Ritual Magic

FOUR

SHARP pain stabbed down on his instep. A second blow took him in the ribs. Rule dodged the next blow and stepped back, pleased.

Unlike Lily. “Don’t look so damn smug! I don’t want to brawl in the middle of . . . no, I guess I do want to, but it isn’t a good idea.” She shoved her hair back from her face, looked around—a couple of people were staring—and sighed. “Is it catching? That desire all of you have to pummel someone to help you smooth out?”

As far as Rule could tell, the desire to pummel someone when you were upset wasn’t a lupus thing. Humans did it all the time. Unlike lupi, though, they could cause lasting damage if they struck out in anger, so they couldn’t afford to offer each other that simple means of relieving stress. “We could go out in the parking lot.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Finally the corner of her mouth turned up. Not a full smile, but a wry acknowledgment. “I’ve relieved enough stress for now, I think.”

He held out his hand. She put hers in it. Together they started walking again.

The ease was immediate. This, too, the mate bond gave them, heightening the inherent comfort of touch. But it was love that made her touch rich, layered, full. Love was like smell, Rule thought. Smell was the most complex and dimensional of the senses, weaving together past and present, near and distant, motion and stillness. Love, too, was a weaver.

“Did Grandmother tell you what’s up?” Lily asked. “All she told me was that she may revoke her approval of doctors.”

“Madame Yu wants the family—the immediate family, that is—to hear what the psychiatrist advises. Sam disagrees with something the man said or with what he’s thinking. I’m not sure which.”

Lily glanced up at the ceiling as if she could see through all ten stories to where the black dragon circled overhead. Or perhaps Sam had landed on the hospital’s roof again. The hospital authorities didn’t like that, but Sam seldom concerned himself with human likes and dislikes. “She told you that? Or Sam did?”

“He hasn’t spoken to me.”

“Typical.”

Lily had not wholly forgiven Sam for what happened three months earlier. She’d been in desperate circumstances and had managed, with great effort, to contact her mindspeech teacher—the black dragon. She’d needed help. She’d gotten three words of advice followed by a slammed mental door. The advice turned out to be good, as did Sam’s priorities, once they learned why he’d cut Lily off. At the time, however, Lily hadn’t known that Sam could not spare her a second’s attention lest his shield around a psi bomb falter. Her sense of betrayal had been great. In her head, she knew now that Sam had done the right thing. Head and heart don’t always agree.

The elevators were just ahead. Santos had obtained one and was holding it, as instructed, over the objections of an older couple. At least, she was objecting.

The man weighed at least three hundred pounds, with much of it hanging over his belt. He hovered protectively behind the woman, who weighed a couple hundred pounds less than he did. Her face was sharp, brown, wrinkled as a raisin, and determined. “We are not getting off, so you may as well let that door close,” she told Santos.

“Ma’am, for security reasons I have to ask you to take the other elevator.”

“The other elevator isn’t here. This one is.”

Rule let go of Lily’s hand and stepped forward. “Ma’am, you are entirely within your rights to insist on taking this elevator. Are you here to visit a friend or a family member?”

She gave him a long, suspicious look before answering. “My granddaughter just had a baby. A beautiful little boy. I am now a great-grandmother.”

A smile bloomed all through him. “That’s wonderful. Congratulations. Naturally you’re eager to see your granddaughter and your new great-grandson. Are they both well?”

“She’s as well as any woman is after the travail of labor. He is perfect. Just perfect.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, as I said, you have the right to use this elevator. But my man was right, too. You will be safer if you take the other one. In the past year the lady behind me and I have been shot, kidnapped, and attacked by demons, doppelgangers, a Chimea, and a wraith. We are going to take this elevator. Do you truly wish to ride with us?”

“No,” the behemoth behind her said. “We don’t. Come on, Marge.”

“I do not think people should be allowed to get away with—”

“Come on, Marge.” He put a hand on the small of her back. “Other one just got here, anyway.” He gave Rule a cool nod as they exited.

“We’ll see you on the eighth floor,” Rule told José. It would be only a few moments alone, but he would give Lily those moments.

“You were aimed at the husband all along, weren’t you?” Lily said as they changed places with Santos. “I thought you meant to charm her into getting out—and damned if you didn’t nearly do it—but he was your target.”

“He’s protective of her.” Rule smiled. It had pleased him to see a couple so clearly woven by time and love into a unit. “No, let me get it,” he said when she started to push the button. “I’ve a trick to use. They’re a lovely couple, aren’t they?”

“You mean that. Just like you were genuinely delighted to hear about her great-grandson.” Lily shook her head. “Which is why it works, I guess.”

“Why what works?” He held down the eighth-floor button and the close-door button at the same time.

“Your other superpower. The one that gets people to do what you want. What are you doing?”

The doors closed. “Making this an express elevator. I hold the buttons down until . . . there.” The elevator car started moving.

“That’s an urban legend.”

“No, but it only works on some systems.”

“You’re sure?”

