Circle of the Moon

by Faith Hunter

  There was a sound system on the middle shelf; it was dust free and probably hooked up to a house Wi-Fi system. I pressed the on button and a jazzy blues song came on. I hit off.

  In the corner was a silver metal stand holding a brass saxophone. The sax wasn’t dusty either, showing that, whatever was going on with Rick in terms of filth and cleanliness, and whatever that meant about his mental state, music and horses were a big part of his life. He seemed to be clinging to things that had kept him sane, things that had kept him human. The values and ideals that had made him the man he once was.

  I wanted to hear him play, but I had a strange feeling that listening to him would make me sad. And I also knew that I was searching for something of the man Occam might be, in the things that made up Rick’s life.

  “Nell? Your emotions are all over the place today. You need to talk?”

  I turned to Tandy, who stood in the master suite doorway, watching me. “No. I think . . . I think I’m okay.” I looked around the clutter and organization, the filth and cleanliness. “I think I’m going to be fine.”

  “But you’re sneaking around Rick’s home. Why?”

  Frowning, I turned in a circle, my hands on my hips. “I feel as if I’m missing something and . . .” Then it began to come clear. I spoke through it slowly. “The public part of the house is fine, if not immaculate. The private part is a disaster. Like Rick’s private life. This space proclaims that Rick is a slob. It shouts the fact that, unlike other bachelors, Rick can’t have a woman over to spend the night”—I pointed to the bed—“so why have clean sheets and a clean bathroom, right? Why not let it go to ruin? And he did. Everything is messed up here except the books and the music and horses, as if only those things are keeping him sane. Someone needs to talk to Rick. You’re a counselor of sorts, right?”

  “Of sorts,” Tandy said softly. He tilted his head toward the front of the house and led me back to the living area, speaking over his shoulder. “Rick may need more than I can offer.”

  “You won’t know unless you try,” I said to his back. “And being afraid of Rick’s cat is not a good reason to abandon him.”

  “I’m not abandoning Rick.” Tandy sat on the sofa and gestured me over. “Have you talked to him about the callings?”

  I grimaced. “No fair throwing my words back on me.” I took the opposite side, my back to the arm and my knees drawn up. That showed self-protective body language, so I swiveled around and sat with my feet on the floor. I was uncomfortable and didn’t know why, except that I had a feeling Tandy was reading me and that made me feel violated. It wasn’t lost on me that he was doing to me what I had been doing to Rick when I snooped. “Okay. Fair question. Go ahead.”

  “When I was first hit by lightning—”

  “Three times in a row.”

  “Right. I had no idea what had happened to me, no idea that trauma could turn on the genes that make sensitives into empaths. There are so few empaths that I’d never heard of them. I had no way to process what was happening. I didn’t realize that I was picking up the thoughts and feelings of the doctors and nurses and technicians who were taking care of me. I just thought I had brain damage and my own emotions were flying all over. Until my girlfriend came to see me in the hospital.”

  I stopped frowning and fidgeting. This was Tandy’s story and I’d never heard it from his lips. “What happened?”

  “At the time, I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror.” Tandy touched his face, the pale skin and the darker reddish Lichtenberg lines that traced across his flesh like the veins of leaves or the tributaries of rivers as seen from the skies. “The lights were off. She walked in and took my hand. She had been crying. She said, ‘I thought you were dead. I was so worried.’ A nurse followed her in and turned on the light. And I felt her reaction. I was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. She jerked away, with a little scream, and ran out of the room.”

  “Did you ever see her again?”

  “Yes,” Tandy said softly. “With her new boyfriend. We passed on opposite sides of the street. She pretended not to see me, but I knew her enough to feel her revulsion even across the lines of traffic.”

  “That stinks.”

  Tandy tilted his head as if agreeing.

  “And yet you and JoJo are together,” I said.

  “Jo likes my skin. She thinks it’s sexy.” He gave me a grin showing his slightly yellowed teeth, even the enamel marred with fractures of Lichtenberg lines.

  “That’s good,” I said, feeling out of my depth and uncertain.

  Kindly, Tandy said, “It’s time to go, Nell. JoJo wants us back at HQ.”

  I figured that meant the conversation was over. “Okay. By now, JoJo can probably monitor the place on Rick’s security cameras. Talk about snooping.”

  Tandy chuckled softly. “Come on. We can leave the back door unlocked in case he comes back here.”

  “The doorknob is round. Cats can’t handle round doorknobs.”

  “Rick’s cat is smart. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Unit Eighteen—JoJo, T. Laine, Tandy, Occam, and me, but still no Soul or FireWind and no Rick, who was presumably still a cat—had gathered around the conference room table, laptops and tablets open. On the overhead screens were the photos Occam had taken at Rick’s accident scene. This was the official end-of-day summation, and Rick’s vanishing act was now a matter of PsyLED record. He was in danger and was potentially a security risk. Even now, he might be a prisoner of the witch. Or dead. We had to find him fast and keep him safe until we caught the black-witch who was calling him, or he would end up on administrative leave with his job on the line. We still had no idea where Rick was or what he was doing, and T. Laine had not managed to scry the location of the working. The sun was setting and the moon wouldn’t rise until around two in the morning. If the boss had been spelled and summoned so early, it was a good bet the spell would only get stronger as night deepened and the waning moon rose. It was shrinking each day, edging to the new moon, and tonight it would have a claw forming on either end.

