Ritual Magic

THIRTY-ONE

EIGHTEEN hours later, they knew a lot about the man who’d been staked to the ground and killed . . . and more about their amnesia victims, too. He’d been the key, all right. Plug his life into the puzzle and a picture finally began to take shape.

Alan Debrett had been fifty-seven years old when he was killed. He’d grown up in San Diego, attending Hoover High followed by a semester at a now-defunct community college. Apparently the academic life wasn’t for him; he’d dropped out to join the Marines. After a stint there he’d gone to work at Achilles, a firm that made custom pipe fittings. He worked at Achilles for twenty-eight years, the last ten in management. He’d lived in the same house for twenty-five of those years.

Alan had been thin on family. An only child, he’d lost his father when he was forty-two. His mother was in a nursing home with advanced Alzheimer’s and his wife died five years ago. He was survived only by two cousins—one in Denver, one now living in Belize—and by his aunt and uncle.

And by his daughter, Mary.

Mary Debrett was twenty-seven years old. She had a thyroid condition, a heart condition, an IQ of 30, and many friends, both in her neighborhood and at the training center where she went once a week. She remained in ICU in a deep coma.

None of Alan’s coworkers remembered him.

One was among the amnesia victims. Upon closer questioning, several more coworkers reported gaps in their memories. A few of them had been concealing this out of fear—no one wants to think they’re losing it. Others had simply not been aware of the gaps. Yes, they knew someone used to work in that office. Couldn’t think of his name right now. Was it a he? Might have been a woman. Odd, now that you mention it, but they simply didn’t remember.

None of Alan’s neighbors remembered him.

The couple on one side had only lived there for four months and said they didn’t know any of their neighbors; the family on the other side was out of town. The SDPD was tracking them down. But several of the others remembered Mary and a few recalled Alan’s deceased wife, but not Alan. The house across the street belonged to his aunt and uncle, who were in their seventies. They’d been in bad shape when the officers knocked on their door. Both were in the hospital now, suffering from dehydration and severe disorientation. Questioning them was difficult, but it was obvious neither remembered their nephew . . . or large parts of the last fifty-seven years.

None of Lily’s family remembered Alan Debrett, either. But she did.

Not his last name, nor had she ever met him or seen a photo of him . . . at least she didn’t think so. But her mother had once talked about her high school boyfriend, Alan, when trying to impress upon a teenage Lily the need to date nice Chinese boys.

Alan hadn’t been Chinese. Julia’s father had been furious when he found out. He and her aunt had forbidden the relationship—with little success, Julia had admitted. She and Alan had gone steady for nearly two years, using any number of subterfuges she had refused to divulge to her curious daughter. His parents hadn’t approved, either. “In the end,” Julia had said, her lips tight with remembered anger or pain, “Alan came to agree with them.” And that was all she’d been willing to say on the subject.

Shortly after seven o’clock on the night after she found Mary, Lily was at her new home, which was currently a bit crowded. In another half hour they needed to leave for Isen’s house. Karonski wanted everyone to meet there for a combination briefing and brainstorming. But for now, for once, for just the next thirty minutes, Lily wasn’t doing a damn thing.

They’d turned the TV off. Someone in the insurance building on the east side of the parking lot had gotten video of almost the entire battle with the dworg. Lily had watched it all the way through online, which may have been a mistake. She didn’t want to see it again, but all the news programs kept showing snippets from it. No TV news for her for a while.

Music was better, anyway. Yo-Yo Ma was making love to his cello at the moment, and Lily was curled up in the chair-and-a-half that had been her total seating in her old apartment. Their current living area was composed of the original second-floor landing plus one of the tiny bedrooms with one wall removed. There wasn’t much room for a couch, but her old chair fit nicely.

Most of her sat in the chair, anyway. Her legs were draped across Rule’s lap. “I was so curious about my mother’s big youthful rebellion,” she said softly. “I didn’t think she’d rebelled at all, you see.”

“Mmm.” He combed her hair with his fingers. “She wouldn’t tell you more than that?”

“No, so I asked my father about Alan. I was sure he’d know. It didn’t occur to me she might not have told him about an old boyfriend . . . these days, cynic that I am, I’d probably assume every married couple had secrets, but it turned out I was right to think she’d told him about Alan. He knew who I meant, but he pretended to think I was trying to shop for a different dad. Teasing me, you know, in that dry, straight-faced way he has. When I pushed—I was pushy back then, too—he said something about letting the past stay in the past.”

“Bah,” Grandmother said.

Lily paused to see if that was addressed to her. Grandmother, Li Qin, Toby, and Julia were playing mah-jongg in the “office”—the room with the dining table. Grandmother had brought her mah-jongg set with her. Not the good one, which was over two hundred years old, but her everyday tiles. In spite of that “bah,” Grandmother was undoubtedly winning. She always did, and she didn’t believe in cutting any slack based on trivialities like age or experience.

