Ritual Magic

FIVE

AS soon as they entered, Rule saw that his roster of who would attend had been incomplete. Julia’s two brothers-in-law had been added to the mix: Jim Chung, Mequi’s husband, and Feng Li Zhang, who was married to the pillowy Deborah. That filled every spot at the conference table save for two chairs waiting for him and Lily.

Most of those present were talking with each other. Edward Yu was not. He sat at one end of the table, as silent and stiffly erect as his mother, who sat at his right. At the other end of the table was the one person who was not a family member, a tall, stoop-shouldered man in rimless glasses: Dr. Babbitt. The psychiatrist’s hair was thick and straight and gray, though his face was unlined. He smelled of baby lotion and hand sanitizer. Rule sat beside him.

Lily seated herself and immediately leaned across Rule to hold out her hand. “Dr. Babbitt? I’m Lily Yu.”

He looked surprised but shook her hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Ms. Yu, but very sorry for the circumstances.”

Lily nodded gravely and released his hand. “This is my fiancé, Rule Turner.”

“Yes, we met briefly.”

Lily leaned back and met Rule’s eyes. She gave a tiny shake of her head to tell him she hadn’t found any magic on the man.

Edward Yu spoke quietly. “We will begin now.” The other conversations drifted to a halt. “Thank you. I have two decisions to make. Please understand that they will be my decisions, but I value your opinions. First I wish to make sure we all have the same information. Lily, is there anything you can tell us?”

Lily looked down at the notebook she’d set on the table, but she wasn’t consulting her notes; the notebook was closed. She spoke slowly. “Not yet. I mostly have negatives, and they aren’t confirmed.”

Mequi’s husband frowned. Jim Chung was a solidly built man with a sweet tooth and a fondness for crossword puzzles. He earned a good income as a tax attorney. Lily said that her uncle Jim made up his mind about as fast as glaciers traveled, but once it was made up, he never changed it. “What does that mean, you have negatives?”

“We’re fairly sure it wasn’t a potion, for one. And no,” she said when her uncle started to speak, “I am not going to go through the list of things we think it wasn’t.”

Mequi spoke crisply. “You owe us more than that. It is clear that Julia was hurt because she is your mother. What other reason could there be? If we are in danger because of you—”

Edward’s palm slapped the table hard. “Enough! We are not going to—”

“She has a point, Edward,” Lily’s other uncle said. Feng was normally a cheerful man, easygoing and sociable. He looked ruffled now. “If Lily’s job is putting us and our children in danger . . .” He glanced nervously at Rule. “Or maybe it’s her association with lupi. Whichever, we deserve to—”

“Deserve?” That was Madame Yu, her voice cold and sharp enough to cut flesh along with the others’ speech. “You will tell me what you think you deserve, bái mù, for blaming the one who fights evil instead of blaming the evil she fights.”

Rule didn’t know the Chinese phrase she’d used. Clearly Feng did. Just as clearly, it was an insult. He went white around the mouth.

Edward spoke into the sudden silence. “If terrorists in Afghanistan blow up a girls’ school and kill the students, are their teachers to blame for teaching them? Are their parents at fault for wanting their daughters to be taught, or are the Afghan people to blame for not giving in to the terrorists?”

Feng spoke stiffly. “I was not blaming Lily.”

To Rule’s surprise, his wife, Deborah, said firmly, “Yes, dear, you were. Not in so many words, but that’s what Mequi and you meant. And very upsetting that must be for poor Lily.” She reached across the table and patted Lily’s hand. “Pay no attention to them, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Deborah,” Edward said. “I would like to stop wasting time now. We are going to hear from two experts who disagree about Julia’s diagnosis, but first I must make you aware of a difficult decision I face. Some of you have met Dr. Babbitt already. He is a well-credentialed psychiatrist recommended by both Susan and Paul. He believes I need to have Julia declared incompetent.”

“Oh, no,” Deborah said. “Oh, no.”

“That can’t be right,” Lily muttered. “I don’t see how that can be right.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Susan said. “Mother—well, she thinks she’s twelve. She won’t react the way she would if she were . . . if she thought of herself as an adult.”