  Because this was official, Clementine was taking everything down in voice-to-text software. Clementine was much easier to say than CLMT2207, but no matter how cute the software’s name was, we had to be careful or we might give away our personal secrets, and none of us wanted that.

  Unfortunately, no one had any idea who was calling/cursing Rick, or why, or what the calling might have to do with vampires. We hadn’t heard back from Ming about her far-flung scions being called. This was a case that had generated only a minor amount of evidence and no leads, a nice way of saying we had nothing.

  Occam said, “JoJo—Jones—and I have determined no tracker dogs should be brought in for fear LaFleur in cat form would attack the dog and the handler. Cats in the wild do not like to be chased. I attempted to track by scent in human form, but I lost him. Soul, when she returned Jones’ call, instructed us to let him go.”

  Tandy said, “You could chase him in cat form.”

  “I could. With a camera. And he might let me chase him. Or he could kill me. I’m more experienced, but I’d hold back in a fight because I don’t want to kill him. I don’t know what his cat wants and Rick doesn’t dominate it very well in a fight.”

  “Never mind, then,” Tandy said.

  Occam ended his report summation with the words, “My final topic is Special Agent Margot Racer. She showed up at the car crash even though she was off duty. She stood around watching the accident investigators and me work. Spent a long time studying the skid marks on the road and searching through the inside of the car.”

  “What was she looking for?” Tandy asked.

  “No idea, but she informed me that she didn’t find the amulet necklace created for Rick by the local witches, so I assume Rick was wearing it.” Occam rubbed his disfigured hand over his scarred scalp as if the
y both itched. “I’d judge Racer’s emotional and mental state as calm but pensive, but next time you’re around her, Tandy, get a read.”

  Our empath said, “Copy that.”

  Occam said to T. Laine, “Just so you know, Racer wasn’t wearing the spelled cat necklace she had on before. Did you get a read on her amulet?”

  “So far as I could tell it was a protection working. A charm a witch might give her child. I’m betting all her grandmother’s gifts are charmed the same way. But we didn’t know that at first. I may have overreacted.”

  Tandy said, “It was a magically charged situation. Additional energies might have been dangerous.”

  T. Laine twisted her hand open in a gesture of uncertainty.

  JoJo asked, “Is that all?”

  “Occam, end of report,” he announced to Clementine.

  JoJo said, “Jones reporting. As of the discovery of Rick’s car and his disappearance, Soul made a personal call to PsyCSI and put the testing of the witch circle focals on the front burner. Ten minutes ago, I received a prelim report. We have fingerprints back from the focal objects found at the circle. Some older prints that are too badly smeared to have reliable markers. Also some clear prints. They’ve been run against every database we have and we got nada. No matches. The techs think they have some acceptable DNA from the golf ball and from the outside of a glass vial that contained black liquid. They’ve tested the substance inside the vial and determined it to be decomposed Mithran blood. It was too far gone to get DNA. However, the rotting scraps of gauze cloth were indeed stained with human blood, type A positive—which, by the way, matches Rick’s—and it’s currently being run for DNA comparison, along with fluid from the other vial. There was a trace of blood on the small steel paring knife, and it too is being run for comparison. This may or may not be important, but Rick always played golf with his dad when they were together, so it’s possible—not likely, but possible—that the ball and tees were his. With his DNA. Which could have been used in a circle.

  “The lab also ran mass spec on the clay sample from the circle. The biological and mineral markers put it as coming from the Tennessee River. Local clay. The black walnut tree was also likely local. So we finally are getting something to work on, people.”

  JoJo punched a key on her laptop. “Some really pixelated security camera video of the witch who is doing the spells, or someone who is helping her. These are from the pet supply store where our witch got the white rats and didn’t pull a no-see-me spell over herself. Or her human helper. Whichever. Her face is hidden in the shadow of her hoodie, but she appears younger than T. Laine or I expected, moves like a teenager, eighteen at most. She has shoulder-length dark hair or wears a wig, and we can’t see the face above the chin. Caucasian. All legs and long limbs. It’s summer and she’s in long sleeves and a hoodie. We’re thinking a junkie, maybe? The clerk doesn’t remember her at all.

  “Ingram, you’ve got a strange look going on there.” She made a circle in the air where my face was.

  “What? I don’t . . .” I stopped as it came to me. “Those are the same clothes worn by the subject who robbed the Pilot Gas and the pawn shop. But the body is different.”

  “Different how?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think she’s . . . familiar? Maybe wearing a glamour that throws us off?”

  “Which means we have no idea what she looks like,” T. Laine said.

  “Fine. Dyson”—Jo looked at Tandy—“I’ve printed stills of the few places we get a hint of the face, but I’m guessing that a glamour means there’s no chance of a composite sketch?”