When no further comments came, Lily went on. “So when I saw his name on the papers in his home office, I felt this little tug, as if I ought to know who he was. The memory didn’t float up to the top of my mind until we found his high school yearbook, though. There was a picture of him with my mother, and bam! I remembered that whole conversation. It had left so many questions unanswered—that’s why it stuck, I think.” She looked at Rule. “Only I shouldn’t have remembered, should I?”

“Something protected you from the memory loss others suffered.” He was winding one strand of her hair around his finger. “Whether it was the toltoi or the mate bond, clearly something kept your memory from being damaged.”

“Probably the mate bond.” Lily wanted her mysterious protection to be the mate bond. If it could protect her, it ought to protect Rule, too.

“We don’t know enough to say for sure. Whichever it was, I’m very glad you have it.”

Trying to get Rule to agree with her wouldn’t make it so . . . but she wished he had. “I wish Drummond would show up again. And that’s something I never expected to say.”

“No sign of him?”

She shook her head and shoved her hair back from her face. And winced. She’d taken the elastic bandage off her wrist after supper to let it breathe, but maybe that had been a mistake. It was pretty tender still. “What would you do if I cut my hair?”

His eyebrows went up. “Do you want to?”

“Thinking about it. I don’t usually let it get this long. It takes forever to blow it dry these days.” And when she was one-handed, doing anything with her hair was a bitch. Rule had washed it for her that morning.

“It’s your hair, so it’s your choice.”

“The way you’re always playing with it, I thought you might go into shock or something.”

He smiled. “I think I could cope if there were less hair to play with. As long as you don’t decide to shave your head.”

“Not going quite that far. Maybe I’ll wait until after the wedding, though.” Her mother had been happy Lily had let her hair grow out, thinking she’d done it for the wedding. Mostly Lily just hadn’t had time to mess with it.

That reminded her. “I meant to tell you earlier. My father called this afternoon.”

“Did he?”

“At first he wanted to know about the wedding, if we’d postponed it. But then . . . he’s sorry he said that about not wanting to hear from me. He . . .” Tears stung, making her feel foolish because this was good news. “He said cutting himself off from me was both wrong and stupid. It was like he’d had his foot amputated and decided to blame his hand for that and cut it off, too.”

Rule pressed a kiss to her hair. “Like I said, he’s a good man. What did you—”

“Did not!” Toby cried, indignant.

“Did so!” That was Julia, very loud. “You’re always bragging—‘my dad this, my dad that, my dad is soooo wonderful’—”

“I just said you didn’t need to be all scared because Dad is here, and it’s true! He killed the dworg and kept us safe and—”

“What do you know? You’re just a stupid little kid!” Julia’s voice rose to shrill, but Lily could hear the tears in it. “Too stupid to be scared when there are monsters that want to eat us! They wanted to eat us!”

“But Dad didn’t let them.”

Julia shrieked in rage. A chair scraped, then clattered.

“Julia,” Grandmother said crisply. “Pick up your chair.”

“No!”

Julia came racing out of the room. She jerked to a stop when she saw Lily and Rule. Her face flooded with a mixture of loathing and longing, then crumpled as she spun and headed for the stairs, thudding down barefoot.

Lily shoved herself out of Rule’s lap.

“I’ll go,” he said, standing.

Grandmother stood in the door to the office. She shook her head. “A bad idea. She will either kiss you or hit you, and either way she will feel worse.”

“How come everyone’s worried about her feelings,” Toby said, “when I’m the one who got called names?”

Grandmother sniffed. “And your feelings are so hurt, are they?”

“Well, no, but . . .”

“Then perhaps this is not about you.”

Rule’s phone picked that moment to chime. It was his father’s ring tone.

“Take your call,” Lily said. “I think I know what this is about.” Not Toby, and not monsters. Not exactly.

Lily found Julia sitting on the front porch, her arms curled tightly around her legs. She didn’t look up when Lily stepped out.

Lily closed the front door, letting darkness wrap itself around them. “One of these days, this porch is going to have furniture.” A porch light, too. Also floodlights, but those would go all over the place and were about security, not comfort.

“I’m not going to apologize.”

“No?” The stubbornness in that voice was so familiar. The whine was not. Lily sat on the steps a couple feet away. “Did you think that was why I came out here? To make you apologize?”

“He is a stupid little boy,” she muttered, turning her head away.

“Do you think so? I . . . ow.”

“What?”

“A splinter poked me. These boards are in terrible shape. You’re likely to get splinters coming out here barefoot.”

“I don’t care.”

Lily borrowed one of Rule’s favorite responses. “Hmm.” After a moment, she added, “I heard that your father came to see you today.”

