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Plot Summary[]

When a high-society party is crashed by a naked, knife-wielding, blood-covered man who "thinks" he might have killed someone, Eve Dallas must track down the crime, and the criminals. Everything points to Satanic ritual, but Eve doesn't believe in devil worship... 

Map[]

Please reference the Ritual in Death Map for locations or approximate locations of sites listed here.


Timeline[]

Spoiler warning!
This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.


Story Start Date: May, 2060[1]

Day 1 – Tuesday[]

Chapter 1[]

  • Eve and Roarke are at a party hosted by Maxia Carlyle in her suite at the Roarke Palace Hotel.
  • Maxia wants Roarke and Eve to meet Anton, a filmmaker, who Roarke actually already met at Wimbledon.
  • Anton’s girlfriend, Silk, an actress, doesn’t ‘see why a girl would want to be a cop. It’s not very feminine’ and Eve starts to answer, ‘Really? It’s funny because I don’t see why a girl would want to be a bimb-‘ but is cut off by Roarke.
  • Somebody screams, something crashes, and a naked drunk man is clutching a bloody knife in his hand.
  • The man has no idea who he is, who he killed, or what drugs he’s on (if any). Eve orders a search of the hotel.

Chapter 2[]

  • Eve gets the person’s information – he is Jackson Pike, 33, doctor.
  • Eve leaves him with hotel security in a maid’s room and tells them ‘Nobody comes in except NYPSD officials. Nobody goes out.’
  • Eve follows the trail of bloody footprints, while Roarke checks to see if anybody with his name is registered at the hotel.
  • The trail leads to Suite 606, but the middle 0 has been smeared with blood to look like a 6. Roarke unlocks the door and they go in, Eve low, Roarke high.
  • The living area is ‘lit by hundreds of candles. In the flickering light blood gleamed as it pooled over the black pentagram drawn on the polished marble floor. A body floated on that pool, the arms and legs spread to form an X at the center of the sign.’
  • The body has bled out – throat slashed, multiple body wounds.
  • The rest of the suite has evidence of sexual frenzy, food, drink, and murder.
  • Roarke says the suite was registered to the Asant Group (Asant = Satan).
  • Eve goes back to Maxia’s suite, has the uniforms take everybody’s info and clear them out, and takes blood samples from what’s on Pike. He still has no clear memory of what happened, but remembers there were a lot of women there.
  • Peabody arrives, so they go back to Suite 606 to examine the murder scene and get the dead woman’s info – Ava Marsterson, age 26, TOD 22:10 (p. 19). There’s a tattoo of a serpent swallowing its own tail on her hip; this wasn’t in her ID so Eve thinks it’s a temp or fresh. Her TOD was almost an hour before Pike crashed Maxia’s party.
  • Crime Scene arrives to sweep, so Peabody and Eve go back to question Pike again.

Day 2 – Wednesday[]

Chapter 3[]

  • Back at Cop Central, Eve and Peabody interview Pike. He insists he doesn’t take illegals.
  • He only remembers vague bits of the night but as soon as he realizes that Ava is dead he faints, goes back to a jail cell, and is put on suicide watch.
  • The tox screening on Pike shows he has Erotica, Rabbit, Zoner, Jive, and Lucy in his system.
  • All of the hotel security discs have white static from about 30 minutes before check-in until 11 p.m.
  • The Asant Group had booked the suite two months prior, under the name Josef Bellor, with an address in Budapest… except the real Bellor had died five years prior, at age 121. There was a tremendous amount of expensive wine and food delivered prior to check-in.
  • McNab comes in to review the discs, and Roarke arrives shortly after that to bring her clothes and give her a list of hotel employees who worked security, then he helps McNab.
  • Eve runs all of the names Roarke gave her, but nothing pops.

