Ritual Magic

Did that mean—
    “Stop,” Cynna said. But she wasn’t talking to Lily now. “We’re there.”
    * * *
    T HE man who’d been staked to the ground and ritually murdered had lived in a brick-veneer ranch-style house in Alta Vista—a nice enough neighborhood, the kind where vacations were more likely to be Motel 6 or camping than anything involving airfare, but most of the time most of the people here could take a vacation. Like much of the city, Alta Vista had been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, but it was beginning to come around. Not as many For Sale signs dotted the streets, nor were there many walkaways standing empty and forlorn.
    This house hadn’t been abandoned. Someone had added a pricey metal roof in the last five years, and the landscaping was well tended, if uninspired. A wide driveway leading to the two-car garage left little room for the yard, which was all grass except for the kind of foundation plantings beloved by builders fifty years ago. The grass had been cut recently and looked like it got watered as often as the city allowed. “Anything?” she asked Mike, whom she’d sent to peer in the high window in the garage door.
    “No car, if that’s what you mean.”
    She nodded. “Head around back, keep an eye on that door.” There was a fence, but that wouldn’t slow him down.
    No toys on the lawn or the drive, Lily noted as she headed for the small front porch. No potted plants or lawn ornaments, either. The porch’s only decoration was a slumped sack of fertilizer topped by a pair of dirty gardening gloves. The welcome mat provided the single note of whimsy. “Hop In!” it said in bold black letters surrounding a cheerful green frog.
    She rang the doorbell.
    “If anyone was here, wouldn’t they have reported your guy missing?” Cynna asked.
    “You’d think so.” Lily rang again, to be sure. It wouldn’t be hard to get a search warrant, but it would take time, and—
    “Lily!” Mike came loping from the side of the house. “Something’s wrong. There’s a window cracked open around back. I couldn’t see in because of the blinds, but I could smell it. Piss and shit and sickness. Not death—I didn’t smell decay, and I heard breathing. Someone’s in there, and it’s bad.”
    Lily hammered on the door with her fist. “Police! Open up! We have reason to think someone inside is injured or ill, and will break in if you don’t open the door!” She let two heartbeats pass, then said to Scott, “Get me in.”
    Scott stepped back two paces, eyed the door—solid core with a dead bolt—and said, “Mike! Get in through that open window and let us in.”
    Mike spun and raced back around the house. A moment later she heard glass break. Apparently Mike hadn’t been able to just push the window up. She drew her weapon. Her heart pounded. She waited, waited . . . heard feet running on carpet, coming near. The click of the dead bolt being turned.
    The door swung open. “She’s in bad shape,” Mike said. “No sign of anyone else inside.”
    Lily decided to trust his senses and holstered her gun. She ran after him, gathering quick impressions—a small, neat living room flooded with light from the picture window, a darker hallway with four doors, where the sewer stench that had alerted Mike grew thick in her nostrils.
    Mike turned into the second doorway on the left. She followed.
    It looked like a little girl’s room, all pink and white, with stuffed animals on the shelves and a frilly bedspread on the double bed. But the woman lying in that bed, stinking of urine and feces, must have been at least twenty. Her hair was dusty brown and braided in twin plaits. Her eyes were closed. She lay on her back with her mouth open, one arm limply cradling a bedraggled stuffed dog, and she looked more dead than alive. She had the small chin, the broad, flat face, and the flattened nose of Down syndrome.

THIRTY

    D RUMMOND came to slowly. He was lying down . . . in bed. Yeah. He was in a bed, and he felt like hell—sick and woozy. A lot like he had that time he got concussed. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. His arm hurt like a mother. He’d taken a chance . . .
    A foolish risk,
someone had told him.
Very brave, but foolish.
    Yeah, that’s right. She’d told him that while she was patching him up. Had it been her who snatched him, pulled him away before—
    He shuddered. He’d known that damn knife worked on both sides. He hadn’t understood what that meant.