Ritual Magic

you.”
    “Feelings are not always a guide to truth, and guilt is an indulgence you cannot afford. It clouds the mind. Set it aside and think. What would you do differently?”
    Several impossibilities rose to mind immediately, like never leaving the house without an Uzi in her hands. She let those bubbles rise to the surface and pop, then said, “From now on, we park as close as possible. I’ve got the authority. I’ve been reluctant to abuse it, or seem to be abusing it. We had AK-47s in the trunk of the car, but it was too far away to do us any good. They don’t have the stopping power of Uzis, but they would have been a damn sight better than the handguns we did have.” And maybe she’d see about getting a couple of Uzis, too. Could Ruben pull some strings, make that a legal acquisition somehow?
    Which reminded her—she needed to check with Karonski, see if he’d been able to keep those Uzis off the record. She had a couple of ideas about that. Her fingers twitched. Where was her notebook?
    “Excellent. Remember that José and the others were not fighting your enemy, Lily. We were, all of us, fighting
our
enemy. Today that enemy struck using an ancient horror. We not only won, but won handily. They failed to achieve a single one of their objectives. Thirty-two dworg were sent against us. In the old days, that many dworg would have meant at least a hundred lupi deaths, and many times that in human casualties. They were our enemy’s most feared and potent weapon. Today, thirty-two dworg managed to kill only three of us before we killed every one of them.”
    “Modern weaponry beats teeth and claws. Admittedly, it took major firepower to bring them down. If we hadn’t had the Uzis, the story would’ve had a different ending.”
    “And somehow the Great Enemy failed to take modern weapons into account?” Isen paused for a moment, letting that sink in. “
She
spent an enormous amount of power today, power on a level she has not used against us in thousands of years. And achieved . . . nothing.”
    Lily opened her mouth. Closed it again. And said, “Shit. We’re missing something.”
    “I think so, yes.”
    Could the dworg have been a diversion? Maybe, but you didn’t use that kind of power for a distraction unless you had something even bigger planned, and nothing else had happened.
    That wasn’t the only thing that didn’t make sense. “The Azá. Last year,
she
needed them in order to open a gate. Them and a whole lot of death magic. How come she’s suddenly able to pop open four gates—bam, bam, bam, bam!—with no helpful ritual on this side? Three of them without nodes, too. We have to ask what’s different now. Friar, yeah, she’s got him all supercharged, but he wasn’t in four places at once, opening gates. I don’t think he could open even one. If Sam can’t do it himself, I can’t believe . . . hold on a minute. Hold on. Cynna’s here.”
    Cynna’s scrubs were pink with little bunnies on them. It made for an odd look with her tats. Her face was tired and a bit grim, but she smiled the moment she saw Lily heading for her. “José’s out of surgery. He should be okay. No guarantees—I’m not Nettie, I can’t check him out myself—but his surgeon has operated on lupi enough to make a guess about his recovery, and he thinks José will make it. Oh, and I saw Rule in with Andy. I told him about José.”
    This time the relief hit hard and immediately. Lily’s eyes filmed with tears. “Thank God. Are you . . . you look tired, but okay. Cullen got up here and crashed.”
    “He was still so drained after his stint with Sam—he damn near burned himself out just using sleep spells. Where . . . oh, there he is.” She moved around Lily and crouched beside her soundly sleeping husband. She watched him a moment, stroked his hair, and whispered something Lily didn’t catch. Then she stood and looked at Lily. There was a lot more grim in her expression now, along with a healthy dollop of determined. “Just before the shit hit the fan, I got a decent pattern for your murder victim. I am by damn going to Find whatever I can with that pattern. I’m headed outside now to do that. You with me?”
    Oh, shit, was this a good idea? Cynna was a target, and just because—
    Drummond popped into being in front of Lily, his face clear, the rest of him fuzzy and indeterminate. “That’s it! That’s the first thing I wanted to tell you, but couldn’t. She needs to do that. You