by Faith Hunter
Occam had me. The notion was just there in my brain, like being stabbed by a pitchfork, impaled on the thought. Occam had me.
And then several things hit me: Margot knew something about Paka, from the missing in action comment; some of her questions were personal on a sexual level; and some were professional law enforcement. They could also be construed as asking if Rick was a liability and security risk. Which he was. Which we all were, and which we never put into reports.
Except she’d said that Occam had been a vampire chick magnet.
I stuffed my reaction to the Occam part of her comments down deep inside for now, so I could concentrate on the other things. But I felt it there, under my skin all crawly. I couldn’t lie to Margot and get away with it. I didn’t know what to say to both protect my team and remind Margot that we knew the were-taint was contagious. “Ummm. Well. They aren’t gay. They don’t date each other, not that it’s your business, Racer. And we have grindylows on-site to keep the populace safe, just in case anyone doesn’t follow protocol to keep from spreading the were-taint.”
“Prickly,” she said of my tone. “And put in my place with pure truth. Okay.” She sent me an amused look.
The crawly feeling under my skin got worse, but I pushed on. “Special Agent Racer, I’m sure that every single human on the planet is aware that were-taint is spread by blood sharing, saliva in cuts and bites, and sex. We know, and Rick knows, that any of the above means a death sentence for any were-creature who bites, or has sex with, someone who can contract the taint—and for his partner if the grindys decide so. He’s careful.” I wanted to add, And alone, but I didn’t.
She brought the conversation back to the witch circles. “Site of the oldest Knoxville witch circle is just ahead. The circle was discovered by a local teen. It was fairly fresh at the time and I’m putting its tentative date of construction and activation just before the new moon, or waning sickle moon in May. The witch circle was cold and dead and there was no sacrifice present on the site when the circle was reported. There was also no blood when the deputies checked it out, though we have to consider the activity of scavengers carrying away any sacrifice and the spell itself taking away any blood. How close to the river are we?”
Back to business. A wave of relief flushed through me. Margot’s hands tightened on the wheel, as if she felt my reaction. I said, “GPS says two hundred feet to the river. Then down a ways to the actual water.”
Margot parked near a copse of trees and we got out, switched on flashlights, and started to the site, my gobag over my shoulder. There was nothing left of the circle except shallow trenches here and there. With a little imagination I could create a spoked circle out of them, but it was hard in the dark and with the passage of time and early summer rains. I had already calibrated the psy-meter 2.0 and done QC on it by reading everyone in the office. I laid my blanket on the ground and measured the circle’s levels. There was nothing left of magic in the ground. But when I surreptitiously touched the soil with a fingertip, I got a hint of maggots. I didn’t share that with Margot yet. Not until Rick gave me permission to read her in to everything.
Silent, I packed up and we went back to the car, where Margot marked her map with a green star. There were other stars, three now green, the rest yellow. She put the tablet down and started the car. “What kind of witch is doing the circles?”
“Our first thought was a single moon witch sitting at north, but T. Laine pointed out that moon witches always practice their workings at the three days of the full moon, to make better use of the moon’s entire power, so we changed it to a water witch working alone because of the river locations. Looking over your shoulder at the map of the witch circles—those stars are the witch circles, aren’t they?” I interrupted myself.
Margot nodded.
“Then I’d say we have a water witch. We’re not ruling out a second witch. We’re not even ruling out a moon witch.” I frowned. “We’re not ruling out anything at this point.”
“I think that’s wise. So maybe two witches,” Margot said. “Or a single really powerful witch who has a secondary affinity for the moon. Or . . . I hate guessing.” She started the car and we motored on to the next-closest site. And then the next. By midnight we had visited five sites and I had tested each with the psy-meter and a fingertip. I felt maggots at almost all the sites and magic at one—levels one and four. Vampires were part of this—whatever this was. Or maybe even witch-vamps. Was the witch also a vampire? I had a lot to talk about to the team, and since Margot was driving, I typed out the bones of an outline for a report. Ninety-nine percent of my job was paperwork. I had always been good at it and I was getting better.
