Ritual Magic

TWENTY-THREE

“SO that’s going to be your secret tunnel.” Julia crouched next to the earthen trench, impressed. Big metal bars were rammed into the dirt along the walls every few feet and the floor was outlined by boards called forms because they’d form the way the concrete would go when they poured it. That was what Rocky had told her. He was the foreman or crew boss or something like that, and she ought to call him Mister Something, but Toby hadn’t told her the man’s last name. Toby called everyone by their first names no matter how old they were.

The trench ran about twenty feet from the house’s basement to what was going to be a big garage, but right now was a big mess. They’d knocked down the original garage, because it had been in sorry shape, plus it hadn’t been big enough. Two men and a woman were working to clear away the mess. The woman was operating a backhoe—a machine with a big scoop on one end that Julia really, really wanted to drive, but they wouldn’t let her. The woman used it to scrape up chunks of cement and broken-up boards from the old garage. Then the men used their shovels to toss smaller pieces of broken stuff into the scoop, and then the machine would pivot and bump along several feet to empty its load into a dump truck.

They wouldn’t let Julia drive the dump truck, either.

“Want to see the other one?” Toby asked.

“Other one what?”

“Other secret tunnel.”

Julia sat back on her heels, indignant. “You get two secret tunnels?” One secret tunnel was cool. Two was like having two swimming pools or two maids picking up after you or—or doubles on anything that was just too much.

“Yes, because maybe our enemies will explode the garage, or maybe that won’t be a good way to go ’cause there’s too many of them in that direction, or maybe they’ll find this one. So there’s one the other side of the house, too. It’s not finished, but it’s closer to being done than this one.” He popped to his feet. “Come on. If the cement truck shows up, we’ll hear it.”

Maybe it wasn’t too much after all, Julia thought as she followed the boy. Or else it was too much of the wrong thing. If you had to worry about your enemies blowing up your garage . . . “Will we be able to see the cement truck if it does come?”

“We’ll hear it, anyway. But Rocky didn’t think the truck was gonna make it today.”

Rocky was the foreman, who’d gone into the house with a couple of his men to eat lunch when they found out there was a problem with the cement truck. Watching them pour the cement was supposedly the reason Mr. Turner had chased them outside. She bet, though, that if they tried to go in, he’d make them leave again. He was working on his computer, which looked a lot like Toby’s computer, but he was reading stuff on it instead of playing stuff on it.

She sighed. “I guess grown-ups are all the same about some things. Like wanting kids to go away when they’re busy.”

“Dad didn’t want us to go away. He wanted us to stop playing computer games. He thinks too much gaming isn’t good for me. That’s usually okay because I usually have plenty of other stuff to do, but since we moved here . . .” He shrugged and kicked a small rock. It skittered several feet.

“You don’t like it here?”

Toby shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s just that there’s more to do at Nokolai Clanhome and lots of kids to do it with. Maybe they’d let you go to Clanhome with me tomorrow. Do you like to fish or rock climb?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done either one.”

“Not ever?”

“My father doesn’t like fishing.” He probably wouldn’t have taken her and her sisters even if he went fishing every week, but she didn’t want to say that. Not when Toby had the coolest father ever . . . even if he had chased them outside after lunch. “I don’t know if I could do rock climbing. I used to be pretty strong for a girl, but I don’t know how strong this body is.” They rounded the corner of the house. “I don’t see a tunnel,” she said, frowning.

Toby grinned. “They did a good job, huh? It’s camouflaged. That’s why I’m not supposed to play on this side of the house, in case I forget what to look for and accidentally fall in.”

“Are we going to get in trouble for being here?”

“We’re not playing, are we? And you ought to know about it so you don’t accidentally fall in.”

“And that is what you plan to tell your father if he finds out.”

“I’ll tell him anyway. I don’t lie to him . . . well, I can’t, because he’d smell it if I tried. But I don’t hide stuff from him, either.” He paused. “Usually.”

Was he pulling her leg about Mr. Turner smelling a lie? She looked at him suspiciously, but decided it might gratify him too much if she asked. He was okay, for a boy. But he did think he was pretty special. “So where’s the tunnel?”

He showed her. It was well hidden, all right. They’d put plywood on top and put sod over the plywood, so all you really saw was a kind of bump that ran out to a small grove of trees. They ambled along in that direction.

“This tunnel is a bigger secret than the other one,” Toby said. “See, if someone’s tracking what we do here they’ll spot the other one and think they know what we’re up to. So you can’t tell anyone about it. No one at all.”

“Okay.” It was a really tricky way to do things, which she had to admire, but it made her stomach feel tight to think they might need this much trickery. “It looks like it’s been here all along. The grass and weeds look like they grew up all by themselves.”

“They used magic to help with that.”

“Did Mr. Seaborne do the magic?”

“No, he’s not that good with plants, because of him being so good with Fire. Grandmother did most of it, but she taught Cynna how so Cynna could do it, too.”

She looked at him, astonished. “Grandmother? You mean the old lady who . . .” Julia had to think for a minute to recall the relationship. “Mr. Yu’s mother?”

