World of Lupi 10 - Ritual Magic (9 page)

He grinned crookedly. “That’s pretty much it.”

“You grinned.”

That brought back the familiar scowl. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t think I ever saw you grin. Smirk, yes. Grin, no.” She tipped her head. “Did you . . . there at the last, I mean, at the warehouse, you said her name. Just before you poofed out. Sarah. You found her?”

“Yeah.” Softness seeped into his face the way light seeps into the sky at dawn. “Yeah, I did. I don’t remember much, but I know I found her.”

“You don’t remember? But that—that’s like my mother—”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not the same at all. My memories of that other place don’t fit into this place, that’s all. They aren’t gone. They’re sort of packed up, waiting for me.”

A cold hand gripped Lily and squeezed. “Then my mother’s memories are gone. Not damaged or lost. Gone.”

“Not exactly. I mean, they’re gone, but . . .” He ran a hand over his hair. “I can’t explain, mainly because I don’t understand. The idea is to get her back to being herself. To get all of them back to themselves. I don’t know how we do that. I don’t know if that’s something that can even happen on your side of things. Might be the missing pieces can’t be returned to her until she’s on my side.”

“Until she dies, you mean. Even if we do everything right, she may not get her memory back while she’s alive.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I mean. I know that’s hard to hear, but it’s one possibility. Lily, there’s a lot more affected than your mom. A lot more than you’ve found so far.”

God, could it get any worse? “How many? Who are they?”

“Can’t tell you that. And remember, when I say
can’t
, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“What can you do?” she cried, frustrated.

“Not much. I can watch your back. I think I’ll know if I get near the object. It has . . . I don’t know what to call it. A spiritual signature or color or . . . see, on this side we use spirit instead of light to see things. Sort of. It isn’t really seeing, but you can think of it that way, and that’s how I’ll know if the artifact is nearby. Otherwise . . . they didn’t exactly give me a training manual, so I don’t know what all I can do. No, wait, there’s one more thing. I should be able to let you know when your saint shows up.”

“My saint? What the hell are you—”

He smirked at her. “You wanted one. Pissed you off that you got me instead.”

“Yes, but—hold on a minute.” Lily’s phone dinged to let her know she had a text. Her heart started pounding. She snatched her phone from her purse.

It was from Rule. She read his message quickly, then read it again. Her shoulders slumped in relief.

“Good news?”

“My mother . . . Julia agreed to let Sam help her. They’re checking her out of the hospital now.”

NINE

T
HERE
were thirty-one hospitals in the Greater San Diego area. By 2:45
A.M.
Lily had been to eleven of them and was pulling into the ER parking of hospital twelve. Drummond had accompanied her at first, but after the fourth stop he’d said he had stuff to do “on his side.” He hadn’t explained and she hadn’t seen him since.

Eleven hospitals meant two false alarms and fourteen victims that she’d confirmed by touch. None of them had an obvious connection to the others. Fourteen victims, and they had no idea what they were dealing with or how many more might be out there.

Lily had talked to Ruben again on the way here. He’d decided it was time to wake the president up.

Hospital twelve was City Heights. She’d put it next on her list because it was more or less on her way back to St. Margaret’s, where they had two more possible cases.

Her mother wasn’t at St. Margaret’s anymore. She was at Sam’s lair. Lily had heard from Rule about that. She’d also heard from her father about it. She’d heard him out, then she’d shut what he said out of her mind so she could do the job.

Things get to be clichés by being true over and over. The ER at City Heights Hospital fit every cliché of an inner city emergency room. Even at this hour, it was crowded and noisy. It reeked of disinfectant with a whiff of eau de homeless guy, and the overworked staff got through their shifts on a mix of adrenaline, bad coffee, and black humor. Some were burned out. Some were still fiercely idealistic, though they hid it behind a heavy veil of cynicism.

In other words, it was a lot like a cop shop. Lily felt right at home as she walked up to the nurses’ station. “I’m here to see Festus Liddel,” she told one of the women behind the counter, holding out the folder with her ID.

“Liddel?” The woman’s braids flared as she turned her head sharply. “God, Denise, don’t tell me you called the FBI about Liddel! Plackett is gonna have a cow.”

The other nurse was twenty years younger than the first and at least twenty pounds heavier. She propped her hands on her ample hips. “And why shouldn’t I call them? That’s what that bulletin said to do, isn’t it?”

