Ritual Magic

good does, too.”
    “Do we have to talk about this?”
    “Yes. Have you thought about the fact that your Gift doesn’t protect you from spiritual energy?”
    Her mouth opened. Closed. Her stomach went hollow. “No. No, I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “You’ll need to draw on what you know about good to protect yourself. Religion is no guarantee of protection, but it helps. You don’t have a faith, a spiritual practice, so you need to think about what you do believe in. What you know in your gut about goodness.” He crunched down on another handful of peanuts. “Do dragons have a spiritual practice?”
    “I—I don’t know. The subject hasn’t come up.” She thought that over, frowning. “Sam said spirit was capricious and personal and universal. That it was often spoken of in terms of good and evil. He said he couldn’t define it and didn’t understand it.”
    “I like him.”
    “What?”
    “The dragon. He’s arrogant as hell, but too smart not to realize that and allow for it. In my branch of Wicca, we call spirit the great mystery. Buddhist koans point toward spirit. That’s all you can do, point in the general direction. You can’t corral it in words. You can’t use spirit the way you use magic or electricity. You can channel it, but you can’t use it, and to channel it, you have to submit to it. Not surprising Sam doesn’t understand spirit. Dragons are not good at submission.” He glanced at her, his mouth twitching up. “You aren’t, either. Plus, you want rules. Spirit doesn’t follow them. Not exactly.”
    “Not exactly? What does that mean, not exactly?”
    “Probably what your dragon meant when he called it capricious. There’s what you might call guidelines—religions are full of ’em—but they don’t come with guarantees. You can follow the hell out of the guidelines and get a different result from one time to the next.”
    Great. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Cullen said we need a saint. Drummond said I was supposed to get one. I may have found him, but I lost him again.”
    “That homeless guy in your report.”
    “Hardy. I don’t know if that’s his first name or last.”
    “He hummed ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ at you.”
    “And how did he know that song would fit? God told him?”
    “Not impossible.”
    “I am so not happy with the God-talk.”
    “Then call it spirit instead.”
    “Which can be either good or evil . . . though I still think the simplest explanation is that Hardy’s connected to the bad guys, and that’s how he knew about my mother.” She brooded on that a moment. “That’s where I need to start, I guess. I need to find Hardy. Whether he’s a saint with a mysterious source of knowledge or a bad guy, he knows things I need to know.”
    “Glad you got that figured out.” More rustles from the plastic bag. “Damn. That’s all my peanuts. We’d better have lunch delivered PDQ. Don’t have much time. Mexican okay with you?”
    “Fine, but I don’t see—”
    “I don’t intend to talk to the press on an empty stomach. You shouldn’t, either.”
    “Me? You don’t need me to—”
    “Sure I do.” He tossed her a heartless grin. “Your face is better known than mine. Prettier, too. You’re gonna be right beside me at that press conference.”

THIRTEEN

    T RAFFIC was unusually annoying on I-5. Rule drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and did not curse or contemplate a judicious culling of the herd. Not much.
    The slow creep was aggravated by the fact that he couldn’t switch lanes aggressively. Impatience was not sufficient reason to risk losing the car tailing him. He glanced at the woman beside him. Nettie had asked him to let his guards follow in another car for the ride into the city. He was still waiting to find out why she’d wanted the privacy. He’d used the drive to tell her more about the situation, but that was nothing that his guards couldn’t hear. She hadn’t said anything they couldn’t hear, either.
    Nettie was reading Lily’s report now, her head down, a pair of readers perched on her nose. It was a strong nose that went well with the copper skin and bladed cheekbones that were her heritage from both sides of her family. Benedict was half Navajo; her mother was full-blood.
    Her hair was a throwback to Rule’s great-grandmother on his father’s side, or so Isen claimed. Not at all Navajo, that hair. Today she’d braided the unruly mass that, let loose, would have