We brought hot Krispy Kreme donuts back to HQ, where I found my sister watching a horror movie on the biggest screen in the conference room, sitting with Tandy, earbuds in her ears. Mud’s eyes were wide and her knees were drawn up under her chin. When she saw me she pointed at the screen and shouted, “Aliens! There’s such a thing as aliens!”
I was surprised that Tandy would watch a horror film, but he seemed fine with Mud’s emotion. He paused the film and Mud tugged out her earbuds. I said, “You had to start her out with Aliens? Why not Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Snakes on a Plane?”
“Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Margot suggested, sliding the donut box across the large table and plopping her gobag onto a chair. “Killer Clowns from Outer Space.”
Mud’s eyes went wider than I had ever seen them. “Really? Clowns are from space?”
“No. Not really,” I said severely. “These are movies, not reality. And my coworker—the empath—should have known better.”
“The empath”—he pointed at himself—“did know exactly what she needed to see. Something horrific that could be overcome. But no clowns. Never clowns.”
“Wimp. Scaredy-cat,” T. Laine said, coming back into the office.
“The weres may be scaredy-cats,” Tandy said. “I am not.”
“Right,” Margot said. “The weres. I need to use the ladies’ and stuff a few things in a locker. Who do I see about getting one?”
“Pick a locker with no lock and nothing inside,” T. Laine said. “Locker room is near the stairs you just came up. Sign on it says ‘Locker Room.’”
“Har-har.” Margot picked up her gear and headed back the way we came.
I pointed to the earbuds and Mud put them back in. The movie restarted. Quickly I updated them, saying softly, “Circles were all constructed in the waning moon. Maggots were at half of the sites. Vamps and witch are absolutely working together.”
T. Laine asked, “Any reason why we’re not telling our new feeb?”
I didn’t know why I hadn’t told Margot about the maggots. But . . . she had indicated a strange interest in Occam and Rick and the werecats’ sexual habits. It had felt oddly predatory and had aroused a protective instinct in me. I glanced at Mud, who was staring at the big screen as an alien burst out of a stomach cavity in an explosion of blood and goo. “No real reason,” I hedged.
Tandy looked at Mud and stood, stretching. “Come on, Mud,” he said, pausing the film. “I have a window that needs a window box with herbs. You can give me some suggestions. Then I think your sister will say it’s your bedtime.”
They left together. To our resident witch, I quickly detailed Margot’s odd interest in the werecats and shared her specific questions about Rick and Occam. T. Laine listened with narrowed eyes and a deep-rooted sense of suspicion. Then I added a few more details on the maggots, vamps, sacrifices, and the witch circles.
T. Laine said, “Noted. While you were gone, I think I put the runes together with the different sacrifices. The working where the white rats died had a single rune in an inner, tiny circle just big enough for the rats and the rune. Nauthiz. This one was the only rune not reversed. Nauthiz symbolizes distress, confusion, conflict, and the power of will and magic to overcome
them. It’s both a recognition of one’s fate and an indication of self-initiated change. I think she’s using this circle to heal herself from something painful at the same time that she’s getting revenge. Or more clearly, using the revenge to heal herself.”
“Okay,” I said, glancing up the hallway. “What about the ones with the black cats?”
“They have Nauthiz merkstave, or upside down. That’s the curse part, intended to constrain freedom, bring distress and hard work that results in nothing. It’s intended for the recipient of the curse to feel deprivation, starvation, poverty, and extreme emotional emptiness and hunger. I think the spells start off without a cat in the middle and actually call black cats to the site to be used as sacrifice. If that’s so, then maybe Rick got caught in a calling. He’s experiencing some behavior changes that coincide with the black cat circles, but that doesn’t mean he’s the intended recipient. Or maybe I’m just in denial. I admit I’m guessing at a lot of it.” I didn’t reply and she went on. “It could be a kid trying to kill her bullies, or get back at an ex boyfriend. Maybe someone hates a football team that has a black cat for a mascot. It could be anything.”
