by Faith Hunter
I jerked at the familiar church-speak, but no one else seemed to notice.
“And woe betide the man or woman who harms her or her child,” the coven leader said, loud enough to be heard.
“That a threat?” Jackett called back, not sounding as though a threat would bother him much.
“Never,” the witch said. But the smile she sent the sheriff said otherwise.
Sheriff Jackett hesitated, watching the witch, before he pulled his key fob from a pocket and walked to his car. No one spoke as the official vehicle departed. Into the uncomfortable silence, T. Laine stepped forward and extended her hand to the coven leader. Softly she said, “Special Agent T. Laine Kent, of the Kent witch clan.”
“I didn’t think they let witches in to PsyLED.”
“I was one of the first.”
The coven leader made a humming noise, then took her hand, and the two women shook. “Astrid Grainger, of the Grainger clan, coven leader of the North Nashville coven.”
“We can use some help,” T. Laine said. “And that null room you trailered in is desperately needed.” Gesturing us to the side, Lainie lowered her voice and we all gathered around her as she filled the coven in on the situation. She ended with, “I can’t guarantee full funding for your services, but I can guarantee you great PR.”
Astrid gave a mighty frown and T. Laine pushed on, fast. “You need something to work past the long-standing witch phobia in the rural parts of this state. This case could be it. It’s garnered national media attention and, if witches are part of solving it, part of saving the victims and deputies, you’ll be heroes. We need you. The site’s not reading like witch energies and we don’t know what it is or, frankly, if there’s even been a crime committed. Needless to say, that part can’t reach the media. Not yet.”
Astrid Grainger made a harrumphing sound that conveyed a sour acceptance of what couldn’t be changed, but her shoulders relaxed. “First let’s set up a circle and recharge the null room, which it needs after travel. Then we’ll see if we can spot anything clinging to the humans.” She waved her arm at the band members peering out of tents. “They’ll have to remove the null suits and aprons. If something magical’s clinging to them, we can then decide if a stay in the null room would help or make things worse. And then we can recharge the null pens, if you know the working.”
“I do.” T. Laine pointed to a flat place on the back lawn, away from potential horse droppings, a spot that would make overviewing by drones difficult. “Circle there?”
“Good,” Astrid said. “I’ll take two of my people and recharge the null room trailer. Etain,” she said, louder, “get the chalk, the chalk spreader, and the implements.”
“Aye,” one of the witches said. With the single word, I knew she wasn’t from around here. “String and stick, bell and candle too?” She was Irish. I had never met an Irish person before and I loved the way the lyrical sounds fell from her mouth. She had freckles the color of light brown sugar, pale skin, and straight brown hair with just a hint of red. She was wearing a black Stella Mae tour T-shirt, with the white and scarlet logo of a silhouetted Stella Mae and her guitar on front and the tour dates and cities on the back.
Astrid waved a hand in a whatever motion and, except for Etain, the witches followed her away. I bent back to the timeline database I was building. There were dozens of names already attached to the potential crime scene. One of the pitfalls of Unit Eighteen covering such a large region was that we didn’t know the law enforcement officials or the microculture of the small towns we visited on official business and we were always playing catch-up. It meant starting from scratch with each out-of-town case. Databases were the stuff that kept us on top of cases.
“Ingram. Hang on,” Occam called out, loping from the direction of the barn. I hadn’t even noticed he had slipped away. Cat stealth, cat grace. He looked so much better than he had. Hunting every full moon on Soulwood meant each time he shifted back to human he was more healed. “We got company,” he murmured. He nodded his head toward the car moving slowly up the drive. “One of the deputies says that’s FBI from the local office. Evidently he was here with the feeb senior special agent earlier.”
“Then he’ll know about ma sister,” Etain said, stepping away from Astrid’s trunk, her face going hard.
