Ritual Magic

THIRTEEN

TRAFFIC was unusually annoying on I-5. Rule drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and did not curse or contemplate a judicious culling of the herd. Not much.

The slow creep was aggravated by the fact that he couldn’t switch lanes aggressively. Impatience was not sufficient reason to risk losing the car tailing him. He glanced at the woman beside him. Nettie had asked him to let his guards follow in another car for the ride into the city. He was still waiting to find out why she’d wanted the privacy. He’d used the drive to tell her more about the situation, but that was nothing that his guards couldn’t hear. She hadn’t said anything they couldn’t hear, either.

Nettie was reading Lily’s report now, her head down, a pair of readers perched on her nose. It was a strong nose that went well with the copper skin and bladed cheekbones that were her heritage from both sides of her family. Benedict was half Navajo; her mother was full-blood.

Her hair was a throwback to Rule’s great-grandmother on his father’s side, or so Isen claimed. Not at all Navajo, that hair. Today she’d braided the unruly mass that, let loose, would have spilled in frizzy waves to her waist. As a teen, Nettie had hated her hair. She’d chopped it all off in medical school and kept it short until, when she turned thirty, it began turning gray. Somehow that change reconciled her to it. She’d worn it long ever since.

Rule had known his niece since she was in diapers. He’d studied women for years. He knew hair held meaning for women, that it affected how they saw themselves. He had no idea why its turning gray had made Nettie like hers. He was glad it had, but he didn’t understand it.

He eased forward another few feet. His phone chimed that he had a new text. He reached for it.

“You are not going to read text messages while driving,” his passenger informed him. “And yes, this speed still qualifies as driving.”

“Of course not.” Rule held the button down briefly without looking at his phone. “Read the text, please.” The automated voice complied. The text was from Lily, who wanted him to know that Abel—whom she insisted on calling Karonski, that being the preferred cop mode of address—was holding a press conference in thirty minutes. Abel wanted her to perform with him.

“That’s the damnedest thing.” Nettie shook her head. “Your phone reads your texts to you? Not that you should be using it at all when you’re driving.”

“I don’t do it at highway speeds.”

“You shouldn’t do it at all. And I don’t want to hear about your super-duper lupi reflexes. Even if you can avert a crash at the last minute, you shouldn’t put yourself in that position. Or me. Or the drivers around you.”

He wasn’t feeling charitable toward the drivers around him at the moment. There were too damn many of them. “I wouldn’t risk you.”

“Try not risking yourself, too. May I see your toy? How do you get it to talk to you?”

He handed her his phone and instructed her briefly in how to access Siri. Nettie had one of the oldest still-functioning cell phones in existence. It was another point of bafflement for Rule. She was no Luddite, yet she disliked cell phones and refused to upgrade.

While she played with Siri, they eased forward a bit faster. Maybe the bottleneck was breaking up at last.

Nettie handed him back his phone. “Maybe I should break down and get a smartphone.”

“I’ll get one for—”

“No, you won’t. Note that I said maybe I should. Not you. Feeling especially Leidolf and territorial today, are you?”

“I was feeling generous. Now I’m feeling annoyed.”

“Surely you know that lupi claim territory by giving presents? Leidolf’s especially obvious about it, but you all do it.”

That shut his mouth. Did he do that? Did his father? “The way you claim territory by constantly correcting me?”

Nettie chuckled. “It’s not constant, but if you’re going to be wrong so often—”

“Careful.”

“Not to mention prickly. What’s wrong?”

Rule gave her a look.

“You’re worried about Lily’s mother, of course. I know that. But I was raised by a champion brooder. I know a good brood when I see one. Something else is eating at you.”

“If I’d wanted to talk about it, perhaps I would have found a way to introduce the subject myself.”

“Did I ask if you wanted to talk about it?” Though her words were as tart as ever, her voice was gentle. She reached out and squeezed his arm. “Do you know what’s bothering you?”

Rule sighed. “I’ve found a new level of pettiness in myself. I’m not happy about it.”

She made a humming noise that was supposed to encourage him to keep talking. When he didn’t, she did. “I’m not just being nosy, Rule. I’m wearing my shaman hat. If we’re dealing with a negative spiritual incursion—”

“A what?”

“A negative spiritual incursion into our world. Or you could call it the dark side of the Force. Or an evil god.”

“You mean the Great Bitch.”

“Actually, I don’t. Not necessarily. First, not all gods are Old Ones. Second, wouldn’t your mantles have reacted if her power was used directly against Julia Yu?”

“I think so, but if Friar is using an artifact, the power isn’t coming from her directly.”