“Let’s say you’re right and Rick isn’t the intended victim. What would happen if the witch caught Rick? Would Rick become the sacrificial victim?” I asked.
“I don’t know. And that scares me, which is why I’ve recommended that he play that infernal woodwind music twenty-four/seven.”
“Hard to do,” I said, “in a restaurant, in the shower, in meetings with the powers that be.”
“JoJo has requested a newfangled earbud that will work directly off his cell. Top-of-the-line Spook School device.”
“And Occam?” I asked.
“Occam is a spotted cat. He hasn’t been called. Either he isn’t as susceptible to the working or the curse, or spotted cats weren’t summoned. I’ll send a note to have him play the anti-shape-changing music just in case. Have you had a chance to talk to Rick about his tats?”
Margot came down the hallway and she had obviously heard the question. I stuffed a donut into my mouth and busied myself making coffee. I don’t think I fooled Margot at all.
* * *
• • •
The clock read two a.m. I pushed away from my desk in my cubicle and went to the sleep room. I had confiscated Mud’s tablet when I put her on the mattress in the back room where agents crashed when we were working twenty-plus-hour days. She was asleep, curled around a small clay pot of basil. Some girls would curl around a doll or stuffed animal. My sister chose a plant. I smiled in the dark and tiptoed toward the conference room.
T. Laine looked up from her laptop as I entered. I carried the old pot of coffee dregs to the break room and poured out the sludge before starting a new pot. No one had ever said that pots were to be started by the newest person in a room; it was more an unwritten rule.
As I worked T. Laine said, “I’m worried. Or may be worried. Might be.”
“Okay.” I added grounds and said, “You want to brainstorm?”
“Now that Margot’s gone, yes.”
I glanced at the unit’s witch, curiosity in my expression. “Oh?”
“Yeah. You aren’t the only one with odd feelings about the special agent. Tandy is getting something too. There’s something she hasn’t said. It’s possible that she’s here in order to get info on Unit Eighteen, maybe because we took down the Knoxville FBI director. Or because we discovered the devil dogs that they all missed. All that must have left a bad taste in the mouths of the local feebs.”
“Or we’re all paranoid,” I said. “But I sent you a report on the things she talked about on the drive tonight.”
“I got it. That was screwy,” T. Laine said. “Rick’s problem with his cat is incredibly complicated magic-wise and it started long before he got the were-taint, back when the tattoo spell was first applied. Vampire blood was inserted under his skin as part of the spells. Cat blood too. The torture he experienced then and when he was a prisoner of the werewolf pack and they were trying to gnaw off the tats may have changed them. All the choices he made under duress and undercover may have changed things. Acquiring were-taint affected all the existing magic in his flesh. And then Paka’s magic and the times she tried to force him to shift into his cat. The magic in his flesh is fu—messed up.”
“That makes sense,” I said as I rinsed out my metal cup painted with leaves, ignoring her almost cussing.
“I sent hand drawings of the circles with the runes, the rats, and the black cat in them to three covens right away. They all called me back and told me not to contact them again.”
“That’s . . . strange?” I asked.
“That’s what has me worried. An hour ago, the local witch coven messengered over a charm they say might help protect Rick, but they refuse other help. They say something evil is brewing in Knoxville and they’re battening down the hatches. They invited me to come hunker down with them.” T. Laine stared across the table at me, her eyes a deeper brown with worry. “When witches run, that’s a very bad sign.”
Mouth dry, I asked, “What do you think they’re running from?” A chill raced through me, dread shaped by a childhood full of dark tales of evil things that attack people.
