World of Lupi 10 - Ritual Magic (18 page)

“I guess so.” Julia tucked her hair behind her ear and wished she’d had a chance to brush it. Lily Yu looked very pulled together, even if she wasn’t wearing any makeup. “Miss Yu—”

The woman winced. “Could you call me Lily? I know that’s not what you’re used to, and I know we’re basically strangers, but it sets off my freak-o-meter for you to call me Miss Yu.”

Freak-o-meter. Julia liked that. She repeated the phrase mentally so she’d remember it. “I’ll try, but you have to promise not to get mad if I forget.”

“Deal.”

“I asked Mr. Turner if I could stay here, but I didn’t ask you if that was okay. I should have.”

“Don’t worry about it. You didn’t have a chance to ask me, did you?”

“Because you’ve been working. Trying to find whoever did this to me.”

She nodded. “And to some other people, and I have to leave pretty soon so I can keeping working on it. Rule will stay here today, unless something happens that changes things. I know you feel better when he’s around.”

Julia nodded, feeling awkward.

Miss Yu smiled a little bit. It was the kind of smile grown-ups use when something’s sort of funny, but mostly
oh, geez
. “I feel better when he’s around, too. Ah . . . I wanted to see you before I left, only now I’m not sure what to say. What to do.”

That made two of them.

Miss Yu—Lily—looked around the small room. Her gaze lingered a minute on the bed. “I see you found something to wear. The woman you grew up to be is . . . was a bit of a clotheshorse. Very stylish. But her clothes probably aren’t the sort of things you’re used to wearing.”

“They’re pretty, but they aren’t . . . they just . . . I don’t know how to be an old woman!” All at once she felt horridly close to tears.

“Then don’t try. You don’t have to make yourself fit what you think your body says about you.” This smile wasn’t
oh, geez
, but it wasn’t happy, either. “You may want to get some different clothes later. Are you hungry? The kitchen’s out of commission right now, but we’ve got—”

A ridiculously loud noise interrupted her. “What’s that?” Julia had to raise her voice to be heard.

“I think it’s the wet saw. They use it to cut tiles. Rule did tell you that the house is a disaster area, didn’t he? We’re having a lot of work done. Most of the work’s downstairs, but they’ll be up here, too, trying to get at least one of the bathrooms finished. That’s why you don’t get eggs this morning. No kitchen. But we’ve got croissants and fruit and cereal and bacon.”

“How do you fix bacon if the kitchen isn’t working?”

“In the microwave. Um . . . I guess microwaves are new to you.”

“I’ve heard of them,” she said, indignant. “That’s another word for electronic oven, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Want to see how it works?”

“I guess.” Some bacon would be good, too. Her stomach didn’t feel icky anymore, but it did feel empty. “I need to get dressed. There, uh, there seems to be a lot of people here.”

“Grandmother is staying with us, too, and her companion, Li Qin. They’re still asleep. You met Grandmother.”

Julia nodded. “She said to call her that, even though she isn’t my grandmother.”

“Then you probably should.”

“That’s okay. I kind of like her.” For one thing, Grandmother was really old—even older than Julia’s body, which made her feel less of a freak. Plus, she made Julia feel steadier. Not the way Mr. Turner did, but it was like you knew you could count on her. She’d boss you around a lot, but you could count on her. “I thought I heard Mr. Turner talking to another man, too.”

“That would probably be Scott. He’s one of the guards. Did he explain why we have guards?”

Julia’s eyes were big. “Guards? Does it have something to do with him being . . . uh, I think I’m not supposed to say werewolf.”

“They prefer to be called lupi. He told you about that?”

“Sam did. He didn’t tell me about any guards, though.”

“Rule is the Rho of one lupus clan. That means he’s their leader. He’s also sort of the assistant Rho for another clan. Rhos always have guards. You don’t seem upset about him being lupus.”

Julia shook her head. When she thought about Mr. Turner being able to turn into a wolf it made her feel like when she stood in line for the roller coaster. As if something exciting was going to happen, even if she wasn’t sure if she’d like it. But it didn’t upset her.

