Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  “Three is for a creature made of energy, like an arcenciel, to accidentally stimulate and feed the working, giving dispersing working energies the time to stabilize. PsyLED says that there are no such creatures living in the Appalachians at this time.”

  I raised my gaze to Rick, let a tiny smile onto my mouth, and raised my eyebrows, saying with my expression, One visiting. Does that count? He stared back, not reacting to the meaning in my eyes, almost as if he had no idea what I meant. I had a feeling that Rick was a good actor, or a good liar.

  Thomas Jefferson had said, “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.” Rick LaFleur had learned to lie well and young when he went undercover in New Orleans, and now it was simply part of him. I was pretty sure I didn’t like that about him, not that I would ever tell him that to his face. My mama had raised me with manners. Mostly.

  “Idea four,” he said, turning from my knowing look, “is for the energies of a magical working, in the form of psysitopes, to touch a living creature, perhaps one with nascent magical powers. Perhaps one in the earth. And the . . . let’s call it a nascent magical being . . . then evolves a way to perpetuate that energy.”

  Nascent magical beings, I thought. Yes.

  “Number five is for a working witch circle to knowingly and deliberately send psysitopic energies into the earth, creating a stable working or stimulating a nascent magical energy intelligence or creature to evolve and stabilize the working. That would be an MED.

  “And number five is for a working to track, trap, and release a, so far, theoretical nascent magical energy intelligence or creature and, deliberately or accidentally, stimulate it, to take over the working.”

  “Like shooting a ground squirrel full of magical power and seeing what it might do?” T. Laine asked. Rick gave her a half nod. “Which one do your specialists think we’re looking for?”

  “They suggest we search for number two and number three.” Rick glanced at me and walked to the coffeepot, pouring himself the last cup in the pot. He put on a fresh pot. The others were busy typing up notes and working to make sense of new ideas. But the ideas weren’t new to me. Not really. It felt as if the words were simply expressing what I guessed or knew about life and living and energy and magic, what I had known from the beginning when I first fed Soulwood. More, as if the words hinted at even more understanding, and solutions to my own problems, as well as the problems in Knoxville.

  “Number three or number four,” I said, my voice quiet. And now I lied, by omission, because there had been two evolution events in the area in the last few months. One was the interconnected one, on my land, involving Brother Ephraim, the sapling behind the house, and the tree in the churchyard. The other I could talk about. “I don’t know how many of you read my report, but there are presences deep in the earth. I didn’t know what they were. So I made a few early-morning phone calls to some people who know these hills and the mythos surrounding them.”

  Rick’s shoulders hunched and he went still as a hunting cat, the coffeepot in one hand, mug in the other. To him, I said, “You need to call your experts back and tell them about the Old Ones. And they need to understand that they are very, very old, and very, very, very dangerous. They are not to be touched or stimulated or . . . or anything. At all.”

  Rick set down the pot and his mug and pulled his cell. He made a note, not asking who I had talked to. I figured he knew, so I didn’t offer, but it would be in my report. What wouldn’t be in the report was the fact that I had told Jane Yellowrock everything about the situation up here, even the classified things that no one was supposed to talk about outside of PsyLED. I had only met Jane twice, but she had a good head on her shoulders and knew a lot about paranormal things and creatures. And she was trustworthy with secrets, maybe because she carried her own.

  Thomas Jefferson’s quote about lying becoming habitual seemed like a mighty truth, and I was clearly racing down that particular road to hell myself. But keeping secrets meant lies, and my job meant keeping secrets. I was trapped in a catch-22 from which there was no escape except back into the life I had lived before. Alone. Or full speed ahead into the life of a liar, with people I liked. There wasn’t much contest. At all.

  “Old Ones?” Rick asked.

  “Old Ones are the name given to . . . let’s call them magical intelligences buried deeply in the earth. They live in all sorts of places, from deserts to oceans, but they are most accessible along mountain ranges.”