Chapter 4[]

  • Eve contacts Ava’s parents to shatter their lives
  • Eve gives Peabody two hours in the crib and she takes a shower, where Roarke joins her for inappropriate workplace shower sex. Roarke says the hotel security was breached from the inside.
  • Roarke, Eve, and Peabody drive to the morgue; Peabody runs the names of family members of the hotel security employees that Roarke provided.
  • Morris confirms that the tattoo was inked within the last 12-15 hours, and that Ava had very rough sex multiple times, and from the tearing, he suspects gang rape. He says she ‘was brutally used, pre- and post-mortem.’ She was killed with a throat wound from a right-handed assailant facing her, and then there were 68 additional wounds, with at least a dozen different blades used, and no defensive wounds.

Chapter 5[]

  • They head to Mika Nakamura’s duplex since she was on the log from noon until just after 11 p.m.; Roarke says the longer shift was because she told the regular guy, Paul Chambers, she’d handle the VIP and Towers while he handled the main hotel. She also told him she’d be running maintenance on the cameras. Roarke says he hasn’t been able to reach her, but assures Eve she’s too smart to get herself trapped.
  • Mika has the same symptoms as Pike and no memory of the previous night nor why she feels so bad. Eve has her taken to Central for examination by Mira and presumably a drug screen. Eve bullies Mira’s admin into allowing Mira to examine Pike right away, and then Mika immediately afterward.
  • Mika confirms that her doctor and her daughter’s pediatrician both work at the West Side Health Clinic, which is where Pike and Ava work/worked. Roarke splits off to do his own thing.
  • Peabody thinks they’re dealing with ritual magic, on the black side – a spell, and they need somebody with a gift to break the spell.
  • Eve and Peabody next visit Brian Trosky, who was also on the desk at the time of the group check-in. Music is blaring from his apartment, and his neighbor is pounding on his door, saying it’s been like that for over an hour. Eve uses her master to open the door and finds him laying across his bed, tangled in the bloody sheets: self-termination with a hammer to his skull.

Chapter 6[]

  • Roarke goes to Spirit Quest, a Wiccan shop, to speak with Isis, who has never heard of the Asant Group. She asks Roarke to take her to where Ava was killed since he didn’t bring anything of hers with him.
  • Eve visits the West Side Health Clinic. Eve thinks whoever is responsible for Ava’s murder trolled for the victims here. She says without Maxia’s party, which was planned just the day before, they couldn’t have known Pike would have wandered into another suite, one with a cop and the hotel owner in it. She thinks the responsible parties aren’t expecting the body to be found so soon.
  • The receptionist is torn up about Ava’s death, so one of the nurse practitioners, Leah Burke, speaks with Eve and Peabody in Dr. Slone’s office. She tells them that Pike and Ava were going out for their first date: ‘Just something casual. Dinner and vid, maybe a club.’
  • Dr. Slone comes in and asks Leah to send Sarah home. Eve tells Slone that Jack is in custody, but not arrested. Slone tells her he will arrange for a lawyer. She asks him where he was last night and he takes offense:
    • ‘I beg your pardon?’
    • Eve often wondered why people used that phrase when they really meant ‘f*** you.’
  • She lets him know she will need to check alibis for the whole staff. And before he can call a lawyer she shows him the picture of Ava at the crime scene. He tells her she can use his office and he will send people in between patients.

Chapter 7[]