“I guess I’d better let you get dressed.” Miss Yu—Lily—moved to the door, but then stopped with her hand on the doorknob and looked at Julia. Her face said there was more she wanted to say, but instead she shook her head and smiled in that I’m-making-myself-smile way and left, closing the door behind her.

Julia didn’t go to the bed and get her clothes. She grabbed the almost-empty glass, drank the last of the water, and went to the door. She put the glass on the door and her ear on the bottom of the glass. She used to do this at Mequi’s door when her sister and her friends were giggling about boys. You could learn a lot that way.

On the other side of the door, Lily Yu dragged in a deep breath that broke in the middle, like when you’re trying not to cry. Then Mr. Turner said something quietly, but he was close enough that Julia heard him
.
“Was it as hard as you feared?”

“Yes. How did you trick me into doing that, anyway?”

“I didn’t.”

“I was pretty fuzzy last night, but I remember enough. You tricked me.”

“No, but I did expect you to change your mind. You’re not very good at refusing to deal with things,
nadia
. It took everything I had to persuade you to stop dealing with every damn thing long enough to get some sleep.”

“
That
was the trick.”

“Mmm,” he said, which was not an answer but seemed to satisfy Lily Yu, who didn’t sound mad when she said she had to go if she was going to stop by the hospital first to check on Nettie. They moved away from the door then, and though they were still talking, Julia couldn’t hear what they said.

Julia straightened, feeling guilty for eavesdropping and angry for no reason she could tell. And alone. So horribly alone. There were people on the other side of that door, and some of them knew her and seemed to care about her. But she didn’t know them. She didn’t want them.

The people she wanted didn’t exist anymore. Even the ones who were still alive—like Mequi, who looked so old—weren’t the people she remembered.

Someone knocked on the door. “I’m not dressed,” she said crossly, but she grabbed the clothes again.

“If you don’t let me in,” a young voice said, “Dad will be back upstairs in a minute and he’ll make me go away. He didn’t tell me I
couldn’t
talk to you, but that’s what he meant when he said it wouldn’t be a good idea. He thinks I’ll say something to upset you.”

Everything upset her. Some dumb boy probably wasn’t going to make it any worse. Julia yanked up the khaki shorts. “Hold on a minute.”

Shorts fastened, T-shirt tugged down, Julia opened the door. The boy who slipped inside was a lot shorter than her. How old had Mr. Turner said his son was? Nine, she thought.

A big tomcat slinked in behind him. The cat was orange and missing part of one ear. He ignored her to stalk past and jump on her bed.

“Is that your cat? Does he have fleas?”

“Of course he doesn’t have fleas. Dirty Harry is really Lily’s cat, but he’s adopted me. That’s what Dad says, anyway.”

She watched the cat making himself comfortable on her bed. Mama didn’t like cats, especially not in the house. Houses are for people, not livestock, she said . . . used to say. Julia frowned at the boy. “I’ve forgotten your name. Mr. Turner told me, but I forgot it.”

“I’m Toby. And you’re . . . well, I used to call you Mrs. Yu, but now you’re just Julia, I guess.”

Toby looked a lot like his father done up smaller, with a softer face. “How come you aren’t in school?”

“It’s Saturday.”

Saturday. Saturday was for cartoons. She still watched
Tom and Jerry
, anyway, with Deborah, who was little enough to watch a lot of cartoons. Saturday was also for getting together with Ellen and Ji after she’d done her chores, and . . . and Ellen and Ji were old ladies now.

“Are you going to cry?”

“Maybe.” But she jutted her chin out instead. “So what did you want? Curious about the freak?”

“I thought you might like to hang out with another kid. Maybe you’re not sick of being around grown-ups every minute. I would be, but maybe you aren’t.”

Her stomach loosened up a bit. “I guess I am. I haven’t even seen another kid since . . . since everything changed.”

“I guess you’re all weirded out. Do you know about PS3? I really want a PS4, but Dad says not yet, which means wait for my birthday. I’ve got some cool games. You might like
Ratchet and Clank
or
Lego Pirates
or
Skylanders
.
Skylanders
is my favorite. Or we could play online stuff, though Dad won’t let me sign up for a lot of those games. He says no graphic bloodletting on-screen until I’m old enough to understand about bloodletting in real life, and then I probably won’t want the on-screen kind, which kind of sucks. But that’s what I do when I’m upset if I can’t go run or something.”

