Ritual Magic

must address my questions to Sam or to Madame Yu, neither of whom is likely to wake soon. She added that tigers, like wolves, often sleep heavily after a difficult hunt.”
    “How’s Li Qin’s foot? Is she getting around okay?”
    “The swelling is down and she’s supposed to get a boot for it tomorrow. She’ll still need to stay off it as much as possible, which she says is fortunate, because then Julia can help her.”
    “That’s fortunate?”
    “What she actually said was, ‘Who does not need to be needed? There is little that helps us forget our pain so much as giving aid to another.’”
    Lily found herself smiling. Li Qin had that effect even when she wasn’t around. “Speaking of giving aid to another—that florist called this morning. Bob or Bill or whoever it is Mother found. I let it go to voice mail, but maybe you could call him and see what the problem is.”
    “Of course. He shouldn’t have called you. They’ve been told not to. I’m considering hiring a wedding planner to assist with some of the arrangements, if you don’t object.”
    “No, it was my mother who didn’t like that idea.” Julia Yu had been appalled at paying someone to do something she was sure she could do better . . . something she’d been enjoying the hell out of doing until she’d been robbed of most of her life. Lily changed the subject. “Did you know your father put Hardy up in his own house instead of a guest cottage?”
    “I didn’t.” And it clearly surprised him. “I doubt Benedict liked that.”
    “Probably not, but he wasn’t there to object.” She’d seen Benedict and Arjenie when she stopped by the hospital to check on Nettie, who remained stable and in fair condition but was heavily sedated. She’d woken repeatedly during the night, and every time she did, she instinctively started trying to heal herself. She’d stop when Benedict told her to, but even such brief drains weren’t good for her. When her surgeon made his rounds that morning, he’d decided to increase her dosage to keep her knocked out.
    Lily sipped at her fourth cup of coffee. “Isen says he’s questioning Hardy in his own fashion, and he’d prefer that I leave him to it. He also said he’s sending me something, although it goes against his own better judgment.”
    “Did he say what?”
    “No, that would have been too easy.”
    “Have there been any results from the press conference?” Rule asked.
    She snorted. “Thank God calls from the concerned public are being routed through D.C., or we’d never get anything done.” Only callers with some slight potential of aiding the investigation were passed on to the team—which this morning meant Lily. Of the two dozen individuals Lily had talked to, only one had sounded promising . . . at first. “The best lead from the public so far was this woman who claimed she’d had a vision about the murder in Balboa Park. She had details the press doesn’t, so I gave in to temptation and went to talk to her, seeing that she works only a few blocks away. Turns out she’s a null.”
    “Nulls can, in rare instances, have visions.”
    “Yeah, but ninety-nine percent of the time they involve hallucinogenics. Pretty sure this particular vision was not part of the one percent. Unless you smelled kittens at the murder site and forgot to mention it?”
    “Kittens.”
    “Hundreds of them, she said. They pinned that poor man down and smothered him in adorable.”
    “A gruesome end. I’m wondering what details she could have gotten right when her vision featured death by cuteness.”
    “The location. She knew that up, down, and sideways, but it turned out she’s a Night Gazer.”
    “A what?”
    “There’s seven of them, seven being such a mystical number and all. They believe in gazing fearlessly into the night, only they don’t like to do it at night”—she paused because Rule was laughing, then resumed—“because the park’s too dangerous after dark. So twice a month in broad daylight they go to that very spot to conduct their rites, which I gather they make up as they go along, aided by the occasional illegal substance.”
    “You’ve had quite a morning.”
    “Yeah.” She sighed. “My afternoon is likely to be more of the same. I’m holding down the fort while Karonski checks out the murder site. He’s hoping to reconstruct the runes used in the ritual, with help from Abby Farmer from the coven. Seems the spell he wants to use is best cast by a strong