by Faith Hunter
Avoiding the wet spots, my bio-suited feet shushing on carpet that puffed with dust, I moved to the wide double French doors and partially opened the closed shades that covered the multipaned windows. Beyond the doors was a pea-gravel drive. I pretended to study the view, though that was more to give myself time to process what I had seen than to look out. Beyond the glass-paned doors I could see part of the barn, a large watering trough, the horse walking machine, and a length of four-board white-wood post-and-rail fencing. There was also what looked like a swimming pool with a horse in it, and two young girls standing on the cement edge, attending it.
The horses had a swimming pool. I shook my head.
Five teenage girls were sitting on top of the fence, watching the house. I made a mental note to get their names, get the names of everyone in or near the house in the last two days since Stella Mae got home from her tour.
With my stomach back under control, I closed the blinds and rejoined T. Laine, who was still standing near the body. It looked as if it had been dead for days, maybe lying in a steam room. She was wearing a three-quarter-sleeved T-shirt and jeans and was lying facedown, her hands under her torso as if she had tried to catch herself when she collapsed. The flesh I could see was at the neck, jaw, one elbow, the bottoms of her bare feet, and her dried crinkled hair. The body was swollen, stretched, dark with lividity, the skin bubbly under the surface. I couldn’t see her face and I was glad of that.
I took one last look at the body and turned away, sucked on the mint. Tried not to breathe. Tried not to see the body on the back of my eyelids every time I blinked.
Pointing at the tape outline and the wet carpet, T. Laine said, “The housekeeper was there. Sound booths and production room are this way.”
Breathing through the handkerchief in my mask, I followed her to the side and saw two tiny booths, not much bigger than my new shower at home, with a single metal chair, microphones, music stands, and headphones. A third room was larger, with a drum set and an electronic keyboard inside. Across from them was a room with a computer and a board with switches, sliders, and knobs, like I had seen on TV, except smaller and more compact.
Reading my mind, T. Laine said, “Brand-new soundboard with all the electronic bells and whistles, installed while Stella was on tour. The bath was upgraded too—Carrera marble all the way. The carpet in this entire lower level is spanking new, created specifically for deadening sound.”
“It’s awful dusty.”
“No. It’s disintegrating.”
“Oh. Okay.” I thought about the site and how much we didn’t know. “So people were in here while she was gone? Doing construction?”
“Yes. Dozens. They finished two weeks ago. I’m trying to get a list and find out if any of the construction crew are sick or missing, if anyone was a practitioner of some kind of arcane arts. The other body and the tour swag are in here.”
I still didn’t understand what swag was, but I followed T. Laine to the open door of a storage room, where she put out an arm to block my way. The stench that boiled out was worse than that in the main studio area. “The deputies got still shots, which I’ve uploaded to the case file, but we don’t need to spend time in there unnecessarily, even with the null pens.”
“Oh,” I said again. I managed to swallow my tongue back into place and not embarrass myself by vomiting like a probie. “Yes. I see why.”
From the entrance I could see rusty metal racks with a few electronic gadgets on them, a rack of small speakers printed with a guitar and Stella’s name in a fancy font, a few hats and belt buckles with the same logo. On the far side of the room were a stack of flattened empty boxes and three half-empty boxes, each marked with shipping labels. In the middle of the floor was one large box filled with T-shirts. Except for the T-shirt box, the room had a depleted feel, as if the band had sold all the goodies that might have been stored here before the tour.
I forced my eyes down to the dead woman on the floor. She was on her side beside the T-shirt box, the words Merry Promotions printed on the sides. One hand was draped up over the box edge, holding a handful of shirts. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress and the arm I could see appeared to be covered with small greenish soap bubbles spread across the muscles. The bones in her green-fleshed hand were exposed where she still gripped a handful of shirts, though the shirts seemed fine, not rotted. Her face was awful. Her mouth was pulled away from her teeth, her gums blackened. Her eyes were whited out, like small boiled eggs, but leaking greenish bubbles. Her legs looked damp and pale and were lined with reddish lividity on top and much darker purplish lividity below, where gravity had pulled the blood down.
