Ritual Magic

arrived and were having a meticulously grand time. Two were on their hands and knees, sifting the scrubby grass near the lookout point. One was carefully scooping bits of blood-soaked soil from just outside the hexagon into baggies. Friar’s blood, according to Rule’s nose, which Lily trusted at least as much as any DNA analysis. Rule and T.J. stood near the edge of the drop-off gripping one end of the rope Barnaby dangled from, sniffing at places a falling body might have hit on the way down.
    Barnaby had an unusually good nose, even two-legged, but they didn’t expect him to find much. When Friar got supercharged by his goddess a few months before, he’d acquired several useful skills, including a trick like the demonic ability to go out-of-phase.
Dshatu
, demons called it. Friar had used it to get away before. From what Lily could tell, it was an immaterial state, which was probably handy if you found yourself falling off a cliff.
    There was no shot-up, smashed-up body at the foot of the drop-off; therefore, Friar had probably gone immaterial when he fell. While he was out-of-phase, he wouldn’t leave a scent or blood trail. But he couldn’t drive a car while he was
dshatu
, and getting away would have been a priority. Rule had sent two of the others off four-footed to check spots where he might have parked a car.
    Thirty feet away, two SOC officers were checking out the bushes where Miriam Faircastle had apparently waited on the best moment for murder.
    The corruption must have leaped from Officer Crown to Miriam when Miriam was trying to remove it. In retrospect, that was obvious. He’d woken up screaming, but free of the taint; she’d gone on to plan and execute murder. Had they been wrong about the icky magic only being able to travel through organic substances? Had Miriam been stupid enough to ignore that safety precaution? Had she just been careless?
    Whatever had gone wrong, Lily was kicking herself for not checking Miriam herself. It seemed so bloody obvious now. The corruption left the officer, so where did it go? Only that still didn’t explain everything. Why had the corruption compelled Miriam to shoot Friar and Jones and Angela Ward and steal the knife? If the corruption was connected to Nam Anthessa, then the knife itself seemed to be acting against Friar.
    Lily huffed out a breath and told herself to brood later, when she had time. She turned away from the busy scene and headed for the south side of the trail.
    Normally there was a bench on the lookout. Friar and Jones had moved it to make room for their rite, parking it on the smooth sand a little ways down the southern end of the trail. Cullen was sitting on it, eyes closed, either meditating or asleep.
    “Got a question for you.”
    “I’m busy.”
    “Yeah, I can tell. Squeeze me into your schedule. Those fireworks you set off . . . they’d have been visible from a long ways off. If Miriam was watching, would she have known what you did? Or would she have thought that was the node blowing up?”
    His eyes opened. He tilted his head, thinking it over. “Good question. It’s not something she would’ve seen before, probably not something anyone she knows has ever seen. Nodes don’t go unstable often, and when they do, they don’t often leave witnesses. I’ve read a description in an old journal, but she probably hasn’t. She doesn’t share my interest in old documents relating to the Art. So . . . yeah, she could easily have assumed her plan had worked.”
    “Then she thinks she got away with it. Good.” Miriam would head back to her condo—was probably there now—and Karonski would station however many officers were needed to keep her from leaving. Would they be armed with tranq weapons? Should she call him and . . . no, she told herself, though her fingers twitched with the urge. Karonski was in charge, and he was certainly capable of thinking of that himself.
    When her phone chimed, she immediately thought it was Karonski. Like most assumptions based on coincidence, that was wrong.
    “Glad to learn that you didn’t blow up,” a familiar voice said.
    Lily stiffened. She touched the mute. “Get Rule. Fast,” she told Cullen—who shot off the bench as if he’d been fired from a cannon.
    “Shocked you speechless, have I?” Robert Friar said. There was an odd, breathy quality to his voice.
    She unmuted the call. “I was trying to think of a polite way to say that I wish you had.”
    “You’d settle for