Ritual Magic

Benedict nodded once. “Where do I go?”

As the little surgeon gave directions, Rule considered the man’s surprising familiarity with the instincts and limitations of healers. He turned to ask Lily to find out if the man had a trace of that Gift.

She stood absolutely motionless, one hand still clutching the mug she’d filled and forgotten, her face a blank mask—save for the tears slipping from her eyes, shining damply on her cheeks.

Fear leaped up, lodging in his throat. His hand tightened on hers. “Lily?”

“I . . . it’s Sam. He just told me. My mother . . .” Now she turned to look at him. “He’s finished, and it worked. Her mind is stable.”

EIGHTEEN

LILY rubbed the back of her head with one hand and tried to concentrate on the copy of Karonski’s report she’d gotten from Ida. It appended reports from the Big A, Erskine, the crime scene squad, and the coven. She had it spread out in hard copy with the database about the amnesia victims called up on her laptop.

Her head hurt.

It was one of those sneaky headaches that starts small so you won’t notice it and take action, but the little guy with the big crowbar had clocked in at some point and was hard at work prying open her skull. The little guy is industrious. As long as you’re still, he can keep working. If you move, it jostles him. That makes him mad and he whacks you with the damn crowbar.

The doorbell chimed, Lily raised her head and the little guy whacked her. She winced. Maybe she’d better take something.

She was in a tiny corner bedroom of the house that would get around to feeling like home one of these days. The bedroom on one side of her held Grandmother and Li Qin. Apparently Grandmother was no longer pretending Li Qin was just a companion; that room had a double bed. On the other side was the temporary master bedroom, with Toby’s room just beyond. They were using this one as an office, though instead of a desk it held the dining table that used to sit at one end of their apartment. Lily still didn’t understand how they’d gotten the table in here. It barely fit. Rule’s stuff was spread out over one end of the table. Lily sat at the other.

Downstairs she heard voices. Rule’s, for one. The other one was too faint for her to identify, but it was male. She listened intently a moment, but no one sounded upset. Not bad news about Nettie, then.

Benedict and Arjenie had stayed at the hospital along with a half dozen guards, whose presence was probably stressing the hospital personnel. Nettie had come around in recovery and done exactly what the surgeon had said she would—tried to use her Gift. But Benedict had been there and told her to stop it. Nettie wasn’t one to take orders and she’d been too fogged by drugs and pain to listen to reason, but he was her father. That voice had reached her on a level no one else’s could. She’d stopped.

It must be one of Rule’s men downstairs, Lily thought, rubbing the back of her neck. Though they didn’t usually ring the bell. She frowned, wondering if she ought to go find out, but the question didn’t seem as pressing as her headache. She had a bottle of water already and there were ibuprofen pills in her purse. She dug them out, swallowed two, and forced her attention back to the report.

Several minutes later, the stairs creaked as Rule came up. He didn’t come into their makeshift office, though; she heard a door open and felt him move into the bedroom at the other end of the hall. The one that held her mother.

Rule could move silently when he wanted, but it wasn’t necessary. Normal noises wouldn’t wake Julia up. Grandmother had said she would sleep at least eight hours and probably ten or twelve. Grandmother had looked so tired when she arrived. Drained. Julia had looked . . . the way she always did. No makeup and her hair was down, which was unusual, but she’d looked like Lily’s mother. As if she ought to wake up and be fine.

She wouldn’t. She’d wake up, sure, but she wouldn’t know Lily or her husband or anyone. She—

Shut up, Lily told herself and rubbed her neck and wished the damn pills would kick in. She needed to focus. There had to be some clue, some trail to follow . . .

“It’s midnight,” Rule said from the doorway.

“Yeah?” Surprised, she glanced at the top right corner of the screen: 12:07. “Someone rang our doorbell at midnight?”

“Paul brought more of your mother’s things.”

She didn’t want to think about that. She needed to get back to the report, but . . . “This late?” Susan had packed a bag for their mother earlier and brought it here; Li Qin had put the things away. “What did he bring that was so important?”

“Your father found a few of Julia’s childhood keepsakes. He thought she’d feel better if she has some familiar objects nearby when she wakes up.”

“Oh.” That was the kind of thing her father would do, too, spend however long it took to unearth a few old treasures that might comfort his wife in her odd and altered state. Edward Yu wasn’t a demonstrative man. Lily didn’t think he’d said “I love you” to her since she went off to college, and not often before, but she knew he did. He lived his love instead of speaking it.

Of course, now he wasn’t speaking to her at all. Would he still be silent at her wedding? That would be jolly. Her mother twelve years old, her father not speaking to her . . . she turned back to her computer screen.

“Lily.” Exasperation rang clearly in Rule’s voice. “It’s midnight.”

“We covered that already.”

“You need to come to bed.”

“Not yet. You go on.”

He growled. It was an honest-to-God growl that ought not to come out of his throat unless he was furry. “I’m wiped out, and I need a good deal less sleep than you do. Sleep, Lily. You do remember what that is?”

“I need to figure out why. Look.” She twisted in her chair to look at him. “Motive isn’t always the answer, but it’s sure as hell part of the question. Friar didn’t do all this just to swipe at me. That may be a bennie, but it’s not the reason. Not his goal. What’s he after?”

“Beaucoup power, for starters.”

“He already has power. We don’t know how much, but we know the Great Bitch supercharged him. There are now seventy-nine amnesia victims. Seventy-eight of them aren’t connected to me, but something connects them. That’s where I’ll find the why, in that connection.” Angrily she shoved her hair back. “I just can’t spot it.”

“And you think staying up all night when you’re already short on sleep will help you do that?”

Lily made a noise in her throat. It did not sound like a growl. “That is so frustrating. Why can’t I growl the way you do?” She turned back to the computer screen. “Go away.”

“I have been careful.” He said that calmly. “I have done my best not to overstep or push or take over—and I am by damn tired of it! I’m sick of being careful with you when you refuse to be careful with your own bloody self!”

Lily had her mouth open to yell back at him when her chair jerked backward. Two hands landed on her shoulders and plucked her out of it, stood her on her feet, and spun her around. Rule glared down at her. “Would you bloody tolerate it if a subordinate refused to stand down and get some rest when he needed it?”

“Subordinate?” The word sputtered out as rage ignited. “You think I’m your subordinate now?”

“In the Shadow Unit, you are.”

“I can’t believe you said that. Is that what we’ve come to? You ordering me to go to sleep because you think you can?”

“Lily.” His eyes closed. He took in a breath slowly before opening them again. “How many times have you read those reports?”

A couple. Well, three, if they were talking about Karonski’s report. More with the database, but that hardly counted. You couldn’t absorb all those details at once, so you had to keep going back over it and over it . . .

“You can barely focus on that bloody screen. You’re in pain—I saw it in your eyes the moment I—”