Ritual Magic

and shut the door. She fastened her seat belt and said, “Ruben put me in charge of the Shadow Unit for this case.”
    Rule gave her a long look. “He did.”
    “Which of the men with us is the best with a rifle?”
    “Gray. I don’t think he’d ever fired a handgun before he joined us on this side of the country, but he’s excellent with a rifle.”
    She nodded. “If Miriam has the knife, we’ll do our damnedest to save her. She isn’t one of the monsters by choice, is she? But if we can’t . . . if the knife gets its claws in us, or if Friar tricks us somehow . . . I want Gray stationed well back with a rifle. Far enough that he should be safe from the knife’s effects. He’s to take her out if I signal him, or if it’s obvious I’ve fallen under the spell of the knife.”
    “I agree with you in theory, but in practice . . . if Miriam can use that knife to compel or corrupt us, we don’t have any business getting close to it.”
    He wasn’t going to like this. “It can’t compel me. It tried. The contagion tried to get into me, and it couldn’t. As for the corrupt or persuade part . . . either the mate bond or the
toltoi
gives me some protection. We don’t know how much, but some. Miriam’s no fighter. If I can take her down quickly, get the knife away from her—”
    “You don’t seriously think I’m going to let you go in alone.”
    “If you’re with me, what’s to stop her from compelling you to stop me from stopping her?” That came out tangled. “You know what I mean. What’s to stop her?”
    Rule’s face turned dark. His eyes did, too, in the way that said he was fighting for control. He didn’t speak.
    Into his grim silence, Cullen chirped, “Polyester?”

THIRTY-SEVEN

    F RIAR didn’t like Lily’s plan any better than Rule had, but for different reasons. “You have fucking got to be joking.”
    The address he’d given them turned out to be a florist’s shop. They’d taken elaborate precautions getting inside, all of which turned out to be unnecessary. He’d had help getting there, according to Ronnie’s nose, but he was alone now. Alone, unarmed, and a bloody mess. Lily’s first sight of Friar had startled her into an instant’s pity. He’d taken several bullets. Someone had wrapped his chest and shoulder in gauze, but they must have run out. His right arm had an old T-shirt tied around it. His left leg wasn’t bandaged at all, so it was easy to see the damage there. The kneecap was gone. Pulverized.
    The first thing they’d done was remove the gauze and the bloody T-shirt along with his clothes. They didn’t find a damn thing except for the two bullets that his body had apparently expelled from his chest. But no weapon or wallet, just the phone he’d used to call them. Friar declined to explain the lack of a wallet.
    They had a stash of medical supplies in the trunk, so they’d used some of their gauze to rewrap his wounds. No point in letting him bleed all over the leather seats. While Mike bandaged his arm, Friar told Rule to order his men outside so he could tell them something “not for public consumption.” Rule ignored him. Friar then told him to “send the sorcerer away, at least. He’d find information about the knife entirely too enticing.”
    “The sorcerer,” Cullen had said, “already knows about the knife. Both what you told me—I listened to your conversation with Lily, you see—and a few tidbits you left out. Which part did you think I’d find unbearably enticing?”
    Lily had almost heard Friar’s teeth grind. Maybe he was truly desperate. He looked royally pissed, but he’d gone ahead and told them at least some of the truth about the knife, ending by saying that obviously they had to shoot its current holder from a distance. That was when Lily told him she meant to go in alone . . . though that wasn’t entirely settled. Cullen was pushing to go with her. He was sure his shields would protect him. She didn’t mention that Gray would be staying back with a rifle.
    “This is not my joking face,” she said now, “and you don’t have a veto.”
    “And I thought you were the practical one. If you—hell, you don’t have to wrap it that tight.”
    Mike had started rewrapping Friar’s chest. “Shut up,” he said and kept winding.
    Friar looked at Rule. “Are you going to let her throw away her life? And with it yours and everyone else’s? Your clan will not survive what happens to our realm if the god is