by Faith Hunter
Rick shielded his eyes from the overhead sun and studied the grounds. “All employees at LuseCo were human until a few months past, when they hired over two dozen witches and got them to form two covens of twelve and sync their energies.” Before T. Laine or I could remind him that was not the way covens were formed, he went on. “Money talked and they got two smaller covens to combine. The witches agreed because there’s a crossing of two ley lines directly beneath us.”
“I don’t feel any ley lines . . .” I stopped and started again. “I don’t feel any ley lines anywhere,” I said. “I didn’t sense them . . . Oh. No. Whatever they did wiped out the ley lines below Knoxville.”
T. Laine said, “That’s what I’ve been feeling. I’d have known it if I had tried any big workings, but . . . And that explains why the Knoxville coven leader, Taryn Lee Faust, keeps putting off meeting with me. She stood up our meeting this morning. Son of a witch on a switch! She knows what’s happened to the ley lines and doesn’t want to admit it.”
Wryly Rick said, “Faust is the leader of the conjoined covens and my money’s on them trying to fix it by themselves, off-site and quietly. They haven’t been in to work in forty-eight hours.”
“That sounds bad,” T. Laine said, worried about the repercussions should witches be responsible for this situation. She was always worried about her species, with good reasons. Witch haters were everywhere.
“The energy testing was going according to plan and expectations with each test,” Rick said, “on workings that attempted to replicate the particle theory research. But then there was an ‘accidental dispersal of the energies’—their words—while raising a working. The testing lab is underground and the witches and the LuseCo techs thought the particles would be simply dispersed into the earth. But there was something different about this working, and by morning, the lab was redlining psysitopes.
“Interpreting their words, reading between the lines, I’d say they shot a fused magical/energy beam into the ground during a working and it didn’t dissolve. Instead it evolved and stabilized and is now acting outside of testing parameters. They never expected to need a P 2.0, so all the testing they’ve done has been on the P 1.0. Lainie, when we finish here, find the head of security and do a reading of the lab.”
“Gladly. Idiots. Them, not you,” she added.
I extended the P 2.0 to her and watched as she entered the front door, merged with the other people in unis, and disappeared down an elevator.
I said, “The infinity loop dancer belowground talked to me. Either it’s using the words of the original spell itself—like Rick’s idea of a working that can develop on its own within strict parameters—or it’s developed and exhibited some form of intelligence.”
“That first one is more likely,” Tandy said, his odd reddish eyes sparking with excitement. “The words of the working got caught up in it and took on a life on their own.”
That theory made sense to them because it fit into their worldview. But I had seen sentience below the earth—sleeping, powerful sentience. I knew it was possible. “Whatever it was before the testing ‘got away’ from the combined coven, that dancing thing is the result, whether it noticed the particle and took it for itself, or the particle brought the thing awake and gave it power. I’m now calling it the infinity creature.”
Rick looked over my shoulder, into the distance, thinking. The term creature changed things from a discovery inquiry to a criminal investigation. It meant that we might have to discover and determine sentience and guilt. His face was drawn and tight, the skin crinkled around his black eyes. Faster-than-normal healing was a standard upgrade for were-creatures, but his inability to shift was aging him. Hurting him. In the background, the moon music played, heard from the dangling earbud.
“Its creation may have been an accident, or something a witch and a LuseCo experimental physicist did on purpose,” I said. “But however it was started, the result is a mutation, an evolution. Whatever it was originally has now changed and, on some level, might be aware of its surroundings, and possibly aware of other things around it.” Like what I had done with the tree. Mutated it. Changed it. “This could indicate just a very high-level working, or a sign of evolving intelligence.”
“Are you suggesting that we protect it?” Rick asked.
I almost nodded but stopped. We killed mosquitoes and termites and roaches and mice as pests, and they had brains and instinct and purpose, far more than this thing might. The infinity might be defined as a pest too. But I didn’t want to let it go. What if it was a magical creature? The churchmen wanted to burn me at the stake for being a magical creature. “Ummm. Yes?”
“And how do we do that, Nell?” Rick sounded interested. Maybe a little too polite, which, with senior agents, meant they were feeling anything except polite. “People, humans, are dying. How am I supposed to protect something only you can sense?”
The roots in my belly writhed. “I . . .” I had no way to explain or to bring attention to what I knew in my gut—literally—to be a potential major problem. “I got no idea,” I said.
Rick shook his head, dismissing me. My face burned with embarrassment. I had a flash to being a child and seeing the older girls turn away in scorn at ball playing or sewing, because I was such a strange little girl. I hadn’t thought about that in ages. My belly ached, and I kneaded the scars there, rolling the hard tissue against my fingers.
I said, “If I know which of the psysitopes is actually redlining, I can do a deeper reading.”
“No,” Occam said, his voice unyielding.
I scowled at him. I hadn’t heard him come up. “I did more than one reading already today, one here while you were inside. I was fine. T. Laine’s methodologies are working great at keeping me from being noticed.”
“No,” he said again, his eyes cat gold.
“Occam,” Rick said. “Earbud. Now.”
The other werecat growled low in his throat but worked the earbud into his left ear.