He was driving an older-model government car, a skinny black man with close-cropped dark hair, a thin mustache, and a goatee shaped like an arrowhead pointing at his chest. The door opened and he lifted a hand in a wave as he left the vehicle. He looked fit, determined, and tense as he strode to Occam and me, perhaps because of the way the deputies on-site were watching the newcomer. Like he was dangerous. Or particularly unwelcome.
Etain, Occam, and I met the new arrival in the open area between the parking and the house. The tall man extended his FBI ID. “Special Agent Gerry Stapp, FBI.”
“Special Agent Occam, PsyLED.” Occam thumbed at me. “Special Agent Ingram, PsyLED.”
“Nell,” I said, smiling, because Stapp looked nervous and I wanted to put him at ease in case his nervousness was due to us being Unit Eighteen, the only PsyLED unit known to be mostly paranormals.
“Etain Doyle,” the Irish witch said. “Catriona Doyle is ma sister and you people took her.” Etain’s voice went higher. “And you kidnapped her child.”
“If you’ll excuse us, ma’am,” Gerry said to Etain, “I need to speak with the special agents.”
“I’ll be staying right here, unless you plan to cart me away too.” When Stapp started to protest, she raised her chin and added, “You send me away, I’ll cast a hearing workin’ and listen in anyway.”
I hadn’t known that was possible, but it made sense. I wondered if the media had witches capable of that particular magic. That would be bad. I dragged my attention to Gerry.
None of us shook hands. Gerry looked over our shoulders at the other law enforcement officers before returning his attention to us. “I’m sorry about your sister being taken in,” he said softly to Etain. “It wasn’t my idea. And I didn’t know about the child until it was too late.”
To Occam and me, he said, “I don’t have much time, so listen fast.” His words were rapid and low, so his voice didn’t carry. “I’m here to cause trouble and make a stink, per orders of the senior special agent, Macauley Smythe. In a minute I’m going to act like an ass and you’re going to tell me to go to hell.”
“Why’s that?” I asked. “Why are you going to make a stink?”
Still soft and fast, he said, “Because Smythe is my boss and he said to. I toe the line for two more months until he formally retires. Everyone knows he hates anyone who’s not just like him. I’m black, I’m gay, he hates me, and he likes making my life a living hell. And before you tell me to write him up, his sleeve is checkered with racist incidents, use-of-force violations, and, way back when, at least one witness-tampering incident. He was always reprimanded up and promoted into a more rural sector. Either no one cares what he does or he has a protector up-line. These days, he has illusions of an easy retirement as a county sheriff or PD chief around here. Anything he can do to stymie your investigation and make the witches look responsible, he’ll do. Two months more and I can take over this office and make things right, so I’m following orders.” He made a little snorting laugh. “And because I’ve heard that Unit Eighteen are mostly paras, I’m hoping that will keep you from reporting me for talking against my up-line. That enough reasons?”
“Not gonna happen!” Occam said loudly, stepping between Gerry and the onlooking LEOs. He bunched his fists and stuck his head forward, for all the world as if he was mad. I hadn’t known he could act that well and a little churchwoman voice inside my head called it lying. I knew it wasn’t lying. But my brain and my history didn’t.
“We have Catriona and you have the property,” Stapp said, loudly. “Smythe wants info. He wants this site and he wants PsyLED of
f it.”
“Not gonna happen,” Occam said again. “He isn’t equipped to work it up.”
“And no one is gonna be able to work it wit’out us,” Etain said, joining the play. “I can feel the bizarre energies through ma boots.”
I slid a look her way. I had felt nothing. But then, I hadn’t tried, not with so many people around.
“He’ll keep you from Catriona Doyle no matter what it takes,” Stapp said. Softer he added, “He’s started on the paperwork to charge her with multiple counts of first-degree murder by magical means. Whoever you have up-line needs to get on this now, not tonight, not tomorrow. Now. Before he can push the paperwork through. Before it hits the media.”
“Even if it gets thrown out, if he gets an arrest this early in the investigation, the media firestorm would be huge,” Occam said, his eyes moving to the road where the news vans were parked.
