by Faith Hunter
Rick shook his head. “I don’t see how. To summon a human or a were-creature, the witch needs something personal from them—blood, hair with roots, fingernails with a bit of flesh on them. There’s nothing of mine here.”
“T. Laine—Kent,” I amended, “should be here, not me. My witch-magic knowledge is nothing compared to hers.”
“I texted Kent while I was dressing,” Rick said. “ETA ten. Meanwhile, will you read the land? Are you up to it?”
“Except for the dead cat, yeah.” Death and blood called to my magic. The team knew about me being easily caught up in the earth, but not about my bloodlust. If I got caught up in the land, hopefully someone would knock me out and stop me before I killed someone. Risking a brain injury was better than risking me killing someone.
“Manageable?” Occam asked, reading my worried expression, or maybe my worried scent.
“I think so.” But I’d discovered that most magical things were manageable with Occam around. Two dissimilar species of predator were seldom compatible, but, strangely, being guarded by Occam’s cat soothed my own predatory instincts. Maybe because we suffered bloodlust for two very different reasons. I hadn’t yet told Occam that his cat was so important to me. I didn’t like being dependent on others for something so basic as self-control.
I unfolded my faded pink blanket, settling it on the ground, at the north point of the circle but outside. I sat, my knees decorously covered. I’d learned not to place both palms flat on the ground and thrust myself into the earth, but rather to put one index fingertip on it first and take a peek down. It was my version of testing the waters with a toe.
Rick was behind me, Occam to my left in case he had to cut me free of the earth. It had happened. I touched the ground with the tip of one, then both index fingers. Something wriggled beneath the ground. I jerked my hands to my chest, hugging myself.
“Nell?” Occam asked. “What?” He was kneeling near me, Rick beside him, all our faces on a level. Occam’s white scars and Rick’s strangely silvered hair caught the flashlight’s beam, creating voids of shadow and inky night where their eyes were. It was creepy, but I figured I better not say that. I frowned. Gingerly I put my right index fingertip on the earth. And frowned harder.
“What?” Rick demanded.
“Maggots. Lots of maggots.” For me that meant vampires. Vampires had been here in such numbers that I felt them stronger than the black magic.
“Why?” he asked, understanding what I meant.
“I don’t know. I’m going deeper.” I closed my eyes.
I heard the sound of a knife being drawn from a Kydex sheath, a snap/slide/plastic/steel sound. Without opening my eyes, I knew that Occam had drawn his blade. Just in case. Sometimes the ground got a little too excited when I was around and the earth had been known to send up vines and roots and tendrils to stick into me, to tie me to it, to pull me down. “So far so good,” I muttered.
I dropped slowly through the layers, past the sensation of maggots on the surface, where I encountered the black magic that permeated an inch below. It felt icky, slimy, like burnt motor oil and something I might scrape out of my compost pile. Underneath the magics, I slipped through soil poisoned with pesticides where modern farming had been continuous for decades. Below that was disturbed soil with evidence of earlier farming methods: an iron tip from an old tiller; bits and pieces of metal and old diesel fuel in one spot that felt as if some machine had broken and been repaired on-site; a refuse pit with rusted tin cans and broken bottles.
Below that were bones, the memory of blood and death. A battle had been fought here once, in the distant past. My bloodlust wandered through the bones, the evidence of blood spilled, and violence. The memory of blood and terror and—
“Nell! Nell, wake up! Come back to the surface.” Occam. Upset. Excited. Worried.
I felt his ravaged hand on my shoulder, hot and shaking me, more claw than fingers. I eased my mind back from the battle and took a breath. Blinked. Occam was cutting me free of the ground. My fingers were buried in a tangle of rootlets and leaves and vines. Occam cursed when one extruded a thorn and bit his wrist.
From somewhere in the dark, Rick snarled. “Why is the circle attacking Ingram?”
A woman’s voice said, “It’s not the circle, boss. That magic has been expended. This is Nell’s magic.”
Occam sliced me free of the last rootlet/vine and picked me up, stepping away fast, holding me like a child. It was nice. I was suddenly cold and he was cat-heated. I rested against his hard chest, his arms holding me easily.
