by Faith Hunter
“They mowed some.” I pointed to the place where the mower had stopped. It was still in the middle of the lawn. “Maybe cutting it released the slime mold to a new state of . . . whatever this is.”
Tandy followed me single file to the front doors where a 3PE-suited National Guardswoman allowed us entry to the lobby and told us to dispose of our suits that had been outside and put on fresh suits for inside. She was stone faced and not talkative. Just pointed with her weapon to a door. I hoped the safety was well set, and leaned away from the weapon, just in case. “Change in there,” she said. “When you get dressed out, the asshat CEO’s office is down that hallway”—again she pointed with her weapon, but deeper into the building, past a receptionist’s desk where a perky, petite woman sat, the gatekeeper of the VIP kingdom—“to the left. The CFO’s office is on the right, and the COO is at the end, across from the conference room. Daveed Petulengo is on leave in the Alps somewhere, but the CFO is in. Have fun.” Her tone said we wouldn’t.
We entered the changing room, leaving behind the laconic guard. “Tandy?” I asked while we were changing out of dirty suits and into clean ones. These weren’t the ugly white suites with orange stripes PsyLED wore, but slim, trim, silver gray, the fabric coated with something that felt slick beneath my fingers. The gloves were elastic, like built-in nitrile gloves worn at crime scenes, but they felt slicker, and my fingers slid into them easily. “What’s a CEO, CFO, and a COO?”
He didn’t smile, an unexpected strain showing on his face. He turned his back as he pulled the booties on, and answered, grunting a little. “Chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and chief operations officer.”
“Let’s start with the financial one. I have a feeling about the infinity loop dancing in the ground.”
He didn’t reply, and was standing facing away from me, shoulders hunched up slightly.
“Tandy? What’s happening?”
“Someone in this place is . . . sick. In his head. Or her head.”
“Mentally unbalanced?” I had learned in Spook School not to say crazy or insane. The terms were politically incorrect and also not descriptive enough. Proper medical terms had to be used in professional conversations, especially where agents might be overheard or taped. To say psychosis was okay. To say nutso or batty wasn’t.
Tandy shook his head, not in negation, but as if he wasn’t sure how to say what he was picking up on. Then, “Howling. There’s howling. Inside his head. It’s . . . loud. It hurts.”
“Okay. Breathe. And if you need, take my hand.” I reached around him at his elbow and Tandy looked down at my hand. Slowly he slid his into it. And he let a breath go. “Better?”
“Yes. Thank you. So how do you want to handle this?”
“I’ll play bad cop and you read the emotional responses.” Tandy nodded and I said, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
* * *
The receptionist’s desk was empty, so Tandy and I walked past it, down the hallway. We reached the COO’s office, and I opened the door and peeked inside. The office was decorated in leather and browns, and there were animal heads on one wall, rams, big-horned goats, moose, and elk. There were photos with him standing over the kills of three spotted big-cats. The COO was a hunter and wanted people to know that he could kill an animal from a long distance with a big gun. Big whoop. I closed the door and went on to the office marked CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER. We didn’t knock and the woman behind the desk didn’t look up when we entered, so we stopped in the open doorway, Tandy releasing my hand, taking a reading of her. Clearly she wasn’t the source of the crazy vibes he had picked up. She wasn’t howling at the moon or spitting foam like a rabid dog.
The CFO was Makayla Lin, the tall, intimating woman I had met the first time we came here. Her office temperature had been set at a crisp sixty-eight, according to the thermostat at the door, and the bronze, silver, and copper metal décor matched the temps with an icy intensity. There was no other exit door, and the only windows were up high, near the ceiling, about three feet by three feet square. The floors were walnut-stained wood, and the upholstery on the couch and guest chairs were copper-colored cloth.
