Read Lupi 08 - Death Magic for Free Online Page B

. . . mostly. You couldn’t avoid iron and steel altogether.
    He gave her a quizzical smile. “I didn’t realize you were a gardener. You don’t have one yourself.”
    “No, but like I told Deborah, I get to play in Grandmother’s dirt.” When she had time. When she was in San Diego instead of Washington.
    “I’m glad you get a chance to get grubby. Lily, please try not to react visibly to what I tell you now. I’d like to have a word with you and Rule after the other guests leave. If you could linger without it being noticed . . . perhaps Deborah can show you the ficus that’s trying to take over the sunroom. You can remain inside as the others depart.”
    Deborah sighed faintly. “Time, is it?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    Lily smiled and nodded as if Ruben had commented on the weather, but now that he’d brought it up, she noticed that the guests had thinned out while she was talking to Deborah. Half a dozen questions jostled in her mind. She suppressed them. If Ruben felt free to tell her what was up, he would have done so. “Okay.”
    He couldn’t have read her mind and she didn’t think her face gave her away, but he answered one of the questions anyway. “It’s about the war.”

FOUR
     

     
    VERY few guests remained when Rule started making his way to the Brookses’ back door. It was almost time. His main feeling was relief.
    The next hour or so would be difficult. He didn’t fool himself about that, but it would be hardest on Lily. First she’d be hit by Ruben’s news, then . . . well, his nadia hated it when he kept secrets from her. He’d learned that he hated it, too, and was more than ready to lay that particular burden down.
    He’d had no choice. She knew him well enough to understand that.
    As he continued along the path, he felt the moon rise. He smiled.
    Her song was always with him, but the bulk of the Earth muffled it until her orbit and the planet’s slow turning brought her above the horizon once more. Tonight the song was quiet and pure, resonating inside him like a plucked harp string. Quiet and pure and sweet. Always it was sweet. The song and the pull would mount over the next week to the wondrous, full-throated call of full moon.
    The Brookses’ land would be a lovely place to spend full-moon night, he thought as he smiled and shook his head, declining an invitation to stop and chat with a couple of slow-to-leave guests. He’d love to sample the scents around him with a keener nose. Changing here would be easy. The earth itself welcomed him in a way he usually felt only at Clanhome. The Change was a matter of Earth communing with moonsong . . . and someone here worked Earth magic regularly.
    Not Ruben, he thought as he went through the open French doors into a large, well-lit kitchen. Mainly because Ruben was not a practitioner, but also, Rule thought the welcome he felt suggested an Earth Gift, not spellwork. And Ruben’s Gift was aligned with fire.
    Deborah, then. Odd that Ruben had never mentioned his wife’s Gift . . . or perhaps not. He seldom mentioned Deborah. Rule had wondered about that. He doubted that he’d gone half a day without speaking of Lily since he met her. But for all that he knew a good deal about human sexual customs, marriage remained a mystery to him.
    It was a mystery he was growing eager to explore. Why had he thought it a good idea to wait until March for the ceremony?
    He passed from the kitchen to a spacious, slightly cluttered den, then into a hall that gave access to the front of the house and to the stairs. Rule approved of Ruben’s home. His own taste leaned more toward contemporary, but he had a love for old wood. Clearly, either Ruben or Deborah did, too, judging by the antiques sprinkled throughout their house.
    The banister curving along the stairwell was old, too. He rested a hand on it as he climbed to the second floor. Smooth wood, polished by countless hands over the years. Had Ruben once dreamed that his children’s hands would