  “Old Ones,” Tandy said, snapping his fingers as if understanding. “The concept that giant snakes live beneath the earth and when they move that’s when we get earthquakes.”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “Some ancient peoples did have a belief system about snakes and earthquakes, but the Cherokee have the concept that the Old Ones are . . . more along the lines of ancient gods, or ancient creation spirits. Jane Yellowrock said it might have something to do with the Hebrew concept of a plural godhead, so that when creation took place it was ‘In the beginning, God . . .’ and the ancient word for God was Elohim, which was plural. And then ‘Let us make man in our own image.’ Again plural. And some of the elder Cherokee seem to think that the Old Ones were part of God that was left behind in the earth and that to disturb them will bring about the end of the world. According to Jane, there are other Tribal American explanations and myths for the Old Ones, but . . . they are real. I felt them.”

  “How likely is it that this MED is related to the Old Ones?” Rick asked.

  “I . . . It could be. I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Until we know, we’ll continue this investigation as if we are looking for someone or something that deliberately or accidentally caused this working. And try to stop them. And stop the working. Those three things are primary. Find the perpetrator, stop her, and stop the working. Bringing charges has to take a backseat to stopping it. Understand?”

  We all nodded and no one commented on the female pronoun. Fewer than one percent of witches were male. And with the woman’s voice in the earth, our unknown witch was a female. Rick continued. “JoJo has been working to narrow down the companies that might be capable of an MED. Nell started with six companies. JoJo ended up with three. Jo?”

  “Nell started with a couple dozen companies and narrowed it to Alocam, Inc., LuseCo Visions, C-Corp Development, Kamines Future Products, and two ‘black companies’ who operate within the Paranormal Congressional Oversight Committee, with congressional funds and approval, Rosco J. Moose, Inc., and San-Inc. I ruled out Rosco and San-Inc, two companies under the same ownership umbrella, a single family, both companies working on propulsion devices and R&D for space travel. Neither has interest in psysitopes.” JoJo turned her tablet around so we could see. “Then I used Nell’s center of the magical circle idea and ruled out two others, leaving us with LuseCo Visions and Kamines Future Products. I put in a few calls up the line and word came back down to visit both, that both companies have witches on payroll or as consultants and both are interested in new energy sources, especially self-perpetuating ones. LuseCo is working on some kind of self-perpetuating energy source, and Kamines is working on something called Strom. Not Storm. Strom. No information available on either research project.”

  “Nell, can you tell us what to look for?” Rick asked.

  “Lainie,” I said, using the diminutive of her name, “what do you see when you do a working?”

  “Not much. Colors sometimes. Spots of light moving.” She sounded surprised at the question. “Well, unless a visual display is part of the working. They didn’t teach you that at Spook School?”

  “They did, but it isn’t true. Jane Yellowrock can see magics. All of the visual and n
on-human-visual range. She can actually see them working.” Rick’s breath hitched slightly before smoothing. “Her animal forms can too, which means some animals can see magical energies, normally, just like the werecats can see bodily fluids in the dark, normally, but we can’t. And I can see magical energies, at least underground.” I frowned. “Could you do something magical, right now, so I can watch?”

  “What? Set off a prepared spell? Sure.” She tilted her coffee cup and let a few drops splash onto the tabletop, then pulled a carved moonstone disc about the size and shape of a quarter from a pocket and spun it across the table. The coffee disappeared. She snapped up the disc.

  I saw nothing. No colored lights, no shadows, nothing, not even the coffee, which disappeared, leaving only a mist hanging above the table. I tuned them out, half hearing them as I thought about what I saw underground when I communed with the land.

  “That, you pitiful, mundane people,” T. Laine said as I thought, “was a little cleanup evaporate and conceal spell that I keep handy for when I spill coffee on myself. And before you ask, it’s hard to make, time-consuming, and no, I will not make one for you. The only reason I used it now is that it was getting weak and needed to be recharged anyway.”

