Ritual Magic

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—”

“It’s just a headache. Humans get them, you know. If—”

“—and you are exhausted and determined to make yourself more exhausted. You are setting yourself up to make mistakes. Mistakes can get you killed. I understand why you’re doing this. You’re determined to shut out everyone and everything but the investigation because that’s the one thing you think you can control, but—”

“Thank you so much for your dime-store psychology, Dr. Turner.” She planted both hands on his shoulders and shoved. He let go of her, but didn’t allow the shove to move him back. He still loomed over her, and it infuriated her. “And thank you for making me so mad I feel downright bright-eyed and bushy-tailed now. I think my headache’s on the way out, so if you’ll just get out of my fucking way, I can get back to work.”

“Your headache is better?”

“Yes, though you don’t get the credit for that. Contrary to what you seem to think, I am not a child. I took some ibuprofen, so you can take your orders and—”

“Good.” He seized her head in both hands and slammed his mouth down on hers.

Apparently he was done being careful with her.

The kiss startled her, but the real surprise, the thing that undid her, was the wash of heat that rolled up from her belly, liquid fire that lit up every nerve at once. Like plugging in a Christmas tree, she thought dimly as she grabbed him back and dived into that kiss. Every nerve at once, all of them singing and stinging, and oh yes, that’s good . . .

He was sucking and licking at her neck. She arched into him and got the first button undone on his shirt. “This is not makeup sex.”

His mmm sounded vaguely inquiring.

“I am still mad at you.”

This mmm suggested agreement.

“And you have too many buttons on this shirt. You don’t need all those buttons.” She tugged, but her angle wasn’t great and Rule bought quality clothing. No buttons popped off. “Dammit.” But she had opened up a bit of chest with that first button, and she wanted it. Wanted the taste of him on her tongue, so she aimed her mouth there.

This dislodged Rule from her neck, but his gasp suggested he didn’t mind. She couldn’t reach his neck very well—he was too tall, dammit—but she could get to the little hollow at the base of his throat. A thought intruded. She paused with one hand at his waist, the other headed south. “Did you do that on purpose? Make me mad on purpose?” He’d done it before, hadn’t he? Tripped her into temper because he thought she needed the outlet.

“No, that was unpremeditated assholery. I . . . mmm.” That low hum came from what she did next, not what he was saying or thinking. Or not thinking, she hoped. “This is not an order, absolutely not an order, just . . . ah, that’s good, that’s lovely. But unless you want to do this on the table—?”

Wrong room. They needed to move this one room over. “They’re all downstairs, right? The guards?”

“One downstairs. The rest outside, patrolling, or at the barracks.”

“Let’s go, then.” And not worry about the bits of clothing undone or . . . wait, when had he done that to her shirt? How could she not have noticed? Hastily Lily tugged it back down and grabbed his hand.

The hall was dark. Rule flicked off the light in their makeshift office, and the whole house was dark. Dark and silent. Though his eyes would find light hers didn’t, and his ears probably picked up all sorts of small sounds from the others in the house. Who were all asleep, but . . .

“You’re thinking,” he told her and lifted her into his arms.

“Bad habit,” she agreed, and now she could reach his neck just fine. She did that as he carried them into their bedroom, closing the door behind them.

It wasn’t as dark here. The blinds at the windows were old and ugly as sin, with bent and missing slats, so mostly they left them pulled up. Outside, the sky was full of stars. No moonlight, but enough starlight to lessen the dark. It was just as quiet, though, so quiet she could hear the slight rush of Rule’s breathing as he set her on her feet and the rustle of fabric as he slid his hands up her sides beneath her shirt.

Rule would hear the catch of her breath. Did he hear her heartbeat pick up, too? Could he hear those sleeping nearby? Grandmother and Li Qin and Toby and the woman who wasn’t a woman now, but a young girl . . .

“Shh,” Rule said as if she’d spoken that thought out loud, and he stroked soothingly down her hips.

. . . her mother, who wouldn’t wake to hear her daughter having sex because she didn’t have a daughter, and besides, she’d been placed in sleep by the black dragon after he knit together her fraying mind. She wouldn’t wake for hours. Julia Lin—no longer Julia Yu; there was no Julia Yu—would not be sleeping in this house now, her plundered mind wandering whatever dreams were left to her, if not for Lily. Her destruction might be no more than a pleasant perk for Friar on the way to whatever goal he’d set, but she had been included among the victims on purpose. Because of Lily.

A shudder took her.

Rule’s hands paused. “Lily?”

“Don’t let me think.” She pulled his head down and kissed him hard, and if there was more desperation than desire in the kiss, she didn’t care.

Rule did her bidding, but not as she expected. Instead of a hot, hasty race to the top, he was thorough and deliberate and ruthless. He stripped her quickly enough and laid her in their bed, but then he wanted to taste. With mouth and teeth and touch he took her up and shoved her off that high sensory peak—then dragged her back up the cliff so he could do it again. This time with him inside her.

Oh, he was ruthless, all right. And deliberate and thorough. Also effective. For a long time she didn’t think of anything but sensation, need, and Rule.

In the cool, close darkness afterward, with her skin slick with sweat and her breathing beginning to steady once more, she lay with her head on his shoulder. “I’ll probably go back to work in a minute.”

He was stroking her back. “Will you?”

Her head moved in the tiniest of nods. Her eyes were heavy. She’d rest them for a bit. “She never wanted me to be a cop, you know.”

“So you’ve said.”

“She wanted all of us safe, but also . . . prestige. Wanted us to have prestigious careers.”

“Many parents do want that for their children.” He kept stroking in long, slow slides.

“For us or from us. Do right by the family, y’know.” The outer darkness was seeping in, dragging her down, making a mumble of her words. “I never thought about the price. The price to me, yeah, but my choice, so I pay the price, that’s okay. Didn’t think about the price others would pay. Expected them to pay it, but didn’t think about it.”

“No one could have thought this would happen. That it even could happen.”

“Not the point.” What was the point? She couldn’t remember, not with all that heavy darkness dragging her down . . . oh, yeah. “Can’t face her. ’S my fault. Can’t look at her like this.”

“Okay.”

That roused her. “What d’you mean, okay? I’ve got to. She’s my mother, and she’s here.”

That soothing hand never stopped petting. “But you won’t be, most of the time. You’ll be busy working yourself into exhaustion again. That’s why Madame Yu and Li Qin are here. Let the rest of us deal with her. You don’t have to.”

There was a flaw in that reasoning. She was sure there was a flaw, but the relief was so intense it unmoored her. With a sigh, she let go and fell off into sleep.