  • An annoyed Roarke tries to contact Eve to let her know his ‘own expert’ (Isis) will be taking a pass at the crime scene and if she has any problem with that, she’ll have to get back to him ‘and we’ll see if I can be bothered answering my ‘link.’
  • Isis is amused by ‘two strong-headed, strong-willed people both not only used to giving orders but to having them obeyed’ and gives Roarke a protection charm to carry when they are in the suite.
  • Eve is interviewing a (now medically soothed) Sarah Meeks:
    • Ava planned to go home to change after work
    • Sarah left the clinic at 3 p.m.
    • There was a spark between Ava and Jack.
    • Ava had no interest in the occult, she ‘was grounded, really real.’
    • Everybody loved Ava – she was good with the staff and patients, remembered names, what they came in for, and what they liked in their coffee.
  • Peabody tells Eve nothing popped from her runs and sends the information to her so they can split up – she sends Peabody to Ava’s apartment while she stays at the clinic.
  • Eve thinks at least one of the killers was somebody who was at the clinic, and subdued Ava and Jack there: ‘gave them enough happy juice to make them compliant and transport them to the hotel, where one or more partners has already dealt with Mika and Trosky’
  • Eve interviews a pediatrician, Dr. Collins, who tells her that Ava was the hub of the practice and that there was no way Pike could have hurt her. She was still there when he left, which was close to 5 p.m. He says he knows for sure Rodney (nurse) and Kiki (lab tech) were still there but the waiting room was empty. When Collins shakes her hand on the way out, Eve notes that he is a sensitive who ‘doesn’t mind poking into another’s mind without permission,’ which is why she was thinking about pepperoni pizza.
  • Eve called Roarke back to chew him out, and is pissed that he’s bringing a witch into her crime scene. Isis tells them that both need naps, and Roarke agrees to wait 40 minutes for Eve before going into the suite.
  • Next interview is with Kiki, who ‘reeked of Neo-Goth’ with a smug gleam in the black-lined eyes that told Eve she is a weak link. Kiki left at 5, doesn’t like ‘the pure and wholesome’ Ava or ‘Dr. Dull’ and provides Eve with the names of the friends she hung out with the previous night.
  • Leah tells Eve Rodney is not back from his break, and she left just after 5, after Ava left – Leah was the last to leave the clinic.
  • Eve sees that Dr. Pratt, her next interviewee, is also a sensitive, so she deliberately thinks ‘Here’s a great-looking man with killer eyes’ as he squeezes her hand. He says he thought of Ava almost as a daughter. He left at 4:45, while Leah was shooing Ava out, saying that Ava and Jack were ‘besotted with each other from the first minute,’ and tells Eve he and his wife had a small dinner party with a few friends the previous evening, giving her the names.

Chapter 8[]

  • Roarke and Isis have lunch at his hotel, and he admits he and Eve haven’t slept in 32 hours. Isis places her hands on his head to give him a warm flow of energy. He doesn’t want to wait past 40 minutes, so they head for the suite. Isis requests going in through the front door rather than through the private elevator, and asks Roarke to stay with her no matter what happens.
  • As they’re getting ready to enter the suite, Eve arrives, pissed at Roarke for not waiting. She says she already knows what happened and who was responsible, so she doesn’t need Isis to go in, but Isis says Roarke needs her to do it, so Eve reluctantly agrees and he slips the protection charm into her pocket as she unlocks the door.
  • Isis requests three swabs of blood from Ava (head, heart, and hand) so she can get to know her, then casts a circle, proclaiming ‘It cannot enter what is light. It cannot enter what is bright. And we will not open.’ She commands the spirits to ‘set the murdered spirit free, send her essence into me.’
  • Isis goes into a trance, is ice-cold, and screams in terror, before all but fainting. She requests help sitting up and some potion to drink for the pain, and then closes the circle before they all leave the suite.
  • They reconvene in Roarke’s office so Isis can describe what she saw, which was horrifying: they drugged Ava and Jack, then raped Ava repeatedly and marked her with a serpent before the leader slashed her throat. ‘Sex for power. Well, for some of them, it was only sex – and greed for it, the meanness of it.’
  • Eve is upset that Isis had to see that, and Roarke points out that she (Eve) saw that as well. Eve says ‘I looked right into the faces of some of the people who did this to that girl. And I looked right in the eyes of one of them, the one I think cut her throat. And for a second–hell, longer–I was scared right down to my guts. Now, I’m just pissed off.’
  • Eve and Roarke make up and Isis is able to identify the killers from photos Eve shows her.