“Edward,” Feng said. “You’re considering this?”

Mequi looked severe. “Of course he is. What else is to be done?”

“I’m considering it,” Edward said evenly. “I haven’t decided. From what Dr. Babbitt tells me, the medical power of attorney I hold for Julia doesn’t apply in the current situation.”

“The problem is,” Dr. Babbitt said gently, “that the law regards Julia as an adult. She’s not comatose, nor does she fall under other established guidelines, so at this time we have to obtain her agreement to any course of action taken to help her. Given that she is mentally twelve years old and has no knowledge of what medicine is like in the twenty-first century, I don’t believe she’s capable of making such decisions. But even if you agree, this can’t be implemented quickly. It would have to go before a court.”

“I wanted you all to be aware that this may need to be done,” Edward said, “though it can’t happen right away. My immediate decision rests on the points on which our two experts disagree—diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Babbitt, will you present your diagnosis?”

The psychiatrist cleared his throat. “I can’t call it that. As far as I can tell, Julia’s case is unique, so we have no diagnosis that fits. I can give you my professional opinion, though, which is based on both my interview with her and on diagnostic tests.” He looked around the table, making brief eye contact with everyone. “First, I’m told that her condition was magically induced. If so—”

“If?” Lily said.

He smiled apologetically. “I’m not questioning your expertise. In my field, we often express opinions conditionally. Psychiatry is a science, but not a precise one. We still know very little about how observational data correlates to physical data about the brain. In other words, I can readily diagnose schizophrenia, but not by using an MRI. Yet MRIs can still be useful. In your mother’s case, the MRI shows no evidence of brain damage or other abnormalities, which is encouraging. It suggests that whatever was done to her, the effect was to suppress her memories, which—”

That is false.

The mental voice was as sharp and cold as a shard of ice. All around the table, eyes popped wide. Dr. Babbitt turned pale. Mequi said something in Chinese; Susan and Deborah gasped. Paul stiffened and Jim looked around suspiciously and Feng blurted out, “What the hell was that?”

“That,” Grandmother said, “is the other expert we will hear from—Sun Mzao, known to some as Sam.”

“The, uh . . .” Dr. Babbitt cleared his throat. “The dragon.”

“Yes.”

“Then that was mindspeech.”

“Of course.”

“I have never . . .” The psychiatrist shook his head. “How should I address him?”

Out loud. It is tedious to sort through the mental chatter that passes for thought in humans to abstract what you wish to say. Do not address me now. I will first correct your conclusion that a lack of physical damage to the brain means that Julia Yu’s memories are being magically suppressed. They are not. The memories are either destroyed or unreachable.

Dr. Babbitt straightened his shoulders. “I, uh, suppose, sir, that you have examined her thoughts, but that would prove only that her memories aren’t available to her.”

The human tendency to settle on the convenient or comfortable answer is biologically based, as is the way you leap at conclusions like frogs jumping at flies. Resist this tendency. I recommend you review the work done by your Dr. Daniel Kahneman. It is flawed, but his metaphor of the two systems is a reasonable way for you to grasp the existence of your innate biases so that you may attempt to guard against them.

“Dr. Kahneman? I don’t . . . oh, yes, heuristics. I’ve read his work on heuristics, but I don’t see what that has to do with—”

You know I can read thoughts. You assume this is the extent of my ability to work with minds. You are wrong. You are also wrong about Julia’s condition. Of course, you lack a basic grasp of the interrelation between memory, identity, and sovereignty, so your failure to comprehend her condition is not surprising.

“And you do comprehend it?” The doctor sounded both polite and skeptical.

Not fully. Unlike you, I perceive it, but my comprehension is limited. I have never encountered a mind damaged in this way. I will now address Julia’s family. Do not interrupt. Edward Yu.

Lily’s father didn’t bat an eye. “Yes?”

Julia’s memory is not being magically suppressed. Either the vast majority of such memories no longer exist or they are severed from her mind. She does possess some badly fragmented memories from beyond the day when she observed her twelfth birthday, but she is unaware of them. This suppression is her mind’s own instinctive response. No effort should be made to direct her thinking toward those fragments. It is unlikely her mind would survive.