“We checked it earlier.” He moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t relax, either. Her muscles were tight.

“I’m not going to fall apart,” she told him.

“No?”

“Not yet. I’d like to scream, though. Yell and scream and pound something. Not you, but something. How is she, really?”

“Asleep at the moment, thanks to Sam.” He hesitated. What should he say? He had the sense that Julia was deteriorating, but what did he know? He wasn’t even sure what he meant by that, except that by the time Sam had put her to sleep, she’d seemed more brittle. Less together, somehow.

And that was too subjective to pass on. Too uncertain. “Julia is very bright. She could see that everything around her was different—the clothes, the technology. She asked if this was ‘the future.’ Then she demanded to know what year it was. Madame Yu told her. At that point she concluded that she’d traveled through time and ended up in someone else’s body.”

“Grandmother didn’t tell her the problem is with her memory?”

“Julia didn’t believe her.”

After a moment Lily said, “Once Mother gets an idea in her head, it takes an act of God to get it out. She is a stubborn woman.”

“Stubbornness can be a survival characteristic. It makes good glue.”

“I suppose. I need to tell you something while we’re alone. Don’t pass this on, but Cullen and I think that whatever was done to Mother involves the kind of not-quite-magic stuff that’s in the toltoi. Arguai, the elves call it.”

His eyebrows shot up. “I’m not sure what that means.”

“Neither am I. Cullen says it’s the same thing as spirit, but I don’t know what that is, either.”

The elevator slowed. Rule moved swiftly to stand in front of her. The doors opened. He saw Andy and Jeff and relaxed. “I’m feeling jumpy,” he told Lily, more in explanation than apology, but he couldn’t apologize for what he didn’t regret.

She sighed, but as she joined him in the hall she put her hand on his arm to say she understood his need, even if she didn’t like him shielding her that way. “One more thing. Drummond’s back.”

“What?” He stopped and stared at her.

“He popped in and told me he’d be working this one with me, but on his side of things.” She’d thought her personal haunt was gone for good, not just for a couple months.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I have no idea.”

Rule glanced around. “Is he . . .”

“He’s not here now. He told me that Friar was definitely involved and that he wouldn’t be able to chat much. Then he winked out.”

Lily didn’t see ghosts . . . except for this one. And no one else saw Drummond. Just Lily. Although there had been a couple of times before Drummond crossed over—or whatever you called it when a ghost went wherever the dead go—when the mate bond had made it possible for Rule to see him. Al Drummond had put himself through hell to get word to Rule when Lily was in Friar’s hands. Without him, Rule wouldn’t have found her in time. He’d done that, then vanished. For good, they thought.

Rule was aware how much he owed Drummond. That didn’t mean he had to like him. His mouth tightened. Why couldn’t the man stay decently dead?

“So,” Lily said, “where are we supposed to hold our family council? And who all will be there?”

And he needed to get over the petty annoyance of Drummond’s reappearance and pay attention to what mattered. Rule started walking again. “It’s this way—a small conference room that Paul arranged for us to use.” St. Margaret’s wasn’t the largest hospital in the city, nor was it the closest to the Golden Dragon, but it was where Susan’s husband, Paul, worked in administration. That was why Julia was here rather than at another hospital. “Dr. Babbitt will be present, of course. He’s the psychiatrist. Your father and grandmother. Susan and Paul. You and me. I believe your mother’s sisters will be there, too.”

“The cousins?”

“None of them.”

“Thank God. Or maybe Grandmother.”

“She does have a way. It was your father who set that particular restriction, though. Is holding a family council a custom of yours? Will everyone vote on what to do?”

That made her grin, albeit briefly. “You sound so appalled. No, this will not be an exercise in democracy. Dad always said, ‘You get to be heard. You do not get a vote.’ I guess I haven’t talked about our family council meetings. It’s been years since we did that. They were usually about where we’d go for vacation or if we should put in a pool—that one was a clear example of nondemocracy in action. We had a family council meeting once when Dad had been offered a really good job, but we’d have had to move to L.A. . . .” Her pleasure in the memory faded. “We never had one for something like this.”

He took her hand again.

After a moment she said, “Doctors don’t usually hold a conference with better than a half dozen family members.”

“For that you may thank or blame your grandmother. Madame Yu informed him that he would do so. He’s probably still wondering how he ended up agreeing.”

They’d reached the conference room, where Todd and Jacob stood watch. Lily’s aunt Mequi was just going in. The older woman stopped to frown at Lily. “I don’t like having these guards everywhere. They’re obtrusive. They don’t help.”

Rule answered before Lily could. “The guards are my contribution. Do you wish to discuss their presence now, or can it wait until after the family council?”

Mequi sniffed. “I suppose it can wait, but you need to send them away. It makes everyone very edgy to have them standing around watching like that.” She turned and went into the room.

Rule was baffled. “The guards are supposed to make them feel safer.”

Lily squeezed his hand and let go. “They didn’t know they weren’t safe until now. Come on. Let’s go in and get it over with.”