World of Lupi 10 - Ritual Magic (3 page)

Lily stopped moving. Someone had scrubbed some of the mascara streaks off her mother’s face, but she still had the raccoon look going. Beneath the smeared makeup, her eyes looked lost. Bewildered.

“Hey,” Cullen said as he stepped up to the gurney. “Hi, Julia. You’ve had a really rough night, I hear.”

“Sir, you need to step away,” one of the EMTs began.

“Susan,” Lily said, “Cullen isn’t going to question her. He just needs a minute.”

Susan frowned hard, but she told the EMTs to wait.

Julia’s jaw tightened pugnaciously. “I don’t know you. I’d remember you if we’d ever met, and I don’t.”

Cullen was memorable. On the one-to-ten scale of male beauty, he was an eleven. Lily had seen passing strangers stop in their tracks to stare. Especially women, but men did it, too, sometimes. “Well, now,” Cullen said with a smile, “if you don’t want us to be on a first-name basis, you’ll have to call me Mr. Seaborne. I’d rather be Cullen to you, but if you insist . . .”

Julia blushed. Lily had never seen her mother blush. “I—I guess that’s okay.”

“I’m going to make some funny gestures,” he told her, “so I can get a better look at the magic used on you. You won’t feel a thing, except maybe like giggling if I look silly.”

Julia’s eyes got big. “Can you fix me?”

“First I have to figure out what’s wrong. What I’m going to do now . . . think of it like going to the doctor and getting a thermometer stuck in your mouth. He usually has to do other things, too, to find out why you’re sick, like look in your ears and your throat. And sometimes that isn’t enough and they have to do more tests. Right now, though, I’m just taking your temperature.”

“Mr. Turner,” Julia said, and tried to sit up, but they’d strapped her in. “Mr. Turner—?”

“I’m right here,” Rule said and moved to her and took her hand.

She blinked up at him. “Is this your friend that you said was coming?”

“It is. Cullen is very good at magic.”

“I’m the great pooh-bah of magic,” Cullen assured her. He drew a sign in the air, whispered something, and put his two hands together, then separated them slightly, thumbs and forefingers extended and touching to shape a crude circle. He moved that empty circle around, staring through it, ending with it framing Julia’s forehead. He frowned, muttered something that wasn’t English, and shifted his hands a couple millimeters. Then he dropped his hands and smiled. “Thanks for staying so still, Julia. I’ll see you a little later, okay?” He winked and stepped back.

“Is he going to be able to fix me?” Julia asked Rule as the EMTs got her moving again. She was still clasping his hand.

“Everyone is going to work together to fix you,” Rule said firmly. “It may take awhile, though, so you’ll have to be patient.”

“I guess that’s why they call a patient a patient,” she said as they stopped at the back of the ambulance. “Because everything takes so long, and you have to be patient.”

“You may be right.”

Getting her loaded created a problem. Julia wanted Rule with her in the ambulance, and there wasn’t room for both him and Susan, and Susan was the doctor. In the end Julia did let go of Rule, but he had to promise he’d do his best to be there as quickly as possible.

As soon as the ambulance doors shut, Rule came to Lily. He put his hands on her shoulders. They felt warm and large and familiar, and she wanted to burrow into him and hold on. She didn’t reach for him. She didn’t trust herself to let go.

“I’ll stay with her,” he told her. Just that. He didn’t ask if she was okay or how she was doing, for which she was grateful. She wasn’t okay.

But she was functioning. She’d keep doing that. “Go,” she told Rule.

“I’ll leave the car for you.”

“No, take it. I’ll have a uniform or one of the agents bring me when I’m through.”

“All right.” His hands fell away. “Mark, you’ll drive. Barnaby, with me.” He went from motionless to a lope in the blink of an eye, his guards trailing after.

This whole time, Lily’s father hadn’t said a word. He’d kept his eyes fixed on Julia, then on the ambulance as it backed up. As it pulled away, he turned and started for his car.

“Edward,” Grandmother said, “you are not driving.”

“I’m perfectly fit to drive,” he said without looking at her. But he stopped at the Nissan he’d bought the previous year and didn’t open the door.

