Ritual Magic

everyone keeps saying, without defining that difference.”
    “Spirit can’t be pinned in place with a definition, but the difference . . . I can take a stab at that. Magic is inanimate and morally neutral, like electricity. Spirit is morally active and volitional.”
    “It’s alive?”
    “Not precisely. Spirit is what life is built from. That’s why Lily’s Gift doesn’t block it.”
    “You need to tell Lily that.”
    “Do I? All right.”
    “Sam said that humans speak of spirit in terms of good and evil. Is that what you mean by morally active?”
    “Close enough. My point is that if there’s a lot of really bad spiritual juju around, we have to be careful about our spiritual hygiene.”
    He snorted. “Spiritual hygiene.”
    She shrugged. “Evil infects. It’s like a virus. We encounter all kinds of viruses and bacteria every day—and spread them, too, without meaning to. Most people, most of the time, don’t get sick beyond a head cold or stomach upset. Similarly, most people, most of the time, fight off most of the infections caused by evil. But if we encounter the spiritual equivalent of the plague, we’re in trouble.”
    “You’re afraid we’re dealing with the plague version.”
    “I don’t know what we’re dealing with. That’s why I’m pestering you to talk about whatever is bothering you.” She squeezed his arm again. “It’s like lancing a boil. If you can’t talk about it with me, then find someone else.”
    Lily. He wanted to talk to Lily. Unfortunately, she was the one person he couldn’t discuss this with.
    He hadn’t known there was anything wrong until this morning, when jealousy reared its snaky head. Lily had told Rule to go tend to his clan business. She wanted to be alone, she’d said. He’d caught himself thinking that she’d arranged to be alone with Abel.
    That was so absurd it got his attention. Why would he think that, even for a moment? The answer had come immediately: because she was shutting him out. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t wanted him with her this morning. It was how she felt when she was with him. Closed down. Shut down. Shutting him out. And he resented it.
    And that was a nice bit of irony, wasn’t it? Lily had pointed out how often he shut her out when he was troubled. She didn’t like it. Now he knew how she felt. He didn’t like it, either, but he wasn’t going to whine to her about it now. Not when she was dealing with very real grief. In effect, Lily had lost her mother. Julia was still around, but the twelve-year-old version of her was not anyone’s mother.
    Unlike with most deaths, however, there was a chance Lily could get her mother back. A slim chance, maybe vanishingly small. But Lily being Lily, she would believe it was up to her to put things right. This had to push her anxiety into the stratosphere, and he worried about how hard she’d be hit if they weren’t able to—
    His phone rippled through the violin music he used for Lily’s ring tone. He grabbed it. “Yes?”
    “The press conference is postponed. Karonski and I are on our way to Balboa Park. Can you meet us there?”
    “Of course. What’s up?”
    “The locals found Hardy for me. He was crooning over a dead body.”
    * * *
    B ALBOA Park was a big place—roughly twelve hundred acres—but it was an urban park, not a wilderness area. The zoo took up a big chunk of those acres, as did the Naval Medical Center and the Morley Field Sports Complex. There was a history center, a science center, fourteen museums, assorted other buildings, and the pavilion. The Old Globe theater complex. The amphitheater. Multiple gardens, running from Alcazar to Zoro.
    In spite of all the cultivation, there were also hiking and biking trails. Lily squatted on a rocky outcrop about a hundred yards from one of those trails, looking down into a ravine. It was a blue-sky day, the air soft with early spring. Birds called each other, gossiping about the two-legged intruders in their midst.
    Off to her left, mostly hidden by scrub, she could hear the city’s CSI team. They were working on what was probably the path the perps had taken. Below her, in the ravine, were two men. One was alive. One wasn’t.
    The living man stood with his back to the dead one, chanting softly as he studied a small mirror he kept tilting this way and that. The dead man ignored him as thoroughly as only the dead can.
    He’d been fifty-five or sixty. Caucasian, and a really pale one now, with so much