Lily reached for Rule’s hand and held it tightly. She didn’t speak.

“You are saying . . .” Edward’s voice broke. “You say there is no hope.”

There is no chance that conventional human treatments will restore her memory. There remains a slim chance of magical restoration. This depends on whether we can determine what induced her condition and on whether the memories have been eradicated or are somehow severed from her mind. Understand that by “mind” I do not mean brain or the ability to reason. Mind is the product of consciousness combined with memory. It is not a wholly physical construct, but its nonphysical components are largely inaccessible by humans. Ghosts are a projection of mind. Most are uninhabited by consciousness, but not all. Lily Yu.

“Yes.” Lily’s voice was husky, as if with unshed tears. She kept a tight grip on Rule’s hand.

The ghost of Al Drummond contacted you. What did he say?

“If you know that much, why don’t you know what he said?”

I sense the constructs you call ghosts, but I cannot hear them. I heard your speech to him. I did not hear his speech to you, which uses channels you would describe as spirit.

Lily grimaced. “Spirit again. He said Friar was involved and that he’d be working this case with me, but mostly on his side of things.”

Good. You will need his assistance, limited as it is likely to be. You and Cullen Seaborne are correct in assuming that the attack on your mother involves spiritual energy rather than purely magical.

“But what does that mean?” she cried, frustrated. “I don’t have any idea what it means when you say ‘spirit.’”

I congratulate you on awareness of your ignorance. Spirit is capricious, personal, universal, and indefinable. It can neither be shaped through will nor grasped by reason. It is often spoken of in terms of good or evil, and observation suggests that humans in particular access it through this polarity. It is both the product of and the ground for soul. I understand very little about it.

“You . . .” Rule closed his mouth before he finished that statement—though Sam was probably well aware of what he was thinking. Sam habitually claimed vastly superior understanding of pretty much everything, and not without reason. If the first couple of millennia don’t kill you, you probably do know what you’re talking about most of the time. If the black dragon didn’t understand spirit, who did? Rule kept his voice level. “Do you have a recommendation?”

Several. First, you need spiritual consultants. Dr. Nettie Two Horses is an obvious choice. I suggest you seek others as well. Second, you need to bring Julia Yu to me on the roof of this building. I will ensorcell her and—

The outcry was immediate.

“What?”

“Absolutely not!”

“No one is going to ensorcell my sister.”

“If this is your idea of an expert, Edward, you need to—”

Madame Yu slapped one hand on the table. “Bah! Stop bleating. You dislike the word ‘ensorcell.’ You understand it not at all. It is a tool, like a surgeon’s knife. It works for good or ill depending on the wielder’s intent and skill.”

Sam’s chill mental voice took over. The surgical analogy is appropriate, although in this instance I would liken ensorcellment more to the anesthetic than to the knife. I propose to perform what you may think of as delicate and complex mental surgery on Julia. Without ensorcellment, this would be as brutal as if a cardiac surgeon were to cut open a patient without benefit of anesthesia and saw through his ribs to gain access to his heart. Even if the patient did not die from shock, his screams and writhings would render a successful outcome unlikely.

That brought a few moments of profound silence. Edward broke it. “If Julia’s memory is gone or—or whatever, what good will this surgery do?”

Julia’s condition is fragile. Dr. Babbitt is aware of this. He makes several errors, but his observational skill is sufficient for him to recognize what I perceive more directly. He intends to propose that she be incarcerated in a facility where her environment can be regulated in an attempt to shield her from some of the shocks of adapting to a time, place, body, and people she does not recognize or understand.

Deborah looked horrified. Her voice wobbled as she addressed Dr. Babbitt. “You want to lock her away?”

The doctor’s eyes were soft with distress. “This wasn’t how I meant to bring it up, nor is that how I’d phrase it, but . . . yes. Essentially I agree with, uh, Sam about her condition. She needs to be in a controlled environment.”

Such incarceration might delay the fragmentation of her mind. It will not prevent it. An accurate projection of when such fragmentation will become irremediable is not possible, but without my intervention, it may take place quite quickly. I am particularly concerned about the strength of her mother bond. Her mother died forty-five years ago. She is not aware of this.