Julia’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “What’s what you do?”

“Play games on my PlayStation or computer.”

Whatever that was. “Why did you say that about bloodletting?”

“Did I upset you? Grandad says humans think about that sort of thing different than we do ’cause they sublimate their violence. Wolves don’t sublimate very well.”

She blinked. “Are you a . . . I forget the word, but like your dad?”

“Yeah, but I won’t turn wolf for another couple years. Do you want to play
Skylanders
?” He studied her a moment. “You don’t know what I’m talking about. C’mon. I’ll show you.”

TWENTY-ONE

“S
HE’S
what?” Lily wedged her phone precariously between her shoulder and her ear while she hit send
.
Another day, another damn report. This one was short because she didn’t have much to add to the one she’d sent last night, just a summary of the false lead she’d chased that morning.

It was noon. She was in the conference room at the Bureau’s San Diego office, which shared a building with the ATF. The two organizations were a tad competitive. ATF was currently all-over smug because of a recent raid on a militia group that had netted them all kinds of illegal weapons, which made them harder than usual to get along with. But mostly the two agencies managed to cohabit reasonably well . . . except when it came to parking. They fought over the limited parking spaces like a pair of starving cats with a single mouse.

Lily had a tiny office of her own, but it was downstairs in what was mostly ATF territory, so she preferred to commandeer the conference room in spite of certain drawbacks, like having the men’s restroom on the other side of one thin wall. She heard every flush. But the women’s restroom was close, too, which was handy, and so was the break room. And there was enough room to set up a murder board here.

Through the closed door, Lily heard a phone ringing. She also heard Fielding’s iPod, which was playing “Hotel California” for the sixteen-thousandth time. In a minute it would change to “Dani California,” then Chuck Berry’s “California,” then “California Dreamin’.” Fielding—a recent transplant from Massachusetts—had the office closest to the conference room, and he really liked songs about California. His playlist, however, was sadly limited. Lily didn’t understand why no one had accidentally spilled coffee on the man’s iPod.

Eleven more people had been admitted to hospitals with some level of amnesia. Two of those already admitted had slid into coma. Two more were on life support. The database of their victims’ lives had finally provided a connection. Fourteen—including Lily’s mother—had gone to the same high school. One of them had been close friends with Julia for two of her high school years, though according to Aunt Mequi the friendship had soured the summer before their senior year. Something to do with a boy. Two agents were at that high school now, poring over records.

The murder board for the ritual killing hung on the north wall of the conference room. They still didn’t know whose face starred in the crime scene photos, it being tricky to get an ID without a body. They did have the man’s fillings—two gold, two composite—and the scarf he’d been gagged with, but the scarf was a cheap import available by the thousands, and even the best forensic dentist couldn’t learn much from four fillings.

That fit right in with the trend on this case. All they had were negatives. Their John Doe hadn’t been reported missing. He didn’t have a police record in California or those states participating in the NGI program, and Homeland Security was pretty sure he hadn’t been a terrorist. Either he hadn’t had much of an online presence, or what showed of his face above the gag wasn’t enough for facial recognition software to ID him using Google and Facebook. Although they’d turned up enough near misses that way to keep a couple of agents busy crossing those people off the list.

“Playing
Skylanders
with Toby,” Rule repeated. “I had to drag her away to eat breakfast.”

“That’s good, I guess. Surprising, but good.” Lily’s mother wasn’t a complete tech illiterate, but she didn’t much like it. Or didn’t approve of it, anyway. God knew she considered texting some kind of major social sin. “At least she isn’t, ah, quite so dependent on you.” Following him around in a moony, preadolescent way, that is.

“Mmm. She seems to have caught on to the game pretty quickly. The two of them are currently arguing about tactics.”

“That’s . . . good?” Lily thought about it. “It is good. It means that Toby really does see her as another kid. He badgers adults. He doesn’t argue with them.”