Rick said, “It isn’t our job to figure out how to deal with the situation on the ground, with the public, with the medical problems, or with media fallout, which is surely coming. KEMA, UTMC, and Soul are here to spearhead that. We have a job. It’s problematic for some of us near the full moon, but the job doesn’t change. Focus. LuseCo’s energy experiment went bad. The result is becoming a massive problem, and it’s our job to make sure nothing falls between the cracks. So figure out how this happened, who at LuseCo is responsible for the damage and the deaths, and who to charge with a crime, if one was committed. That’s it. We have a job, so let’s do it.”
Rick gestured us to follow and walked into the shade, where he removed his tablet from an oversized uni pocket. Even with gloved fingers, he was able to pull up the case map and highlight the locations of the land where the unusual energy readings were taking place.
He said, “We have a nearly perfect triangle. Triangles and circles are the most basic magical maths, pi and circumference and angles, used in every witch working. And they are the most common ones used in a witch circle when one witch is working solo.”
He was giving us Witch Magic 101, which might have been insulting, but I just nodded. Take it back to basics. That was the way problem solving was done in school and in the field.
“The most common geometrical configuration when three witches are sitting is the circle and the triangle. Basic triangles are used to channel rising energies in the buildup for a magical working, to contain them as they escalate. So the question arises—is the triangle being used now, by witches or some other magical being, to some purpose? Is someone or something deliberately keeping it going? If so, who? How? And if we accidentally allow the energies to release during the course of our investigation, what happens? If the person who may be keeping the energies going deliberately lets the energies release, what happens?”
And what happens if we shut off the work
ing and kill a sentient being? But I kept that to myself because I knew the answer. It had hurt humans, therefore it would be put down like a rabid dog. I said, “The area first affected was the pond and the geese, and looking at the other sites, that location becomes magnetic north of the working.”
Rick lay a finger on the tablet screen and made a strange chuffing sound. “So it is.”
“The dancing infinity creature is running on the circle, with those three points maintaining the circle’s stability.”
“Good,” Rick said. “When we’re granted access, we’ll be looking for previously undetected paranormals, hiding as humans. We will also be looking for witches. For anyone who might have brought in a magical item that interfered with the testing, or any signs of blood magic that might have been added to the testing. Blood would have altered any experimental working. JoJo has already started with company employee records, including upgrading existing background checks. This is new research for them, and to this point no company employees have been routinely monitored for magical energies. So I want every single one rescanned with the P 2.0. We have to look for magical beings who are still in the closet, employed here in hiding. Also, consider things like the possibility of an unknown witch involved tangentially with an employee, who used the relationship to somehow influence the experiment. We need to know about secret love affairs, personality changes, changes in lifestyle, finances, or habits. This is Interview 101 with a twist. Tandy, you will be present on every interview, silent, observational only, unless you sense anything out of the ordinary. At that point, you take over.”
Tandy nodded.
“Nell and Occam, your first order of business is to ascertain if these paranormal energies were activated by magic-working terrorists, imported or homegrown. If terrorism is involved, then we have to assume that someone or something will be targeted, and we need to know who and what, fast. I don’t expect you to find anything, but if I’m wrong, contact T. Laine, who will turn over the interviews to Tandy and to me, and join you on the info gathering. Second order of business is to detect if the witch circle was sabotaged, for any reason from a lover’s spat, to financial concerns, to terrorist activity.”
The door opened behind us. Standing there, wearing a gray LuseCo uni with an apricot stripe across it, was Makayla. It conformed to her body far better than our pick-a-size-and-hope-it-fits 3PE unis. “Your unit’s cumulative security clearance is below the projects taking place here,” she said, her eyes still spitting sparks. “However, I have been informed by a very important person at DoD that PsyLED’s access is confirmed. You have permission to talk to the techs involved in what we now agree may have fallen out of the experiment’s paradigm. Not a single tech will stand in your way.”
That was an odd way to phrase it—no tech will stand in our way—but half the team tramped inside, their unis swishing. Occam and I went to the parking lot, removed our unis, and drove away in his vehicle, not speaking to each other, the antimoon music playing on his earbuds, hanging around his neck. It wasn’t precisely the silent treatment, but it wasn’t pleasant either. I figured out what was happening. Occam was acting like an alpha cat, giving me the silent treatment, protecting the probie kitten, not wanting me to do my job. That was not acceptable in any way, shape, or form. I just had to figure out how to tell him that without damaging his cat sensibilities or the unit’s cohesiveness. That had been covered in Spook School too, but only for human teams, not in any way that I had been able to utilize or even make sense of for a paranormal unit.
In the multifamily household where I grew up, the silent treatment was an unsuccessful weapon of choice, because in a home with multiple wives, the husband always won in that game. Someone always talked to him, so the silence of one wife was hard to detect unless she resorted to slamming doors or crying, both of which had always been deemed immature. The silence of the husband was ignored totally as the wives were consumed by child rearing and running a home. I had never spent time in a home with adults, watching them work through problems. I’d left home too early. With Leah dying, there had been no cantankerous discussions between John and Leah. Therefore I wasn’t really sure what adults did to resolve problems. So this was confusing.