She didn’t answer, but walked up to stand in front of him. She put her hands on his arms and looked up at him—not very far up, for Edward Yu was not a tall man. For a long moment they simply stood there looking at each other. Suddenly his face crumpled, and he whispered something in Chinese that Lily didn’t catch.

Grandmother reached up and patted his face, leaving her hand on his cheek as she answered in that language. “You will do what you have to, my son, until you can’t. And then you will rest while others do what needs doing.”

Edward Yu reached up and placed his hand over his mother’s. A stiff little smile curved his lips as both their hands fell away at the same time. He responded in English. “I will. And as I
am
fit to drive, I will begin by driving you to the hospital.”

Grandmother’s smile sparked briefly. “Ha! Everyone contradicts me.” With that blithe disregard for truth, she went on to dispose of her troops—which in this case meant everyone within earshot and many who weren’t. Lily was to pursue her work here. The rest of the family would remain here and obey the officers of the law. “We will leave now,” she informed her son. “Sam will meet us there. It will take him two hours.”

“Sam?” Lily said, startled. “I thought he was leaving for one of his sing-alongs.”

Grandmother snorted. “Hardly that. In any event, he has postponed his departure.”

Edward had opened the passenger door for his mother and stopped with his hand on it, staring at his mother in consternation. “Surely you aren’t talking about—”

“Of course I am. Doctors are all very well.” Grandmother slid into the car. “I do not object to doctors. But in matters of magic and mind, I think the black dragon will be more useful.”

The car door shut.

“I hope she’s right,” Lily said too softly for human ears.

Cullen, of course, wasn’t human, and he stood only a few feet away. He heard and moved closer to say softly, “You felt what I saw, didn’t you?”

She wanted to tell him she had no idea. She didn’t know what he’d seen, did she? Only she was pretty sure she did. “It’s not exactly magic that was used, is it?”

“No. I’d hoped to see an intact spell in place, suppressing Julia’s memories. That was the best-case scenario. Remove the spell and she’s back to normal. Next-best case would be a potion that—”

“A potion could do that?”

“It’s not likely, but there are some that cause forgetfulness. They don’t make you lose most of a lifetime, though—more like a couple hours. I’ve heard of one that could make you lose up to a month, but . . . well, I’ll skip the technical stuff, but theory doesn’t support any potion causing the loss of more than a month because of the tie to the moon’s cycles. But potions aren’t my thing, so I wasn’t going to discount the possibility. A potion wouldn’t have been too bad. Sometimes their effects wear off spontaneously, but if not, there’s the potential for an antidote.”

“You’re dragging this out.”

“Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand up in spikes. “Worst case, I thought, would be a spell that had actually destroyed her memories rather than suppressing them. Just because I’ve never heard of such a spell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And at first that’s what I thought had happened, because the lingering trace of magic was so small I could barely see it. When I looked with my magnifying spell, though . . . whatever it is, it doesn’t look like mind magic.”

“Arguai,”
she said flatly. “That’s what it felt like.” She ran her thumb over the
toltoi
in her ring . . . which held
arguai
. Or so she’d been told. Her mouth twisted. “Not that I know what that means, but that’s what the elves call it. Some kind of power that isn’t magic. Magic can tell me it’s present, but can’t identify it.”

“Arguai,”
he breathed. “Shit.”

“You know what it is?”

“Oh, yeah. I can tell you that much, at least. We have another word for it. Spirit.”

“That’s just a word to me. What does it mean?”

“It means,” he said grimly, “that you might need to find a holy man or woman, because I’m not going to be much help. Not any old monk or shaman or priest will do, either. If
arguai
was used on your mother, you need a truly holy person. A saint.”

Lily wanted to grab her hair with both hands and yank. Or throw something. Or punch something. Her eyes welled up, and that infuriated her even more. “Any idea where I find a saint? They aren’t exactly listed in the Yellow Pages! Unless Miriam . . . she’ll be here soon, with the coven. Does it have to be, like, a Catholic saint?”

“Holiness isn’t dependent on creed, but if you’re talking about Miriam Faircastle—”

“You know another Miriam? She’s a Wiccan high priestess, so I thought maybe she’d do.”

