Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  By the time I got to HQ, the snow had melted and the weather had warmed. And I was worried. Jane Yellowrock had that effect on people.

  * * *

  I brought nothing in with me—no donuts, no coffeehouse coffee, no lunch. But I carried a lot of things that were worrying me, both personally and professionally, things that weighed on me, plucking at my mind and spirit like crows on a dead body. I pushed the personal stuff—the trees and Daddy looking so poorly—to the back of my mind, and mentally ordered and arranged the professional things so I could talk about them. Last, as I swiped my card at the top of the stairs, I pasted a business smile on my face. LaLa had told me it was patently false, but it was the only fake smile I had except a churchwoman smile, and I knew I had never been sweet enough to successfully fake that one.

  I might have been up and about for hours, but it was still early and the lights were on energy-saving mode, so I went through and turned them on bright, before taking my one-day gobag to the shower. I dried my hair, gooped it up again, and changed clothes, happy about the mix-and-match possibilities of mostly black with touches of greens and pinks. I hung my wet clothing up to drip-dry in front of the heating vent, hoping the draft would take out the skirt’s wrinkles.

  The grindylow appeared in the locker room, though the door didn’t open. I preferred to think she had found a way in through the ductwork rather than assume she could magically translocate. She sat on the counter at the sink and chittered at me, looking for all the world like a neon green kitten, but one with thumbs, retractable steel claws used to kill were-creatures, and eyes that saw too much. She ducked her head into my gobag like a ferret might, and pulled out my extra bra, holding it up to me. She chittered several times, repeating the sound, a sibilant followed by cracking noises, a bit like, “Shhhhh t-t-t-t-t. Meeoooooee.”

  “I have no idea what you might be saying, you cute lil’ killing machine, other than talking about cow patties.”

  She said, “Ssssssst-t-t-t-t,” followed by a sound like laughter before she dropped my bra onto the bench nearby and went back to trundling through my things. She held up a black tube, waving it in the air.

  “Gimme that,” I said, snatching my lipstick away. “Mine,” I said, shaking it at her.

  “Mmmmmmmeeeeeoooooo,” she said back, sounding like my cats last night, yodeling to get inside.

  I put on lipstick and a bit of blush while Pea studied the buttons on the hair dryer, touching a heated piece of metal on the blower end and looking at her fingertip. “Come on. We’uns got work to do and reports to write.” Unexpectedly the grindy leaped from the counter to my shoulder. I froze for half a second and said, “You try to cut my throat and I’ll be mighty unhappy with you.” Pea made the strange laughter sound again and I opened the door.

  I dropped my gobag off in my office cubicle and strapped on my service weapon’s shoulder harness, dropping Pea to the desk three times as I worked. I hadn’t gotten used to the feel of the harness straps on my back or the rigidity of the Kydex holster beneath my arm. I preferred a spine holster, but the shoulder holster was more regulation. I removed the mag, did a chamber check, and slid the loaded mag back into the weapon. Set the safety. Holstered it. I didn’t pull on a jacket, still feeling the hair dryer heat and wanting coffee. Pea leaped back to my shoulder.

  Occam was in the break room when I entered, and the grindy pushed off, leaping from my shoulder all the way across the room to land on Occam’s. The force of the push shoved me back two steps. The leap was easily twelve feet. It wasn’t the first time the grindy had made me think that the laws of physics worked differently for her than for the rest of us.

  “Morning, Pea. Nell,” Occam said. He handed me a travel mug of coffee and poured another for himself. He looked tired and disheveled, and when he yawned, his jaw cracked. He hadn’t shaved today, and the two-day beard looked good on him. I blinked at the thought, as he reached across for sugar packets, his shoulders stretching the plaid shirt and pulling it from his jeans to reveal a slice of flesh, tanned and golden. He tossed the packets on the table between us.

  I sweetened my coffee and sipped, my attention now firmly on my mug. I wondered why I felt so out of sorts all of a sudden.

  “Nell, sugar, I hope one of us got a good night’s sleep.”

  “Not really. Why didn’t you—? Oh. The full moon’s close.” That explained a lot, including my sudden fascination with an inch of skin. I shook that thought from my head. “Weres don’t sleep well before the three days of full moon, do you?” I glanced at Pea. Had she been trying to say moon?

  Occam drank down half of the coffee in a single gulp and chuffed, a sound more catlike than human. He slid a hand through his hair, pulling it behind his ears, and drawled, “A lot of creatures are moon called, but we weres are the most affected by its phases.” His words, the shape of the syllables, were more Texan today, and the lower pitch of his voice sounded more cat than usual. I struggled to remember everything I had studied about weres in the full moon, but all I could think of was the glimpse of golden skin. I clamped down on the thoughts. Were-magics were well documented, even the unintended ones, like sexual allure.

  Pea snuggled up under Occam’s jaw as if scent-marking him. Occam stroked down her back, the way one might a friendly house cat. “The urge to shift and to hunt waxes strong three days out, abides the three days of, and wanes three days after. Nine nights of pleasure and nine days of hell.” It sounded like a quote.

