Eileen Wilks - Ritual Magic

He shuddered. He’d known that damn knife worked on both sides. He hadn’t understood what that meant. He’d been trying to . . .

He couldn’t remember.

This wasn’t the kind of forgetting he did about stuff that was too separate from the mortal world to bring with him when he was working here. This was cold and stark and terrifying.

Because the knife was wielded only on this side, it did no harm to who and what you are. You have lost some memories of your actions on this side, but your sense of self remains strong. The damage to your function is more of a problem.

To his function? Drummond shook his head, trying to shake himself awake. That was one of the shitty things about this side. No coffee. He sat up and looked around.

He was in Lily Yu’s bedroom, in her bed. Hers and that Turner guy’s. He’d been to her place a couple of times, so he recognized it, but that didn’t explain why he’d woken up in her bed. He didn’t need a bed to sleep. Right after he died, when he’d been so screwed up, he hadn’t known how to rest without the trappings he was used to—beds, chairs, whatever. Not anymore, though. Now he just sort of slid sideways into whatever struck him as a restful spot—a tree, a drop of water . . .

A tree? A drop of water? What the fuck?

But that was what he’d been doing. He remembered it, but now it struck him as straight out of Bizarro World. He started to rub his face and hissed in pain.

His right arm hurt.

It was in a sling, but he could see the bloody bandage wrapped around his biceps. Not that it was really blood, or a sling, or a bandage. Not really an arm, for that matter. But he knew arms and blood and bandages, so that was how he saw and felt it, was maybe why he’d woken up in bed. When you were hurt, you rested in a bed, so some part of him must have dragged him here.

That was . . . that was good, actually. At least he remembered that much about how things worked. What else?

He spent a few minutes sorting through his memories of the time since he died. He couldn’t find anything missing except for what he’d been doing when he got into a fight with someone who held an ancient artifact. Someone on this side. He was sure of that. Someone on this side had taken possession of the spirit side of that damn knife, and he’d . . .

That part was gone. Wiped out. No, cut out. Drummond grimaced.

Another memory rose, this one very recent. He’d been injured on the job. They wanted him to take medical leave. That wasn’t how they put it, maybe, but that was what he understood. Medical leave meant going home to Sarah . . . a pang of longing shot through him. He missed her. Missed her a lot. He looked at his left hand, where her ring . . .

The ring was gone. The glowing gold ring that had followed him into death, that tied him to Sarah. His hand was bare.

“Nooo,” he moaned. The ring couldn’t be gone. It couldn’t.

It’s part of what was removed, a gentle voice said. Keep to your path, and all will be restored .

His path? What the hell did that mean? Drummond scrubbed his face and found it wet. But . . . apparently he wasn’t alone. He didn’t see anyone that voice might belong to, but it was familiar. He knew it. Trusted it.

Keep to his path. Right. He remembered a little more. He’d turned down the medical leave. They didn’t have anyone else with his skill set available. They couldn’t have replaced him, so he’d opted to stay on the job, but there was a problem. He’d lost function in some way, yeah. And the ring. The ring was gone, and that hurt all the way down, but he’d also lost memory. Not much, but any loss sort of loosened his connection to other memories. He was going to default more to his in-body ways and find the in-spirit stuff a bit slippery.

Like wanting a bed for rest instead of a leaf or whatever. Grimacing, he got out of the bed he didn’t need but thought he did. Better see what was going on. He felt sure he’d been drawn here for a reason.

It was pitch-black in this room, but that didn’t bother him. He didn’t see the way he used to, and whatever was wrong with his functioning, his spirit eyes worked fine. When he got to the door, though, he automatically tried to open it.

Stupid. At least he’d reached out with his left arm, not the right. He rolled his eyes at himself and passed through it. On the other side, he saw Turner sitting in the living space, stropping a wicked-looking knife. Drummond had never been one for knives, but cleaning his weapon used to soothe him sometimes, and Mr. Wolf Man looked like he could use some soothing. His face was stony, but his spirit was all agitated. No surprise, after everything that had happened lately.

Must be late. No one else seemed to be up. He’d check on them, he decided, and did so, passing through walls and doors with no problem. Yeah, all asleep, and they all seemed fine, though Julia was having some kind of bad dream. He watched her a minute, but he didn’t see any kind of outside influence, and regular nightmares weren’t his job. He wasn’t clear enough to help with those.

Lily Yu wasn’t here. That bothered him. He’d figured he’d been drawn here because she was, but she was gone, and everyone but Turner was asleep.

Maybe he’d better have another look at Turner. And that big knife.

This time he took as long as he had with Julia, checking all over. And this time he saw it and cursed himself for having missed it before. It was small, yeah, thin as a thread, but once he’d spotted it, it was damn obvious, starkly black against the man’s shiny soul-stuff. It slid around in all that turbulence, somehow anchored in Turner’s spirit without being static. It kept dodging out of the way of the other thing hooked into the man, that glowing white cord they called the mate bond.

Drummond watched for a minute. It didn’t look like the bond was going to block this slimy bit of interference. Someone was trying a different technique, maybe, or else it was Turner’s own turbulence that let the black thing keep moving away from the bond.

Now what? He wanted to grab hold of the nasty thing and yank it out, but he knew better. There were those who could touch filth without it sticking to them, but he sure as hell wasn’t that pure. And he couldn’t tell Turner he was under spiritual attack. He needed Lily to do that, but she wasn’t here.

Hell. Only one thing to try.

Drummond zipped into one of the bedrooms. Two women slept there. One was small and wrinkled and sound asleep—and ablaze to his spirit eyes. The other was just as deeply asleep. Her glow was also beautiful, but in a different way. Clear, clear, all the way down she was clear. Every time he saw her, he wanted to slow down, to just look at that quiet glow awhile . . . no time for that.

Drummond crouched next to her side of the bed and tried to settle his mind. He wouldn’t actually enter her dream. That would take too long. But she’d given permission for him to contact her this way, if only he could remember how . . . oh, yeah.

He reached out his left hand and touched her spirit in the spot some called the third eye, right over the center of her forehead. “Li Qin, I’m, uh, I’m sorry to intrude, but I need your help. I need you to wake up and go stop Turner. He’s about to make a big mistake, but it’s not really him. Not just him. Something’s influencing him. Don’t let him leave until Lily gets here. Please, if you can hear me . . .” He said it all again, but she wasn’t stirring, wasn’t opening her eyes. He must be doing something wrong. Or maybe she could hear him, but wasn’t able to wake up. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

Turner’s phone chimed in the other room. He cursed and zipped back there. Turner had set down the big knife to pick up his phone. “Yes?”