“I don’t know much about artifacts.” Nettie thought about that a moment, then said, “Directed, focused spiritual power—to me that speaks of those we’ve traditionally called gods. But whether we’re dealing with a god or an artifact, spiritual power is involved, and spirit is different from magic.”

“So everyone keeps saying, without defining that difference.”

“Spirit can’t be pinned in place with a definition, but the difference . . . I can take a stab at that. Magic is inanimate and morally neutral, like electricity. Spirit is morally active and volitional.”

“It’s alive?”

“Not precisely. Spirit is what life is built from. That’s why Lily’s Gift doesn’t block it.”

“You need to tell Lily that.”

“Do I? All right.”

“Sam said that humans speak of spirit in terms of good and evil. Is that what you mean by morally active?”

“Close enough. My point is that if there’s a lot of really bad spiritual juju around, we have to be careful about our spiritual hygiene.”

He snorted. “Spiritual hygiene.”

She shrugged. “Evil infects. It’s like a virus. We encounter all kinds of viruses and bacteria every day—and spread them, too, without meaning to. Most people, most of the time, don’t get sick beyond a head cold or stomach upset. Similarly, most people, most of the time, fight off most of the infections caused by evil. But if we encounter the spiritual equivalent of the plague, we’re in trouble.”

“You’re afraid we’re dealing with the plague version.”

“I don’t know what we’re dealing with. That’s why I’m pestering you to talk about whatever is bothering you.” She squeezed his arm again. “It’s like lancing a boil. If you can’t talk about it with me, then find someone else.”

Lily. He wanted to talk to Lily. Unfortunately, she was the one person he couldn’t discuss this with.

He hadn’t known there was anything wrong until this morning, when jealousy reared its snaky head. Lily had told Rule to go tend to his clan business. She wanted to be alone, she’d said. He’d caught himself thinking that she’d arranged to be alone with Abel.

That was so absurd it got his attention. Why would he think that, even for a moment? The answer had come immediately: because she was shutting him out. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t wanted him with her this morning. It was how she felt when she was with him. Closed down. Shut down. Shutting him out. And he resented it.

And that was a nice bit of irony, wasn’t it? Lily had pointed out how often he shut her out when he was troubled. She didn’t like it. Now he knew how she felt. He didn’t like it, either, but he wasn’t going to whine to her about it now. Not when she was dealing with very real grief. In effect, Lily had lost her mother. Julia was still around, but the twelve-year-old version of her was not anyone’s mother.

Unlike with most deaths, however, there was a chance Lily could get her mother back. A slim chance, maybe vanishingly small. But Lily being Lily, she would believe it was up to her to put things right. This had to push her anxiety into the stratosphere, and he worried about how hard she’d be hit if they weren’t able to—

His phone rippled through the violin music he used for Lily’s ring tone. He grabbed it. “Yes?”

“The press conference is postponed. Karonski and I are on our way to Balboa Park. Can you meet us there?”

“Of course. What’s up?”

“The locals found Hardy for me. He was crooning over a dead body.”

BALBOA Park was a big place—roughly twelve hundred acres—but it was an urban park, not a wilderness area. The zoo took up a big chunk of those acres, as did the Naval Medical Center and the Morley Field Sports Complex. There was a history center, a science center, fourteen museums, assorted other buildings, and the pavilion. The Old Globe theater complex. The amphitheater. Multiple gardens, running from Alcazar to Zoro.

In spite of all the cultivation, there were also hiking and biking trails. Lily squatted on a rocky outcrop about a hundred yards from one of those trails, looking down into a ravine. It was a blue-sky day, the air soft with early spring. Birds called each other, gossiping about the two-legged intruders in their midst.

Off to her left, mostly hidden by scrub, she could hear the city’s CSI team. They were working on what was probably the path the perps had taken. Below her, in the ravine, were two men. One was alive. One wasn’t.

The living man stood with his back to the dead one, chanting softly as he studied a small mirror he kept tilting this way and that. The dead man ignored him as thoroughly as only the dead can.

He’d been fifty-five or sixty. Caucasian, and a really pale one now, with so much of his blood gone. What she could see of his features looked regular; the lower half of his face was hidden by the black cloth they’d gagged him with. Blond hair going gray, a bit of a paunch . . . which she could see because his killers had stripped him before staking him to the ground with four big iron spikes. One through each hand, one through each foot.

He’d still been alive when they did that. Alive, too, when they drew some kind of rune on his chest with a knife. They hadn’t cut his throat until after they pinned him to the earth like a human bug. He’d struggled. Damn near pulled one of his hands free in spite of the spike, which spoke of strength and desperation and guts. It took guts to do that to yourself. He’d ripped his hand apart, trying to get loose.

