Eileen Wilks - Ritual Magic

“What spell is Abel planning to use to reconstruct the runes?” Cullen asked.

“Something that requires an Earth witch. Beyond that, I have no idea.”

“Probably one of the variants on Cyffnid’s Dire,” Cynna said—which set her and Cullen to arguing in technobabble about the Law of This and the Quadrant of That and synchronicity. Lily tuned them out and thought about a saint who couldn’t talk. Was Hardy’s message supposed to be a warning? The “Riders on the Storm” made her think so, that being such an ominous song, but maybe it was intended as a clue about the killer. Or the victim’s identity? Maybe their victim had written the damn song back in his younger days. Hell, maybe he’d been the lead singer in The Strangeloves.

No, not that. Hardy communicated through song lyrics, not by playing some kind of music trivia game. So . . . assume it was a warning. What did he mean by singing about the candy man? Should she be on the alert for a Willy Wonka lookalike? If she spotted one, was he supposed to help, or was he the killer toad? Toad-on-the-road . . . roadkill. Candy roadkill. A smashed chocolate bar. Smashed into the shape of a toad. Don’t take candy from strangers, little girl . . .

The door swung open and Fielding entered, carrying a small plastic bag. “Here they are. What in the world are you going to do with them?”

“Cast spells,” Lily said, standing up and grabbing her Coke.

“Huh. You Unit people are weird. Can I watch?”

Lily exchanged a look with Cynna, who shrugged. “All right, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You leave the iPod unplugged the rest of the day.”

CYNNAneeded to go outside to set her circle, since she couldn’t draw on carpet. First Lily notified her guards. They—Santos, Joe, and Andy today—were waiting for her in the public reception area. They’d prefer to be a lot closer, but she’d tried bringing them into the offices once. Lily could have put up with the comments and funny looks she got for having bodyguards, but the men were just too much of a distraction. Because they were lupi, yes, but also because they weren’t FBI. Civilians aren’t supposed to hang around in law enforcement offices unless they’re witnesses or under arrest.

She notified Santos of where they were going and why. That was part of the deal, that she let them know if she was going to stick her nose out the door. Cullen had already headed for the conference room door; Lily, Fielding, and Cynna followed.

The Big A ran into them in the hall. “Fielding. Why don’t I have that wit report yet?”

“Uh—I thought, after making that mistake about Agent Yu’s Gift, I’d better learn more about how the Unit operates. I wanted to—”

Ackleford rolled his eyes. “Get me that wit report.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ackleford shoved open the men’s room door and went in.

Fielding said quickly, “I’ll be right out, okay? I’ve almost got the report done. I’ll be just a minute.”

“He’s eager,” Cynna commented.

“He’s new,” Lily said dryly. “He’s still trying to get on the Big A’s good side. He hasn’t figured out that the Big A doesn’t have a good side. Why do you need a circle?” She’d seen Cynna cast for a pattern plenty of times without setting a circle first.

“There’s a wee chance that if Miriam is able to banish the contagion from your officer, it will sort of rebound into the fillings.”

“Mind you,” Cullen put in, “it’s a very slim chance. The resonance would be very slight, considering how little the fillings had to do with generating the contagion and, I suspect, with containing it until it was called or decided to move out. If the—”

“Don’t explain.” Lily looked at Cynna as they turned into the hall that led to the stairs. They’d go out the back way, which was really on the side of the building, but everyone called it going out the back. “Is this going to be safe for you?”

“Ought to be. I’m not impervious to magic the way you are, but I’ve got pretty heavy-duty protections these days. And I set one hell of a circle. I won’t open the baggie until the circle’s set.”

Just how much power did Cynna have available as Rhej? She probably shouldn’t ask. Rhejes kept a lot of things secret. “How much power do you have now, anyway? On, say, a scale of one to dragon.”

Cynna grinned. “Less than Sam, certainly.”

She hadn’t said less than a dragon, but less than Sam, who was the oldest of the dragons, and presumably the most powerful. “Does that mean—”

“It means,” Cullen said, “that your question can’t be answered. In the first place, magic isn’t electricity. You can’t break it down into neat little quanta like ohms or volts or whatever. In the second place, the real question is how much power someone can safely handle. There are casters with minor Gifts who can cast quite powerful spells because they’ve mastered the use of external power. Abel Karonski, for one. Then there are people with powerful Gifts who can’t channel external power worth a damn. Like you.”

“But—”

“And then,” Cullen said as they reached the door to the stairs, “there are a few rare souls like me.” His grin flashed. He swung the door open with a flourish. “Strong as hell and masterful, too.”

“Not to mention pretty,” Cynna said, patting him on the cheek as she passed. “But not modest. Somehow he missed the modesty gene altogether.”

“I thought about adding modesty to all my other wonderful qualities, but decided it would be too much.”

“Couldn’t squeeze it in past your ego, you mean.”

Lily smiled, but she couldn’t help noting that, between the minilecture and the banter, Cullen and Cynna had done a fine job of changing the subject. Rhejes did get to have secrets, she reminded herself as she started down the stairs. But Cullen didn’t. “Why did you say I can’t channel? I can’t, of course, but doesn’t that go without saying with a Gift like mine? I can’t use magic, period.”

“You can’t use spells. You use magic all the freaking time. You soak it up, mostly unconsciously, but you’ve done it on purpose, too, though that nearly killed you precisely because you couldn’t dump it fast enough. I don’t understand why Sam hasn’t taught you how to avoid that.”

“Oh, gee, maybe it’s because I can’t do it.”

“You probably can’t learn to channel, but you can learn to get rid of excess magic. You already do, just not consciously.”

“No, I don’t.” Her Gift soaked up magic and made it hers, which was how she was able to read magic with a touch and why she couldn’t be affected by it. Throw a spell at her, and her Gift ate the power. And yes, like he said, she could use it to suck up magic on purpose, although doing so bothered her. But . . . “That’s why I can’t cast spells. You told me that yourself. To cast a spell you have to be able to use whatever magic you’ve got, you said, and mine isn’t available for that. My Gift hangs on to all the magic it absorbs.”

Cullen snorted. “Why is it that your brain works fine on other subjects, but not about your Gift? I said one of those things. The other is your unconsidered assumption. Think about it. Your capacity to absorb magic is not unlimited. Your experience with the Chimea proved that. So why didn’t you exceed your capacity years ago?”

Lily’s mouth opened . . . and closed again.

“You must be shedding excess magic somehow. I don’t know what the mechanism is, so I can’t teach you how to use it consciously. But Sam ought to be able to.”

Thoroughly uncomfortable and not sure why, Lily didn’t respond.

They’d reached the bottom of the stairs, which opened onto a short hall with locked doors on either side—one to the parking lot, the other to the rest of the building. Both doors required key cards; Lily moved to the front to use hers.