Cullen snorted. “Miriam’s no saint.”

“You don’t like her?”

“Woman completely lacks a sense of humor.”

It figured that Cullen would see that as a prerequisite for sainthood. “She’s a bit intense, but . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes widened in shock.

Cullen spun to face the spot she was staring at. “What is it?”

“Mist.” White mist that rapidly pushed out blobs so it was shaped like a starfish with a stump where the top limb should be. Four of the blobs coalesced into arms and legs as the one on top became a head and everything sprang into focus. A lean man with slicked-back hair stood there, smirking at her. He was as translucent as the mist he’d formed himself out of.

Al Drummond. Former FBI agent. Former bad guy, though he’d redeemed himself. Currently quite dead, but that didn’t keep him from smirking at her. “Surprise.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Don’t get all soppy, now.”

“Drummond—”

“I can’t stay, but I wanted you to know, first, that Friar’s in this up to his grimy neck. Second, I’ll be working this one with you, but mostly from my side of things. I won’t be able to chat much.” Far faster than he’d come into focus, he winked out.

Lily stared in disbelief at the empty space. “I need a saint, and
that’s
what I get?”

THREE

L
ILY
had had plenty of experience dealing with a victim’s family members when they were in the grip of grief or anger. She’d thought she understood their feelings. She’d been wrong.

Fury pulsed inside her like a second heart, driving her forward, but she could keep it in check. Use it. Over the next couple hours it flicked at her now and then, hot and raw like a flame licking up the side of a fire pit. But the job wrapped its constraints around her, telling her when to pause and take a breath, telling her not to respond to that sullen lash. As long as she could keep moving forward, she’d do okay.

But it was a good thing Karonski would be here tomorrow. A damn good thing.

At this point Lily knew pretty much exactly what she’d known two hours earlier. Her family had been questioned and turned loose; most of them had headed to the hospital. “Nothing,” Rickie had told her. “The Big A and I got nothing from them worth repeating. No one saw or heard anything unusual until Mrs. Yu started screaming.”

The coven wasn’t here yet. Their head priestess had been in Mission Viejo, over an hour away, when Ida called her. CSI was still working the scene. Cullen was helping them by making sure everything they removed was magically inert. Ackleford and his people were interviewing the last of the restaurant’s patrons. Lily had told him that Friar was probably involved. There were special procedures to be followed in a case involving Robert Friar. For one thing, he was a powerful clairaudient—a listener. Lily’s Gift blocked him, as did Rule’s mantle, but the regular agents would have to be careful about what they said.

And Lily . . . Lily was feeling increasingly useless. She was also running out of reasons to avoid going to the hospital.

She ought to want to be there, but, oh, God, she didn’t. For once in her life, she wanted to play ostrich. She would put off going as long as she could, put off that moment when she looked at her father and her family, knowing she was probably the reason her mother had been attacked.

Coincidences happen, but this was not one. Not if Friar was involved. He hadn’t done this just to get at Lily, though. He and his damn mistress were too goal oriented for that, and their goal was the biggest makeover ever, using
her
specs for Humanity 2.0.

Lily didn’t see how robbing Julia Yu of most of her life gave them a leg up on the world-domination thing. Maybe this had been the test-drive of some new magical trick or device. A way to be sure it worked before turning it on his real target—Rule? Ruben? the president?—and to hurt Lily along the way. That made more sense.

No, it didn’t. Why would Friar show his hand this way? Why alert them that such a thing was possible? Robert Friar wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t risk having his real attack misfire just so he could shovel some pain into Lily’s life. Did that mean that somehow Julia Yu’s memory loss did help him? Had there been something in Julia’s life—something she used to know, but no longer did—that could derail Friar’s plans?

Whatever the hell those plans might be. She needed to stop speculating until she had more facts to build on. If she couldn’t get a handle on
why
, she’d look at how. Which meant pestering Cullen, because Miriam and her damn coven weren’t here yet.

She only hoped he wouldn’t be too bloody careful with her. Some of the others were doing that, and it drove her crazy.