  “It’s unlikely,” he said. “The best information we have from witnesses is a description of her chin.”

  “Occam,” JoJo said, “if LaFleur comes back here in distress, we can use the null room again, yes?”

  “If he’s in human form, yes, if we have to,” Occam said. “I don’t think his cat will come here and I don’t think the cat will go into a null room willingly. I suggest we set up a silver cage. It’s more painful than a silver bracelet or necklace, but more effective, and less likely to result in a fight that spreads were-taint. I have the feeling that a silver cage will stop any calling, even his own magic, because it stops the ability for a were to change shape. Two birds, one cage.”

  Occam had spent twenty years in a silvered cage. Occam knew what they could do and what they might be able to do.

  “You got a cage, CC?”

  Occam smiled at the Crispy Critter reference. “I do. LaFleur’s used it before. It’s familiar, a safe place, so I think his cat would go into it. I can set it up in his office or the sleeping room.”

  Rick, in cat form, here. Having Mud at HQ when I was working was looking like a worse and worse idea. I needed to figure out child care now, not after the court gave me custody.

  “LaFleur’s office,” T. Laine said. “That way he won’t disturb us if he starts yowling.”

  We looked at her in disbelief. “Really?” JoJo said. “Yowl? You’re talking about our boss.”

  “So? Cats yowl.” T. Laine’s face creased in a mischievous grin and she looked at Clementine’s speaker in the middle of the table. “There was a feral cat who actually brought her boyfriends to my front porch and had relations one night. It was loud!”

  Tandy and Occam snickered. I realized this was a joke that would be included in the day’s record.

  “Ingram,” Jo said to me. “Report.”

  I filled them in on the vampire meeting and the few insights I had to offer. It wasn’t much.

  “EOD concluded. Clementine, cease recording,” JoJo said, dumbfounded, shaking her head. A small red light I hadn’t noticed on the mic went dark. “Dismissed. Be safe, people.”

  The team dispersed slowly, JoJo and Tandy going over the files and discussing what to do if Rick came back or called one of us or was spotted in cat form by the public. T. Laine said she was working on something and would be late in the morning. As he left the room, Occam pointed a finger at me, saying, “I’m running some errands, but I’ll pick up dinner and bring it back.”

  My heart warmed at the thought that I’d get to see him again. He walked from the room and my eyes followed him down the hallway, his body moving cat-like, graceful and smooth. It was good to see him being Occam again and not so badly burned and wounded. And my thoughts returned to his . . . not his proposal. He hadn’t offered one. But he had said he loved me. Loved. Me. Leaves and all. Except that I didn’t know how I felt about loving a man. About giving myself to him. I had done that once before out of desperation and the bargain had been worth it, but I didn’t know if I wanted to bargain for my freedom again. Would that be what I was doing if I loved a man? Bargaining for my freedom? Did I even love Occam? I wasn’t sure about that. The few romance books I had read suggested that love followed attraction and I certainly felt an attraction for Occam. But . . .

  Brow furrowed, my brain thinking too many things on too many levels to really concentrate on just one—like work—I went to my cubicle. I started putting together a list of spells that had been used against vampires in the past, something akin to the spell that was calling them. I was still wearing jeans and the T-shirt I started the shift in, and since I’d be working in the office, I saw no reason to change just to do paperwork. I had a nicer pair of pants in the four-day gobag should I need them. I took the laptop to my cubicle and called Mama and then Mud, before I started in. Mud was planting herbs in good Soulwood soil and playing with her computer. “Don’t be ordering any more electrical equipment,” I warned.

  Mud giggled. “Nope. Sam, Jedidiah, Daddy, and me are talking greenhouses.”

  “Tell them to not let you break my budget.” My sister was safe with the Nicholsons tonight and I made arrangements to pick her up when I got off work. Unless Rick reappeared, it was shaping up to be a quiet night.

  Two hours late
r, I heard the door from the stairway open, with a strange metallic banging clanging sound. I got up from my desk and stuck my head out in the hallway to see Occam wedging a stack of metal against the door to hold it open. He whirled and padded down the stairs again, his boots so soft on the steps I could barely hear them.

  I went to the top of the stairs and inspected the flat metal, which turned out to be an easily assembled cage, steel walls and top with a removable, silver-plated steel bottom. Rick’s cage. Occam came in again, this time carrying bags of hoagies and a plastic container of iced tea from Frussies Deli & Bakery on Gay Street. He grinned at me as the outer door closed. “I got a Dirty Bird, a Three Little Pigs, a Turkey Club, and a James Dick’s Favorite. I—”

  Something slammed into the outer door. Faster than I could follow, Occam set down the bag, drew his weapon, and raced back down the stairs. From the conference room JoJo shouted, “It’s Rick’s leopard!” The banging, slamming came again. Even though the outer door was reinforced to withstand a small bomb, I could see the edges give.

  Occam’s lips were bloodless in the harsh lighting. His eyes tense as he mentally ran through his options.

  The banging came again. And again. I looked back at the window. It was dark out but the moon hadn’t risen yet.

  “A grindy is with him,” JoJo shouted. “What do you want to do, CC?”