  “Are you safe to be around?” I asked, making the words casual, but knowing it might be taken as an insult. I’d had a class in were-manners, but they differed by species, and cats were among the most prickly of them all.

  “Not sure that I’m ever safe, Nell, sugar.” He sipped, his brownish eyes gripping me with the intensity of a cat watching a mouse, and taking on a glow, faint flecks of gold shining in his irises. “’Specially ’round the full moon.”

  I looked away from his eyes. The color change there was dangerous. Occam had been raised in captivity in his cat shape, from the time he was ten years old, and he had less control than some. I’d learned that a color change or a glow meant that a were-creature was closer to shifting than might be healthy for bystanders.

  Few other PsyLED units had were-creatures as members, and in private mentoring sessions, LaLa had warned me that I might have to defend myself on a full moon. LaLa had actually suggested that I keep one weapon loaded with silver, but silver could kill a werecat, and I wasn’t interested in that, no matter what happened. Pulling out and sliding into a chair at an angle, the table between us, I asked, “So you’re dangerous. Do I need to keep my weapon handy, Occam?”

  He chuffed a laugh. “Nell, sugar, the proper response to an out-of-control were-creature is standard ammo, gunfire enough to knock them off course and sway any accidental lapses of control, but lemme guess.” Occam’s golden eyes went hard. “Privately you were told to use silver. Just in case.”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “Kill you dead, just to be safe.”

  “Hmmm,” he said, his tone lowered, a burr of sound, his eyes so heated that it felt like two torches burning into me. “You got your service weapon in your hand?” He sipped his coffee and waited. When I didn’t answer and the silence between us grew heavy, he said, “Safe . . . is overrated. Sometimes it’s better to live dangerously.” When I still stayed silent—having been reminded of that trick by Daddy—Occam asked, sounding more like himself, “You got a quote for were-creatures?”

  I lifted my chin and said, “He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.”

  “I got no knowledge about the last two, but the first ones I can attest to.” He chuckled, the sound a low vibration that quivered along my spine. “But you’re more’n safe with me, Nell, sugar. Safer than a running deer or rabbit.”

  “I ain’t never been a rabbit,” I said in church-sp
eak. “And I figure Pea right there”—I nodded to his shoulder—“will rip out your’un throat if’n you decide to bite me.”

  “And you’ll pull the trigger before I can get across the table,” he drawled. “Right?”

  I pulled my weapon, racked back the slide, injecting a round into the chamber, and off-safetied, all in one slick motion. His eyes widened. “I will now,” I said. “Because I know when a cat is playing games with me, and I mean to stop it now, once and for all.”

  Behind me, Rick said, “You playing games with the mouse, my brother?”

  His voice was deeper too, and my skin prickled, rising in a tight chill. A faint sweat started, and I knew they could both smell the change on me. Both of them edged closer to me, a minuscule, almost silent shifting of feet on the floor. Was I in danger? I wondered if I’d really have to shoot them.

  Over the loudspeakers, music flowed, saxophone and flute and the deep, distant notes of trombone. The melody swelled and fell like waves rolling on an ocean. Pea swiveled her head and stared at me, her eyes as green as her neon coat. The gold in Occam’s eyes was snuffed. He shook himself like a cat who had been thrown in a tub full of icy water. Rick shook himself, entered, and went to the coffeemaker. Occam offered Rick a cup of coffee and the boss accepted a mug from him, both guys dipping their heads in that peculiarly male manner of greeting. As if nothing had happened and they were just starting their day.

  I blinked, unchambered the round, reset the mag, safetied, and holstered the gun. Because that was what I was supposed to do. But my insides were churning. Fear trickled through my arms and legs and out my boot soles into the floor. I thought to take a breath, and my ribs felt creaky with the motion. I was shaking slightly.

  Tandy entered the break room, his ten-mil held at his side, and took a chair beside me. “On the nine days of the full moon,” he said softly, “they get antsy. Soon as they do, we start the music playing. Twenty-four-seven. Understand?” Tandy holstered his weapon, no expression on his face.

  I said, “Trust me. I will not forget. Ever. I’m guessing there’s drives with the music on them?”

  He placed two in my hand. “One for your cell. Sync it to everything electronic you have. Keep a backup at your house. On the full moon, you keep the music handy and play it continuously.”

  “Okay. I just got one question. Why didn’t Pea do something?”

  “Pea?” Tandy, swiveled his head, taking in the entire room, seeing Pea back on Occam’s shoulder. His mouth opened slowly and he breathed, “Oh . . . Nell . . .”

  “What?”

  Before he answered my question, his cell buzzed, and Tandy left the room, his phone to his ear. When I had first known Tandy, he had been this quiet, unassuming, introverted man. Not a man I would think would ever own, much less hold, a gun. Not a man I might consider capable of protecting himself. Not a man I associated with violence, except on the receiving end of it.

  I had helped him when we first met, sending him some small bit of strength and power to resist the emotional impressions of the others. Had I sent him more than I knew? Had T. Laine’s spells given him access to more assertive, violent personality traits? Had he picked up the aggression from the werecats? Or had Tandy always been more than I knew?

