Eileen Wilks - Ritual Magic

“No,” she whispered. “It’s okay you woke me up. I had . . . bad dreams.”

He nodded as if he understood, and even though she knew he didn’t, not really, it helped that he wanted to. “That’s not surprising. Julia, we’ve found someone who can help. He can’t make things right, but he can help, if you want him to.”

“What—what’s his name?”

“Sam.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, please.”

ITwas after midnight when Lily stepped out of the bright-ly lit emergency room at Scripps Mercy to go to UCSD Medical Center, where Barbara Lennox lay in a coma. Surprise stopped her steps. It had rained while she was inside—not a lot, judging by the dearth of puddles, but enough that the pavement was wet and the world smelled wonderful.

She drew in a lungful of air scrubbed clean, perfumed with ozone and humus. Night air slid like cool silk over the skin on her face. Earlier she’d gotten her shoulder harness and a slightly wrinkled jacket from the trunk of Rule’s car because she was damned if she’d work a case without having her weapon at hand. Now she wanted to take that jacket off and let the clean air wash over more of her. She didn’t; people got jittery if they saw her weapon. But she did suck in more of that crisp air.

Scott made a motion and Mark loped around her. Mark would use his nose to make sure no one had messed with the car while they were inside. “You drive,” she told Scott.

He nodded. “Where are we going?”

“UCSD Medical Center.” Her feet didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to see the woman in a coma. Was that what awaited Lily’s mother if she didn’t allow Sam to help? Why was one victim comatose, another shaken but functional, and a third somewhere in between?

Stupid feet. Those questions wouldn’t get answered by standing here in the parking lot. Lily made herself start for the car.

A wisp of fog drifted in front of her and quickly shaped itself into a man—a hard-faced man with dark hair wearing a dull gray suit with a wrinkled shirt. “It’s Drummond,” she said quickly to Scott, then: “You’d better not wink out right away. I didn’t get to ask you anything, and—”

“Things are different this time.”

“Different how?” She cocked her head. “You look younger.”

“Never mind that shit,” he said, but he ran a hand over his hair—which he had more of than he used to. He looked maybe forty, she thought. Not a lot younger than when he died, but some. The age he’d been before his wife died? “I’ll mostly be working things on my side. I may not even hear you call me like I used to. I’m not tied to you the same way. Because we used to be tied I can find you, but I couldn’t talk to you if not for the way you died once. You didn’t tell me about that.” He scowled as if she’d withheld facts pertinent to a case.

“So who did?”

He waved that away as unimportant. “Someone on this side. The thing is, having died once, you’ve got this little open place in you. It lets me get close enough for you to hear me.”

She scowled. “I am not turning into a medium.”

“Okay, fine. I doubt any ghosts are going to find that spot, anyway. Only reason I can is because of that tie we used to have.”

“But if the tie is gone—”

“It left . . . call it a path. Or a habit. Same difference. Would you quit worrying about the shit I can’t explain and pay attention? It’s a lot harder for me to manifest this time and I can’t do it for long, and there’s stuff you need to know. First, you’re dealing with something Friar got from that elf before he escaped from the warehouse. An artifact.”

“Did you see it? What does it do?”

“I didn’t see it. I felt it. It feels, uh . . . evil, I guess you’d say.”

Lily turned that word over in her mind. “Evil is a pretty broad category.”

“On this side, evil means something specific. Evil affects . . .” His mouth kept moving, but she didn’t hear anything.

“Back up. I lost some of that.”

He scowled. “There’s stuff I can’t say. Not won’t. Can’t. Just take my word for it—what Friar got hold of is evil in a way that upsets the heavy hitters on my side of things.”

“Heavy hitters?”

He looked down and muttered. “Angels. Sort of. Not really, because they aren’t . . . oh, hell, call them whatever you want, or don’t call them anything at all. That might be best. The thing is, everyone on this side is real restricted in what we can do on your side. Even the heavy hitters. It’s all about choice. Choice and time. On your side, time’s like a funnel that lets only one drop of now through at a time, and choice is what you do with that drop. No one gets to take away the choices other people make—only, that object Friar got hold of does just that. I don’t know how it works, so don’t ask, but by wiping out memories, it robs people of all the choices they made.”

Lily thought about her mother. All the choices Julia Yu had made over a lifetime, wiped out. Disintegrated. Her throat tightened. She managed to push a couple of words out through her tight throat. “Yeah. That’s evil.”

He nodded. “It affects this side of things, too. That’s why I can be here. There’s a . . . it’s like a fissure or a crack. A break created by that artifact.”

“But why you?” She waved vaguely. “I mean—there must be lots and lots of dead people who could—”

“Watch who you’re calling dead. I died, sure, but I’m not dead.”

“We’ll talk about terminology another time. Why you?”

He shrugged. “Mostly because I can. Most folks on this side can’t interact with your world at all, but because of the way I died, that tie we used to have, I’ve got a toe in the door. All that death magic stirred things up, plus there’s the way I . . .” His mouth kept moving, but silently.

“You went mute again.”

“Shit. The stuff I can’t say . . . anyway, I’m not as rooted on this side as I’m supposed to be. I could’ve gotten that fixed, but I’m needed for this. I’m small enough that I can slip through that crack to work with you on your side. The heavy hitters can’t. They . . . there’s so much of them, see. They’re part of your world, but it’s just their shine you get, not all of them. They can’t be squeezed into the funnel of time without breaking it.”

“So instead of an angel, I get you.”

He grinned crookedly. “That’s pretty much it.”

“You grinned.”

That brought back the familiar scowl. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t think I ever saw you grin. Smirk, yes. Grin, no.” She tipped her head. “Did you . . . there at the last, I mean, at the warehouse, you said her name. Just before you poofed out. Sarah. You found her?”

“Yeah.” Softness seeped into his face the way light seeps into the sky at dawn. “Yeah, I did. I don’t remember much, but I know I found her.”

“You don’t remember? But that—that’s like my mother—”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not the same at all. My memories of that other place don’t fit into this place, that’s all. They aren’t gone. They’re sort of packed up, waiting for me.”

A cold hand gripped Lily and squeezed. “Then my mother’s memories are gone. Not damaged or lost. Gone.”

“Not exactly. I mean, they’re gone, but . . .” He ran a hand over his hair. “I can’t explain, mainly because I don’t understand. The idea is to get her back to being herself. To get all of them back to themselves. I don’t know how we do that. I don’t know if that’s something that can even happen on your side of things. Might be the missing pieces can’t be returned to her until she’s on my side.”