Mortal Sins by Eileen Wilks Read Free Book Online

way of thinking, she’d already dealt with that. She’d done it for Rule.
    That protective instinct again. His lips curved up. Lily might never run four-footed in the moonlight with him, but in other ways she made a fine wolf.
    “A couple of the reporters recognized me,” she said. “They asked about you, of course. They’ll find you pretty quickly here.”
    “I know. You’ve given me time to warn Toby and Mrs. Asteglio, at least. You touched the dogs’ bodies?”
    She nodded. “The magic felt different, I guess because of the way they, uh, encountered it—through ingestion. Slimy as hell. But it was there. I’ve warned the ERT to treat all the bodies as biohazards. Rule, Ruben wants me to work the case.”
    Ruben Brooks was the head of Unit 12, a formerly obscure section of the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division that had risen to importance with the Turning because most of its agents were Gifted.
    Rule was silent as he pulled out of the small parking lot onto an empty street. Dawn had cracked the horizon and light was bleeding back into the world, but no one seemed to be up yet, save themselves. “I suspect he didn’t phrase it as a request.”
    “No. Not really.”
    “Good.”
    “What?” Her head swung toward him fast enough to send her hair flying. “I know you don’t want me to work this case, not with the hearing so close. Then there’s Leidolf and what you have to do there.”
    “I don’t want it, no, which is why it’s just as well Brooks didn’t leave it up to you. You would have been torn by opposing obligations. I understand why Brooks wants you on it. No one else has your protection against death magic, for one thing.” Lily’s Gift gave her that. She could touch magic; she couldn’t be touched by it. “For another, you want this one. It’s already yours.”
    She reached for his right hand, curling hers around it. “Think you know me pretty well, don’t you?”
    “I wouldn’t say that. You’re like Russia.”
    “What?” This time he’d surprised a smile from her. “I’m guessing you don’t mean I’m cold—too much evidence to the contrary. And as for any communist tendencies you think I’m harboring—”
    “No, I was borrowing from Churchill. Like Russia, you’re a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ But I’ve been studying the riddle, the mystery, and the enigma awhile. I know the obvious things. You’ll let go of an investigation about as easily as a bulldog unclamps its jaws.”
    “So I’m an enigmatic bulldog.”
    “Of course.”
    “I don’t know about the enigmatic part.” Her smile faded. “Speaking of dogs . . . it’s stupid, but that got to me. Having to shoot those dogs got to me.”
    Rule didn’t doubt that, though he suspected she was focusing on that horror because the other—the children—was too large to come at directly. He squeezed her hand. “I won’t tell you it wasn’t your fault, because you already know that. But maybe it hasn’t occurred to you that death by bullet was cleaner than what they’d have endured otherwise.”
    “They’d been pets, you know? At least two of them had. They had collars. No tags, but collars. If you could have seen their ribs . . . They were starving to death. That’s why they dug up the grave. They were starving.”
    “They were sinned against twice—by those who abandoned them, and by whoever left the tainted bodies for them to find. But not by you, Lily.”
    “I guess.” Her eyebrows knitted. “I don’t see why the magic transferred that way. Why they went mad. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”
    “I don’t know much about death magic.”
    “Well, neither do I, but I thought it took a big-deal ritual to work it. I’ll ask Karonski about that.”
    “Ah. Will he be joining you? Or is Brooks sending you some other minions?”
    “Minions. I like that.” She smiled, but in the pale light of early morning, she looked tired. “For now, just the ERT. Karonski will be