Cullen was perched on a table in the center of the main dining room, legs folded in half lotus, watching the busy CSI techs like a grouchy Buddha. Every so often he sketched something in the air, though his air-writing didn’t glow like it usually did. Maybe he didn’t like to do that around so many cops. Technically, sorcery was illegal, though the law hadn’t been enforced for decades, and not just because most people didn’t think sorcerers existed anymore. The law was based on such poor understanding of what sorcery was—and how magic in general worked—that enforcing it was about as reasonable as arresting people for leaving their Christmas decorations up too long. Which, she’d read, was illegal in Maine, but no one got arrested for it.

He saw her coming and stood, then launched himself from the table, leaping over a startled tech using a hand vac. The table rocked slightly. He landed easily and scowled at her. “I hope to God you’ve got something for me to do.”

She should have known she could count on Cullen not to tread warily around her delicate feelings. “You can leave if you’re done.”

“No, I can’t. I’m waiting on Miriam. There’s a couple more elaborate spells I can try, but they require a full circle.”

“While we wait, I’ve got a few questions.”

“Of course you do.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve got precious few answers for you. Whatever was done to Julia, the spell or ritual took place elsewhere. No matter how carefully a spell or ritual is worked, it leaves traces. There aren’t any here.”

“You’ve abandoned the idea of a potion?”

“It’s just so damn unlikely. If Friar somehow hooked up with another of Dya’s people, someone who might be able to concoct a potion that would do this . . . but that’s not at all likely, is it? Plus any potion would have to have turned magically inert afterward, since I checked every glass at the table. That’s also hard for anyone but a Binai to pull off.”

Dya’s people made the most sophisticated potions known to the sidhe, which meant they were very sophisticated indeed. But the Binai were few and lived in the sidhe realms, and the two Queens came down really, really hard on anyone in their realms who so much as spoke the Great Bitch’s name. None of the Binai would knowingly give aid to
her
.

All of which made it, as Cullen said, damn unlikely. “So what—ah. At last.” Lily started for the restaurant’s front door.

It had opened to admit five people. The one in the lead was a tall woman, what some might call statuesque, others lush. An insurance chart would likely peg her as thirty pounds above optimum, but she wore those pounds the way another woman might wrap up in a sarong.

Miriam Faircastle reminded Lily a bit of Nettie Two Horses. They were about the same age, two self-assured, forty-plus women who’d never married or seemed to feel the need. Mostly, though, it was the hair. Miriam’s was every bit as long and frizzy as Nettie’s and a similar shade of coppery brown. Their styles were vastly different, though. Miriam liked color. Lots of color. Tonight she’d pulled her hair back with a blue scarf. She put that with a floaty turquoise skirt, an orange tee, and a second scarf wrapped around her hips, that one mostly yellow with some green and blue. To make sure she didn’t leave any part of the spectrum feeling neglected, she’d added several strands of bright red beads around her neck.

Lily had met three of the people with Miriam. The fourth was new to her—a short, square little woman with thick glasses and a blond braid. Lily gave the group a nod. “I know Jack and Gail and Warren,” she said, “and this is—?”

“Abby,” Miriam said and clasped Lily’s shoulders in her hands, looking down at her with dark brown eyes. “Abby Farmer. You haven’t worked with her before. She’s new to the coven and is an extremely strong and capable Earth witch. Lily, I am so very sorry about your mother.”

Sympathy affected Lily the way peanuts did some people. Her throat closed right up. She nodded stiffly. “Thanks. She’ll be okay. Now, I’m sure Ida or Ruben briefed you, but—”

“It has to be terrible for you, working this as if it was just another case. Anything I can do to help, I will. We all will.” Miriam glanced at the others, who murmured agreement or nodded.

She could start by not looming over Lily. Miriam’s personal space dial was set to Italian or something. She always stood too close. “Thank you,” Lily said again.
And if you hug me, I’m going to belt you.
“We need to know several things that I hope you can help with. First, though, I need you to certify that . . . damn.” The electronic gong muffled by Lily’s pocket was a ring tone she didn’t hear often. Grandmother did not like talking on the phone. “I need to answer this,” she said, pulling out her phone. “Cullen, could you brief Miriam and the others?”

“Sure. Here’s the deal, Miriam. Once you’ve run the basic tests for the record, I’d like to try a variation on a seek spell with . . .”