“I wish I could try a reversed hedge working around the bodies,” T. Laine said, “but the Knoxville covens are still not answering my calls and I can’t do much alone.”
While some of the witches were not averse to helping us, the leaders of the Knoxville covens were no longer agreeable to helping PsyLED. Not that I blamed them. I asked, “What would happen to the bodies if we got them into the null room at HQ?”
“I don’t know. I did toss a null pen into the cooler with the one DB we got out of here. If there’s anything left inside when the transport vehicle gets to UTMC, we’ll try sending the others.” She considered and added, “If the transport vehicle makes it.”
A finger on the body twitched. It was not an indication of life or zombification. I knew that. It was still creepy and gross. And the smell was suddenly worse, overpowering the mentholated salve on the handkerchief. “You think the vehicle will be affected by the energies?” I asked, pressing the mask and the hankie inside it around my lower face. Which was doing nothing at all against the rot stench. I sucked on the mint, but my mouth was coated by the stink in the air.
“It’s possible. The carpet under the bodies is rotted through. The bottom of that box is showing signs of disintegration. The piano’s finish is crackling and the lid over the strings, or whatever you call it, is split. The guitars closest to this room are falling apart.”
I glanced back and saw the destruction I hadn’t detected until she mentioned it. One guitar body had separated from the neck and was hanging by the strings. There were half a dozen guitars hanging near it, all showing signs of dry rot. The percussion equipment was dull and powdery looking. I remembered the RVs out back. The purpose of the band and crew lunch had been to unpack the tour gear. That probably meant there were more instruments and equipment out there. “Did you say the deputies got photos of the room earlier?”
“Yeah.” T. Laine’s jaw tightened. “The piano and the guitars looked fine when they arrived. Come on. Let’s get out of here. Even with null pens we’ve been in here long enough.”
As we walked back upstairs, a tension I hadn’t noticed fell away from my shoulders. I guessed it was death energies pushing on me, but it didn’t feel like witch magic. It felt scratchy and cold and odd, but not in a way I could put words to.
On the landing, we changed out of the blue unis and put the contaminated gear into the disposal bins for crime scene workup. I returned the null pen to T. Laine and tucked the handkerchief into my pocket for later use. I crunched the mint and let the flavor flood my dry mouth.
As we climbed the last steps, T. Laine asked, “You glad to be out of the office and away from the search for the Blood Tarot deck?”
“Until I got a whiff a this place, I was. Now, not so much.” I pulled my jacket lapel out and took a sniff. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the smell out of these clothes. I might have to burn ’em and that goes against the grain for a ch— for me.” I’d almost said “for a churchwoman,” but I wasn’t one a them anymore. “But yeah. I’m happy to stop the Blood Tarot search for a while. Don’t tell JoJo, but it’s boring.”
JoJo Jones, the special agent who sent me here, was the unit’s second in command and our highly prized former hacker. Or not-so-former, sometimes. JoJo loved research bet
ter than anything else in life.
The Blood Tarot was one of three black magic tarot decks known to be in existence and it had been missing since our last big case, possibly destroyed. Possibly not. We hadn’t been able to prove either possibility, and it was too powerful an object to be forgotten, out there, somewhere, tempting someone to use it. I wasn’t having any luck locating it in a pawnshop, on the Internet, on the dark web, or on the magical black market.
In the kitchen, someone had made a pot of coffee in Stella’s fancy Braun. It was probably against regs to make and drink coffee in a victim’s house, but it smelled fresh and there were stacks of paper cups to the side, so I took that as an invitation. I slid a paper cup out of the plastic sleeve and poured coffee. The effect of the mint was gone and I needed to get the taste of rot out of my mouth and breathing passages. T. Laine and Occam, who had been talking to the uniform guarding the door, poured cups too. The uniform, a different deputy from the sheriff’s cousin, was a substantial black man in his fifties. He took a cup and went outside to talk to someone approaching the house.
