Mortal Ties Read Free

had done what she had to do. And Helen hadn’t had a spouse,
     lover, or any living family, so Lily didn’t even carry the burden of having brought
     grief to those who might have loved the woman.
    Yet here she was. She wasn’t sure why. In some murky, underneath way it was connected
     to what she’d done yesterday, when she and Rule had stood in line for a ridiculous
     amount of time at the County Clerk’s office. They’d left with a marriage license good
     for the next ninety days.
    The wedding was in March—two months, one week, and two days away.
    Yesterday had been the immediate catalyst for this visit, but the decision to come
     here had grown up organically in Lily’s mind over the last several months. She’d found
     out where Helen was back in June, but hadn’t come. Last month she’d swung by Mount
     Hope’s office and gotten directions and the map, but hadn’t gone to Helen’s grave.
     She hadn’t been ready.
    Ready for what? She wasn’t sure. She was here, and she still wasn’t sure why.
    Mount Hope had been San Diego’s municipal cemetery for about a hundred and fifty years.
     Raymond Chandler was buried here. So was Alta Hulett, America’s first female attorney,
     and the guy who established Balboa Park, and a lot of veterans. So was Ah Quin, who
     was remembered as one the city’s founding fathers…at least by its Chinese residents.
     And so were those who’d been buried at the county’s expense, though budget cuts meant
     the county was likely to cremate, not plant, these days.
    Helen had died a virgin, a killer, and intestate, but taxpayers hadn’t had to pick
     up the tab for disposing of her mortal remains. The trustee appointed by a judge had
     seen to that, paying for it out of her estate.
    Turned out Helen had socked away well over a quartermillion. Telepaths had an inside track on conning people, didn’t they? If they could
     shut out the voices in their heads enough to function, that is—which Helen had been
     able to do, thanks to the Old One she served. That’s how she’d met her protégé, Patrick
     Harlowe…who’d also died badly, but not at Lily’s hands. Cullen Seabourne had done
     the honors there.
    But Lily had killed again since then. Helen was her first, but killing and war went
     together, didn’t they? Even if most of the country didn’t know they were at war, the
     lupi did. Lily did. And so did her boss, head of the FBI’s Unit Twelve…head, too,
     of the far less official Shadow Unit.
    In the run-up to the war, Lily had killed demons, helped a wraith reach true death,
     and ushered a supposed immortal through that small, dark door. This last September
     she’d tried and failed to kill a sidhe lord. And in October, just before the first
     open battle of the war, she’d shot a man. Double-tapped him.
    That man had just shot a fellow FBI agent—a lying, treacherous bastard of an agent,
     but at that point he’d been on Lily’s side. There had been other lives on the line:
     four lupi, another FBI agent, and the twenty-two people the bad guys intended to slaughter.
     Lily had sited on the shooter’s head—his body had been blocked by the van he’d driven—and
     squeezed off two quick shots. She’d killed him cold, not hot, killed him to stop him
     from killing others.
    That was training. Most cops never had to use their weapons, but when you took up
     the badge you knew you might be called on to take a life. Lily had never doubted she
     could. Not since she was nine, anyway. The man who’d raped and killed her friend while
     she watched, tied up and waiting for him to do the same to her, had been arrested
     and tried and convicted. He’d gone to prison for life, which was all the vengeance
     she was supposed to want.
    But for months afterward, she’d dreamed of murder.
    Lily had always known she entered the police force to stop the monsters. She was beginning
     to understand the other reason she’d needed that bureaucratic harness.
    “Goddamn