Ritual Magic

else was gone, too, she realized. She checked up near the ceiling. Sometimes Drummond didn’t stay fully manifested, but hung around as a drift of white no one else saw.
    No sign of him. He was having trouble manifesting, he’d said. But he’d made the effort because he had two things to tell her, only it turned out he couldn’t say the first thing. Not intelligibly. Marigolds? She grimaced. But the other thing that mattered from his perspective was that they had a second enemy. One who’d mounted some kind of spiritual attack on Lily.
    What did that even mean? Someone was trying to pull her over to the dark side? Or did he mean the kind of mind control that had affected poor Officer Crown? And God, she hadn’t thought about him in hours . . . she needed to check on him.
    But the attack on him had been magic-based—grimy, yucky magic that she’d touched. What had been done to her mother and the others . . . that involved spirit. Or
arguai
. Same thing, according to Cullen. Had someone been trying to wipe out her memory? Why would their enemy—or enemies—want anyone’s memory wiped out? Lily scrubbed her face with both hands.
Think, damn it.
Her brain felt clouded, fogged by grief and guilt and exhaustion. Even her relief about Andy was distant. In the midst of all that dimness, a tiny little question nudged up.
    Had someone wanted her to kill Santos? Tried to make that happen?
    Rule squeezed her shoulder. “I need to head to recovery, Lily.”
    “Hmm? Oh, yes. Of course. I’ll stay here and wait for news.”
    “You looked very far away just now, and not in a happy place.”
    “Trying to think. Not doing a great job of it.”
    “You probably need to eat.” Rule sighed. “We all do. I’ll have a word with Scott on my way out. I should have seen to that before. Do you have a preference?”
    Rule and those lupi who’d been involved in the battle had grabbed various foodlike substances from the vending machines earlier, but Changing made them
hungry
. So did healing. Chips and peanuts were a small, temporary stopgap.
    Lily, on the other hand, had no appetite whatsoever. “Whatever’s easy. You go see Andy. I told you what he said, didn’t I?”
    A small smile touched Rule’s lips. “He didn’t freeze.”
    “Yeah. He . . .” Her phone hooted like an owl. Her eyebrows shot up. “That’s Isen.”
    “He said he wanted a word with you.” Rule brushed his lips across her cheek and headed off, trailing three of the guards.
    Lily took out her phone. “Hi, Isen.”
    “Lily.” Isen’s voice was a deep, true bass. The phone didn’t do it justice, but did allow the warmth through. “When we spoke earlier I was somewhat distracted, but something you said has nagged at me. You said that Cynna identified the dworg immediately. You realized she must have recognized them from the clan memories.”
    “Yes.” Where was he going with this?
    “It occurs to me that you haven’t heard our stories about dworg.”
    “Ah . . . no. No, I haven’t.” Maybe that was why she’d lost twice as many men as Rule and Isen had. She didn’t know how to fight dworg. Hadn’t been able to fight them. Which was why she’d tried to stay out of the way of those who did, those who’d fought and bled and died . . .
    “In the old days, it took ten or twelve lupi to kill one, and even with those numbers, several were always lost. We always tried to fight them in the open. We needed room to maneuver. Your men lacked room, in that parking lot. In spite of that, your casualties were amazingly low. José was quick and beautifully competent. So were you.”
    “Competent?” Her voice rose and cracked. “José, yes. Me? I couldn’t fight them. I did nothing.”
    “You sent for backup before you even knew what you faced.”
    Which got one person killed, another badly hurt. Though it had also alerted Ackleford, who’d gone for the RPG as soon as he looked out his window . . . “It was the candy frog. Toad. Whatever. I saw that and thought about Hardy’s warning.”
    “For which I have thanked him. Once the monsters arrived, you recognized that you couldn’t personally engage with them and trusted José to do his job. You got Cynna to safety. You drew the dworg away from José so your compatriot could fire his RPG. How is it nothing, when you did all these things right?”
    A huge lump rose in Lily’s throat. She had to swallow twice to get rid of it. “That doesn’t feel true, but thank