Rick yanked and ripped my blanket free of the vines. Cursing. Mad. His Frenchy black eyes glowing cat-green. I didn’t know if he was still reacting to the magic or to an attack on a member of his team. Both probably.
“Don’t mess up my blanket,” I said. “I need it.”
“I’m not messing up your blanket, Ingram,” he growled.
“We were afraid of you going all woody and branching out,” the woman said.
I swiveled my head to her. “Hey, Lainie.”
“Hey, Tree Girl. You got all leafy again.”
“I did?” I lifted my hands in the light of her shielded flash. My nails were greenish brown and leafed out, the skin of my fingers nut brown. I put a cold palm against Occam’s unscarred cheek, which was scruffy. His eyes were glowing gold. “You cut me free again.” Occam growled softly. I smiled up at him. “Thank you. You can put me down now.”
Occam’s arms tightened on me.
“Or not.” I rested my head against his chest, watching the action in the field. Kent was doing some kind of arcane measurements with a stick and the psy-meter 2.0 and recording numbers on a pad in the light of her flash.
“Levels one and four are redlining, which is not typical for a witch circle or a witch.”
“What is it typical for?” Occam asked.
“Nothing I remember from the databases. But with the cat and the strangeness of the circle, I can agree with your evaluation. It’s black magic,” T. Laine said, the words sounding as if they tasted bad. “It’s a strange spell. I’ll know more after I finish analyzing it.” Lainie was the unit’s witch and her analysis would be arcane as well as mundane.
Rick—properly referred to as LaFleur on the job—said, “When you get back, open a file on this, Kent. Run it through the local law enforcement databases and see if there’s anything similar.”
T. Laine asked, her voice carefully emotionless, “What do you want me to say about how you ended up here?”
I shifted in Occam’s arms at that question. The query may have sounded simple, but it was loaded with intricate potentialities. If Rick had been summoned by the spell, it made him a liability to the unit. If we left mention of him out and it was later discovered that he was a liability, then we’d be in trouble for not including it. Internal Affairs would be all over us.
Rick turned his head so he was looking back over the circle; I couldn’t see his eyes. “Say exactly what happened. I was attracted to the working after it was over. Make the file PsyLED Unit Eighteen eyes only for now. I’ll call the up-line bosses and report.” Which was walking a very fine line between the prospective problems. I was impressed despite myself.
“I’m taking Nell home,” Occam said. “She’s growing more leaves. She needs to be back on Soulwood.”
I held up my hands and studied my fingers. “Mighty leafy.” Then I laid my head on Occam’s chest and fell asleep, hardly noticing when I was placed in his car, and waking only when he picked me back up. I sighed and stretched and yawned and pushed away from his body to look up at his disfigured face. But he was still Occam. And he had become a safe haven for me.
That thought coiled through me, foreign, alien. Except for Soulwood, I’d never had a safe haven before.
TWO
“I can walk, you know. I ain’t broke and I ain’t a young’un.”
“True,” Occam said. But he didn’t put me down, just rubbed his jaw on the top of my head l
ike a cat, scent-marking me, carried me up the steps to my door, and leaned down so I could open the lock. Then he carried me through the dark to the tiny bath and placed me on the toilet seat, which was all kinds of uncomfortable even with both of us fully clothed. “You’re cold. Get a shower. Get warm. Put on your winter pajamas. Get in bed. I’ll add wood to the stove and let the cats in.”
“That sounds nice, you bossy cat, but the stove’s cold so there ain’t no hot water. I don’t burn wood in summer. I take cold showers and use the AC window unit upstairs and the fans downstairs to keep the place cool. I cook on the brazier outside or use the microwave.”
Occam hesitated in the doorway, watching me with golden eyes. He hadn’t been around long enough to know how people living off the grid survived the heat of summer.