Chapter 9[]

  • Eve returns to Central, where Peabody tells her Ava was supposed to go home after work to primp with a neighbor, but never made it and nothing in her apartment indicated an interest in the occult.
  • Eve tells Peabody Ava didn’t return ‘because they took her at the clinic’ and then fills her in on what she learned at the clinic and with Isis. She tells Peabody to tag Reo for warrants and then sleeps for five minutes.
  • Eve heads to Mira’s office and shows her admin Ava’s crime scene picture to explain why she was such a bully earlier. She tells Mira she knows what happened and who’s responsible, but needs Mira to tell her what was done to Jack and Mika, telling her the same thing was done to the desk clerk, who bashed his brains out with a hammer.
  • Mira tells her the tox screens were the same for both victims, and included a hallucinogenic and a drug used to control patients with violent tendencies, in addition to the sexual drugs, resulting in a chemical hangover, but not the violent pain.
  • Eve and Mira agree that they were hypnotized, and Eve tells Mira about the sensitives she met and how she blocked them, telling her that Pratt especially has a punch. Mika took her daughter to him for a check-up three weeks ago and Eve theorizes that Pratt began the process then – posthypnotic suggestion.
  • Mira says she’s been looking for the trigger and that both Pike and Mika begged her to kill them. She was finally able to lower the pain ‘from inhuman to hideous’ and that got Jack to remember some of it – Pratt giving him doctored coffee, a limo ride with Ava and Collins, having sex with Ava – but he is repressing the murder. The next thing he remembered was ‘waking in a bed, covered with blood, and a woman he called Leah sitting beside him, crying.’
  • Once Eve takes everybody down, Mira says the victims can begin healing but they will never be the same.
  • Eve tags Peabody to have two uniforms bring Leah in for ‘further questioning’ (not arrest) while Eve finishes up getting the search warrants. Meanwhile, Roarke has brought pizza for the department because he’s just that awesome.

Chapter 10[]

  • Eve and Roarke are in Observation, watching Leah pace the interview room; Mira joins them, and Eve requests that they turn off audio while she’s interviewing Leah so it’s off the record.
  • She tells Leah she has one shot to tell her the truth on record, and if she doesn’t take it Eve will ‘move to Kiki or Rodney, to Larry’s wife, and down the line’ – if she takes it Eve will deal down to Murder Two, meaning life but on planet. Leah agrees after Eve threatens her.
  • Eve nods to Observation to turn on audio and then has Peabody join her for the official interview. Leah claims she thought it would be a symbolic death, not real. She flips on Silas, saying he told her Ava and Jack would accept her sacrifice, that Ava would be the gift to Lucifer.
  • Leah says she’s not a Satanist, but ‘a disciple of the One,’ telling Eve that her God murdered her child (her daughter was killed in a traffic accident). She can’t bring herself to admit that Silas lied to her, telling Eve ‘I think he miscalculated, that’s all. She wasn’t ready. Wasn’t as strong as Silas thought.’
  • She then lists all participants; Dr. Slone and some others from the clinic weren’t involved (they weren’t open to their faith). She said it was a celebration of Silas’s birthday (his date of rebirth in the One). She confirms with Eve that Mika and Brian were ‘drugged, and embraced by Silas’s power,’ which caused them to shut down security for the lobby and elevators, with the intention of having them forget what was done and not suffer pain.
  • After Jack passed out they coated him with Ava’s blood; Larry then told Leah to put a knife in his hand, and give him another round of drugs so he’d overdose, but Leah couldn’t do the last step.
  • Eve and Peabody go to Silas’s house to arrest him and his wife after alerting Channel 75 so the whole thing was broadcast. She puts dark glasses over his eyes once he’s in the back of the police car, warning the uniforms that he’s a sensitive and needs to go straight into isolation.
  • Eve sends Peabody home to sleep, and Roarke drives Eve home for sleep as well.

Day 3 – Thursday[]

Epilogue[]

  • Eve visits Jackson Pike in the hospital (p. 83). She tells him that 13 people killed Ava, but he wasn’t one of them, and because he lived they were able to find the killers and lock all of them up.
  • Roarke and Eve head home after another long day (p. 85).

Character List[]

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]

Other Covers[]

Additional covers here

Czech Cover German Cover for the 3 Anthology Titles German Book Club Cover for the 3 Anthology Titles Hungarian edition cover Brilliance Audio unabridged edition cover
Czech Cover German Cover for Ritual German Book Club Cover for Ritual Hungarian edition cover Brilliance Audio unabridged edition cover

Footnotes[]

  1. Pg. 8. "He skimmed a finger down her arm, where a knife had slashed only days before."

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