Ritual Magic

now.”
    She blinked her eyes and everything was bright again. Too bright for eyes barely awake, and she was staring up at a white, white ceiling and someone was holding her hand, so she wasn’t alone, and that felt good, but . . .
    “Back with me now?”
    She could hear the smile in his voice so she turned her head on the pillow and there he was—the gorgeous man she’d first seen in the hall in the restaurant. The man who was the one good thing in her crumbling life. Mr. Turner. She managed to smile at him, but it felt wobbly.
    She remembered some things now, and she didn’t want to.
    “You seemed to be having trouble waking up,” he said, and he smoothed her hair back from her face in the way her mother sometimes did. Not her father. Father was as hard to reach as the FBI agent in her dream. Harder, because he never tried to reach back. “Maybe you didn’t want to.”
    “No,” she whispered. “It’s okay you woke me up. I had . . . bad dreams.”
    He nodded as if he understood, and even though she knew he didn’t, not really, it helped that he wanted to. “That’s not surprising. Julia, we’ve found someone who can help. He can’t make things right, but he can help, if you want him to.”
    “What—what’s his name?”
    “Sam.”
    “Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, please.”
    * * *
    I T was after midnight when Lily stepped out of the bright-ly lit emergency room at Scripps Mercy to go to UCSD Medical Center, where Barbara Lennox lay in a coma. Surprise stopped her steps. It had rained while she was inside—not a lot, judging by the dearth of puddles, but enough that the pavement was wet and the world smelled wonderful.
    She drew in a lungful of air scrubbed clean, perfumed with ozone and humus. Night air slid like cool silk over the skin on her face. Earlier she’d gotten her shoulder harness and a slightly wrinkled jacket from the trunk of Rule’s car because she was damned if she’d work a case without having her weapon at hand. Now she wanted to take that jacket off and let the clean air wash over more of her. She didn’t; people got jittery if they saw her weapon. But she did suck in more of that crisp air.
    Scott made a motion and Mark loped around her. Mark would use his nose to make sure no one had messed with the car while they were inside. “You drive,” she told Scott.
    He nodded. “Where are we going?”
    “UCSD Medical Center.” Her feet didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to see the woman in a coma. Was that what awaited Lily’s mother if she didn’t allow Sam to help? Why was one victim comatose, another shaken but functional, and a third somewhere in between?
    Stupid feet. Those questions wouldn’t get answered by standing here in the parking lot. Lily made herself start for the car.
    A wisp of fog drifted in front of her and quickly shaped itself into a man—a hard-faced man with dark hair wearing a dull gray suit with a wrinkled shirt. “It’s Drummond,” she said quickly to Scott, then: “You’d better not wink out right away. I didn’t get to ask you anything, and—”
    “Things are different this time.”
    “Different how?” She cocked her head. “You look younger.”
    “Never mind that shit,” he said, but he ran a hand over his hair—which he had more of than he used to. He looked maybe forty, she thought. Not a lot younger than when he died, but some. The age he’d been before his wife died? “I’ll mostly be working things on my side. I may not even hear you call me like I used to. I’m not tied to you the same way. Because we used to be tied I can find you, but I couldn’t talk to you if not for the way you died once. You didn’t tell me about that.” He scowled as if she’d withheld facts pertinent to a case.
    “So who did?”
    He waved that away as unimportant. “Someone on this side. The thing is, having died once, you’ve got this little open place in you. It lets me get close enough for you to hear me.”
    She scowled. “I am not turning into a medium.”
    “Okay, fine. I doubt any ghosts are going to find that spot, anyway. Only reason I can is because of that tie we used to have.”
    “But if the tie is gone—”
    “It left . . . call it a path. Or a habit. Same difference. Would you quit worrying about the shit I can’t explain and pay attention? It’s a lot harder for me to manifest this time and I can’t do it for long, and there’s stuff you need to know. First, you’re dealing with