“Get on outta here. I can take care of myself.” I couldn’t see him well in the dark, but I knew he wasn’t happy at the thought of leaving me. I could feel his disquiet through my connection to Soulwood and that disturbed me. I shook my head at my land, more than at Occam. “I’m good. Go on,” I said more gently. “I can tell you need to shift and run and hunt, and I’ll feel better knowing you’re here, close by. Just don’t take a doe. All the does on the land have fawns. There’s a small bachelor herd to the north, and one is too big for his britches. Take him. He’s young enough to be tender but old enough to make trouble. And I think we got a family of coyotes skirting the property. If you find them, be careful. They’re shifty and tricky and they might get the drop on a big-cat.”
Occam shook his head at the impossibility of a canine species getting the drop on him. Without a word he slid into the muggy darkness. I heard the back door open and felt more than saw the mousers race in from the back porch. I heard the lock click and knew he was gone to shift and hunt and watch over me. I sighed and let go of the tension that was holding my shoulders tight.
While Jezzie, Torquil, and Cello wound around my ankles, mrowing for kibble and voicing their displeasure that the big-cat was gone, I made it to my feet and stripped off the clothes I’d worn to date Occam. Rinsed, shivering, under the tepid shower water. The house was muggy and sticky hot from the day’s heat, even with the single window unit struggling to cool it down, but my body was cold as an oak in winter. I padded to my bedroom and dressed in pajamas, then called Mud, my baby sister, who was coming to live with me soon, to see if she was all right for the night. Somewhere in there, I poured out kibble and ate a leftover sandwich from the picnic. Finally I crawled into bed with the electric blanket on a two-hour timer and cats settling in on top of me.
• • •
I woke when a pan clanged in my kitchen. The cats were gone and the smell of bacon and coffee was bright on the air, though, judging by the angle of the sun, it was well after noon and long past breakfast. My sleep schedule had been odd since I’d come back to the fauna side of the flora and fauna biology spectrum, and working PsyLED hours was not helping me to sleep at night like normal people. I snickered softly. Normal people. I was definitely not normal people.
I rolled off my sweat-damp mattress, knowing that at some point in the last year, I had become a spoiled city girl. I’d never survive another summer without doing something about an air conditioner. My bedroom was hot and sticky and so was I. Sleeping, I had thrown off the blanket and it was heaped on the floor at the foot of the bed. I managed to stand on wobbly legs and stripped the sheets. Caught sight of myself in the mirror. I was browner than before. Leaves were growing out of my fingers and my hairline. They were bright and deep summer green, shaped vaguely like the love child of grape leaves and oak leaves. Vines were tangled in my redder-than-once-before hair. My eyes were the green of corn husks, flecked with the darker green of … of zucchini maybe. I was going vegetarian. I laughed.
I knew vaguely who was in my house and if I’d tuned in more closely I could have named them. Most of Unit Eighteen had invaded the living room and kitchen and I couldn’t remember if this was a planned visit or not. Either way I had company and couldn’t go traipsing around in my altogethers. I wrapped a robe around me and trudged to the shower, dropping off the sheets on the back porch, which served as a laundry room, cat romp-room, hammock sleep space, and catchall. Without greeting or even looking at my uninvited guests, I got ready for my day. Showered; clipped my leaves; gooped the ends of my hair; jerked on loose pants, white T-shirt. The weapons harness and weapon went into my repacked gobag, just in case. Slippers on my feet. Because I was not dressing for work on my day off in my own house. Decent, I went to face my home invaders. Though I guess I had to call them visitors since they had cooked breakfast.
• • •
“File is ‘LaFleur/Circle,’” JoJo said, referring to the report on our screens, one I hadn’t read yet. “We have a black-magic/blood-magic spell with a dead cat, and the possible presence of vampires at the site either before, during, or after the spell was cast. Rick was called to or attracted to the site, in cat form, though by the time he arrived the spell was ended. Due to the timeline, we haven’t established causality. T. Laine? You’re up.”
“From the beginning … ,” T. Laine said slowly, as if trying to sift out conclusions. She was sitting in my rocker, her tablet balanced on her thigh, with one knee thrown up over the arm of the chair, the other foot bare to the floor, pushing her forward and back. She was dressed in pants that ended at midcalf and a tank top to combat the heat. She had kicked off her shoes at the door and looked perfectly comfortable in my home. “… Rick loses conscious volition, yet somehow drives toward a site where a black domestic cat has been sacrificed in a black-magic ceremony. He shifts to cat, grabs an old gobag containing a blanket and a flip phone, which is perfect for being carried in cat fangs. Goes overland to the witch circle. He doesn’t enter the circle. He shifts to human. Texts for help. Wraps himself in the blanket. Waits for backup.
