Ritual Magic

along. You knew, and made sure we didn’t call and warn anyone.”
    Lily didn’t dare take her eyes off the road, so she didn’t see exactly what happened
.
One second Cullen was staring at Friar. The next there was the smack of flesh on flesh and Cullen bounced back into the seat, having left it so abruptly Lily missed it.
    “Cullen,” Rule said. “No.”
    Cullen subsided, breathing heavily. “I didn’t swear to anything.”
    “I did,” Rule said. “And you’re under my authority. You will not cause me to forswear myself. And neither,” he added in a voice dropped straight into arctic cold, “will he.”
    No question who
he
was. Lily flexed her hands on the wheel, encouraging circulation to return. “You might as well admit it,” she told the bastard in the backseat. He was gloating. She was sure of it, though she couldn’t see his face. “The knife’s at Clanhome, isn’t it?”
    “I did warn you,” the bastard in question said in a silky voice. “I said the next victim would probably be one of your people, and where else does one find your people?”
    Yeah, he’d known all along where the knife was—and he’d made sure they didn’t call and warn Isen. That had been part of the goddamn deal. Lily breathed deep, trying to keep calm. She was driving. She couldn’t fling herself over the seat the way Cullen had tried to do.
    “Perhaps we don’t need you now,” Rule said. “We know where we’re going.”
    “Clanhome’s a big place, and time is short. Do you want to waste some of that time hunting the knife?”
    “Cullen,” Rule said, “will the knife’s holder need a node for the rite?”
    Cullen was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know. I don’t bloody know. I’d think they would want one, but that damn dead god managed to open gates without a node.”
    “You see?” Friar sounded much too smug. “You can’t assume you can go straight to that node of yours. What if they’re using a ley line instead? Plenty of them to choose from.”
    Lily wanted to grab his tongue and yank it out. She could imagine doing just that. Get a pair of pliers, grip that slimy, lying tongue with them, and rip it out, then watch him choke on his own blood and . . . and what in God’s name was she thinking?
    She’d long wanted Friar dead. She could have killed him, given the chance. Right or wrong, she knew she was capable of that, but to imagine torturing him . . . that wasn’t her. Surely that wasn’t her. She shuddered and wished she knew how to pray, but the only one she remembered from her religion-averse childhood started
Now I lay me down to sleep
, which was no help at all.
    What do you believe in?
    Try. And keep trying. “Now that we know roughly where we’re going, we can start making plans,” she said in a voice that surprised her. She sounded a lot more level than she felt.
    * * *
    M IRIAM stood in the open French doors. Outside on what was left of the deck, five brawny men pried up the last boards. They were shirtless and lovely to watch, but she felt so . . . so impatient. Restless. As if parts of her were trying to fly away even while the rest of her stood here, watching. She couldn’t begin laying out what was needed for the ritual until the earth was bare and had been raked to remove any nails that might have fallen.
    There’s time,
a beloved voice said soothingly.
    He was right. Of course he was right, though she glanced at her watch anyway, to see how much time. An hour and fifty minutes until the conjunction, and really, the ritual required very little prep. “I don’t know why I’m so jittery,” she said apologetically. “I can’t seem to think clearly.”
    Their plans had changed after she got here. Originally, Miriam had intended to use a node that was halfway up a rocky hill, but just as she could now hear her beloved and feel his presence, he could now perceive the world through her. Yet he hadn’t sensed the node behind the house until she was almost on top of it, which had intrigued him greatly. He’d changed the location for the ritual. There was something about that node, he said, that he needed to understand. Something connected to Isen Turner . . . who she would sacrifice atop that node in an hour and fifty minutes.
    If they ever got all those stupid boards removed.
    Love, you’re shaking.
    Was she? How odd. “It’s a bit unpleasant,” she whispered. “What I must do to him is . . . I know him, you see.”
    He crooned to her