“I guess you don’t know about her anymore.” His brow wrinkled. “I’m not sure if I should tell you, but . . . well, she’s got what you might call a really special Gift, but it’s a big secret. She knows some spells, too, and one of them makes things grow.”

Julia frowned, studying the slight hump that indicated the tunnel-to-be. “So why do they worry about you falling in? You don’t weigh enough to break plywood.”

“Oh, it isn’t plywood everywhere. There’s places where it’s just a bit of tarp and not much dirt. See that scuffed spot by that dead-looking bush? And I think there’s one close to us, too.” He studied the ground, then squatted and brushed at the dirt. “See?”

The edge of a yellow tarp showed through beneath a thin coating of dirt. “But that’s not enough dirt to grow things!”

“That’s why they needed magic.”

That was some pretty cool magic. Julia sighed. She’d never thought about magic much before, but now she found herself sad because she didn’t have any. “So why did they use a tarp in some places?”

“So they can get in and out to work on it, which they mostly do at night.”

“They really are working hard to . . . hey, what’s that?”

“What?”

“Up there.” Julia pointed at a patch of sky between them and the house. “See where the air is all wavy and funny?”

“YOU’VE seen the greenhouse, the store, and the rec center,” Isen said. “Shall we visit the babies now?”

Hardy’s face lit up. “‘You are my sunshine,’” he sang. “‘You make me happy when skies are gray.’”

Isen chuckled and turned down the path to the clan’s day-care center. “Babies do that for me, too.”

He had learned quite a bit about his unusual guest today. Some of it was obvious. Hardy couldn’t use words normally, but he understood them just fine. He had a vast repertoire of songs and commercial ditties from before 1975. Most likely, then, he’d been hurt in 1975, or close to it.

Isen had also learned that Hardy loved dogs, chocolate ice cream, and hot water. That last item was probably not a pleasure he could indulge in often, but he certainly had this morning. He’d been in the shower a full hour. He also knew that Hardy had a bad knee, a child’s curiosity, and a clear and flexible mind. Humans might not notice that. Without language, Hardy wouldn’t think the way they did, so sometimes he would baffle them, or vice versa. But Isen was accustomed to new wolves who’d temporarily lost language . . . and old wolves who didn’t always bother to put words to their thoughts.

He might be the most nearly fearless man Isen had ever met.

Not completely without fear. He’d been anxious about the message he wanted passed on to Lily, but otherwise he lived in the moment, sunny and untroubled. Certainly lupi didn’t worry him. Once he understood the nature of his hosts, he’d been fascinated. At Hardy’s request—rather elliptically posed, but Isen had figured it out—Isen had Changed in front of his guest. Hardy had watched intently, then he’d grinned and sung out that God had “you and me, baby, in His hands”—a clear proclamation that Hardy considered Isen one of God’s children, even when he was four-footed. Interestingly, he’d assumed that Isen would still understand him.

Hardy also walked with angels.

That was how Hardy thought of it, at least, and who was Isen to say he was wrong? They’d had a good conversation about it. Hardy didn’t actually see the beings he called angels, but he felt their presence. Sometimes they spoke to him, and the way they . . .

What was that? Isen stopped, all his senses alert.

Hardy grabbed his arm and sang so quickly that the words all smeared together. “Running-just-as-fast-as-we-can!”

The mantle in Isen’s gut twisted as some part of Clanhome ripped. Isen looked toward that breach and felt the wrongness and knew precisely where it had occurred—the node halfway up the rocky slope of Little Sister. He pulled hard on the mantle, tipped back his head, and bellowed, “Fighters—to me!”

SEVEN floors up at St. Margaret’s Hospital, Benedict pushed to his feet. He didn’t suffer from claustrophobia the way his brother did. He had a touch of discomfort in very tight, enclosed spaces, sure, but almost all lupi did. Nettie’s room was small, and at his insistence, it lacked a window. But it wasn’t small enough to trigger that response in him.

So why was he on his feet, pacing?

Arjenie looked at him over the top of her laptop. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Go run the stairs again.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re restless and anxious and sick of this room. You’re also accustomed to a lot of physical activity, and you haven’t been getting it.”

Benedict stopped to smile at his mate. “Know me pretty—”

Thud.

He froze.

“What is it?” Arjenie whispered.

He made the sign for silence and listened keenly. Then he spun. Quicker to take the bed with Nettie in it than to disentangle her first from the various tubes. He pulled his hunting knife from the sheath on his calf. “We’re evacuating. I’ll get Nettie. You get her IV.”

She didn’t hesitate. She put her laptop on the floor and hurried to the IV stand.

Thud.

She must have heard it this time, too. Her eyes widened.

“Bill, Tommy!” he snapped. “Get in here. Rearguard!” He laid the knife beside Nettie and shoved her bed, aiming for the door, which opened to admit the two guards. Arjenie kept pace with the IV stand. “Something’s on the wall outside. Something big. It—”

Thud, thud, crack!

“—wants in.”

LI Lei Yu woke suddenly, sat bolt upright in her borrowed bed, and did something she never did. She yelled. “Rule! The children! Run!”