Lily stopped listening, moving away as she thumbed the answer button. Her heart pounded. If it was bad news, surely it would be Rule calling, not Grandmother? “This is Lily.”

“Do not be alarmed,” Grandmother said crisply. “Julia is resting. However, there is disagreement about her treatment. I may revoke my approval of doctors. You are needed here.”

* * *

R
ULE
had always known his people were at war.

Long before his First Change, he and Steve and the others in their age cohort had killed thousands of dworg
.
Dworg made satisfying monsters because they were not wholly imaginary. Extinct, yes—or so everyone believed—but the clans had fought the real thing in the Great War. Sometimes Rule had died heroically in those battles, like Arnos of Etorri, but mostly he’d preferred to emulate Kierran or Tel—heroes who survived to fight another day. Those ancient tales were the stories he’d listened to, played out, and grown up on. All lupi did.

Human history had no record of the Great War. Not surprising, given that it ended over three thousand years ago . . . or so its other participants thought. Not the lupi. War didn’t end until your opponent was dead or had submitted irrevocably. The enemy they had been created to defeat was an Old One, as incapable of real submission as she was of dying. She might have been temporarily defeated and locked out of their realm, but the war hadn’t ended.

For over three thousand years, each generation of lupi had been raised knowing they could be the ones called upon to resume the war. So Rule had always known that his people were at war, yes, and that his could be the generation called into battle . . . much as he’d grown up knowing the Russians might decide to drop nuclear bombs on his country. It could happen. It probably wouldn’t, but it could.

Unlike the lupi’s war, the Cold War had ended. And as year rolled into year it had been easy to believe that his generation, too, would live out their lives in relative peace.

One year and four months ago, the Azá tried to open a hellgate.

He and Lily and a great many others had stopped them, but they’d known
she
was behind the attempt. Persuading the other clans of this had been difficult until last September, when the Lady spoke through the Rhejes to announce the resumption of the war. In October, the battle had gone hot. Even humans knew a little about it now—at least, they knew about the battles at the Humans First rallies. Most had some idea of Friar’s connection to that carnage, though they didn’t know about the Great Bitch and her plans for their world.

A few did, however. At the FBI and in the White House, they knew.

It was one thing to know you might be called to war. It was another to fight it.

Rule leaned his head back in the uncomfortable chair beside Julia’s bed and closed his eyes, relieved that she slept at last. Relieved for both of them. Dealing with a sad, frantic twelve-year-old was not easy. But with his eyes closed, the sickness came back, a sickness that pounded in him like a drumbeat.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

What had been done to Julia was hideous, obscene, wrong on the deepest level. And his fault.

That wasn’t true. He knew that, dammit. How could he have anticipated such a thing, much less kept it from happening? He pushed to his feet and then stood there, trying not to pace. Deep inside where that drumbeat pounded, words held no sway. Deep inside, he knew only that he’d failed. Failed Julia and failed Lily. Julia was part of the war because of him. It had been up to him to protect her, and he’d failed.

He took a slow breath to calm himself. God, he hated hospitals.

His eyes fell on the black leather purse sitting primly on the beside table. Edward Yu was a highly logical man, yet he’d insisted that Julia should have her purse. That made no sense. All the familiar detritus of Julia’s life had no meaning to her now, but logic broke down under such an onslaught of emotion.

There was a slim leather folder tucked into one outside pocket of that purse. His heart heavy, Rule pulled out that folder. He knew what it held—a notebook containing all the plans for the wedding, written in Julia’s slanting, impeccable script.

Lily often found her mother difficult, he knew. He understood why, but he’d enjoyed collaborating with Julia on the wedding. She was pushy, yes, and inclined to hold a very high opinion of her opinions. But once they’d established that Rule could not be pushed somewhere he didn’t wish to go, they’d dealt with each other quite well. Julia was a natural organizer, and she’d taken such pleasure in arranging her daughter’s wedding. Every detail interested her. Every detail mattered.

Every detail was written down in the notebook he held now. That was fortunate, for Julia remembered none of them now. Sorrow tightened Rule’s throat. He tucked the folder into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.