Makayla was wearing a sleeveless black dress, even in the cold, and her hair was cut scalp short, worn plastered to her head with some sort of solid, hard goop. Silver and copper hoops hung from her ears, a single set, one copper bangle per wrist, and a single copper and gold ring per hand, each ring set with a black stone, as if she had accessorized for the interior design. There was no splashy bling for the CFO. She looked like she might have walked directly from a fashion magazine to the black leather desk chair and sleek laptop. It was bronze too.
I turned on my best God’s Cloud of Glory accent and said, “I’da thought an operations officer woulda been wearing a T-shirt with a tool belt weighing down his jeans to show his butt crack. Instead he’s got dead animals hanging on his walls. And the CFO’s office would be stacked with money around the walls. But here it’s just cold as Hades with an ice queen sitting behind a desk.”
Makayla didn’t even look up from her laptop. She lifted a hand away and pressed a button on a small box beside her and said, “Shonda, call security. We have intruders.”
“Shonda ain’t at her desk,” I said. “And since I’m the cops, maybe you might want to show a little smiley face and cooperation, okay, Makayla?”
She swiveled her head and narrowed her eyes at me. I gave her my best Sunday-dinner grin as I crossed the space to her, holding my ID and badge out for view. “We ain’t been properly introduced as I recall. I’m PsyLED Special Agent Nell Ingram, and this here’s my partner, Special Agent Thom Andrew Dyson.”
Tandy did a little double take at my introduction of him by his full name. It was the first time I’d used it, and I right liked the sound of it. He held out his ID too.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I won’t be shaking your hand.” I put away the badge and ID in a pocket in the front of the gray suit. “See, somebody’s done let loose a magical working for self-perpetuating energy, into the earth. There’s odd growths in the city and a few peculiar deaths and we haven’t ruled out it being contagious. And that spell? We got proof that it come from here.”
Makayla tightened all over in shock. And I knew I had her.
“But then you’un know all about that, right? Being as how LuseCo was the ones who let it loose in the first place? Tandy? How’m I doing?”
“You’re bowling strikes, Nell,” he said, his accent a little more crisp, Seattle, maybe. I wasn’t much good with accents, having never been anywhere or met many people, but there had been a guy from Seattle at Spook School.
“Strikes? Is that like a touchdown, Tandy? I ain’t never been bowling. What’s the name of the wyrd spell, Makayla? And where’s the witches who let it loose?”
Makayla’s slight tell was gone and she reached to pick up her desk phone. I leaned in, putting one hand over it, my weight supported on her desk, only inches from the laptop. Where I could see the screen in my side vision, clear as a bell, even without focusing on it.
“We can talk about this here’n the frigid confines of your office or we’uns can go down to PsyLED HQ and do it with the lawyers and maybe an FBI or CIA VIP present. What’s it gonna be?”
“Is my client under arrest?” a cool voice said from the door.
Makayla closed her laptop with a soft snap. I stood upright and let my happy smile slip away as I faced the man in the very expensive suit, and no uni. There were two men behind him, wearing unis that made them look as though their shoulders were going to pop right out at the slightest movement. Bodybuilders for sure, hired for bulk and given guns.
“A lawyer and two musclemen to back him up,” I said to Tandy. “Are you’un feelin’ intimidated?”
“No, Nell, but I am feeling a great many other things,” Tandy said. Which sounded positive.
“Me too.” I
dug a little lower into the church-speak and addressed the lawyer. “Your’un client here can tell me about a self-perpetuating energy spell or she can tell her lies to the federal prosecutors while she’s wearing a truly tacky orange jumpsuit. There ain’t a lot of laws on the books to control witches, because they’uns tend to control themselves, but there are laws on the books that cover harm to the general population by individuals and corporations. And wrongful death lawsuits, and involvement by the Environmental Protection Agency, and OSHA, and the DOE and DOD, and fines, and all sorts of things that can plague a body and a company into legal and financial ruin.”
The suit said, “LuseCo has nothing to do with the problems seen—”
“We know better, bubba. People have died, thanks to the wyrd curse this company let loose into the ground, maybe combined with a laser, maybe with blood magic. Now, somebody’s gonna talk to me.”
