Eileen Wilks - Ritual Magic

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?”