Free Tempting Danger by Eileen Wilks Page A

sensitive, I mean. And about lupi.”
    “I read about this in the paper. You are with this killing, are you? No.” Grandmother switched to English, which she spoke perfectly well, though with an accent every bit as bad as Lily’s was in Chinese. “I mean—on the case. You are on the case.”
    “I’m lead. And I need to know more about lupi than I do.”
    Grandmother tapped the rim of her cup with one long, painted fingernail. “This is your favor? You wish to ask me about lupi?”
    Lily answered carefully. Some things were not to be spoken of directly. “I know a little, of course. But there are so many stories. I need help sorting story from truth. Lupi are grouped by families or clans—”
    “Eh! I know little about lupus clans. They are a secretive people.”
    “Yes, but . . . you can help me understand what they’re capable of, what their weaknesses are. They’re fast. I know that. But how fast? The report I read estimated that they could run a hundred miles an hour in wolf form.”
    That sent Grandmother into peals of laughter. “This is experts? Experts believe this? Cheetahs run this fast! Wolves do not.”
    “But they aren’t regular wolves.”
    “No, but they aren’t cheetah, either.” Her eyes were shiny and damp with mirth. She dabbed at one with her fingertip. “What they have—you know this!—is very quick response. Two times as fast as human? Three times? I don’t know. I don’t put a number to it, but very much faster than humans. When they try,” she added, still amused. “They don’t go around speeded up all the time.”
    Two times faster would be plenty quick, Lily thought. “Weaknesses?”
    “They don’t like small, closed-up places. Putting them in jail is bad idea. They go crazy sometimes.”
    A race of claustrophobes? “They can regenerate limbs, right? That’s why registered lupi were tattooed on their foreheads. When they tried tattooing their hands, the lupi cut them off and grew them back without the tattoos.”
    Grandmother shrugged. “Sometimes experts are right.”
    “What about the rumors about their, ah, sexual potency? Is there anything to the idea that they bespell women?”
    Grandmother snorted. “They are potent, yes, but there’s no magic to it. Unless you call it magic when a man pays attention to what a woman wants.” That amused her. “Maybe it is. You have a lupus’s attention, child?”
    “I’m meeting with one today, about the case.” She frowned and pushed her hair behind her ear. She hadn’t really thought she’d been bespelled . . . but what had happened? “Is there any way for a lupus to lose his magic? A curse, or some kind of magical accident? Can a lupus be a lupus without magic?”
    “What?” She drew herself up, stern as a cat presented with the wrong food for dinner. “You will explain.”
    “I shook his hand. The Nokolai prince. I shook his hand, and I felt nothing.” That wasn’t quite accurate. She flushed. “No magic, that is. I have to know why. If my ability is fading—”
    “You know better. You can lose an arm or leg. You cannot lose what you are.”
    “Then what happened?” she cried, frustrated. “He’s supposed to be the heir, the number-two muckety-muck in his clan. He must be lupus, yet I didn’t touch magic! I have to know why. I have to know if it’s him or me. If I read him right, then he can’t Change, so he can’t be the killer. Which I won’t be able to explain to anyone or prove, but it’s a starting point. If I’m right. I have to—”
    “Enough! You are overwrought. Be quiet. I must think.”
    With difficulty, Lily subsided. Grandmother’s fingernail tapped the rim of her cup— ting, ting, ting. She sat very still, very straight. There was a distant look in her eyes and a worried tuck to her thin lips that made the wrinkles show more than usual.
    Of course Grandmother saw the implications, and a good deal more. That’s why Lily was here. A lupus’s magic was innate, like Lily’s