“It’s already huge and Smythe intends to fan the flames,” Stapp said.
“I’ll curse him and turn his pecker into a toad,” Etain said. She had an impish face, but she looked anything but cute now. She looked dangerous.
“You can do that?” I asked.
“No. But he doesna know’t.”
“No threats,” Gerry said. “Anything you do along that line will play into his hands. Get someone up to Cookeville, to the city police department at the corner of East Broad Street and Walnut Avenue.” He raised his voice. “This is our site! Paras can’t fairly and honestly investigate a crime committed by paras against good, God-fearing people like Stella Mae Ragel. That’s a job for humans.”
“The sheriff is on the way into town now to intervene,” Occam said quietly.
“Not enough,” Gerry said just as softly. “You need to be able to pull rank hard and fast.”
“You ain’t getting to pull lead on this one, Feeb,” Occam said, loudly. “And anyway, from what I understand, Smythe’s mama was a witch. So what makes him any more capable?”
I managed to keep the surprise off my face. How had Occam learned that? And then I realized he was still lying and planting seeds to discredit Smythe. It was quick-thinking and mean and . . . and the churchwoman voice shut up. The new me, the PsyLED special agent me, kinda liked it. I raised my eyebrows in approval at my cat-man. His lips twitched.
“A witch?” Gerry said, sounding stunned.
Occam said, still loud enough to carry clearly, “We’ll provide interdepartmental cooperation when and if we get access to Catriona Doyle.”
“And have you paras prep her? Ain’t happening.”
“We’ll get the PsyLED special agent in charge of the eastern U.S., Ayatas FireWind, involved,” I said quietly. “He’ll provide pushback.”
“Hope it’s not too late,” the feeb said softly. Gerry Stapp turned on a heel and strode back to his car, the epitome of outrage.
Etain said, “Him I like. He’s a right sneaky bastard.” She slanted her eyes to Occam. “So are you, cowboy. You happen to be available tonight?”
I flinched at what sounded as if she was asking him for a date, but she went on.
“I could use help to kidnap ma niece back and break ma sister from príosúnacht.” She sent him a saucy grin. “We could have a pint and a bit of fun after, to sweeten the deal.”
It sounded like a churchwoman bargain, help in return for sex. And I did not like it one little bit.
Occam grinned at her, a lazy twinkle in his eyes. “The rescue part sounds like fun, but I’m taken.” His gaze slid to me. “And she’s dangerous.”
“Oh,” Etain said, looking back and forth between us. “I see how the wind blows. If I break Catriona out, I’ll have to do it on ma own, then.” She sighed in frustration and went back to removing gear from Astrid Grainger’s trunk.
I had a feeling Etain wasn’t joking about the jailbreak, but Occam didn’t look worried. He showed teeth in a grin and called FireWind on his cell, telling the big boss that we had political troubles—not an uncommon thing these days—and rerouting him directly to the Cookeville PD and the recalcitrant FBI special agent in charge.
But unless FireWind had favors he could call in, things were pretty much what Gerry Stapp had said: We had the site. Smythe had Catriona.
I shook my head and left my cat-man talking, putting politics and pretty, flirtatious, desperate Irish girls out of my mind. My job today was database work, talking to the local law, and questioning the band members about where they were, and when. Politics were the problem of the more experienced team members.
Events at the scene crawled on. Deputies and the remaining victims were read by the witches. They all had some measure of the death whatever on them, so groups were herded into the null room trailer.
As the band members finished their half-hour stint in the portable null room, I began to expand on the prelim questioning for the timeline, talking to as many as I could. It was an ethnically diverse group, which I learned was an oddity in the country music scene, including three backup singers, all female, one African, one Asian, and one Caucasian, and Cale Nowell, the tattooed African-American guitarist. He had been one of the first on-site that morning and was with the first group that found Stella, along with the drummer. He turned out to be the man who had waved at me from the ambulance when I arrived. The entire band was visibily shaken and not overly helpful. No one knew anything about how or why Stella died. She seemed to be universally loved and respected.
