Eileen Wilks: Ritual Magic

“Then he’ll go with her. Have you called Beth?” Their youngest sister was in San Francisco. The day before the party, she’d claimed that a work emergency was keeping her from coming to San Diego. Lily suspected that Beth had decided the guilt involved with missing their mother’s birthday celebration would be easier to deal with than the furor if she showed up with her new boyfriend . . . Sean Friar. Robert Friar’s half brother.

“Dad did. She’ll be here sometime tomorrow.”

With or without Sean? Lily decided not to ask. She thought of someone else who had to be called. “What about Grandfather Lin?” Her mother’s father was not exactly an involved parent, but he had to be told.

“Grandmother called him.”

Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “She used the phone?”

“Weird, isn’t it? She demanded my phone and called him. He’s going to make an appearance, but not right away. He’s got some kind of important meeting.”

Lily grimaced. Typical. “How’s Dad holding up?”

“He’s quiet. Really quiet.”

Lily bit her lip and nodded. Edward Yu dealt with rough emotional waters by going silent. The quieter he got, the worse things were.

Susan sighed. “Thank God for Grandmother . . . and that’s not something I say every day. But no one else could’ve gotten Aunt Mequi out of there so quick. She sure wasn’t listening to me.”

When the restaurant doors swung open, both sisters turned to look. It was the CSI squad. “My people, not yours,” Lily said. “I have to go.”

“I need to get back to her anyway.”

“Over here,” Lily called. She wasn’t sure what good CSI would do. Magical evidence was hard for nulls to collect even if they could spot it, and it couldn’t be tested in a lab. Which reminded her that she needed to call Ruben. Cullen was good, the best, but the courts only accepted magical evidence from accredited covens, plus there were some spells that needed to be a group effort. She had to get the coven the Unit used out here, and she needed to report.

Lily pulled out her phone and moved toward the squad so she could tell them to hold off until her magical consultant checked the scene.

Ruben answered right away. While she briefed him, two more patrol cars arrived; she broke off to direct the officers to start getting names and addresses of the sixty-odd customers in the main dining room. The ambulance arrived just as she finished reporting.

“That does explain the disruption I felt in the probabilities,” Ruben said. “Which in turn suggests that Robert Friar may be involved.”

Ruben was an off-the-charts precog. Friar was an off-the-charts patterner. The two Gifts worked differently, but Ruben usually sensed it when Friar was manipulating the probabilities in a major way. “Does that translate into a hunch you can share?”

“I’m afraid not, but the level of perturbation suggests this event may have wider repercussions than is immediately apparent. Lily, I’m going to allow you to remain in charge for now because you’re on-scene, but you can’t keep the lead. Not when the victim is your mother.”

No. No, he was right. She was too damn angry. “I understand.”

“Ida will send the coven to you ASAP. I’m going to send Abel Karonski. He’s in Kansas City tying up the last dangling ends of a case, but that can be left to the junior agent he’s been training. He should be there tomorrow. I’ll have him contact you.”

“Okay.”

“I’m very sorry about your mother.”

The EMTs were wheeling an empty gurney across the dining room. “Yeah,” she said, her voice thick. “Me, too.”

She’d barely disconnected when her phone gave a drumroll. That was Cullen’s ring tone. She answered. “Yes.”

“I’m pulling into the parking lot now.”

“Good.” She glanced at her watch, frowned. Maybe thirty, thirty-five minutes had passed since Rule had called him. “How did you get here so fast?”

“Rule said to hurry. I need you to have a chat with the guy who pulled in behind me. Surly-looking fellow. He’s got a flashing red light on top of his car.”

The patrol officer did not want to leave Cullen free to wreak havoc on the streets of San Diego. At the very least, he wanted to explain to Lily in detail how many traffic violations Cullen had racked up. “Officer, you can hang around and write tickets for Mr. Seaborne all night if you like, but you will have to wait to deliver them. I need my consultant now . Cullen, come with me.”

As she turned and started for the front door of the Golden Dragon, she heard the officer mutter, “Goddamn feds.”

“Rule said your mother suffered some kind of magical attack,” Cullen said, keeping pace beside her. “What do you know?”

“Too damn little. She thinks she’s twelve years old and that today is February twenty-fourth, 1968. I confirmed that magic was involved, but it . . . no, I want to find out what you see before I tell you what I felt.”

He grunted.

The double doors opened just as they reached them. Mark held one of them wide. Rule held the other. Rule looked at her and nodded in a way meant to be reassuring. The gurney the EMTs pushed out those double doors was no longer empty. Susan walked beside it. Grandmother and Lily’s father followed. His face was tight and pale and she didn’t think he saw anything but the gurney carrying his wife.

Lily stopped moving. Someone had scrubbed some of the mascara streaks off her mother’s face, but she still had the raccoon look going. Beneath the smeared makeup, her eyes looked lost. Bewildered.

“Hey,” Cullen said as he stepped up to the gurney. “Hi, Julia. You’ve had a really rough night, I hear.”

“Sir, you need to step away,” one of the EMTs began.

“Susan,” Lily said, “Cullen isn’t going to question her. He just needs a minute.”

Susan frowned hard, but she told the EMTs to wait.

Julia’s jaw tightened pugnaciously. “I don’t know you. I’d remember you if we’d ever met, and I don’t.”

Cullen was memorable. On the one-to-ten scale of male beauty, he was an eleven. Lily had seen passing strangers stop in their tracks to stare. Especially women, but men did it, too, sometimes. “Well, now,” Cullen said with a smile, “if you don’t want us to be on a first-name basis, you’ll have to call me Mr. Seaborne. I’d rather be Cullen to you, but if you insist . . .”

Julia blushed. Lily had never seen her mother blush. “I—I guess that’s okay.”

“I’m going to make some funny gestures,” he told her, “so I can get a better look at the magic used on you. You won’t feel a thing, except maybe like giggling if I look silly.”

Julia’s eyes got big. “Can you fix me?”

“First I have to figure out what’s wrong. What I’m going to do now . . . think of it like going to the doctor and getting a thermometer stuck in your mouth. He usually has to do other things, too, to find out why you’re sick, like look in your ears and your throat. And sometimes that isn’t enough and they have to do more tests. Right now, though, I’m just taking your temperature.”

“Mr. Turner,” Julia said, and tried to sit up, but they’d strapped her in. “Mr. Turner—?”

“I’m right here,” Rule said and moved to her and took her hand.

She blinked up at him. “Is this your friend that you said was coming?”

“It is. Cullen is very good at magic.”

“I’m the great pooh-bah of magic,” Cullen assured her. He drew a sign in the air, whispered something, and put his two hands together, then separated them slightly, thumbs and forefingers extended and touching to shape a crude circle. He moved that empty circle around, staring through it, ending with it framing Julia’s forehead. He frowned, muttered something that wasn’t English, and shifted his hands a couple millimeters. Then he dropped his hands and smiled. “Thanks for staying so still, Julia. I’ll see you a little later, okay?” He winked and stepped back.