  Before I could figure out how to address a batch of interlocking situations all at once, the others filed in, sleepy and begging coffee, T. Laine tossing a box of Krispy Kremes on the table. Everyone dug in. Pea jumped to the table and accepted a thimble-sized lump of sugared dough from JoJo. She sat up like a cat on the table and took it in her hands, which had opposable thumbs. I hadn’t noticed that until now. Pea nibbled on the donut, her cat eyes watching me, as if entertained.

  I stared at the wall, trying to figure out what had just happened.

  “Nell?” Rick asked. “Did you ever figure out what the yellow glow in the center of the circle and triangle was?” He swiveled his laptop to me, with the report I had e-mailed last night after I gave myself hypothermia during all my scans.

  I said, “I think it’s the location of the activity that resulted in the MED.”

  “Can you pinpoint its GPS?” he asked.

  “Not like you mean. Not with an address. Just a general location. I already looked. The yellow glow could be any of several businesses in the center of the circle.”

  Rick frowned and said, “A typical MED is a postulated weapon,” he reminded his sleepy crew, “a magical exposure device, a black-magic curse, capable of an active or passive working intended to spread violent, offensive, magical energies over a wide area. Contamination of the populace by a dark-magical weapon for terrorist/political aims. We’ve considered the possibility of an MED from the get-go, but until we had some evidence for that unsupported theory—physical, material, human, or paranormal—I had no reason to send the hypothesis up the chain of command. After the things we’ve seen over the last few days, we now have to consider the clear and present danger of an MED. And worse, we may be facing something out of control of the witch or coven who created the working in the first place.”

  “Out of control?” T. Laine asked.

  Rick nodded, his eyes on her. “Something that was and/or is acting independently of its creator.”

  I sat up. “The infinity loop dancer. Is it acting according to a prearranged, integrated part of the original working, or is it developing its own agenda?”

  TEN

  Rick looked at me the way a bug lover looked at a strange beetle held down by stickpins. “I’ve spent the better part of the night online with PsyLED experts in witch workings, arcenciel paranormal energies, and a theoretical physicist from MIT,” Rick said. “I don’t pretend to understand half of what they were talking about, but they narrowed down the problem with magic—as we currently understand it—being used in such a way that the working itself might become stable even after the initial working is completed and the formation energies are used up. Normally whatever energies remain after a working just blow back into the universe, the way a shock wave eventually disperses into the air. But according to the physicists, there is some theoretical possibility that may not always happen, and the energies might remain available, on-site, for other uses. Or take on stability and keep going even after the witch thinks she’s closed it down. They postulated mechanisms by which paranormal energies—which they are still calling psysitopes but may alter or add to at any time, because they’re scientists and classifications are always changing—can be transformed to become stable. And all of the mechanisms can be accomplished deliberately or by accident.”

  The others started taking notes. I took a slow, painful breath, fighting a bad feeling in my middle at Rick’s words, thinking about my land. Thinking about the dancing infinity loop. Thinking about Soul and the energies I saw her become. A dragon made of light. Thinking about my blood, which might create or hold a trace of psysitopic activity when I commune with the earth. Or when I have roots buried inside me. Like at the pond. Thinking that all these things were disparate, but also interlocking because magic was nothing but energy, and energy was interlocking. E=MC2.

  I placed one hand on the break-room table, the other still on my middle where I could easily feel the rooty scars, adding my own thought at the top of Rick’s list of possibilities. I might have created a magical something-something when I made roots grow inside, forcing a tree that had once been a live oak to heal me. Because I had to be responsible for that. Me. Not the tree. I might not have wanted to accept that possibility, might have hidden it from my conscious mind, but the knowledge that I had done that had always been there. And if I had done one such thing unconsciously, then something similar, or even vastly different, could happen in other ways and places. So, did someone somewhere accidentally release a magical working that caused the effects all around Knoxville, do it and not know they had done so, or did someone somewhere do it on purpose? Either way, what was the infinity loop now?
>
  Around me the moon music swelled, high notes combined with deep, dire low notes of the compositions that kept the werecats from reacting to the moon so much. Music that Rick had provided to PsyLED, so long as no one knew where it came from and so long as PsyLED didn’t try to find the air-magic composer. I’d studied that at Spook School too. So much I had learned and was now putting into use in the real world.

  “Nell? Where y’at?” Rick asked in the slang of New Orleans. He didn’t use it often, but when he did, the odd phrases were comforting on some level. And he might use them more, the closer we got to the full moon.

  There was a proper response to the colloquial saying; it swam up from the deeps of my brain. “What it is?” I said slowly, and Rick’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “I’m . . . putting it all together. You’uns go on. I’m listening.”

  “A’ight,” Rick said.

  A’ight, not copy or okay. That was odd.

  “Idea number one,” he said, “is for a working to be so powerful that when a coven is finished with it, the energies don’t dissipate. Two is for a nascent magical consciousness to be stimulated by a low leak of mundane nuclear energy and evolve its intellect in the vicinity of the leak. Since none of the sites is located near a currently active energy plant, that idea is on hold.