“Liddel’s memory got washed away by alcohol years ago.”

“This isn’t the same. You know it’s not the same. He doesn’t even sound like himself. And Hardy says—”

“Hardy!” The first woman rolled her eyes. “Now, listen, sweetie, I know you like Hardy—though God knows why. He creeps me out. But—”

“That was a coincidence! He couldn’t have known.”

“I’m not talking about that, though it was pretty damn weird. I’m talking about the way he looks at you. As if . . . well, it creeps me out, that’s all. What are you going to tell Dr. Plackett when he finds out you called this nice agent? You going to explain that
Hardy
thought we should call in the FBI?”

The second woman giggled. “It would almost be worth it to see his face.”

The first woman sighed and shook her head and looked at Lily. “I’m afraid you got dragged out here for nothing, Special Agent. Festus Liddel is one of our regulars. He can’t remember what day of the week it is most times. Denise thinks his poor, pickled brain is malfunctioning worse than usual tonight, and maybe it is, but that’s not saying much.”

“I’m here, so I might as well see him.” And touch him. That was the quickest way to know for sure if Festus Liddel was victim fifteen.

“I’ll take you to him,” Denise said. “You can see what you think, but he is not his usual self.”

“What kind of unusual is he?”

“You’ll see.” Denise came out from behind the counter and started down a well-scrubbed aisle between examination cubicles separated by curtains. A Spanish-speaking family were clustered in the first one, spilling partly out into the aisle, all of them talking at once. “He’s this way, down at the end. Hardy’s with him.”

“The message I got said your patient didn’t know what year it is.”

“He thinks it’s 1998. To be fair, his memory’s always iffy, so I understand why Hillary thinks I shouldn’t have called you.”

“That’s exactly the sort of memory problem I need to know about. I’ll need to talk to that doctor—the attending?” Lily searched her tired brain and couldn’t come up with the name. “He won’t be happy that you called me, I take it.”

Denise snorted. “Plackett doesn’t want us to take a piss without his say-so.”

In the next cubicle a baby cried, thin and sad, in his mother’s arms. The mother looked about fifteen and exhausted. They passed an emaciated young man with gang tats being hooked up to an IV, an old man on a heart monitor, and a middle-aged couple exchanging worried words in what sounded like Vietnamese.

“I ought to tell you about Hardy,” the nurse went on. “
I
don’t think there’s anything wrong with his cognition.” Her defensiveness suggested that others did. “But he can’t communicate normally. He was beaten real badly several years ago, see. Brain damage.”

They had to stop and move aside to let an enormously obese woman make her way slowly down the hall with the aid of a walker, breathing heavily. She wore two hospital gowns—one to cover her backside and one her front—and a look of grim determination. As the woman struggled by, music arrived. Harmonica music.

It was a hymn of some sort. Lily knew that much, even if she couldn’t put words to it. Lily had been exposed to religion as a child, but the battle between her parents over which faith system their daughters would be raised in—Christian or Buddhist—had made her decide to opt out of the whole subject. She’d been studious in her inattention whether dragged to church or to temple, and eventually her parents dropped the subject, too.

The woman beside her obviously recognized the song. She was humming along, smiling. “That Hardy,” Denise said as the obese woman finally passed them. “He can sing most anything—well, old songs, anyway. I never heard him sing any of the newer ones. But he only ever plays the same three hymns on that harmonica of his—‘Blessed Assurance,’ ‘Amazing Grace,’ and ‘In the Garden.’ We hear those over and over. He does a real pretty job with them, though.”

Blessed Assurance.
That was what the hymn was called. Mildly satisfied with having put a name to it, Lily followed the nurse to the last cubicle on the right.

The small space held two men. The one in the bed was white, unshaven, and scrawny, with a potbelly and mouse-colored hair. His eyes had the yellow tinge of a failing liver. The one standing beside the bed was over six feet tall and gaunt, though muscle lingered on his wide shoulders. His skin was unusually dark, the kind that takes on a bluish tinge under fluorescent lights, and his hair was grizzled. He wore a faded flannel shirt and baggy gray pants. He, too, could have used a shave.

“This is Agent Yu,” Denise announced. “She’s with the FBI.”

“The FBI,” the man in the bed said in a marveling way. “Imagine that, Hardy. That pretty girl is with the FBI.”

