Ritual Magic

was pushy back then, too—he said something about letting the past stay in the past.”
    “Bah,” Grandmother said.
    Lily paused to see if that was addressed to her. Grandmother, Li Qin, Toby, and Julia were playing mah-jongg in the “office”—the room with the dining table. Grandmother had brought her mah-jongg set with her. Not the good one, which was over two hundred years old, but her everyday tiles. In spite of that “bah,” Grandmother was undoubtedly winning. She always did, and she didn’t believe in cutting any slack based on trivialities like age or experience.
    When no further comments came, Lily went on. “So when I saw his name on the papers in his home office, I felt this little tug, as if I ought to know who he was. The memory didn’t float up to the top of my mind until we found his high school yearbook, though. There was a picture of him with my mother, and bam! I remembered that whole conversation. It had left so many questions unanswered—that’s why it stuck, I think.” She looked at Rule. “Only I shouldn’t have remembered, should I?”
    “Something protected you from the memory loss others suffered.” He was winding one strand of her hair around his finger. “Whether it was the
toltoi
or the mate bond, clearly something kept your memory from being damaged.”
    “Probably the mate bond.” Lily wanted her mysterious protection to be the mate bond. If it could protect her, it ought to protect Rule, too.
    “We don’t know enough to say for sure. Whichever it was, I’m very glad you have it.”
    Trying to get Rule to agree with her wouldn’t make it so . . . but she wished he had. “I wish Drummond would show up again. And that’s something I never expected to say.”
    “No sign of him?”
    She shook her head and shoved her hair back from her face. And winced. She’d taken the elastic bandage off her wrist after supper to let it breathe, but maybe that had been a mistake. It was pretty tender still. “What would you do if I cut my hair?”
    His eyebrows went up. “Do you want to?”
    “Thinking about it. I don’t usually let it get this long. It takes forever to blow it dry these days.” And when she was one-handed, doing anything with her hair was a bitch. Rule had washed it for her that morning.
    “It’s your hair, so it’s your choice.”
    “The way you’re always playing with it, I thought you might go into shock or something.”
    He smiled. “I think I could cope if there were less hair to play with. As long as you don’t decide to shave your head.”
    “Not going quite that far. Maybe I’ll wait until after the wedding, though.” Her mother had been happy Lily had let her hair grow out, thinking she’d done it for the wedding. Mostly Lily just hadn’t had time to mess with it.
    That reminded her. “I meant to tell you earlier. My father called this afternoon.”
    “Did he?”
    “At first he wanted to know about the wedding, if we’d postponed it. But then . . . he’s sorry he said that about not wanting to hear from me. He . . .” Tears stung, making her feel foolish because this was good news. “He said cutting himself off from me was both wrong and stupid. It was like he’d had his foot amputated and decided to blame his hand for that and cut it off, too.”
    Rule pressed a kiss to her hair. “Like I said, he’s a good man. What did you—”
    “Did not!” Toby cried, indignant.
    “Did so!” That was Julia, very loud. “You’re always bragging—‘my dad
this
, my dad
that
, my dad is soooo wonderful’—”
    “I just said you didn’t need to be all scared because Dad is here, and it’s true! He killed the dworg and kept us safe and—”
    “What do you know? You’re just a stupid little kid!” Julia’s voice rose to shrill, but Lily could hear the tears in it. “Too stupid to be scared when there are monsters that want to
eat
us! They wanted to eat us!”
    “But Dad didn’t let them.”
    Julia shrieked in rage. A chair scraped, then clattered.
    “Julia,” Grandmother said crisply. “Pick up your chair.”
    “No!”
    Julia came racing out of the room. She jerked to a stop when she saw Lily and Rule. Her face flooded with a mixture of loathing and longing, then crumpled as she spun and headed for the stairs, thudding down barefoot.
    Lily shoved herself out of Rule’s lap.
    “I’ll go,” he said, standing.
    Grandmother stood in the door to the office. She shook her head. “A bad idea. She will either