“True. Which is why I let him stay after he snuck in to see her—which, as he pointed out, I hadn’t explicitly forbidden. She informed me that he was no more upsetting than any other dumb boy, and she liked playing
Skylanders
.”

In a weird, twelve-year-old way, that sounded just like her mother. “How’s Grandmother?”

“Still asleep. She must have been awake at some point, though, because Li Qin had a message for me from her. Grandmother wishes us to know that Sam has decided we need information about the artifact. It’s a sidhe artifact, so he sent an agent to speak with a sidhe historian.”

Startled, Lily put down her coffee. “He did? What agent? Where exactly did he send this agent, and how?”

“That’s the total message, I’m afraid. Li Qin tells me I must address my questions to Sam or to Madame Yu, neither of whom is likely to wake soon. She added that tigers, like wolves, often sleep heavily after a difficult hunt.”

“How’s Li Qin’s foot? Is she getting around okay?”

“The swelling is down and she’s supposed to get a boot for it tomorrow. She’ll still need to stay off it as much as possible, which she says is fortunate, because then Julia can help her.”

“That’s fortunate?”

“What she actually said was, ‘Who does not need to be needed? There is little that helps us forget our pain so much as giving aid to another.’”

Lily found herself smiling. Li Qin had that effect even when she wasn’t around. “Speaking of giving aid to another—that florist called this morning. Bob or Bill or whoever it is Mother found. I let it go to voice mail, but maybe you could call him and see what the problem is.”

“Of course. He shouldn’t have called you. They’ve been told not to. I’m considering hiring a wedding planner to assist with some of the arrangements, if you don’t object.”

“No, it was my mother who didn’t like that idea.” Julia Yu had been appalled at paying someone to do something she was sure she could do better . . . something she’d been enjoying the hell out of doing until she’d been robbed of most of her life. Lily changed the subject. “Did you know your father put Hardy up in his own house instead of a guest cottage?”

“I didn’t.” And it clearly surprised him. “I doubt Benedict liked that.”

“Probably not, but he wasn’t there to object.” She’d seen Benedict and Arjenie when she stopped by the hospital to check on Nettie, who remained stable and in fair condition but was heavily sedated. She’d woken repeatedly during the night, and every time she did, she instinctively started trying to heal herself. She’d stop when Benedict told her to, but even such brief drains weren’t good for her. When her surgeon made his rounds that morning, he’d decided to increase her dosage to keep her knocked out.

Lily sipped at her fourth cup of coffee. “Isen says he’s questioning Hardy in his own fashion, and he’d prefer that I leave him to it. He also said he’s sending me something, although it goes against his own better judgment.”

“Did he say what?”

“No, that would have been too easy.”

“Have there been any results from the press conference?” Rule asked.

She snorted. “Thank God calls from the concerned public are being routed through D.C., or we’d never get anything done.” Only callers with some slight potential of aiding the investigation were passed on to the team—which this morning meant Lily. Of the two dozen individuals Lily had talked to, only one had sounded promising . . . at first. “The best lead from the public so far was this woman who claimed she’d had a vision about the murder in Balboa Park. She had details the press doesn’t, so I gave in to temptation and went to talk to her, seeing that she works only a few blocks away. Turns out she’s a null.”

“Nulls can, in rare instances, have visions.”

“Yeah, but ninety-nine percent of the time they involve hallucinogenics. Pretty sure this particular vision was not part of the one percent. Unless you smelled kittens at the murder site and forgot to mention it?”

“Kittens.”

“Hundreds of them, she said. They pinned that poor man down and smothered him in adorable.”

“A gruesome end. I’m wondering what details she could have gotten right when her vision featured death by cuteness.”

“The location. She knew that up, down, and sideways, but it turned out she’s a Night Gazer.”

“A what?”

“There’s seven of them, seven being such a mystical number and all. They believe in gazing fearlessly into the night, only they don’t like to do it at night”—she paused because Rule was laughing, then resumed—“because the park’s too dangerous after dark. So twice a month in broad daylight they go to that very spot to conduct their rites, which I gather they make up as they go along, aided by the occasional illegal substance.”