  “Getting weak,” I said. “The energies dissipate?”

  “Totally. Always. A self-perpetuating form of magic, outside of a magical being like an arcenciel, is an impossibility, just like human life without food and water is an impossibility. The people researching it are wasting man-hours and money.”

  “Hmmm,” I murmured.

  “Is there a conceal working for blood?” Rick asked, his tone mild.

  “Yeah. Ditto on the not making you one.”

  “Maybe you need to make some reveal workings. Just in case someone has access to a blood-hiding spell,” he said.

  “I can, but there’s no need,” T. Laine said. “You got cat noses. No matter what we do, witches can’t get rid of the lingering scents. The table here?” She pointed. “Still smells of coffee. People may not be able to smell it, but cats can.”

  “Back on track,” Rick said. “Jo, we have LuseCo Visions and Kamines Future Products. What do we know about them?”

  “Not much. Both are privately held companies. They do energy research and they are not tied in with TVA, so we can’t ask the authority to just go busting in and demand info.”

  “Everything about energy in Tennessee is tied in with the Tennessee Valley Authority,” Rick said.

  “Nope. Not these companies. And they got security up the ying-yang.”

  “Ying-yang?” I asked. “Not yin-yang?”

  JoJo did a little back-and-forth head-swivel thing that I could never duplicate in a million years, and said, “Two very different things. Yin-yang is that black-and-white circular thing in Chinese philosophy that means male and female and light and shadow and all that.”

  Tandy said, “Actually yin-yang is an Asian concept that describes how opposite or contrary forces can also be complementary and interconnected.”

  “Now shut up, you human candy cane. I got the floor.”

  Human candy cane? Tandy did have white skin and very red Lichtenberg lightning lines sketched across his body, but that term sounded awfully pejorative to me. Except that Tandy blushed. I looked from him to JoJo and back, and I suddenly realized that Tandy and JoJo had a . . . a thing. They were involved . . . romantically.

  My own blush went scarlet. Wow. That went against all the rules. If anyone figured it out. Except that there was Rick and Paka . . . and everyone knew about that. Maybe Unit Eighteen—which was special among all the PsyLED units because we were composed almost entirely of paranormals—had different rules, rules no one had told me. I had started off without the mandatory policy and guidelines meeting. I hadn’t even thought about that until now. Maybe rules for strictly human units didn’t apply to a unit made up mostly of paranormal creatures. I shook my head and listened to JoJo who was into a diatribe.

  “—ying-yang is a hip-hop duo. And it’s also the street term for a vagina.”

  I wished I had not tuned back in so quickly.

  “So, up the ying-yang make sense to you yet?” She was talking to me.

  “Sadly yes,” I said. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. “A great deal makes sense now.”

  JoJo flinched the tiniest bit and I smiled in a way that mighta been a tad mean. I decided I needed to get this meeting back on track. I said, “I can see the energies of the working that’s affecting all the sites. I thought everyone could. But I guess it’s just me.”

  Rick said, “I thought you were using hyperbolic, metaphorical terms in your reports.”

  “No. I see the underground energies. I didn’t see the energies of T. Laine’s tabletop working, but I see the stuff underground. Even T. Laine’s Break working. Even the Old Ones. So I need to double-check the readings at one of the sites and then do a deep scan on the land on both companies’ sites. And even maybe look at the hospital patients to see what I can see there. Today.”

  “Is that safe?” Occam asked.

  I scowled at him. “You wouldn’t ask that of him.” I pointed to Tandy. “Or of them.” I pointed to JoJo and T. Laine. “No. It probably isn’t safe. But I need to do it anyway.”

  “Fine. I’ll be with you, Nell, sugar, supporting you all the way.” But his tone said he was thinking about ways to make me change my mind.

  Rick looked at Occam, then at me. His face softened in an emotion that I didn’t understand. “You two”—he pointed at Occam and me—“go. Read some land. And make nice while you’re gone. No arguing this close to the full moon. T. Laine, you go referee. And while you’re out there, see what magic is doing and try to figure out how to Break this working.”