“I don’t know, but yeah. Something big. I’ve sent word to Soul and FireWind, and LaFleur. For now, they’re using the meetings in town at FBI headquarters as a way to get all the agencies up to speed and ready to lock everything down.”
“Why does magical crazy stuff keep happening here?” Was it my fault? I had changed things, fighting a magic creature who flung energy around and skipped off the magma deep in the earth. Our battle had bounced energy into the ley lines. That easily qualified as a “disturbance in the force.” There had been so much energy pumped through the liminal system it was possible that I had opened a path and made a weak spot for the magma to push up through. The salamanders—who had likely been using hot springs as an entry way—had found an easier way up through the magma, and had used it to their own purposes.
I started to say all this, but T. Laine spoke first.
“Honestly? I’m afraid it’s still all tied into something happening in Secret City. Maybe something else is being tested, something we haven’t found yet. Maybe something that’s a mixture of tech and magic again, or more spells gone bad. LaFleur looked into it. I looked into it. But no one is admitting anything.”
I thought about my land and the church. People I loved. “Is this—?” I stopped.
“Public? No. Not yet. You want to know if you can call your family and warn them that something’s coming. No.”
“Oh.”
T. Laine looked at me hard. “You call them, what are they going to do, Nell? Go hide in the caves on church land? What if something is reaching toward Knoxville and is coming through local cave systems?”
They could pray, I thought.
“So keep the info to yourself.” She looked back at her screens. “The charm for Rick got here just a bit ago. It’s an onyx amulet in the shape of a black cat, spelled for protection. It passed my examination. It’s safe and it might help. Who knows?”
“That’s why you’re working after hours, isn’t it? To make sure Rick gets the amulet.”
“Yeah. And I hope it’s enough.”
SEVEN
An hour later we got a call on the official line, which came over the speakers in the conference room. It was Rick. And he was growling.
“Rick?” T. Laine said, startled.
“Grindy with . . . In trouble.” His next words were garbled and Tandy appeared in the doorway, his eyes wide and skin too dull, as if all the blood had left his flesh and coagulated in his core.
“. . . driving. Close now . . . Null . . . ,” he growled, the sound less human. “Open . . . doors . . .”
“LaFleur,” Lainie demanded.
“Rick’s
near here. He’s in trouble,” Tandy whispered.
“‘Open doors,’” I repeated. “He wants us to open the outer doors. The grindy is with him so he’s a danger to humans. His cat’s trying to shift.”
“Null room. Move!” T. Laine said.
Tandy and I raced down the hallway. Tandy grabbed up a chair and I took my service weapon in one hand and a potted plant in the other. T. Laine shoved the null room door open behind us, activating the strongest antimagic we could access. She locked it in place, groaning in pain as the null magic that stopped magical workings washed over her. She stumbled back to the conference room. Rick’s antishift music blasted over the speakers.
I blocked open the stairwell door at the top with the pot. Tandy raced downstairs and into the night, blocking the outer door open with the chair. He was going to wait on Rick outside. Dangerous. Very dangerous.
I placed myself in front of Mud’s room and drew my weapon. If I had to shoot my boss to protect my sister I would. The enormity of having her here while I worked fell on me like an avalanche. Saving her from my family had put her in danger. Mud couldn’t stay here.
I heard the sound of a car stopping, tires screeching. A door opening but not closing.
Rick hissed. I heard him stumble at the entrance and I looked down the stairs. My boss’s body was silhouetted in the entrance, his shoulders hunched, only his hands visible where they gripped the metal doorjamb. They were covered in black hair, fingertips clawed and gouging into the paint. He was caught in a partial shift, fighting it. This wasn’t a full moon shift, but Rick wasn’t shifting by choice. This had to be the result of being called to a witch circle.
“Hurry,” Rick growled. “Hurry. Null . . . room. Now.” But his feet didn’t move. He was caught in a stasis of misery in the outer doorway, panting in pain, fighting what was happening.