Now Julia jerked upright. “For a whole hour. He looked at his watch! Twice! He couldn’t wait to get away. He’s such a—a—he’s an asshole!” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you smiling like that? You think I’m funny?”

“I was remembering how you sent me to my room once for saying something along those lines. Grandfather Li had called, making his usual excuses for missing my birthday party. I didn’t much care, but it upset you, and that made me mad.”

“What did you say?”

“I don’t recall exactly, but it included calling him a dick.”

“That’s worse than asshole,” Julia announced judiciously. “Not that I’m allowed to say either one.” She stole a quick glance at Lily. “Maybe I am allowed now. Who’s going to tell me I can’t?”

“Grandmother, I expect.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Her arms had loosened slightly; now she unwound one and began picking at a toenail on one bare foot. “Tell me something.”

“If I can.”

“Edward Yu . . . is he a good dad?”

Lily’s throat closed. She had to swallow before she could answer. “He’s a great dad. I don’t know if he could fight off dworg, but mostly we don’t need fathers for that, do we? He always listened. Still does. He’s good at it. He played games with us a lot. Oh, and then there were the Dad Dates. That’s when he’d spend all Saturday afternoon with one of us girls, just one, who got his whole attention that afternoon. I loved Dad Dates. We’d do all kinds of things. Movies, miniature golf, the beach . . . anything but the mall. He would not go to the mall, but that was okay. It didn’t matter what we did.”

“Good,” Julia said gruffly. “That’s good. I’m glad I . . . the grown-up me . . . picked a good dad for you.”

“You did.”

“Do you think I loved him?”

Oh, damn, her not-a-mother-anymore was going to make her cry. “I know you did. And he loved . . . loves you.”

Silence, while Julia picked at that toenail. Then, “I guess he’s pretty sad.”

“Yes.”

More silence. “I guess it would be okay if he wanted to come see me.”

“Shall I tell him that?”

Julia nodded. “But it’s still going to just be me, you know? Not that grown-up Julia he remembers, so he’ll probably still be sad.”

“I guess we can’t keep him from being sad.”

Julia sighed the kind of long, windy sigh twelve-year-old girls were so good at.

For several minutes neither of them said anything, just sat there together. They weren’t really alone, Lily knew. Somewhere in the darkness guards patrolled, some on two feet, some on four. But it felt like just the two of them. She rubbed her arms, which were getting chilly, but she didn’t want to go in yet. The sky was clear and splendid with stars, and she was sitting with the girl who had been—had become—her mother. And it was okay. For this moment, it was okay. “It’s funny. I always pictured you as a very proper sort of girl. I thought you always did your homework and your chores, that you respected your elders and never talked back.”

Julia snickered. “Well . . . I usually do my homework.”

Lily smiled.

Julia tilted her head. “What kind of mother was I?”

Oh, damn once more. She didn’t want to lie, but the truth was complicated. “You read stories to us when we were little, and you were wonderful when one of us was sick. You’d nag us about how we hadn’t taken care of ourselves, but in this really soft voice that was really saying I love you, never mind what the words were. Then you’d fix us whatever treat made us feel pampered. Oh, and you threw wonderful birthday parties. For my tenth birthday you rented a bunch of costumes, western stuff, enough for my whole class. We put on a play, making it up as we went along. It was fun.” Lily smiled, remembering. That had been her first birthday after the abduction. She hadn’t wanted a party, but her mother had insisted, and she’d been right. Not about everything, but about the party. Lily had been the sheriff.

“Was I strict?”

“About some things, yes, because you wanted what was best for us.”

Julia nodded. “Were we close? Me and my mother were really close.”

Lily licked her lips and tried. “I think you and your mother were unusually close. That’s the impression I had.”

“Yes, we were. But you and I weren’t.” Julia nodded again, decisively, and stood and dusted off her rear with both hands. “Good.”

“Ah . . . it is?”

“That’s a mistake, being too close. My mother was . . .” Julia’s voice thickened. “She was wonderful. She really was, and she didn’t know she’d die like that, so it’s not her fault, but . . . but it’s better if there’s a little distance. Mothers should take the very best care of their children, but they shouldn’t make it so it hurts so much when you lose them.”

With that, Julia headed for the door. “I am going to apologize,” she announced, “to Grandmother and Li Qin because I was rude, and to Toby because I shouldn’t have said that about him being stupid. Even if he does brag too much.” She opened the door and went back inside.

Lily didn’t move. She just sat there, robbed of speech. Had her mother always thought this way? That the truly loving thing was to keep some distance between her and her daughters so they wouldn’t hurt too much when they lost her?

Oh, Mother. She rubbed her chilly arms and stared up at the starry sky with damp eyes. You were wrong. It still hurts. It hurts a lot.