Tandy fought a smile at my words.
“How’s my bad cop?” I asked him.
“Delightful. And she knows all about the spell that got away. But her lawyer doesn’t.”
“Ohhh, bad girl,” I said to her. “Lying to your lawyer.”
The lawyer said, “Miz Lin?”
“I’d like a moment with my lawyer,” she said. “Then we can talk.”
I looked around the room, double-checking that there were no exits, and I nodded.
In the hallway, Tandy said, “Nell. You were . . . unexpected. And brilliant.”
I grinned happily. “I was, wasn’t I? I reckon growing up in the church and watching so many debates between factions and near factions twisted my mind into a semilegal bent. And watching so much TV and movies when I was at Spook School mighta helped with my interrogation techniques.”
Tandy laughed softly. “I think we created a monster.”
“Why, thank you, Tandy. This monster needs to text JoJo to get a warrant for anything related to a working called Infinitio. I saw it on her laptop. And she was also online, inside the TVA. That woman is in this up to her plastered scalp.” I pulled my cell and sent JoJo a quick text.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the well-dressed and calm lawyer appeared in the hallway, where we had staked out a place on an uncomfortable bench-seat couch to prevent exodus by any of the company officials. He stopped in front of us, and Tandy made as if to rise. I thought at him, Sit. He did. Which might be quite scary, when I had time to think about it.
The lawyer said, “It is my client’s understanding that you wish to see and test the lab in the basement. She has agreed to open it to you.” Basement—singular, not plural. She didn’t know I knew about the subbasement.
“And the witches?”
“There have been no contract witches on the premises for over seventy-two hours, at which time they were summarily sacked. My client Ms. Lin, and LuseCo itself, have no idea what the witches were working on beyond their assigned duties, and bear no responsibility for anything said witches might have done while on premises, behind the backs of their supervisors.”
“Blaming the witches. Ain’t that always the way. And yet, speaking of witches, we have a magical working that came from this location, and got free into the environment just like an MED. You ever heard of an MED, Mr. Lawyer Man? Look it up. And just after the MED, them witches were fired,” I purred, “from a job that gave them access to things beyond their ‘assigned duties.’ I don’t believe in coincidence—it goes against most of what I perceive as rational, and LuseCo’s got coincidence piled on coincidence like a stack of coins that’s ripe for spilling over. So I want all contact info and personnel records on the fired employees. If I get them by the time I’m done with my little trek into the two basements, I’ll be happy and leave without ordering up Makayla a pretty orange jumpsuit. Okay, Mr. Lawyer Man?”
The lawyer’s face altered just a bit. More important, my partner sat up straight. “My name is Brad Maxwell. Not Mr. Lawyer Man.”
“Your client is still keeping secrets, Mr. Lawyer Man-well.”
“Maxwell. Brad Maxwell.”
“I want access to both lower basements within the hour, and I’d like to get it without calling Washington, and with LuseCo’s complete and generous assistance. But I’ll start at the first basement. For now.” The lawyer turned and entered the office of the CEO and shut the door quietly. I had a feeling that he was trying to deal with the semithreats and unexpected information I had tossed his way.
I sent a text to JoJo telling her where we were going and led the way to the elevator. Not improbably, there was only one basement button on the elevator’s control panel. That meant the lower basement was a big secret, with a secret elevator or—I put my finger on three key openings on the control panel—a secret keyed access. Interesting. I pushed a button, and the doors closed on the two of us.
FIFTEEN
I waited until we were alone in the first basement hallway to pull the P 2.0. I zeroed it and then read the hallway, which read high on level one—the witch reading.
As I worked, Tandy murmured, “You should have been a lawyer, Nell. That was spectacular.”
“I’ll admit it gave me a peculiar and forceful sense of power. I also admit that this could become addicting. You best promise to slap me down hard if I overstep my bounds.”
Tandy slid me a sideways look and said, “Somehow I think you’ll know when to pull back.”
