Progress. She got a "lines are busy" recording instead of blank air.
Finally she listened to the last message, the one from Unknown. It was probably some annoying huckster, but she couldn't stand to delete messages without hearing them.
"Lily Yu." A woman's voice, low and musical with some hint of accent she couldn't identify. "This is Jiri. You are looking for me, and I am ready for you to find me. I will call again with instructions for you. Tell no one official of this call—none of your FBI or police friends—oh!" She chuckled. "Except for Cynna, of course. I forget sometimes that she is official these days. But tell no one else, or Rule Turner's son will never wake up."
WHEN they reached the hospital, Cynna was waiting for them, pacing up and down on her long legs in front of the drop-off area. When she saw them, she motioned at a young thug leaning against the building, arms crossed. He sauntered up, all tough-guy swagger, gangster pants, and attitude.
"Jo-Jo will park it for you," she said. "I already paid him half. He gets the rest when he brings us the keys."
Lily looked dubiously at Jo-Jo.
"It's okay," Cynna said. "Jo-Jo here brought a friend in to get stitched up, and his friend's got some sense even if Jo-Jo doesn't."
They took Cynna at her word and climbed out; the homeboy slid behind the wheel, his lip curling. No doubt Suburbans weren't his style.
"How'd you get here so quick?" Lily asked as they hustled inside. "I thought planes were still grounded."
"Commercial flights, yeah. I hitched with the Air Force."
They'd finally managed to reach Cynna by phone just as they hit the outskirts of D.C. Traffic had been amazingly light after that. Either everyone had already emptied out of the city, or they were following instructions and staying put.
"Toby's in CCU," Cynna said, adding quickly, "Not because he's critical. His vitals are good, except that his heart rate is real slow. It's a trance state, so his heart would beat slowly, but doctors turn hard of hearing when you start talking magic. Even with the kilingo—"
"What?"
"Jiri marked him." Cynna closed her hand tightly as if hiding her own mark. "Like she did me, only this spell's different than the one she stuck me with. I… he's there, inside. I checked. He's not been forced to ride, or anything like that."
Lily's breath caught. She hadn't thought of that possibility.
They lucked out—the elevator was emptying just as they reached it. They refilled the little box; Cynna hit the button for the third floor, and the doors closed.
Lily reached for Rule's hand, though she suspected he was too eaten up with worry about Toby to notice the small, closed space this time. But she needed the contact, too. "My grandmother?"
"She's back from surgery," Cynna said. "She's good. She's amazing. I just checked on her."
"Surgery?" Lily said, alarmed. Grandmother healed even faster than lupi. If she'd needed an operation—
"She was gored."
Bile rose. Lily swallowed. Swallowed again.
"She's good," Cynna repeated hastily. "The worst was her lung, but she never lost consciousness. And she couldn't be anesthetized—Li Qin explained to me about that—but she used my spell. It shut off the pain so they could operate. I'm told she gave her surgeon instructions while he was working."
A little bubble rose up and popped inside her. Not laughter, not quite, but relief. "She would."
"Her surgeon's stunned. He's planning to write her up in some medical journal. Your people…" She looked at Benedict. "I'm sorry. Stan Carlson died. They didn't have a shaman on staff to put him in sleep, and he couldn't make the pain-block spell work. He died on the operating table.
"The other two are doing fine," she went on. "Brown, he needed some surgery because of his ribs being so bad, and he couldn't get the stupid spell to work, either, but he passed out, and his condition's good now. Lincoln just had a couple broken bones, and once the doc got the ends lined up right and casted, he was okay. They're sharing a room on the second floor."
"Timms?" Cullen asked.
"Post-op. He's, uh, critical."
Minutes later Lily and Rule stood in CCU looking down at Toby. She'd tried to prepare herself for the intrusive technology, for the way the boy would look—small and fragile, his color bleached to a terrible pallor.
Machines beeped, tubes were everywhere, but Toby didn't look ill or broken or pale. He looked like a kid who'd played hard and was catching up on his sleep. His cheeks held their usual color. His nail beds were pink and healthy. Only he wouldn't wake up. Couldn't wake up.
The kilingo was on his forehead. It was small, the size of a large postage stamp, the complex lines as fine as spider silk. She brushed his hair away from the mark and let her hand rest on his forehead.
Orange. Slick and somehow complex this time, but the orangey sense of the magic was unmistakable. "Demon magic," she said quietly. "Not exactly like other kinds I've touched. There's a layered quality to it, as if—"
"As if it had been crafted." Cynna stood in the entry to the cubicle. "The demon magic you've touched before came straight from the source, and demons don't use spells the way we do. But a shetanni mwenye—a demon master—does." Cynna looked down at the sleeping boy, her voice tightening as if she had to force the words out. "Jiri is shetanni mwenye. She did it. She did this to him."
Cynna would know. In some fashion she'd been there when it happened, propelled by the mark on her palm. That much she'd told them on the phone.
"Can you—no, of course not. If you knew how to remove the spell, you already would have."
"I can't remove a spell I don't know," she agreed, her voice heavy with regret. "But Cullen has a sleep charm. I'm hoping it's enough like this that between us we can figure out how to get rid of it."
THEY tried. Rule and Lily had to go to the CCU waiting room to keep the number of visitors within approved limits, but they didn't have to wait long before Cullen came in. He shook his head.
"Dammit, Cullen!" Rule was ready to explode. "You have to be able to do something!"
"Maybe…" He took two quick steps, stopped, and ran a hand over his hair. "Maybe if I have long enough to study it, but… hell, Rule. By putting it on his skin, she's tied it to him. It's got threads running everywhere, woven deep into him. If I tug on the wrong one, I'll stop his heart."
GRANDMOTHER was one floor up. Unlike Toby, she looked awful—shrunken and fragile and pale.
After Cynna's cheery words about how well Grandmother was doing, Lily couldn't quite hide her reaction as she bent to kiss the old woman on the cheek. If this was amazing, what kind of shape had she been in before? "Grandmother," she said, her voice wobbly. "Fighting demons? At your age?"
Grandmother gave a one-shoulder shrug. Her other arm was in a sling. "He would not look in my eyes. If he had, I would not have needed to fight." She looked at Rule. "The boy. They tell me he is all right, but he sleeps."
"Yes. He's all right physically. He's enspelled."
Madam Yu gave a single nod. "So. I couldn't stop them. I tried, but… bah," she said when her eyes sheened suddenly.
Lily knew better than to notice the tears. "Them? Was there more than one?"
"The demon and whoever controlled him." She was testy. "He didn't want to go upstairs. He wanted to finish killing me and enjoy the blood. Someone prevented that." She looked away. "I tire. Go away now."
Li Qin moved up beside Lily. She'd come with them to see Grandmother while Cynna stayed with Toby, Cullen checked on Timms, and Benedict went to see the two surviving guards. She spoke softly. "You may go, Lily, if you wish. I will stay with her."
Grandmother glared at her. "I do not need my hand held."
"Of course not." Li Qin settled in the chair next to the bed and held out her hand. "I do."