Ritual Magic

me to do with her.”
    Cory marched Lily behind Pete, who led the way to the side of the house. They passed three more guards on the way. Two of them had been injured . . . or maybe the blood on that second man’s arm wasn’t his. But whoever had bled tonight—whoever had died—they were hers. Leidolf or Nokolai, compelled or free, they were hers to protect if she could, and to grieve if she couldn’t. But not now. She refused to count her dead until this was over, one way or another.
    One she knew for certain had survived the fight. She knew where he was, too, as clearly as she knew her right hand from her left. Pete was taking her to him now, taking her behind the house . . . where Rule was, according to the mate-sense. Right by the node.
    They rounded the corner of the house. The path they were on was higher than the lower deck; four stone steps led down to it. She could only see this end of the deck; the roof blocked her view of the rest. The upper deck was roughly level with her waist, supported along its length by a stone retaining wall. Floodlights lit it.
    Lily glanced quickly at the upper deck, so brilliantly lit—and horror iced the blood in her veins, freezing her in place. It held bodies. Rows of bodies. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. A second later relief punched through the ice, leaving her dizzy. Some of them, at least, were alive. She saw makeshift bandages wrapped around chests, arms, legs. Four lupi moved among the injured—one with water, one with food, and a pair who seemed to be performing some kind of crude surgery on one motionless body.
    She knew two of the men tending the wounded fairly well. One was Sean, a cheerful redheaded Nokolai who actually was as young as he looked. One was Mike. One of Rule’s Leidolf guards. Mike, who’d remembered a lot about crazy gods when she asked . . . a blood-soaked cloth was tied around his thigh. His head was bare. The garish green-and-orange knitted cap from Walmart was gone.
    Pete stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked at them over his shoulder, and made a come-along gesture, followed by the Nokolai hand sign for
quiet.
    No one was speaking, she realized as she obeyed Cory’s nudge at her back and started down the steps. No one made a sound. Even stoic lupi moaned in pain when hurt badly enough, but all of the wounded were silent, as were the men tending them. So were the four guards on the lower deck who moved aside to let Pete pass.
    Under the roof were more shadows. For some reason Miriam hadn’t turned on the lower floods, just the small porch light. It was enough to see by. The French doors stood open as they so often did in the evening. On the other side of them, the decking was gone. The boards had been pried up, the support beams cut and removed, leaving a large swath of bare ground. Miriam crouched there in the dirt, shaking something from her palm onto the ground.
    But Lily didn’t pay attention to Miriam. Her eyes went to the other side of the hole in the deck. That was where Rule lay, his eyes closed. And Isen beside him.
    Both men were naked. Carl sat between them with a hand on each man’s chest. Rule’s head was bloody. His arm was, too. Lily couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt. She could barely see Isen, with Carl in the way, but he was as motionless as his son. Not as bloody, though.
    Were they unconscious? Spelled?
    Her breath was coming fast and jerky. She tried to steady it. Rule was
alive
.
That was what counted. She’d guessed he was a prisoner when she knew where he was, so seeing him there—so still!—shouldn’t be such a shock. He was alive, and if he’d been hurt, he’d heal. If he’d been spelled . . . that was it. That was why Carl sat there with a hand on each man’s chest. He must be holding sleep charms to their bare skin.
    If they needed a sleep charm to keep Rule knocked out, then he wasn’t wounded too badly. Lily’s breathing finally evened out.
    Pete made the “halt” sign at her and Cory. Cory stopped, so Lily had to. Pete walked to the edge of the hole in the deck and stood there, saying nothing. Everyone must have been told to be quiet while Miriam did her thing.
    Lily tore her gaze away from Rule to study the woman who held him prisoner. Whatever Miriam held in her hand was white and powdery. She was shaking it onto the ground to mark a large circle that seemed almost complete. Her hair was loose, a frizzy brown cloud hiding her downturned face. There were other marks on the