Ritual Magic

anyway.”
    * * *
    E MPATHS are not all alcoholics, nor are all alcoholics empaths, but Liddel wasn’t the only person who started drinking to drown out an empathic Gift. Alcohol, Lily had been told, didn’t so much shut down empathy as numb the brain to it. Unfortunately, it required larger and larger doses to work. Lily wondered how many of the homeless were empaths who’d never developed the sort of unconscious block their more functional brethren did. Shields were the best solution, but most people didn’t have access to the kind of training that would let them learn how to shield. Besides, many low-level empaths didn’t realize they were Gifted. If you don’t know what the problem is, you don’t look for solutions in the right places.
    Festus Liddel had passed out a fifty-some-year-old drunk. He’d come to with years missing from his life and a body ravaged by alcohol. And he was happy about it. The way he saw it, God was giving him a chance to do things differently. He’d have to detox—blood tests showed he still had a lot of alcohol in his system, which Lily supposed was why he wasn’t swamped by the pain and anxiety of the patients around him. Detox would be bad, he figured, but if he could get through that, he had a second chance.
    Lily needed to talk to Liddel’s doctor. She needed to leave so she could check out the next report on her list. But after she asked the usual questions, looking for some connection to any of the others who’d been stricken, and getting the usual answer—he didn’t remember any of them—she talked to Liddel about his Gift. Detox was going to be extremely difficult for him. His Gift would awaken as the alcohol left his system, and he’d be around others experiencing the pain and confusion of detox. He had to tell his doctor about being an empath. She could put him in touch with people who could teach him how to shield, but he had to get sober first.
    “No way. I don’t have any truck with magic.”
    “Learning how to shield keeps magic from messing with you.”
    He considered that and agreed that he would pray on the matter, maybe ask Hardy what he thought when he came back—“since,” he told her, “I don’t have a shiny track record for figuring out the rights and wrongs of things on my own.”
    Could a brain-damaged man without any touch of magic understand how imperative it was for an empath to be able to shield? Even if Hardy did understand, what song could he sing to persuade Liddel to give it a try? “You do that. I’m leaving you my card. Call me if you want that contact I told you about. Call me if you remember anything, or if anything happens you think I should know. I need to be able to reach you, too.”
    His grin was lopsided, given that he lacked two teeth. “Should be easy enough for the next couple three days. I’ll be in detox.”
    Lily tracked down Denise in the break room, which gave her the chance to meet the infamous Dr. Plackett. Plackett—Dr. John L. Plackett, according to his name tag—was about five-five and puffier than the Pillsbury Doughboy. He didn’t even glance at Lily when she entered, too busy giving the nurse a dressing-down for having phoned in “a false alarm.”
    Lily took some pleasure in identifying herself, correcting him, and commending Denise for having called her. Denise flashed her a grateful smile and escaped.
    Lily and the Doughboy doctor then exchanged information. Plackett informed her there was nothing wrong with Mr. Liddel “aside from the ruination of his body and brain through excessive drinking,” and she informed him he was wrong. She had by then perfected a spiel to give physicians. She opened by speaking of “magically induced trauma with potentially serious medical repercussions,” made a suitably ominous reference to a potential state of emergency due to the number of victims, and concluded with the need to keep his patient hospitalized and avoid drawing media attention. Since most hospitals hated media attention, the last bit was usually easy for doctors to agree to.
    A few were reluctant to agree to the first part, about admitting the patient. Everyone had a budget. That was when Lily told them about Barbara Lennox. Most doctors were too conscientious to risk releasing a patient who could lapse into a coma, and the rest were too worried about lawsuits.
    Plackett proved to be the exception. “I assure you this patient is not on the verge of a coma.”
    “If you know something about