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other man looked at him. After a moment his eyes went back to normal, and the fire died.
    “I’m not laughing,” Rule said. “What are you suggesting?”
    “I tossed the bones after the cops left.”
    Max rolled his eyes. “Teenage tricks.”
    Rule knew little about divination, but everyone tried tossing the bones at some point—usually, as Max had said, as a teenager, when the lure of the forbidden was strong and common sense was short. The results were unreliable, at best. Or so he’d always thought.
    But done by a sorcerer of the Blood? His eyebrows went up. “And . . . ?”
    “I asked for information about your enemy. And got . . . this.” He pulled a handful of dice out of his pocket and tumbled them onto the bar.
    Snake eyes. All of them. All six dice had a single dot on every side.
    There was silence for a moment, then Max breathed, “Jesus.”
    Rule’s mouth was dry. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance you did that yourself? Accidentally?”
    “About the same chance you have of turning into a kitty cat at the next full moon.”
    “Another sorcerer?”
    Cullen’s lip curled. “I don’t think so.”
    “There’s some of the Fae could do it,” Max said. “Don’t know why they would, but who knows why a Fae does anything?”
    “Or we can consider the obvious.” Cullen looked at Rule.
    “Yes.” Rule drew a deep breath. “Maybe one of the Old Ones has woken, and is stirring this pot.”

FOUR

    THE low ceilings and twisty ramps of the subbasement parking at headquarters always made Lily feel as if she were traveling through the guts of a concrete behemoth. Her cell phone rang as she pointed her old Toyota down yet another rigid intestine.
    She glanced at the Caller ID, grimaced, and answered anyway. “Hello, Mother. I’m a bit pressed for time. I’m due in the captain’s office at nine.”
    “The captain’s office? Are you in trouble?”
    Why did her mother assume that? It’s not as if Lily had been in trouble all the time as a kid. Just the opposite. “It’s a briefing. Kind of like a meeting, you know? Like people with real jobs have.”
    Dead silence on the other end. Lily’s breath huffed out. Her mother could cram more reproach into silence than most people managed by screaming curses. “Sorry. I’m short on sleep.”
    “This will just take a moment. You left last night before I got a firm date from you for the fitting.”
    “I’m being digested by the parking garage at the moment. I don’t have my planner handy.”
    “Then you will call me once you do. Really, Lily, my cousin’s friend is a very busy woman, and she’s given us a handsome discount. You must show some courtesy. You’ve already missed one appointment, and your bridsesmaid gown simply has to be altered. The bodice looked terrible on you.”
    Lily wanted to say that no amount of alteration would make her look good in puke green, but she was already in trouble. “I’ll check my schedule and E-mail you, okay? That will be quicker for me than calling.”
    Her mother wasn’t fond of E-mail but grudgingly accepted the compromise and launched into a detailed description of the newest wedding crisis. Lily’s older sister was going to be married in grand style if it killed their mother.
    Lily pulled into her parking place deep in the belly of the garage, most of her attention on the report she’d pulled together before leaving her apartment. “Mm-hmm,” she said as she grabbed her backpack, shut and locked her car door. Then what her mother had just said sank in.
    It seemed the menu for the rehearsal dinner had to be changed. The groom’s sister was allergic to ginger.
    “Lily? What is it?”
    She realized she’d made some small noise. “You mentioned ginger, and it reminded me. I saw Ginger Harris last night.”
    Her mother made one of those very Chinese exclamations, sort of a short eh! It was a sure sign of distress. Normally Julia Yu sounded as Californian as The Beach Boys. “Ginger Harris? Why