Ritual Magic

frowned, studying the slight hump that indicated the tunnel-to-be. “So why do they worry about you falling in? You don’t weigh enough to break plywood.”
    “Oh, it isn’t plywood everywhere. There’s places where it’s just a bit of tarp and not much dirt. See that scuffed spot by that dead-looking bush? And I think there’s one close to us, too.” He studied the ground, then squatted and brushed at the dirt. “See?”
    The edge of a yellow tarp showed through beneath a thin coating of dirt. “But that’s not enough dirt to grow things!”
    “That’s why they needed magic.”
    That was some pretty cool magic. Julia sighed. She’d never thought about magic much before, but now she found herself sad because she didn’t have any. “So why did they use a tarp in some places?”
    “So they can get in and out to work on it, which they mostly do at night.”
    “They really are working hard to . . . hey, what’s that?”
    “What?”
    “Up there.” Julia pointed at a patch of sky between them and the house. “See where the air is all wavy and funny?”
    * * *
    “Y OU’VE seen the greenhouse, the store, and the rec center,” Isen said. “Shall we visit the babies now?”
    Hardy’s face lit up. “‘You are my sunshine,’” he sang. “‘You make me happy when skies are gray.’”
    Isen chuckled and turned down the path to the clan’s day-care center. “Babies do that for me, too.”
    He had learned quite a bit about his unusual guest today. Some of it was obvious. Hardy couldn’t use words normally, but he understood them just fine. He had a vast repertoire of songs and commercial ditties from before 1975. Most likely, then, he’d been hurt in 1975, or close to it.
    Isen had also learned that Hardy loved dogs, chocolate ice cream, and hot water. That last item was probably not a pleasure he could indulge in often, but he certainly had this morning. He’d been in the shower a full hour. He also knew that Hardy had a bad knee, a child’s curiosity, and a clear and flexible mind. Humans might not notice that. Without language, Hardy wouldn’t think the way they did, so sometimes he would baffle them, or vice versa. But Isen was accustomed to new wolves who’d temporarily lost language . . . and old wolves who didn’t always bother to put words to their thoughts.
    He might be the most nearly fearless man Isen had ever met.
    Not completely without fear. He’d been anxious about the message he wanted passed on to Lily, but otherwise he lived in the moment, sunny and untroubled. Certainly lupi didn’t worry him. Once he understood the nature of his hosts, he’d been fascinated. At Hardy’s request—rather elliptically posed, but Isen had figured it out—Isen had Changed in front of his guest. Hardy had watched intently, then he’d grinned and sung out that God had “you and me, baby, in His hands”—a clear proclamation that Hardy considered Isen one of God’s children, even when he was four-footed. Interestingly, he’d assumed that Isen would still understand him.
    Hardy also walked with angels.
    That was how Hardy thought of it, at least, and who was Isen to say he was wrong? They’d had a good conversation about it. Hardy didn’t actually see the beings he called angels, but he felt their presence. Sometimes they spoke to him, and the way they . . .
    What was that? Isen stopped, all his senses alert.
    Hardy grabbed his arm and sang so quickly that the words all smeared together. “Running-just-as-fast-as-we-can!”
    The mantle in Isen’s gut twisted as some part of Clanhome
ripped.
Isen looked toward that breach and felt the wrongness and knew precisely where it had occurred—the node halfway up the rocky slope of Little Sister. He pulled hard on the mantle, tipped back his head, and bellowed,
“Fighters—to me!”
    * * *
    S EVEN floors up at St. Margaret’s Hospital, Benedict pushed to his feet. He didn’t suffer from claustrophobia the way his brother did. He had a touch of discomfort in very tight, enclosed spaces, sure, but almost all lupi did. Nettie’s room was small, and at his insistence, it lacked a window. But it wasn’t small enough to trigger that response in him.
    So why was he on his feet, pacing?
    Arjenie looked at him over the top of her laptop. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Go run the stairs again.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “You’re restless and anxious and sick of this room. You’re also accustomed to a lot of physical activity, and