Ritual Magic

Toby looked a lot like his father done up smaller, with a softer face. “How come you aren’t in school?”

“It’s Saturday.”

Saturday. Saturday was for cartoons. She still watched Tom and Jerry, anyway, with Deborah, who was little enough to watch a lot of cartoons. Saturday was also for getting together with Ellen and Ji after she’d done her chores, and . . . and Ellen and Ji were old ladies now.

“Are you going to cry?”

“Maybe.” But she jutted her chin out instead. “So what did you want? Curious about the freak?”

“I thought you might like to hang out with another kid. Maybe you’re not sick of being around grown-ups every minute. I would be, but maybe you aren’t.”

Her stomach loosened up a bit. “I guess I am. I haven’t even seen another kid since . . . since everything changed.”

“I guess you’re all weirded out. Do you know about PS3? I really want a PS4, but Dad says not yet, which means wait for my birthday. I’ve got some cool games. You might like Ratchet and Clank or Lego Pirates or Skylanders. Skylanders is my favorite. Or we could play online stuff, though Dad won’t let me sign up for a lot of those games. He says no graphic bloodletting on-screen until I’m old enough to understand about bloodletting in real life, and then I probably won’t want the on-screen kind, which kind of sucks. But that’s what I do when I’m upset if I can’t go run or something.”

Julia’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “What’s what you do?”

“Play games on my PlayStation or computer.”

Whatever that was. “Why did you say that about bloodletting?”

“Did I upset you? Grandad says humans think about that sort of thing different than we do ’cause they sublimate their violence. Wolves don’t sublimate very well.”

She blinked. “Are you a . . . I forget the word, but like your dad?”

“Yeah, but I won’t turn wolf for another couple years. Do you want to play Skylanders?” He studied her a moment. “You don’t know what I’m talking about. C’mon. I’ll show you.”

TWENTY-ONE

“SHE’S what?” Lily wedged her phone precariously between her shoulder and her ear while she hit send. Another day, another damn report. This one was short because she didn’t have much to add to the one she’d sent last night, just a summary of the false lead she’d chased that morning.

It was noon. She was in the conference room at the Bureau’s San Diego office, which shared a building with the ATF. The two organizations were a tad competitive. ATF was currently all-over smug because of a recent raid on a militia group that had netted them all kinds of illegal weapons, which made them harder than usual to get along with. But mostly the two agencies managed to cohabit reasonably well . . . except when it came to parking. They fought over the limited parking spaces like a pair of starving cats with a single mouse.

Lily had a tiny office of her own, but it was downstairs in what was mostly ATF territory, so she preferred to commandeer the conference room in spite of certain drawbacks, like having the men’s restroom on the other side of one thin wall. She heard every flush. But the women’s restroom was close, too, which was handy, and so was the break room. And there was enough room to set up a murder board here.

Through the closed door, Lily heard a phone ringing. She also heard Fielding’s iPod, which was playing “Hotel California” for the sixteen-thousandth time. In a minute it would change to “Dani California,” then Chuck Berry’s “California,” then “California Dreamin’.” Fielding—a recent transplant from Massachusetts—had the office closest to the conference room, and he really liked songs about California. His playlist, however, was sadly limited. Lily didn’t understand why no one had accidentally spilled coffee on the man’s iPod.

Eleven more people had been admitted to hospitals with some level of amnesia. Two of those already admitted had slid into coma. Two more were on life support. The database of their victims’ lives had finally provided a connection. Fourteen—including Lily’s mother—had gone to the same high school. One of them had been close friends with Julia for two of her high school years, though according to Aunt Mequi the friendship had soured the summer before their senior year. Something to do with a boy. Two agents were at that high school now, poring over records.

The murder board for the ritual killing hung on the north wall of the conference room. They still didn’t know whose face starred in the crime scene photos, it being tricky to get an ID without a body. They did have the man’s fillings—two gold, two composite—and the scarf he’d been gagged with, but the scarf was a cheap import available by the thousands, and even the best forensic dentist couldn’t learn much from four fillings.

That fit right in with the trend on this case. All they had were negatives. Their John Doe hadn’t been reported missing. He didn’t have a police record in California or those states participating in the NGI program, and Homeland Security was pretty sure he hadn’t been a terrorist. Either he hadn’t had much of an online presence, or what showed of his face above the gag wasn’t enough for facial recognition software to ID him using Google and Facebook. Although they’d turned up enough near misses that way to keep a couple of agents busy crossing those people off the list.

“Playing Skylanders with Toby,” Rule repeated. “I had to drag her away to eat breakfast.”

“That’s good, I guess. Surprising, but good.” Lily’s mother wasn’t a complete tech illiterate, but she didn’t much like it. Or didn’t approve of it, anyway. God knew she considered texting some kind of major social sin. “At least she isn’t, ah, quite so dependent on you.” Following him around in a moony, preadolescent way, that is.

“Mmm. She seems to have caught on to the game pretty quickly. The two of them are currently arguing about tactics.”

“That’s . . . good?” Lily thought about it. “It is good. It means that Toby really does see her as another kid. He badgers adults. He doesn’t argue with them.”

“True. Which is why I let him stay after he snuck in to see her—which, as he pointed out, I hadn’t explicitly forbidden. She informed me that he was no more upsetting than any other dumb boy, and she liked playing Skylanders.”

In a weird, twelve-year-old way, that sounded just like her mother. “How’s Grandmother?”

“Still asleep. She must have been awake at some point, though, because Li Qin had a message for me from her. Grandmother wishes us to know that Sam has decided we need information about the artifact. It’s a sidhe artifact, so he sent an agent to speak with a sidhe historian.”

Startled, Lily put down her coffee. “He did? What agent? Where exactly did he send this agent, and how?”

“That’s the total message, I’m afraid. Li Qin tells me I must address my questions to Sam or to Madame Yu, neither of whom is likely to wake soon. She added that tigers, like wolves, often sleep heavily after a difficult hunt.”

“How’s Li Qin’s foot? Is she getting around okay?”

“The swelling is down and she’s supposed to get a boot for it tomorrow. She’ll still need to stay off it as much as possible, which she says is fortunate, because then Julia can help her.”

“That’s fortunate?”

“What she actually said was, ‘Who does not need to be needed? There is little that helps us forget our pain so much as giving aid to another.’”

Lily found herself smiling. Li Qin had that effect even when she wasn’t around. “Speaking of giving aid to another—that florist called this morning. Bob or Bill or whoever it is Mother found. I let it go to voice mail, but maybe you could call him and see what the problem is.”

“Of course. He shouldn’t have called you. They’ve been told not to. I’m considering hiring a wedding planner to assist with some of the arrangements, if you don’t object.”

“No, it was my mother who didn’t like that idea.” Julia Yu had been appalled at paying someone to do