“Occam was not called to the witch circle, though he was farther away and busy.” T. Laine slid a sly glance my way and then back to her tablet.
I was too much of a tree for my blush to show, thankfully.
She went on with her summary. “Rick is a black cat. Rick has magical cat tats, though not black cats. JoJo has a big-cat tattoo and she isn’t called. And Occam, who is a cat, but not a black cat, wasn’t called to the same spell. I’m not sure what part is coincidence, but I’m thinking causality is in there somewhere. Either way, coincidence is a rare bird.”
I wasn’t certain what birds had to do with cat spells, but I agreed with the coincidence factor. I nibbled on a piece of cold toast, letting the conversation flow through me like a stream, searching for eddies and pools where logjams and detritus of thought had gone overlooked.
Breakfast had been really good, even though it was only microwaved scrambled eggs, toast, and jelly. The washed dishes were piled on the kitchen counter, except for the last of the toast and jelly on a platter in the middle of the coffee table. The work-related tablets and laptops were scattered around, as were glasses of iced cola or tea. Everyone had brought their own drink. I was sipping on my own cold mint tea to try and keep cool. It wasn’t helping much. My single-unit air conditioner had never been intended to chill down a house this big, in daylight, warmed by this many people. John, my deceased husband, may have planned to get more window units, had the children he wanted ever appeared. Living alone, I hadn’t needed them, but Tandy, Occam, T. Laine, and JoJo did.
Rick, our senior agent, was in an interagency conference all day at Knoxville FBI headquarters, with the assistant director of PsyLED—Soul—and with the regional heads of the FBI, CIA, ICE, ATF, the Tennessee and North Carolina National Guards, the state bureaus of investigation from Tennessee and North and South Carolina, MEPS (the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command located in Knoxville), top Highway Patrol chiefs, and Homeland Security. It was a big meeting of the biggest LEO brass from three states, working on creating protocols for potential security and terrorist threats of all kinds, human and paranormal, ho
megrown and foreign.
Our new up-line man, the special agent in charge of the eastern seaboard, Ayatas FireWind, was at the Pentagon for high-level meetings about vampires. FireWind spent a lot of time on planes, jetting around, dealing with politically delicate paranormal criminal cases, often with the vampires, who seemed to be in an uproar since Leo Pellissier, the former Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the southern United States, was no longer in charge of his Mithrans. We were on our own today. FireWind had run other units and even other regions, but they had been primarily human units. Unit Eighteen was the first largely para unit, and though I hadn’t met him yet, I had gotten the feeling that things hadn’t gone nicely the first few times FireWind was in the office. There was some smoldering discontent in the unit, and clearly they didn’t want to discuss Rick around HQ, where the boss might walk in unexpectedly.
Since electronic equipment allowed us to run the office remotely, and since Occam had hunted as he protected my land all day, the office meeting was here and we were unobserved. It was kinda nice.
T. Laine’s lips puckered and her eyes went distant, still thinking. She said, “Rick seemed … odd this morning. Even for a moon-called beast, he seemed distracted, agitated, preoccupied, and even more distant than usual.”
“It’s not new,” the unit empath said. “He’s been unvaryingly unpleasant inside his own skin for weeks, the way he is on the three days of the full moon. I’m glad he’s not here. He’s throwing off confusing emotions that make my skin itch, and he’s pacing like a cat in a cage. No offense, Occam.”
“None taken, Tandy,” Occam said. “You’re a lightning rod who reads minds. I’m a cat. We all have issues.”
Tandy gave a breathy laugh. He had been struck by lightning three times, which had ignited his empath gifts and left him with permanent Lichtenberg lines on his skin. Issues. True, I thought. Occam had surely done his share of pacing during twenty years in a cage, in cat form. T. Laine was a witch without a coven. JoJo was the Diamond Drill, the highest level of hacker known. I was turning into a plant.