The other man lowered his harmonica to look at her in delighted surprise, as if they were old friends but he hadn’t expected to run into her here. “‘I’ll be calling you . . . ooo,’” he sang. “‘You will answer true . . . ooo.’” His voice was deep and true, but rough. Maybe the beating that damaged his brain had included a blow to his voice box.

“It’s mostly songs with Hardy, see,” Denise said. “Sometimes rhymes, but songs are easiest for him. Music is stored differently in our brains than language, see? He makes himself understood pretty well. Right, Hardy?”

The broken man smiled at Denise with the sweetness usually reserved for very young children, then held out both hands to Lily, still smiling.

Lily didn’t pass up a chance to get a reading on people. She moved closer and learned that he probably lacked the chance to bathe often. She put her hand in his. Not a trace of magic. His dark eyes were filmed at the edges with cataracts. “You’re Mr. Hardy?”

He shook his head.

“He likes to be called Hardy,” the man on the bed put in helpfully. “No ‘mister.’”

Hardy nodded, but his smile faded. There was something odd about his eyes, the intent way he looked at her . . . suddenly uncomfortable, Lily thought about her third grade teacher and felt a pang of sympathy for the other nurse. Mrs. Hawkins had been kind of creepy, too.

Hardy frowned. “H-h-hard road, heavy load. You true, you blue.” He still held her hand in one of his, but reached up to pat her cheek with the other. He started humming—a pop song this time, one she knew, though the words eluded her. It wasn’t recent.

“Hey, Hardy, you aren’t the only one who wants to hold hands with the pretty girl,” the man in the bed said. The crooked smile he gave her might have been charming many years before, when he still had all his teeth. “I’m Festus Liddel, miss, and I guess you’ve come to see me.”

“I guess I have,” Lily said, disentangling her hand from Hardy’s. “And I’d be happy to shake your hand, too, Mr. Liddel.”

“Well, I got to go check on my patients,” Denise said, smiling at all of them, “but you come talk to me later, Agent Yu.”

Festus Liddel had dry, cracked skin, a deep scratch on the back of his hand, and he smelled worse than Hardy. A lot worse. He also had a trace of an empathic Gift. It was weak, but it was wide open. “How can you stand it here?” Lily exclaimed before she thought.

Liddel flinched. “What do you mean?”

Lily cursed herself for introducing the subject of her Gift—and his—so poorly. She must be more tired than she’d realized. “I apologize for giving away information you might not want revealed. I’m a touch sensitive, and—”

“Get away! Get away! I don’t have anything to do with magic!”

Liddel, it turned out, had been raised in a fundamentalist sect that hated magic even more than they did gay sex. It took time to find that out—time, and Hardy crooning country music lyrics about how he believed in love, music, magic, and you. By which he meant
Yu
, Lily supposed, since he put his hand on Lily’s shoulder when he sang that part. He seemed to want Liddel to relax and trust her.

Amazingly, it worked. Liddel did calm down and let Lily explain and apologize for speaking about his Gift. “I understand that many people don’t want others to know, and I deeply regret mentioning it out loud. I was concerned. A hospital is a miserable place for someone with . . .” She paused, hunting for a way of referring to empathy without using the word in front of Hardy so she wouldn’t give away even more than she already had. And realized Hardy wasn’t there. “Where did he go?”

Liddel shrugged. “Guess he was called elsewhere.”

Lily was used to noticing things. Her job depended on it; sometimes her life did, too. It bothered her that the big man had slipped out without her noticing. “You’ve known him a long time?”

“So they say. To me, I just met him tonight. Guess I must have met him after 1998. That’s what year it is for me.”

Startled, she said, “But you trust him. You seemed to be relying on him.”

“He’s a man of God, isn’t he? Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have a church of his own. I’ve never been around anyone who felt like . . . like he’s true, all the way down, the way Hardy is.”

Lily had a sinking sensation. “Almost like a saint.”

“Well, the Brethren don’t hold with all that papist stuff, so that’s not a word I’d use. But I guess if you were Catholic, you’d call him a saint. You Catholic?”

“Ah—no. But the subject of saints has been on my mind recently. You seem very calm about losing a large part of your life, Mr. Liddel.”

“I was upset at first, but after Hardy reminded me how God has a plan for each of us. Besides, it looks like what I lost was the worst part.” He chuckled. “I probably wouldn’t remember much of those years 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.