Night Season Read Free Page A

agreement to leave people and pets off the menu.
    Problem was, there weren't enough dragons.
    Cynna watched Washington's dragon bank and head down. Looked like he was heading for Rock Creek Park. He'd claimed the amphitheater there while governmental types argued over where to build his permanent lair.
    "You coming?" Lily said.
    Cynna slid in the car and buckled up. "Do you ever wish we'd gotten Sam instead of Mika?"
    Lily shrugged and started the car. "Sam wanted to be near Grandmother. Or else Grandmother wanted him near. Or maybe he just wanted to be warm. It's never warm here."
    "Bitch, bitch, bitch. If you're still around this summer, you'll be complaining about the heat. It's not a dry heat like you're used to."
    "San Diego isn't as hot as you'd think. Hotter in the mountains, of course. As you move away from the coast, you don't get the cooling effects of the ocean."
    "You miss it."
    Lily sighed and pulled out. "More than I expected. This was supposed to be temporary."
    Lily had originally been posted to Washington, DC, for two purposes: to assist the Secret Service in an investigation and to take an abbreviated version of the standard FBI training at Quantico. Like Cynna, she belonged to a special unit in the FBI's Magical Crimes Division, one that until recently very few knew existed. Lily had been recruited last November. She was a touch sensitive, able to feel magic tactilely yet impervious to its effects, but her background as a homicide cop was as valuable to the Unit as her Gift. A lot of the Unit's agents lacked that kind of law enforcement training and experience.
    Lily had finished up the assist-the-Secret Service part of her assignment, but what with demon assassins and the Turning and all, her training still wasn't complete.
    "There is an upside, I guess," Lily said. "Being parked at Headquarters puts twenty-six hundred miles between me and my mother."
    "Yeah, but planes are flying again, cell phones are working—"
    "Don't remind me."
    Cynna smiled because she was supposed to, but she wondered… if her mother had lived, would she be as mom-averse as Lily? Some of her other friends were like that, too. A few seemed to be close to their mothers, but a lot of them had issues.
    Not that she didn't have issues. You didn't have to have a living mother to find knots tangled all over your heart tagged "from Mom." Which was a damn good reason for never… not going there, she reminded herself. "How's Rule?"
    "He's good. The mantles have settled into peaceful coexistence… which you'd know if you hadn't been avoiding us. I—oh, God."
    "What? What is it?"
    "I sound like my mother."
    Cynna laughed. For the first time in hours—days—well, a long time, she felt like laughing. Maybe she'd been isolating.
    You think ? whispered a snide inner voice.
    "I'd better get over that," Lily added casually. "It looks like I'm going to be a mother myself soon. Of sorts."
    Cynna jolted so hard she nearly gave herself whiplash. "You—you're going to have a baby?"
    "No. Oh, no, though—well, I can't say what I'm thinking without making a forbidden allusion. I was talking about Toby."
    Toby was Rule's son, and Rule was… well, just about everything to Lily, except a husband. Lupi didn't marry. "You mean he's going to sue for custody? Or did Toby's mom finally agree to let him live with Rule?"
    "Alicia didn't agree, but her mother has. I think Mrs. Asteglio approves of me, and with Rule and me going down there so often after she broke her leg—"
    "She broke her leg?"
    "Fell down the stairs. It was a wake-up call for her. She's sixty-three, you know, and has some other health problems that make it hard for her to care for a child Toby's age. And she knows Toby wants to live with his dad."
    Since the boy had run away just before Christmas so he could spend the holiday with his father, Cyinna agreed that Toby's preference was obvious.
    "I feel sad for her," Lily added. "She loves Toby. It's hard on her, giving him up, but we'll