Ritual Magic

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