Eileen Wilks: Ritual Magic

Derwin Ackleford, aka the Big A, was the special agent in charge of the local office. His nickname did not refer to his size; he was five foot seven with an average build. Nor did it refer to his last name. Lily was convinced Ackleford had some sort of personality disorder. He was rude, crude, and hard to work with, and he always stank of cigarette smoke. He would never have risen to the position he held if he hadn’t also been damn good at his job. The Big Asshole was a workaholic—painstaking, methodical, yet capable of brilliant intuitive leaps at times.

Those leaps were probably due to the tiny trace of a patterning Gift he refused to acknowledge. Ackleford was regular FBI, not Unit, which meant Lily outranked him in the ways that counted, if not on the organizational chart. But the man had a second saving grace: all that mattered to him was the investigation. He didn’t give a damn who was in charge or who got credit. Or, as he’d put it the first time she’d had to work with him, “Every investigation’s got problems. It rains before you get the casts of the tire prints or some asshole in headquarters loses the goddamn form you sent or some idiot chick promoted way past her competence shows up and gets put in charge.” He’d shrugged. “Whatever.”

In spite of his drawbacks, she was glad to see Ackleford. She briefed him and the other agents quickly, finishing with, “We don’t know what we’re dealing with. What I need first is names and addresses from everyone present and a brief statement. You know the drill. We also need to know if anyone left before I got the place shut down. Two of you take the family; two take the employees. Employees are in the kitchen.” She nodded at the door to that region. “I’ll start on the other customers when I can.”

Ackleford looked skeptical. “You’re saying this was some kind of spell.”

“Maybe a spell, maybe something else, but magic is involved. For now, we will proceed on the assumption that what happened was intentional. A deliberate attack.”

“The victim’s your mother.”

“Yes.” Temper flared—but not, she realized, at Ackleford. Deep inside, rage had begun to burn.

“And your uncle owns the place.”

“‘Uncle’ is an honorific in this case. Chen Lin is my second cousin.” Ackleford would be thinking that the husband was the usual suspect, or the kids—people who might inherit or who’d been nursing a grievance. “Whoever did this was Gifted. Of those present at the party, only two have the potential to use magic: my grandmother, Li Lei Yu, and my cousin Lin’s husband, Mack Li. Oh, and one of the servers who waited on us has a slight empathic Gift, but it’s completely blocked. I doubt she could use it if her life depended on it.”

“What about your grandmother? What’s her Gift?”

“Unique to her, I believe, so it’s not named.”

“Huh. And your cousin’s husband?”

“A minor telekinetic Gift. Mack can’t bend a spoon, but he can nudge it a bit. To the best of my knowledge, however, he lacks any training in spellcraft.”

“You left yourself off the list.” That came from the newest agent at the office, a man Lily had met but hadn’t worked with. What was his name? Fields? No, Fielding. Carl Fielding. “You can work magic.”

“Idiots,” Ackleford muttered. “Why do they always send me idiots? She’s a touch sensitive,” he told the man. “Feels magic if it’s around, can’t be affected by it, can’t do shit with it herself. Go away. You and Brewer can make like you know how to interview witnesses.”

“Uh—do we take the family?”

“No.” Ackleford looked at Lily again, eyes narrowed. “Robert Friar’s got a major hard-on for you.”

And that was Ackleford. He’d earned his nickname of the Big Asshole, but he didn’t settle for the obvious if it didn’t fit. “I’d say he wants me dead, but dead probably isn’t good enough. So yes, it’s possible he’s involved, but we’ve nothing to connect him at this time. I’d like you to double up on interviewing the family so we can release them as soon as possible.”

Ackleford grunted. “Who’s handling the woo-woo end of things?”

“I’ve got an expert headed here who can advise us on that.”

“That Seaborne guy or the chick with the tattoos or the one with all that red hair?”

“The Seaborne guy. The family is in the small private dining room. I moved them from the larger room, where we—they—were eating. It’s—”

“Lily!”

She turned. A tall, elegant woman strode toward her. She wore a simple blue sheath, low heels, and a determined expression.

“That one of your family?” Ackleford asked.

“My sister Susan. Susan Wong. She’s a doctor. She and Grandmother have been staying with . . . with the victim in the ladies’ room.”

“I need to transport my patient to the hospital,” Susan said crisply as soon as she reached Lily. “I’ve called an ambulance.”

A jolt of fear made Lily stiffen. “Is she—”

“No, no—there’s been no change. She’s not in physical distress, but we don’t know what was done to her. It was some kind of spell, wasn’t it?”

“Magic was involved.”

“It might have physical effects that haven’t shown up yet. She needs to be checked out.”

“Yeah, well, I need to talk to her first,” Ackleford said.

Susan turned a polite frown on him. “Who are you?”

“Special Agent Ackleford, ma’am.”

“Well, no one is interrogating my mother right now. She’s suffered serious trauma, and questions increase her distress, potentially deepening the trauma.”

“It’s a funny thing, but the FBI doesn’t let the victim’s family determine who we talk to and when.”

“In this case,” Lily said, “the family member is also the doctor in charge. She’s stated that the victim is not fit for questioning and is about to be taken to the hospital. Pretty clear rules about that. You might try to remember that I gave you an assignment.”

Ackleford rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Parker. Let’s get started.”

“Second door on the right,” Lily told him.

“Yeah, yeah. The one that’s not being secured by the uniforms. I might’ve figured that out all by myself.”

Ackleford stomped off. Rickie Parker—who was thoroughly female in spite of the nickname, which was short for Fredericka—gave Lily a single, sympathetic glance before following him.

“Who is he?” Susan asked, staring after them.

“He’s in charge of the Bureau’s office here. He is not, however, in charge of this investigation. He’ll forget that several more times before we’re through. Susan, how is she really doing?”

Susan sighed and looked tired and worried and not doctorish. “She needs a psychiatric evaluation.”

“She isn’t crazy!”

“We don’t know what she is at the moment. I wasn’t exaggerating about the trauma. Mentally, she’s twelve years old. She remembers nothing later than February twenty-fourth, 1968. At a minimum, we need to monitor her for shock and determine if medication will be helpful.”

Lily didn’t like it, but . . . “I won’t tell you how to do your job.”

“Good. Rule will have to go with her.”

“Rule? I mean, that’s okay, but I would have thought Grandmother or maybe Aunt Deborah—well, no, not her.” Deborah would be collapsed somewhere, sniffing damply. Aunt Deborah was as soft and huggable as a teddy bear, but she did not deal well with crises. “But Aunt Mequi—”

“Not Aunt Mequi,” Susan said grimly. “She insisted on coming in to talk to Mother, but when Mother saw her, she freaked. I think she recognized Mequi, but the sister she remembers is fifteen years old, not next door to sixty. Even Grandmother couldn’t get her calmed down. Rule did, though. He came right into the ladies’ room and let her grab hold of him while he patted her back, and she settled down. Only now she’s latched on to him like a toddler with a security blanket.”