Ritual Magic

teeth into.”

“I’d have to be quick, wouldn’t I?” He said that softly, maybe because there were cops around them now. Maybe because he was warning his wolf not to linger over the kill.

“T.J.,” she said as he turned to look at them, “I’ve got to go. Woo-woo stuff.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You and Turner taking all your sniffers with you?”

“I am, yes,” Rule answered without stopping.

As they reached the trail, Cullen pulled ahead and Rule dropped behind. No room to go abreast. Together all three of them shifted into an easy lope. Lily couldn’t take the trail fast, not at night . . . but she wanted to. She wanted to race as fast as she could. She felt twitchy, as if she’d drunk way too much coffee.

Nerves. Jitters. This wasn’t like her. Normally at this point in an operation she’d be tense but focused—on what she was doing, what her next step needed to be. She had the tense part down. It was focus she lacked. She couldn’t seem to get her mind to pay attention. “If Friar doesn’t have the knife, he means to use us to get it back. Once we get it away from Miriam, he’ll try to take it.”

“I’m still trying to work out how we’ll get it away from Miriam.”

“There is that.” Maybe that’s why she was so jumpy. They didn’t have a plan. Showing up was necessary, but it wasn’t a plan. Only she couldn’t think of where to start.

They hit the first sharp bend. Scott and Mike joined them. Rule told Scott to have the rest of the men meet them at the cars.

From a few feet ahead of them, Cullen said, “Polyester.”

“What?”

“The contagion couldn’t pass through inorganics, and it came from the knife, so maybe the knife has trouble working through inorganics. We need polyester.”

“I’ve got latex gloves.”

“That’s a start. We need more.”

Lily’s phone started on the opening bars of the polka tune she used for Karonski. She pulled it from her pocket just as Barnaby joined them at the rear. “Yes?” Her heart kicked once and started pounding, which made no sense. She could run at this pace a lot longer without her heartbeat going crazy.

“Fairchild’s not at her condo. I’ve got an APB out. Can you get over here? I’d like you to check the place out with your magical fingers. Maybe Rule could sniff around, too.”

“Can’t. I’m headed off on . . . urgent Unit business.”

He was silent a moment. “I see. Advise me when you can.”

“Will do.” She disconnected, feeling vaguely dizzy.

Karonski had known what she meant right away when she said “Unit business.” She hadn’t referred to the legal Unit Twelve, whose investigation he was heading, but to the one that operated in the shadows. The Shadow Unit.

Cullen was right. They couldn’t touch the knife. They had to stop Miriam from using it, but they couldn’t touch it. It would be best if they didn’t get near it. And that was why she’d had trouble focusing. She didn’t want to go where the facts led her. But her unconscious had gotten there just fine, without the rest of her noticing. She’d told Karonski this was now something for the Shadow Unit to handle. That, in effect, she planned to act outside the law.

The best way to stop Miriam without getting close was obvious, wasn’t it? Shoot her from a distance. Don’t risk letting the knife take over any of them. Kill Miriam and leave the knife wherever it fell. Maybe have Cullen put up wards around it. Keep everyone away—could they leave Hardy near to keep an eye on it?—until Sam got back with the Queen’s Hound.

Lily had killed to save her own life. She’d killed to stop someone from killing others. But to kill someone who was a victim herself . . . Miriam had been taken over by the knife or by the god it was linked to. Just like Officer Crown. That made her a victim, not a bad guy. Could making Miriam a victim twice over possibly be the right thing to do?

Lily wasn’t sure. She was deeply, desperately unsure. Stack up the fate of the world against one woman’s life, and it ought to be obvious. It wasn’t.

Ruben had put her in charge of the Shadow Unit’s role in this because she would try her damnedest not to see killing as the only solution . . . but he expected her to do that if she had to. Or order it done.

Did she have to? Wasn’t there always a choice?

Behind her, Rule was giving crisp instructions to Scott for the men. Bound by his word, he said nothing about Friar or a crazy god or the deal they’d just made. He told Scott that he and the rest were to follow him, Lily, and Cullen to an address he could not give out at this time. Earlier, on the way to the scene, Rule had briefed the men on what Sam had told them; now he asked Scott to emphasize to the others that the knife was their most urgent priority. He said there was a good chance that Miriam Faircastle had the knife, but it was not a certainty. Yet.

When he finished, she told him that the call had been from Karonski. “Miriam isn’t at her condo.”

Rule was silent a moment. “That tends to support the information we just received.”

It did, though it wasn’t proof. But if Miriam did have the knife . . . Rule had said he was trying to think of how to stop her. Either he hadn’t seen the obvious, either, or he meant that he was trying to find another way. One that didn’t involve a rifle. Rule saw nothing inherently wrong with assassination, but he didn’t hurt women. Killing one would rip him up inside. It would rip up any of the lupi.

What was right?

What do you believe? That’s the gist of what Karonski had said when Lily picked him up at the airport. What do you know in your gut about goodness? She hadn’t known how to answer. Maybe it was time she figured that out.

She believed in the rule of law. Individual laws might be wrongheaded, but the rule of law was a definite good.

And yet that wasn’t her bedrock. At one time she thought it was, but she couldn’t see it in that black-and- white way anymore. She’d been brought to accept the need for a Shadow Unit to deal with matters the law couldn’t. Tonight she’d indicated to Karonski that this was a matter for that Unit, not the legal one. She’d been happy to circumvent the law, too, about the Uzi Jose had used on the dworg. She didn’t want him jailed for using the only weapon he’d had that stopped the monsters.

Stopping the monsters. Yes. She believed in that. Heart, gut, and mind, she knew that was right.

But stopping was not another word for killing. Sometimes that was what it came down to, the only way she could stop them, but killing monsters was not the goal. Stopping them was.

And Miriam wasn’t a monster. At least, not of her own free will.

Sam had told Lily once that the fundamental value for dragons was freedom of will. She believed in that, in free will and choices. That was what lay behind the whole rule-of-law thing, wasn’t it? People got together and decided that those who made bad choices, ones that harmed others, were subject to consequences. Cops, laws, courts, prison . . . if you didn’t believe that every person was responsible for his or her choices, there was no point in any of it.

They’d reached the road where their car was parked. Gray and Joel were there, but Ronnie hadn’t made it yet. He’d been the farthest away, but he’d be there any minute, Rule said. They’d wait.

And with that, another piece of her beliefs fell into place. Lily wasn’t a dragon. Free will mattered hugely, but so did teamwork. Cops, like soldiers and lupi, knew about working as a team. Other groups did, too. Families, churches, nonprofits, even businesses . . . at their core, each was about people getting together to do things no one could on their own. About working together. Helping each other the best they knew how. Their best was a long way from perfect. Even the good guys were full of flaws and foibles, and they swam in a society made up of people—every one of whom thought they didn’t have enough of something. Beauty, friends, love, sex, money, food, whatever.

Sometimes you truly didn’t have enough. Sometimes all the choices open to you were bad. That was what the law called mitigating circumstances, wasn’t it? You were responsible for your choices, but sometimes those choices were so limited you couldn’t find any good options.

You did the best you could. You tried. And you kept trying.

Ronnie showed up running flat-out in wolf form. Rule told him to stay four-footed for now and get in the