Lily’s gut cramped. Whoever he was, he’d been a fighter.

“What’s your buddy doing?” the cop behind her asked.

“Investigating,” Lily said. That came out too terse. Angry. She tried again. “I don’t know any more than what he told Detective Erskine. I don’t know spellwork myself.”

“Huh. I thought all you Unit types did the woo-woo stuff.”

Lily sighed. You’d think she’d be better at waiting. She did enough of it. “We all have different areas of expertise. I’m a touch sensitive. I can’t work magic, so I never learned spellwork. I’ll be checking for death magic after he’s finished.” There were special protocols for dealing with a body and a scene involving death magic, so they needed to know for sure before the Bureau’s CSI team got started.

When Lily and Karonski got here, the city’s crime scene team had started working the scene, though they hadn’t gotten beyond taking pictures and video. Karonski had set them to working on the path and relegated the rest of the SDPD to searching the nearby area, maintaining the perimeter, and watching Hardy and the boys. The guy with the lead, Detective Erskine, was not happy about that.

It would have to be Erskine, Lily thought glumly as she rose. Not T.J. or Brady or even Laurell, but Erskine. She turned to face the patrol officer. Officer Daryl Crown wasn’t middle-aged yet, but if he stood on tiptoe he’d bump his head on it. He was Caucasian, brown and brown, with tired eyes and, from the smell, a nicotine habit. He’d been first on-scene, and Lily had wanted to question him while Karonski did his thing, so she’d asked him to escort her here.

She cocked her head. “The boys who found the body—Ryan and Patrick, right?”

“He likes to be called Pat.”

She made a mental note of that. “They said they were on the bike trail and heard Hardy singing.”

“If Hardy’s the guy who doesn’t talk, then yeah. They also said they never take their bikes off the marked paths, but they made an exception this time.”

“I guess they don’t usually cut school, either.” She exchanged a look with him. “They’re brothers. The parents here yet?”

“I’ll check.” He clicked his mike and asked someone about that. “The dad just arrived. Mr. Samuel Springer.”

“If Karonski doesn’t finish up pretty soon, I’ll—”

“I’m done,” called a voice from below. “Come on down. Carefully.”

Lily didn’t waste any time following that order.

The ravine wasn’t deep, but it was steep and covered in bushy growth. Only one good way down, so they weren’t using it. The perps probably had. The next-best access was about ten feet to Lily’s right. She headed there, sliding the strap of her purse across her chest messenger-bag style so she’d have both hands free. That let her scramble down quickly, hitting the bottom of the ravine several yards from the body.

Karonski met her. His face didn’t tell her much. The lines were grooved deeper than usual, but that might be fatigue from the spell.

“Well?” she said.

“We’ll share notes after you’ve checked things out your way. Stay back as far as you can. Don’t cross the circle.”

“It’s not active, is it?”

“No, but don’t touch it. Just touch one of his hands for now.”

She nodded, slipped booties on over her shoes, and advanced carefully. She’d already mapped out her route from above.

The circle around the victim had been drawn with a thick line of powder the color of unburned charcoal. It was scuffed in several places. Inside it—in addition to the body—were simple runes sand-painted on the earth. They were a pale, chalky yellow. It looked like there’d been nine of them, though several had been obscured by the arterial blood that had fountained up and out, covering a large swath of the ground . . . except in one spot, near the victim’s head. The place where his killer had squatted to cut his throat.

Blood splatter doesn’t show up as starkly on dirt and rocks as it does on a white wall, but from above Lily had been able to map out a fairly clear path to one staked hand. She sniffed as she drew near and frowned. She’d expected the sour, butcher-shop stink. There was a lot of blood. Some had soaked into the ground, but the ravine was rocky. Not enough soil to absorb however many quarts he’d lost before his heart quit pumping it out.

She had not expected the faint stink of decay. Visually, the body seemed fresh. Some lividity, sure, but while that didn’t hit maximum for six to twelve hours, it set in pretty early. No signs of animal depredation, and while the day was warm, it wasn’t hot enough to speed decomposition. Last night had been cool.

Well, figuring out time of death was the ME’s job, not hers. She stopped and crouched. Someone had a very sharp knife, she observed. They’d sliced his neck open with a single stroke. No false starts. Took a good blade and some strength to do that. Might take some practice, too. Had they used the same blade to carve that rune on his chest? If so, it was fairly narrow.

She could reach one of the staked hands without crossing the scuffed circle. She did that, pressing her fingers to one mutilated hand.

And fell back on her butt.