I sipped, breathing the rich scent, and leaned my back against the edge of the fancy stone countertop. Only the sound of murmuring voices disturbed the quiet of the house. Every time I blinked, I saw the soapy greenish flesh and the bones in the hand holding the black tour T-shirts screen-printed with white and scarlet in words and images.
In spite of the death, the afternoon sun was warm through the windows and there was an illusion of peace in the kitchen. Two people sat on the sofa in the gathering room, their heads together, speaking softly. I rose up on my toes and made out two young, tattooed white women with spiky rainbow-colored hair, wearing trashed jeans and sweatshirts. They had been crying, their makeup smeared and faces chapped.
In a mutter, T. Laine said, “Okay. Five-minute break’s over. I originally requested this site be treated as if it was a level three biohazard/spelled site, but I didn’t get to follow through. Since the site didn’t read like typical witch death energies, and because I couldn’t prove it was a crime scene and not an accident, and since the family had driven up and were demanding access to the premises, the sheriff elected to downgrade it to level two.”
“Family? Where?” I asked, looking at the two women.
“Outside for now,” Occam said. “In Stella’s RV, which I cleared and released to them, per FireWind.”
“He’s taking a strange interest in this case,” I said.
“He’s a fan,” T. Laine said, shaking her head. “I’d never have guessed. Anyway, whatever is causing this accelerated decomp isn’t decelerating like I expected, probably because I was treating it like witch magic and it isn’t. I may have to pull rank on the sheriff and upgrade the threat level. Thoughts?”
“I’m leaning toward an upgrade,” Occam said. “At this rate, with the accelerated decay, I doubt we’ll even get PMs. I—”
The two women on the couch slumped and toppled over. I dropped the cup on the counter. At a dead run, I leaped for the women. T. Laine snagged my shoulder and yanked me back. “No!”
“But—”
“No! They’re with the band. Backup singers.” Meaning they might be contaminated with something we couldn’t see. “They were downstairs when the LEOs arrived,” T. Laine said, “without null pens to mitigate the . . . hell. The death whatever-this-is.”
“Right,” I said, my heart feeling like it might bust outta my chest. “Death whatever. We have to call it something.”
T. Laine gave us each a null pen and we approached the women slowly, keeping a good ten feet away. The women were unconscious, barely breathing. A door to our right rammed open and a man stumbled into the kitchen from a set of stairs leading to the second story. He reeled against the wall, bounded off, and fell.
Lainie grabbed Occam’s shoulder and my wrist, shoving, backing us out of the gathering room. She shouted, “Clear the house! Clear the house! Level five containment protocol. Clear the house! Clear the house! Level five containment protocol. We got a problem, people!” To us she said, “The locals locked down only the crime scene, not the upper floors, so people on Stella’s approved list have been up and down for hours. Stupid starstruck sheriff.”
Law enforcement officers boiled out of the hallway leading to the basement and rushed outside. Standing to the side of the door as people raced past, T. Laine said, “I want everyone quarantined. I have a feeling this is getting worse instead of better.”
Three more civilians rushed down the stairs from the second story and T. Laine called out, “Special Agent Kent, PsyLED. Outside, all of you. Occam, keep them together and don’t let anyone leave, law enforcement included. Nell,” she shouted, though I was right beside her, “get the quarantine tents out of my vehicle.” She placed her keys into my hand and said softly, “I’m calling FireWind for an ETA, and to bring a warrant for the entire house. The locals only got one for the basement, which was stupid beyond stupid,” she practically spat. “I want full access and a full crew.”
“You won’t get LaFleur and Racer,” Occam said. “They’re still in Chattanooga.”
T. Laine cursed. “You!” She yelled and pointed at a woman in a sheriff’s deputy uniform. “Get a team together and clear the house. Wear gloves. Touch no one, no thing, not one person, with your bare skin, not a doorknob or chair, no matter what, and get out fast. I want to make absolutely certain this place is empty.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said and started issuing orders.