Initial interviews were usually interesting and challenging, but this time it was sweaty work, outside, in the afternoon sun, in the last hot spell of fall. My clothes smelled like death whatever; I was getting nowhere; I was feeling marginally gripey; and I was wondering when Tandy would arrive. He was the unit’s empath and was normally present at questionings, but he was nowhere to be seen yet. Not that anyone was telling me anything. I might no longer be a probationary agent, but it was taking far too long for the stigma to wear off. Hence the gripey.
I worked until T. Laine called to me. “Ingram? Your turn to be read by the witches.”
The air had cooled in the late afternoon, but it wasn’t cold enough to create the shivers that suddenly quivered along my bones and pebbled my skin. My feet felt leaden as I crossed the lawn. It was all I could do to step through the witch circle and not run before Astrid could close the circle behind me. I was all kinds of self-conscious and crossed my arms, holding my elbows as I took a place in the middle of the witch circle. The coven and T. Laine looked at me. That was it. They looked at me as the wind cooled, sharpened, and blew through the horse farm.
Standing in the chalk circle, witches looking me over, brought slivers of odd memories to the surface, one of me standing in the middle of a circle, long ago, as someone decided I wasn’t a witch. The next memories were an overlapping batch: the sound of a man’s voice as he demanded me for his bed; the same man reaching for me in the greenhouse; the smell of fresh-baked berry pie on the air where I hid in the kitchen as that voice informed Daddy for the third time that I was “ripe” and that he wanted me; the fear that clotted my heart as my father calmly said he would think about it. I had been twelve.
“Nell?”
I flinched and looked up. Tried to focus past the memories and into T. Laine’s dark eyes. Dark hair, nearly black, caught the wind, tangled in her eyelashes. I caught a breath and it sounded strange, squeaky. My arms were aching and my fingers were stiff as I peeled them off me. I was shaking.
“Nell?” she asked softer. “You okay?”
I nodded before I thought. Because no. I wasn’t okay, and my friend knew it. “Memories,” I managed. “Bad ones.”
She gave a slight head tilt that meant she heard me, and that others were listening. She took my arm and led me from the circle, away from the witches. “We should have a girls’ night out and blow off some steam.”
“I don’t know how to blow off steam,” I said, blinking
away the dryness that burned my eyes. “Churchwomen don’t blow off steam, we—they—redirect it.”
“I’ll bet they do,” she said, sounding grim. “But you broke that mold. You, JoJo, Margot, and me? We’ll have a few, maybe do some line dancing, and indulge in girl talk. Soon. For now”—she glanced at the driveway—“you need time in the null room. You’re covered with what we’re currently calling death energies.”
My heart went all aflutter. Death energies was more specific than death whatever. Death energies sounded like a new thing. Not witch magics. Not . . . not anything I understood. I couldn’t go home with death on me. I might harm my sisters, could damage Soulwood.
“So am I,” she continued. “The coven wants us both inside the null room for ten-minute segments, with readings in between, to see how long it takes to break down the energies on nonhumans. We can talk.”
“I don’t want to talk,” I said.
“Then we can just sit there in silence. Come on.” She plucked at my sleeve and I followed her to the portable null room trailer, up the back ramp, and inside. Someone shut the door behind us, leaving me with T. Laine and six chairs. She pushed me to one and took another, sitting. She glanced at her watch and back up to me. I had been afraid we’d be in the dark, but there were lights in the ceiling and someone had run in an extension cord.
The cold of the null workings impregnated into the plywood walls of the six-by-twelve windowless trailer sent sharp shafts of ice into my veins. “I get that witches know I’m not human,” I said. “They got seeing workings. But it seems odd to use me as a test subject, as I’m the only one of my species on-site.”
“Null rooms are easier on us than on Occam, and they already tested it on the humans, reading them, trying to find a safe minimum time to erase the energies clinging to their skin. Sit.”