  “The leader of the Knoxville coven, Taryn Lee Faust, finally agreed to meet with me,” T. Laine said. “Me alone. I’ll be breaking off from the others for a while.”

  “Be safe,” he ordered. “Keep your cells on. Carry a GPS backup and a stack of 3PE unis. They’re in the supply closet outside my office. You two”—Rick pointed at JoJo and Tandy—“get the paperwork started on warrants for both businesses. I want this sitch solved by nightfall. Figure this out, people. Before more humans die.”

  “And if it isn’t solved by nightfall?” JoJo asked, her tone steady and uninflected.

  “And if it isn’t, you’re senior agent. You’re in charge, JoJo, just like always.”

  They were talking about the full moon. It was nearly here.

  * * *

  Antimoon music playing on the fancy sound system, Occam drove his sporty little car. T. Laine, who had to break away at some point for her witchy meeting, followed. She called my cell when we were partway there and offered some advice about how to do a scan without attracting the attention of the things below the surface. It was good advice, and I cogitated on ways to implement her suggestions.

  The day had warmed again, proving the old Southern saying, You don’t like the weather? Wait’ll tomorrow. Southern weather seldom lasted more than a few days before shifting into a totally different pattern. An ice storm, followed by clear skies and seventy-degree temps. An abnormally warm fall, followed by a freezing spell with an early snow.

  As if reading my mind about the variability of the temperatures, or making small talk, Occam said, “I thought when I moved up here”—his long legs worked the pedals and the little car made good time, weaving in and out of traffic—“I’d get snow and sledding and skiing.”

  I looked back and saw that T. Laine was a long way behind us. “You ski?” I asked, my mind occupied elsewhere, less than half on the conversation. I pulled out my tablet and opened a new topographical satellite map of the area.

  “Not yet. I was hoping to learn. Can’t be harder than riding a horse. You ski?”

  “Snow, like a horse, has a mind of its own. Churchwome
n don’t ski, so I never learned. And I never saw the point after I left. You want to ski, you can head east, into the mountains.” On the tablet, I studied the rows of hills west of Knoxville, curving like a fishhook, row after row.

  “You offering to show me the way, Nell, sugar?”

  “What? Oh.” I pointed to the GPS. “You won’t get lost.” I twisted in the seat to face him and asked, “You ever hear of the Old Ones?”

  “I guess that’s a no,” he muttered. Louder he said, “Nope. Native American tribes out west got all sorts of legends and myths to explain the world around them. I figure the eastern tribes got much the same.

  “You do know that Rick is still hung up on Jane Yellowrock.” I nodded and Occam finished with, “It’s a very catlike thing you do, Nell, sugar, to keep bringing her up.”

  I made a hmmm sound and slid back into place, my fingers tapping on the tablet. Occam fell silent. Or I blocked him out, thinking. Until the small car pulled off the road and around the crime scene tape, into the entrance of a two-rut road. We were at the pond. I tapped the tablet to sleep and set it in my bag. “Are . . .” My voice sounded reedy and thin, all of a sudden. I cleared it and said, “Are the bodies all gone?”

  “Yes. They are, Nell, sugar.”

  “Okay. That’s good.” The car rolled slowly around the curve. The turn around the trees opened out and the pond appeared. No cars, no fire pits, no tents, no bodies. I blew out a breath. The grassy area around the small body of water was still churned up. The few snowflakes had wet the ground and the tracks, leaving them damp and softly contoured. The pond itself looked tranquil. When the car stopped at a safe one hundred feet from the pond, we got out and put on unis. Carrying my faded pink communing blanket, I picked out a patch of thick grass in sight of the water and the tree where the camera had been. I sat on the folded blanket, peeled back one inelastic glove, and held my palm gently, carefully, about six inches above the ground. And closed my eyes.