“We need a null room on-site,” T. Laine said. “I have some calls in to find—”
Outside, a man hit the ground. Then another. T. Laine raced to the door and whispered, “Those two. They weren’t here when the bodies were discovered, but they did go down to get a look before the local law got here.” She turned and stared into the room, her eyes focused on something terrible that only she could see. “It’s not decelerating,” she repeated, her tired face growing even paler. “It’s growing.”
The victim list was now nine dead or down, and I wondered if the entire crew who had traveled with Stella on the tour had been affected by the death whatever. I had no idea how T. Laine would contain the energies and help the victims, but her being in charge of that meant the investigation was on Occam and me. I still had no idea why the überboss wanted me here, but for now, I needed to work.
TWO
More bodies fell, all of them people associated with the band or who had been in the basement. Some were struggling to breathe; some were unconscious. “Leave ’em where they lay,” T. Laine shouted, racing outside, her hands and body position suggesting that she was using a seeing working to explore the magical energies around the house and the victims. “A portable null room is on the way.”
“But they need our help,” an EMT said, his eyes tracking the victims lying on the lawn.
“Not until we know what we’re dealing with,” T. Laine said, “and not without responders wearing blue unis.” She pointed at Sheriff Jackett. “This thing seems to be expanding and growing, not decreasing. Maybe even jumping from victim to victim. I’ll cover them all with null blue aprons, but keep your people away or you can deal with this on your own. I swear to God, you make my job any harder and I’ll leave.” Which was a lie, but the sheriff didn’t know that.
“Why not just give EMTs unis and one a them null pens and let them help?” the sheriff asked.
“The null pens all need to be recharged except for two, and I’m low on unis,” she said. “Without a null room, we have a bigger disaster in the making.”
He gave a slant-eyed grunt. “Roger that. Back off, people,” he said, louder.
T. Laine looked at me and murmured, just for my ears, “I pray to God I really do have a null room on the way. I haven’t heard back from the North Nashville coven, but rumor says they have a portable one.”
Running into the face of danger was second nature to first respon
ders, but so was using the correct equipment so they didn’t end up making things worse. As long as more help was coming they were willing to wait.
The first responders watching, T. Laine and Occam dressed out in fresh blue unis and started quartering the yard, covering the victims with blue aprons made of the same materials and coated with the same spells as the unis. Together, they turned victims on their sides, leaving bottles of water with the ones who were conscious, pulling them into shelter as quickly as I got the tents up.
Making trips, sweating, I carried the heavy quarantine tents to the backyard and the deputy who was the sheriff’s family—Alvin Hembest—and some of the local LEOs helped me assemble them. The tents were a simple design, but erecting them wasn’t a one-person job. I shed my jacket, pulled my springy hair back in an elastic, and put a baseball hat over it. I still sweated through raising three tents, the late fall sun bringing the temp to a humid high eighties. My small team and I also set up awnings and inflated air mattresses, covering them with disposable plastic sheets from the county’s biohazard unit. It was a huge van supplied with everything, even a water tank and outdoor shower for washing down contaminated victims. But the county had extremely limited supplies for paranormal contamination, and showering couldn’t wash away the effects of weird magics.
* * *
* * *
T. Laine would have made a great general, giving orders and dividing up supplies. Once all the victims were covered, and the conscious band members dressed in biohazard unis, she assigned four to a tent in a sort of triage, giving her limited, nearly drained null pens to the ones who appeared to be the sickest. Once she had the site as safe as she could make it, she let the first responders dress out in her dwindling supply of unis and render aid. They started oxygen and IVs and took blood pressures.
She assigned Alvin and me to start a database record of the victims and their symptoms and where they had been, and when, from the time they arrived at Stella’s house. We used paper pads because I was afraid the death whatever energies could potentially ruin electronics. They would rot paper too, but we could take pics of our notes later, giving us backup.
