“Is he going to be able to fix me?” Julia asked Rule as the EMTs got her moving again. She was still clasping his hand.
“Everyone is going to work together to fix you,” Rule said firmly. “It may take awhile, though, so you’ll have to be patient.”
“I guess that’s why they call a patient a patient,” she said as they stopped at the back of the ambulance. “Because everything takes so long, and you have to be patient.”
“You may be right.”
Getting her loaded created a problem. Julia wanted Rule with her in the ambulance, and there wasn’t room for both him and Susan, and Susan was the doctor. In the end Julia did let go of Rule, but he had to promise he’d do his best to be there as quickly as possible.
As soon as the ambulance doors shut, Rule came to Lily. He put his hands on her shoulders. They felt warm and large and familiar, and she wanted to burrow into him and hold on. She didn’t reach for him. She didn’t trust herself to let go.
“I’ll stay with her,” he told her. Just that. He didn’t ask if she was okay or how she was doing, for which she was grateful. She wasn’t okay.
But she was functioning. She’d keep doing that. “Go,” she told Rule.
“I’ll leave the car for you.”
“No, take it. I’ll have a uniform or one of the agents bring me when I’m through.”
“All right.” His hands fell away. “Mark, you’ll drive. Barnaby, with me.” He went from motionless to a lope in the blink of an eye, his guards trailing after.
This whole time, Lily’s father hadn’t said a word. He’d kept his eyes fixed on Julia, then on the ambulance as it backed up. As it pulled away, he turned and started for his car.
“Edward,” Grandmother said, “you are not driving.”
“I’m perfectly fit to drive,” he said without looking at her. But he stopped at the Nissan he’d bought the previous year and didn’t open the door.
She didn’t answer, but walked up to stand in front of him. She put her hands on his arms and looked up at him—not very far up, for Edward Yu was not a tall man. For a long moment they simply stood there looking at each other. Suddenly his face crumpled, and he whispered something in Chinese that Lily didn’t catch.
Grandmother reached up and patted his face, leaving her hand on his cheek as she answered in that language. “You will do what you have to, my son, until you can’t. And then you will rest while others do what needs doing.”
Edward Yu reached up and placed his hand over his mother’s. A stiff little smile curved his lips as both their hands fell away at the same time. He responded in English. “I will. And as I am fit to drive, I will begin by driving you to the hospital.”
Grandmother’s smile sparked briefly. “Ha! Everyone contradicts me.” With that blithe disregard for truth, she went on to dispose of her troops—which in this case meant everyone within earshot and many who weren’t. Lily was to pursue her work here. The rest of the family would remain here and obey the officers of the law. “We will leave now,” she informed her son. “Sam will meet us there. It will take him two hours.”
“Sam?” Lily said, startled. “I thought he was leaving for one of his sing-alongs.”
Grandmother snorted. “Hardly that. In any event, he has postponed his departure.”
Edward had opened the passenger door for his mother and stopped with his hand on it, staring at his mother in consternation. “Surely you aren’t talking about—”
“Of course I am. Doctors are all very well.” Grandmother slid into the car. “I do not object to doctors. But in matters of magic and mind, I think the black dragon will be more useful.”
The car door shut.
“I hope she’s right,” Lily said too softly for human ears.
Cullen, of course, wasn’t human, and he stood only a few feet away. He heard and moved closer to say softly, “You felt what I saw, didn’t you?”
She wanted to tell him she had no idea. She didn’t know what he’d seen, did she? Only she was pretty sure she did. “It’s not exactly magic that was used, is it?”
“No. I’d hoped to see an intact spell in place, suppressing Julia’s memories. That was the best-case scenario. Remove the spell and she’s back to normal. Next-best case would be a potion that—”
“A potion could do that?”
“It’s not likely, but there are some that cause forgetfulness. They don’t make you lose most of a lifetime, though—more like a couple hours. I’ve heard of one that could make you lose up to a month, but . . . well, I’ll skip the technical stuff, but theory doesn’t support any potion causing the loss of more than a month because of the tie to the moon’s cycles. But potions aren’t my thing, so I wasn’t going to discount the possibility. A potion wouldn’t have been too bad. Sometimes their effects wear off spontaneously, but if not, there’s the potential for an antidote.”
“You’re dragging this out.”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand up in spikes. “Worst case, I thought, would be a spell that had actually destroyed her memories rather than suppressing them. Just because I’ve never heard of such a spell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And at first that’s what I thought had happened, because the lingering trace of magic was so small I could barely see it. When I looked with my magnifying spell, though . . . whatever it is, it doesn’t look like mind magic.”
“Arguai,” she said flatly. “That’s what it felt like.” She ran her thumb over the toltoi in her ring . . . which held arguai. Or so she’d been told. Her mouth twisted. “Not that I know what that means, but that’s what the elves call it. Some kind of power that isn’t magic. Magic can tell me it’s present, but can’t identify it.”
“Arguai,” he breathed. “Shit.”
“You know what it is?”
“Oh, yeah. I can tell you that much, at least. We have another word for it. Spirit.”
“That’s just a word to me. What does it mean?”
“It means,” he said grimly, “that you might need to find a holy man or woman, because I’m not going to be much help. Not any old monk or shaman or priest will do, either. If arguai was used on your mother, you need a truly holy person. A saint.”
Lily wanted to grab her hair with both hands and yank. Or throw something. Or punch something. Her eyes welled up, and that infuriated her even more. “Any idea where I find a saint? They aren’t exactly listed in the Yellow Pages! Unless Miriam . . . she’ll be here soon, with the coven. Does it have to be, like, a Catholic saint?”
“Holiness isn’t dependent on creed, but if you’re talking about Miriam Faircastle—”
“You know another Miriam? She’s a Wiccan high priestess, so I thought maybe she’d do.”
Cullen snorted. “Miriam’s no saint.”
“You don’t like her?”
“Woman completely lacks a sense of humor.”
It figured that Cullen would see that as a prerequisite for sainthood. “She’s a bit intense, but . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes widened in shock.
Cullen spun to face the spot she was staring at. “What is it?”
“Mist.” White mist that rapidly pushed out blobs so it was shaped like a starfish with a stump where the top limb should be. Four of the blobs coalesced into arms and legs as the one on top became a head and everything sprang into focus. A lean man with slicked-back hair stood there, smirking at her. He was as translucent as the mist he’d formed himself out of.