“You’ve had quite a morning.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “My afternoon is likely to be more of the same. I’m holding down the fort while Karonski checks out the murder site. He’s hoping to reconstruct the runes used in the ritual, with help from Abby Farmer from the coven. Seems the spell he wants to use is best cast by a strong Earth witch, and Abby is that, but she’s inexperienced at this sort of thing. He has to teach her the spell first, plus there’s a lot of prep involved. He said not to expect him until I saw him.”

“Why didn’t he have Miriam do it with Abby? Surely she knows the spell.”

“She’s at the hospital trying to figure out a way to remove the contagion from Officer Crown. He . . .” Her voice drifted off as the door to the conference room opened. Her eyebrows shot up. “You look like hell. Are you what Isen sent me against his better judgment?”

“I doubt it,” Cullen said. “That’s probably the person right behind . . . no, she’s stopped to talk to someone.”

“Is that Cullen?” Rule asked.

“Unless we’ve got more doppelgangers running around.”

“Not funny.” A short pause. “I hear Mark downstairs. That will be lunch, so I’d better go pry Toby and Julia away from the computer. You need to eat, too.”

Lily had given up trying to persuade Rule that she ate regularly even without being reminded. For lupi, staying well-fed meant staying in control. One of the most basic things they did for each other was to offer food. Frequently. “Sure. You, too. See you whenever.” She disconnected.

Cullen had wandered to the end of the room where she’d set up her murder board. He was studying the photos taken before the body dissolved. “How come you’re awake?” she asked. “Sam thought you’d be unconscious at least twenty-four hours.”

“That would be my doing,” said a familiar voice from the doorway. An amazon stood there grinning at her through the spiderweb whorls tattooed on her face and pretty much every other bit of skin that showed.

“Cynna!” Lily’s heart lifted. She and Cynna hadn’t started out as friends, which just went to show how lousy first impressions can be as predictors of anything important. She shoved back her chair, suddenly sick of sitting. “I’m glad you’re here, but why are you? I thought you’d be in lockdown, under the circumstances. Where’s Ryder?”

“To answer your first question first, I gave Cullen a pick-me-up. He might come in handy, even if he is still too weak to light a candle.”

“Hey,” Cullen said without turning away from the murder board. “I could handle a candle. Maybe even a piece of paper.”

Cynna’s grin flickered. “Besides, he’d be royally pissed if I came here without him. Answering question two—or was it three?—I pumped out some milk for Ryder, who’s staying at Clanhome with the tenders. I’d be there, too, if Isen had his way. But he ain’t the boss of me.” Her smile was impish. “He needs to be reminded of that sometimes.”

“What she means,” Cullen said dryly, “is that neither Isen nor I could argue her out of coming. She claimed she had a nudge from the Lady.”

“I did not. I said I had a feeling I was needed. It might be the Lady giving me a nudge, it might not, but either way, she didn’t nudge me to stay put. So it’s okay for me to get out of Clanhome for a while.”

Cynna Weaver was a Finder who wore her spells on her skin. She was also Cullen’s wife, a new mother, former Dizzy, practicing Catholic, former FBI agent, and the Nokolai Rhej. A Rhej was the clan’s connection to the Lady, more wisewoman than priestess, and keeper of the clan memories. She was able to draw on the magic of the entire clan, though Lily wasn’t clear on whether that power came from the mantle or from each clan member. “You zapped Cullen with clan power?”

“I did. He’s still as weak as a sweet little butterfly—”

Cullen snorted. “You could make that weak as a tired old tyrannosaurus or a gorilla with a bad cold. But no. You—”

“Grumpy as a gorilla with a bad cold, maybe. Anyway, it seemed like with him being able to see magic and me being able to use it, we might be useful. And I needed to tell you something.” She came closer and held out her hands.

Puzzled, Lily took them and touched leaves and moss. That was how Cynna’s Gift felt—like the intricate patterns found in a leaf, the organic growth of moss.

“I’m so sorry about your mother.”

Lily’s eyes stung. She blinked fiercely. “I know. I mean, of course you are. I mean . . . dammit.”

“And it’s pissing you off that you’re about to cry, and I get that, so I won’t say anything more. We’re going to figure this out. So, ah . . . do have something in mind for me to do? Anything I could Find for you?”