“Hmmm. Maybe. Maybe not. That was fun. And nothing at all like what a churchwoman would be able to do in similar circumstances.”
Tandy chuckled, sounding entertained and, again, a bit more self-confident than he usually did. I assumed it was because he was picking up on my own emotions. I had to be careful where I might be headed with this new attitude. It was one thing to race headlong down a road to some kinda insolent arrogance, for which I might someday pay a price I hadn’t considered yet. It was another thing entirely to drag Tandy with me.
“Which office first?” I asked him.
Tandy tilted his head a little to the side as if hearing a distant melody. “This one, I think.” He pointed. “I watched T. Laine interview her and she kept secrets. Nothing we could pin down, but secrets nonetheless.” We entered the office of Colleen Shee MacDonald, who looked as Irish or Scottish as her name implied. A blond woman about my age, but with a calm, self-confident worldliness and a sharp intellect in her blue-eyed stare that instantly left me feeling outclassed, outsmarted, and outgunned. “May I be of some help to you?” she asked with a burr of an accent that went along with the name. And in my hands, the psy-meter 2.0 redlined on level one. This was a powerful and capable witch.
LuseCo was keeping secrets. Lots of secrets. Or . . . they didn’t know that they had a witch employed here? Oh . . .
I might not have been told a lie exactly, but I hadn’t been told the truth either. I had to wonder what other partial truths were at work here.
I decided that the chatty hillbilly talk wouldn’t work with Colleen, so I flipped open my ID, stepped forward, introduced myself again, and said, “Tandy? Did Colleen deny she was a witch during your first interview with her?”
“Yes,” Tandy said slowly. “She did.”
“Did she read as a witch on the psy-meter?”
“No. Which means she knows a working that will hide what she is.”
“Interesting,” I said. “You wanna tell me about that working?” I asked her.
The elevator door opened again and Mr. Lawyer Man stepped out.
I started to speak to him when Tandy grabbed my shoulders. Threw me at the floor. I jerked out my hands to catch my fall. Tandy landed on top of me. The floor smashed into me with a whoomp, a vibration like a bass drum, deep and low. Bone shattering.
* * *
It took us over fifteen minutes to sort ourselves out and get some of our hearing back, but we had missed the worst of the blast, thanks to Tandy knowing someone
intended us ill will. It wasn’t the first time the empath had saved us.
By the time we could sit up amidst the debris field, we had security, Makayla, the CEO, whose name I couldn’t remember, and two white-suited military VIPs standing in the small elevator area with us. And by then, Colleen was gone.
T. Laine showed up moments later and was able to tell us that Colleen had set off a small, short-range, locally contained acoustic knockout bomb. The sonic blast had left Tandy and me with terrible headaches, but because we were on the floor when it detonated, that was the extent of our troubles. Mr. Lawyer Man/Brad Maxwell had a headache, busted eardrums with complete but temporary loss of hearing, and the need to spend an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom.
The magical sonic bomb was an evil weapon spell, one that targeted the brains, ears, and bowels of the victims. T. Laine said it was something left over from a vampire war in Europe over a thousand years ago. I could only imagine vampires lined up to use the Dark Ages’ equivalent of a portable toilet to rid themselves of the day’s blood. Or their blood-meals leaning on trees in the woods, so sick there was no way for the vampires to feed.
As my hearing returned, I put myself together, running my hands through my stiff hair until it popped like Rice Krispies, rearranging my clothes, checking my equipment. I picked up the thirty-thousand-dollar psy-meter from the floor. The P 2.0 was broken. While in the hands of the probie. I’d be in trouble once Rick came back from his moon-called crazies.
More important, Tandy had lost (briefly, I hoped) his empathic abilities. He was sitting, a beatific smile on his face, in a corner, totally alone inside his own emotions for the first time in years. He looked like a happy drunk, inebriated on the emotional silence. I asked him—three times—for his P 1.0 and he finally understood what I wanted. He pulled it from his pocket and extended it in my general direction. A very happy drunk.