Ritual Magic by Eileen Wilks

him to see a couple so clearly woven by time and love into a unit. “No, let me get it,” he said when she started to push the button. “I’ve a trick to use. They’re a lovely couple, aren’t they?”
    “You mean that. Just like you were genuinely delighted to hear about her great-grandson.” Lily shook her head. “Which is why it works, I guess.”
    “Why what works?” He held down the eighth-floor button and the close-door button at the same time.
    “Your other superpower. The one that gets people to do what you want. What are you doing?”
    The doors closed. “Making this an express elevator. I hold the buttons down until . . . there.” The elevator car started moving.
    “That’s an urban legend.”
    “No, but it only works on some systems.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “We checked it earlier.” He moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t relax, either. Her muscles were tight.
    “I’m not going to fall apart,” she told him.
    “No?”
    “Not yet. I’d like to scream, though. Yell and scream and pound something. Not you, but something. How is she, really?”
    “Asleep at the moment, thanks to Sam.” He hesitated. What should he say? He had the sense that Julia was deteriorating, but what did he know? He wasn’t even sure what he meant by that, except that by the time Sam had put her to sleep, she’d seemed more brittle. Less together, somehow.
    And that was too subjective to pass on. Too uncertain. “Julia is very bright. She could see that everything around her was different—the clothes, the technology. She asked if this was ‘the future.’ Then she demanded to know what year it was. Madame Yu told her. At that point she concluded that she’d traveled through time and ended up in someone else’s body.”
    “Grandmother didn’t tell her the problem is with her memory?”
    “Julia didn’t believe her.”
    After a moment Lily said, “Once Mother gets an idea in her head, it takes an act of God to get it out. She is a stubborn woman.”
    “Stubbornness can be a survival characteristic. It makes good glue.”
    “I suppose. I need to tell you something while we’re alone. Don’t pass this on, but Cullen and I think that whatever was done to Mother involves the kind of not-quite-magic stuff that’s in the
toltoi
.
Arguai
, the elves call it.”
    His eyebrows shot up. “I’m not sure what that means.”
    “Neither am I. Cullen says it’s the same thing as spirit, but I don’t know what that is, either.”
    The elevator slowed. Rule moved swiftly to stand in front of her. The doors opened. He saw Andy and Jeff and relaxed. “I’m feeling jumpy,” he told Lily, more in explanation than apology, but he couldn’t apologize for what he didn’t regret.
    She sighed, but as she joined him in the hall she put her hand on his arm to say she understood his need, even if she didn’t like him shielding her that way. “One more thing. Drummond’s back.”
    “What?” He stopped and stared at her.
    “He popped in and told me he’d be working this one with me, but on his side of things.” She’d thought her personal haunt was gone for good, not just for a couple months.
    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
    “I have no idea.”
    Rule glanced around. “Is he . . .”
    “He’s not here now. He told me that Friar was definitely involved and that he wouldn’t be able to chat much. Then he winked out.”
    Lily didn’t see ghosts . . . except for this one. And no one else saw Drummond. Just Lily. Although there had been a couple of times before Drummond crossed over—or whatever you called it when a ghost went wherever the dead go—when the mate bond had made it possible for Rule to see him. Al Drummond had put himself through hell to get word to Rule when Lily was in Friar’s hands. Without him, Rule wouldn’t have found her in time. He’d done that, then vanished. For good, they