Ritual Magic

need to go, both of you. And hurry.”

TWENTY-NINE

    C YNNA could not be talked out of it. Admittedly, Lily didn’t try very hard, not with Drummond cheerleading the idea from his side, but Rule did. He was hampered by having to make his case over the phone, since he had to stay with Andy and José until they could be taken home. Cynna told him he’d have to cope, because she was damn well going to finish what she’d started before it rained down dworg on their heads.
    “I don’t think the dworg were sent on my account,” Cynna told Lily as she sat down on a wide strip of grass next to the hospital’s parking lot. She untied one shoe. “
She
didn’t go to all that trouble just to keep me from Finding your victim’s home or whatever. But maybe that was part of the timing. And even if it wasn’t”—she took that shoe and sock off and started on the other one—“I’m going to do this.”
    Lily suspected Cynna was hell-bent on doing her Find because she
could
. This was what she did, what she was good at, and there’d been little she could do for their wounded. Reason enough to follow through, Lily thought, if Cynna hadn’t been Rhej. She was, though, which raised the stakes considerably. For that reason and a couple of others, Lily would stick with her. No point in dividing up their guards.
    Those guards stood in a circle around them now, facing out. Once Cynna had removed her shoes and socks she stood, her stance wide, knees flexed, arms overhead. Her Gift didn’t need anything but her attention to work, but for a tricky Find she sometimes boosted her focus with a sort of barefoot drumming dance. That was what she was doing now.
    Slowly she began to stamp the earth with her bare feet. The rhythm picked up as she turned in a slow circle, her hands weaving invisible patterns, her arms gradually descending as her feet punched the ground faster and faster. Her dance paused twice before she stopped, her arms straight out in front of her. She nodded once, satisfied. “Got it.”
    * * *
    “L EFT at the light,” Cynna said. The words came out a little muffled because her mouth was full of mozzarella, crust, and sauce.
    They weren’t in the tankmobile, though it hadn’t been damaged by the dworg. The shiny paint had gotten a few scratches—maybe when the RPG went off, maybe from the claws of a scrambling wolf—but the car was operational, unlike several others. But none of the vehicles could be handed back to their users yet. CSI was still vacuuming. That wasn’t as pointless as it seemed. No one expected to find anything pertinent, but, as Karonski had put it, they didn’t want to feed the conspiracy nuts by stinting on the usual procedures.
    In the end, Rule had accepted that Cynna was going to do this. So he’d rented them an armored limousine.
    That had meant a delay, but a brief one. Just the right amount of time, it turned out, for the pizza Scott had ordered to arrive. That was good, because two of their guards were among those who’d fought dworg that day. They needed the fuel.
    Cynna and Lily had the limo’s rear seat. They were sharing a large pizza with pepperoni and extra bell pepper. Mike, Miles, and Jonathan sat across from them. Each of them had his own box, as did Casey and Scott up front. Casey was driving.
    Lily wasn’t hungry, but she’d taken a slice knowing that it might be hours before she had time for supper. Then she bit into it and was suddenly ravenous. That first piece was gone now, as was the second, and she was finishing her third. She glanced out her window. They were on Market Street, passing Mount Hope, the cemetery where the first person she’d killed was buried. “We getting close?” she asked Cynna.
    “Still a little over ten miles.”
    That should be enough time. Lily washed down the last bite with Diet Coke. “I’ve got a question.”
    Cynna was eyeing the box, where one last slice remained. “Go ahead. You want the last piece?”
    “I’m full. It’s a couple of questions, actually. The first one’s for you as Rhej.”
    Cynna’s eyebrows went up. She took the last slice. “Okay.”
    “It seems as if all of the Great Bitch’s agents we’ve run across have been psychopaths. We’re known by the company we keep, right? I can’t help wondering if the Big B is literally crazy.”
    “Well, sure!”
    Lily blinked. “Then she is a psychopath?”
    “Oh, no, I don’t think so. I think that’s a purely human malfunction, and whatever