Ritual Magic

brought through.”
    Rule hadn’t spoken much. He was crouched near his enemy, his eyes never leaving Friar’s face. He was, Lily thought, about halfway into his wolf, though his voice was civilized enough. “It’s surprising that a man of your intelligence—one who has had reason to learn what he could of Lily—could believe it is within my power to
let
her do anything.”
    Friar had quite a sneer when he made the effort. “Perhaps you’ll feel differently when I tell you that the next victim is almost certainly one of your people. One or more.”
    “You didn’t choose one of my people for your rite.”
    “I’m not constrained the way the god of that knife is, nor do I want to destroy our realm.”
    Lily wanted to smash his face in. “Shut up. Just shut up about how you don’t want to destroy the world. Do you think if you say it often enough we’ll believe it? You don’t want that dead god coming in and taking over your playground, but you had every intention of messing it up yourself. You were going to sacrifice Angela Ward. Millions of people have memories of her. Millions. That’s why you chose her, isn’t it? She’s loved and she’s famous and cutting her out of time would create millions of victims. It would damn sure destabilize the realm, and that’s exactly what you wanted.”
    Friar didn’t answer right away. He was thinking, dammit. She’d given away more than she meant to, letting her temper lead instead of her brain. He was wondering how much more they knew and how they knew it. “Reality would have wobbled a bit,” he said at last. “Nothing my mistress couldn’t fix. Dyffaya áv Eni will destroy it.”
    “What kind of constraints is this Dyffaya under?” Rule asked.
    Friar’s gaze flicked to him. “Because of the way the knife was awakened and fed, its god is bound to act . . . if not precisely according to my plans, then in league with them. At least until he pulls himself fully into our realm.” He shifted as if uncomfortable, but he was breathing a lot better, wasn’t he? Probably because he’d expelled those two bullets. His chest was still pretty messed up, though. “If you’re not going to be reasonable, you’d better call that shaman of yours. We’re dealing with a sidhe god. The only chance short of bullets we have of stopping him is to invoke a deity native to our realm.”
    Lily was staring. “You don’t know. How could you not know?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    Cullen’s eyebrows looked like they were trying to climb off his face. “He doesn’t. He really doesn’t know. And he talked about the god being bound by his rite, not the knife. It isn’t just Lily’s secondhand memory of Debrett that let this semidead god take over. You used the wrong bloody rite.”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Cullen gave a single, harsh bark of laughter. “Oh, don’t I? Then why didn’t you know that a police officer was possessed by the corruption left behind by your rite? That the corruption compelled him to shoot Nettie Two Horses?”
    Friar’s eyes widened. Only for a second, but it gave him away.
    “You didn’t know,” Cullen said, leaning forward, “because you thought the knife was still in your control at that point. You thought you didn’t lose control until later, but you were so bloody wrong. You used the wrong bloody rite. That knife is a
named
artifact, you stupid asshole—and you didn’t know that, either, did you? A named artifact, and you didn’t bind it when you woke it. Which gave this Dyffaya áv Eni a big, fat loophole to squirm through.”
    Silence.
    “Now that,” Lily said, “is interesting.”
    Friar’s dark eyes glittered. “Almost as interesting as the fact that you knew the knife was named. Since you’re so interested in us sharing information—”
    “Uh-uh. You want us to take care of this little problem you’ve created. You’re just along for the ride, so your part is supplying information. I need to know why you didn’t use the knife to compel others. You carried Alan Debrett to the ritual site. You could have just told him to follow you.”
    He gave Lily a disdainful glance. “Had I used the knife’s ability to compel, it would have strengthened the god’s presence in the knife.”
    “Oh? And why weren’t you compelled or persuaded by the knife while you held it?”
    “I am wholly dedicated to my mistress. She protected me. If you’re thinking your
Lady
”—he looked