The sun was in my eyes and I pulled down the visor to cut the glare. There was a small mirror there, showing me traffic and more traffic behind us, but my eyes settled on a small green car weaving in and out and back and forth, trying to force its way through the crush. I kept my eyes on it rather than look at Occam. I crossed my arms over my chest, thinking. Finally I said, “I could shoot you.”
“What?” There was an alarmed tone in his question.
“I’m not good at playing silly games. You got something to say, say it. Or I could shoot you.”
Occam laughed, a spluttering sound that made me want to laugh with him, but I kept my eyes on the road behind us. “That’s one of the reasons I like you, Nell, sugar. No nonsense.” He slanted his eyes to me and back to the road as he took a right into traffic. “Silver or standard?”
I hid a smile. “Standard. You ain’t worth jail time.”
Occam chortled. “You do know why I don’t want you to do a read, don’tcha, sugar?”
“Tired of dulling your blade on roots?”
He laughed again, his hands visibly relaxing on the wheel. “There is that. But mostly because leaving a woman in bloody pieces is not a way to inspire confidence or to get her to agree to take in a movie.”
I dragged my eyes from the green car to him in confusion. “I like movies.”
His mouth turned down, puckering in thought. “Chick flick or action?”
“There was a Transformers night at Spook School. I liked that. And the Star Trek marathon.”
The green car behind us cut off a driver and passed another, and was suddenly speeding toward us. The windows on both sides came down. Something stuck out the passenger window. “Occam? Are we being followed?”
“See the little green car, do you?”
“And what might be a gun hanging out the passenger window.”
Occam took another turn, a hard left, across traffic, without the use of his blinker. Vehicles swerved to avoid us. Horns blew. Traffic on the four-lane road snarled. The green car behind us fishtailed trying to follow our turn.
We were in trouble.
“Call it in.”
I tightened my seat belt and pulled out my cell. I punched in 911 and, on the car’s computer, I pulled up a map and our GPS location. My heart pounded, my breath came fast and hard, cold as death in my lungs. Hands shaking, I gave the 911 operator our twenty and our situation. I asked for the sheriff’s department and the highway patrol. Then I re-called Rick and put him on speaker as it rang. “Rick, we’re in trouble,” I said as he answered.
The green car was gaining on us, despite the speed of the sportster. To Occam, I said, “Passenger window means they’ll shoot you first and take me down after we crash.”
“What?” Rick demanded.
Occam took a hard right, tires squealing, slinging me back and forth. I grunted, my breath catching. The seat belt strained my ribs on one side and the door bruised me on the other. On the car’s computer screen, the map showed us off into no roads at all. Green screen. And the condition of the street confirmed it. It hadn’t been paved in years. Occam put his foot flat to the floor. The small car’s engine roared. The road vibrated beneath us. Trees and pasture and a trailer park flew by. We passed a rusted truck so fast it was a blur. Rick was shouting. And suddenly I knew where we were. On a street bordering the property where the pond incident took place, coming at it from the other direction. One turn and we would be at the entrance. Why had Occam brought us here? And then I knew. Woods and hills and places to hide. I opened my one-day gobag and got out gear. Shoved it into pockets, telling Rick what was happening.
In the rearview, the green car followed us, far back, spinning out on the
turn, the tires blowing black smoke. Occam cursed, but his eyes were glowing golden. His human half might be unhappy, but his cat was having fun. The full moon. We were close to the full moon. He wanted to be in the woods. We took a hard left and he accelerated on the straightaway, the car clearly built for speed. “Rick,” he growled and tossed his earbuds to the floor. “Nell, sugar. We’ll be running in the woods.”
“Woods?” Rick asked, his voice rising. “Where are you?”
“We’re at the pond,” I shouted to the cell.
Occam took the turn into the two-rut drive hard. The car tilted. Up on two wheels. Bounced back down. The landing hurt. The car made strange sounds. Occam laughed. Tires spat gravel and dust as it fishtailed down the dirt road. The sports car wasn’t made for dirt. We raced past the pond, past the tree where the wildlife camera had been mounted. Occam slung the car around the pond on no road at all, through mud I’m pretty sure we skated over, and into a small space behind the old, kudzu-covered buildings I had seen before. He braked so hard the car spun and bounced on its tires. My teeth clacked, and I bit my tongue.
Occam leaned across me to open my door. He stopped, his hand inches from the handle. “Nell?” he growled. His glowing eyes were latched onto my face. I tasted blood.
I whacked him on the head with my cell. He blinked and jerked away. “I bit my tongue, you damn cat. I am not dinner.”
Occam blinked again and the gold glow in his eyes began to mist away.
I glanced back and got a good look at the pond. It was different. Its surface was black and oily and . . . not just water. Not anymore. Though what it was I didn’t know. In the distance I heard a car coming down the dirt drive. “Out!” I opened my door and slid from the seat belt. “They’ll know we had to stop and they’ll have to get us fast and get out. Rick. Make sure help is on the way!” I wiped my nose and mouth with a wrist and tucked my cell into a pocket, still connected to Rick. I hoped. I pulled my service weapon.