“No,” Grandmother said. “She asks for her mother. We make excuses. We have not told her that her mother died many years ago.”

That is wise. I do not judge her mind capable of sustaining such a shock. Withholding this information is a temporary solution, however. She will either guess the truth or construct elaborate stories to protect herself from that. Already she has begun to do the latter. Eventually these stories will acquire permanence, and there will be no way to supplant them with observable reality.

Eventually Julia really would be crazy, in other words. Rule’s throat went tight with sudden grief.

Edward spoke slowly. “You say you can prevent this. How?”

I propose to buttress certain mental constructs and alter others. I do not go into detail as you lack both the language and the conceptual background to understand, but several of them relate to her temporal sense. I will distort that to mimic the buffering provided by the passage of time. This will give her a better chance of surviving the blow to her mother bond and aid her in accepting her current body and other aspects of reality.

“A better chance,” Lily repeated. Her voice was level. Her hand gripped Rule’s so tightly his fingertips tingled. “How much better?”

Substantially better. I do not affix numbers to what is essentially unquantifiable. You should all be aware that, regardless of your individual or joint conclusions regarding competency, I will seek Julia’s permission before proceeding.

Mequi’s eyebrows lifted. “Mentally, Julia is twelve years old. You consider a child competent to make such a decision?”

Your species employs a far greater degree of custodial care for its young than mine finds either necessary or desirable. Respect for this species difference does not require me to violate my ethical standards. Julia Yu has done nothing that would entitle me to subvert her autonomy. I will not proceed without her consent. You should also know that delay is inadvisable. The sooner I am able to proceed, the better the outcome will be.

Edward Yu spoke. “In the interest of speed, then, we will now discuss which course to follow—that of Dr. Babbitt or that of Sun Mzao. We will go around the table. Mother, will you begin?”

“I prefer to go last, Edward.”

“Very well. Jim?”

Mequi’s husband didn’t want to talk about the dragon’s proposed treatment versus the doctor’s. He declared himself incompetent to make that decision—if that was meant as a joke, it fell very flat—and offered a short lecture on the legal means of declaring someone incompetent in California.

Mequi, next to him, said that of course Julia was not competent to make such decisions at this time, and that with all due respect to the black dragon, humans were obviously better able to determine what humans needed than he was. They should either follow Dr. Babbitt’s advice or bring in additional doctors.

Lily’s phone vibrated while Mequi was speaking. Her lips thinned, but she took out her phone to see who it was. Rule couldn’t see the screen, but it must have been important because she interrupted. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.”

“Good God, girl, can’t you turn that thing off?” Jim exclaimed. “We’re talking about your mother’s—”

“Jim,” Grandmother said, “enough.”

“I was just going to—”

“You will do me the favor of shutting your mouth.”

Wearily Edward said, “Lily is not chatting with her friends, Jim. The call must have something to do with the investigation. It may be urgent.”

Rule was able to hear most of what the caller was saying to Lily in spite of the chatter at the table. Edward was right. It was about the investigation, and it was urgent.

Lily put her phone up and pushed away from the table. “I have to go. Rule, will you speak for me?”

He met her eyes. “What will I say?”

“That we’re wasting time talking. There’s no real choice to be made. If Sam says Mother has to have this procedure or her mind will come unglued, then she does.” Then she added more intimately, You heard what Officer Perez told me?

Unlike everyone else at the table, Lily could use mindspeech. Not reliably, but sometimes. Rule nodded somberly. “You’ll be in touch with Ruben.”

“Oh, yeah.” She looked around at her family, but her gaze ended on Dr. Babbitt. “Doctor, the Bureau may wish to use your services as a consultant. I need your number so I can contact you if needed.”

“Of course, but why? I’m already on your mother’s case.” He lifted up so he could pull his wallet from his back pocket. He took out a business card and handed it to her.

“Because it looks like Mother wasn’t the only victim.” She looked at Rule. “I’m headed for Scripps on Fifth.”

“Take Scott and Mark.”

She grimaced but left without arguing—or answering any of the questions her family hurled at her retreating back.