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finished, nothing in its proper position. So he swung along on crutches beside the Fed who'd been designated to bring him to some super secret location in the bowels of FBI Headquarters, aka the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, feeling foolish and annoyed.
    Make that pissed. Lily gives him a call… and he'd answered his phone, hadn't he? Okay, maybe that was because he wanted to know how the shopping with Cynna had gone, whether the dippy woman had finally deigned to acknowledge reality. But he had answered.
    And what does she do? Asks him to drop everything and come to this big, ugly block of a building named for the asshole who ran the FBI back when lupi were pretty much "shoot on sight" to the Feds. Wouldn't tell him why, either. She gave him this "can't tell you on an unsecured line" bullshit.
    In spite of that, he'd agreed. Lily didn't make a habit of yanking him around, which meant something was up. He wanted to know what. But he'd been in the middle of an elaborate setup for a spell, an important one.
    Cullen had the most impenetrable mental shields on the planet. They weren't some freakish natural ability, but something that had been given him—or done to him—while he was unconscious last September. It was driving him crazy. He possessed incredibly sophisticated spells, but passively. He didn't know the spells, couldn't cast them or learn from them. That was intolerable. He'd spent weeks creating a spell he hoped would read and copy the ones that had been used on him.
    Of course, his shields were designed not to be tampered with, and reading them was akin to tampering. This would be his third attempt. He thought he had the parameters down, but only the casting would tell.
    Lily knew all that. She knew how much this mattered. So when he'd told her he would come in tomorrow, he'd expected her to accept that.
    Instead, she'd gotten Rule to order him to come here.
    Oh, technically Rule hadn't ordered him. Technically, being heir to Nokolai clan didn't give him that authority. But if your Lu Nuncio tells you the clan needs you to do something, you're damned well going to do it, aren't you?
    Especially if you've spent the better part of your life clanless. Outcast.
    Cullen knew Rule wouldn't kick him out of Nokolai for failing to jump fast enough. He knew that. Yet here he was, and if a good half of his mad came from fears he had no intention of acknowledging, that didn't make him feel one whit more agreeable.
    So maybe he was less than tactful when his escort turned him over to a pair of idiots in bad suits who were guarding a dull stretch of hallway holding three doors—one on the right, two on the left. The idiots wanted to search him.
    He did keep his tone polite. "First you'd better search for some damned brains, I'll help. Bend over."
    "Sorry, sir," said the first asshole, lying like a politician. "Orders. You're lupus. We have to search you before you can go any farther."
    This was a perfect opportunity. All he had to do was exactly what he wanted—tell them to admit him immediately or else explain to their superiors why he'd left. They wouldn't back down. He could tell. They'd refuse to let him pass and he could leave.
    Problem was, the bastards would think they'd won… and he'd told Rule he would do this. If he didn't follow through, he made himself a liar. Which he was, of course, when necessary. Lying was a fine and useful skill, one he'd honed well over the years. But he didn't lie to friends. He might occasionally omit to mention this or that, but he didn't lie to them.
    So that was out.
    Maybe he should just clobber these assholes and look for Lily on his own. An appealing notion… not smart, but definitely appealing. "First, I was asked to come here. Second, I've already been patted down, just before they issued me this nifty little badge that's supposed to admit me everywhere but the executive washroom."
    "Yes, sir," said Asshole Number Two, who was enjoying himself. "But we have to conduct a more