Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  The sonic attack on federal law enforcement officers was exactly what law enforcement needed for all the agencies to walk in and take over. That and the fact that Colleen’s office redlined on the P 1.0. That was the nail in LuseCo’s legal defense. Whether deliberately or by accident, we had been lied to about a threat to the populace, a magical weapon of mass destruction.

  With the absconding of Colleen, Mr. Lawyer Man counseled Makayla (from the bathroom, yelling through the stall walls as his hearing returned) to share a good deal more information with us, and we discovered that, contrary to the account given to the feds earlier, there was a LuseCo employee missing. Aleta Turner, a specialist in particle physics, had dual citizenship in the US and in South Africa, and she hadn’t been to work in three days. Her mother, Wendy Cornwall, and her aunt, Rivera Cornwall, were both among the fired contract witches, powerful witches who could trace their ancestry back to Salem, Massachusetts. Aleta’s father was not in the picture and hadn’t been in twenty years, having traveled back to a tiny South African township and the pub he owned there. Aleta wasn’t a witch. But she had contacts through her mother and aunt. All this was info we should have had access to the minute we started working with LuseCo. The deluge now was more than suspicious, the kind of thing a guilty party might provide to shift attention away from itself.

  I was provided the electronic files on all the fired contract witch employees, which I sent off to JoJo during a quick trip to the surface level, and I got offers to look at the security footage, to search all the offices of the missing people and the lab where they had worked, and nearly obsequious attention from Mr. Lawyer, whose name I couldn’t remember since the explosion.

  Leaving Tandy where he sat in silent bliss, I reentered the busted office where Colleen had disappeared. The walls were scored with cracks and scrapes. The ceiling was pitted. Her work laptop was missing and her personal things were gone. Her desk was covered with dust and debris, and the plastic-and-metal base of her chair was split as if it had been hit with an ax. I moved her desk chair, the wheels squeaky on the tile flooring. It seemed to be otherwise intact and so I sat in it and went through the drawers. All empty. Except the bottom drawer, which had four dead plants in it. They looked like succulents that hadn’t been watered in years: brown, dried husks; leaves lying limp over the sides. But in the soil of each plant, black spots were growing. Slime mold.

  Each slime had a different type of reproductive body fruiting. One had several yellow, vaguely bell-shaped buds. One flower—though I used the term loosely—was black and shaped like a tulip. One was orange and looked like something my cats might leave on the kitchen floor. One was in the midst of crawling—at microspeeds I couldn’t actually focus on—over the lip of the pot and into the bottom of the drawer. It had reached the corner and was spreading up the sides. Perilously close to a tiny micro–thumb drive memory device. I was pretty sure we had both probable cause and a warrant by now and so I took the thumb drive, which was shaped like a jade leaf, a heavy, deep green, like a charm for a bracelet. I dropped it into an evidence bag, added date, time, and my initials to the bag, and started an evidentiary chain of custody form to indicate where I had found the item, what it was, and its evidence number. I left the next line blank, which would be for the person who opened the bag and worked with the microdrive. It would likely be me. I was pretty sure I was going to hate COC forms before the day was out. I tucked the bag into my uni pocket.

  I removed the drawer and spotted Mr. Lawyer Man—Brad Maxwell, that was his name—in the hallway, between bathroom visits. He looked a mite clammy and pale, entering Makayla’s office. I followed before the door could close and offered him the drawer. He took it, looked inside, and blanched even more. To Makayla I said, “You will now give us all the access we need. Are we clear?” I asked.

  “What happened to the accent?” she asked, as the lawyer placed the yucky drawer on top of the desk, moving as if it might explode in his hands.

  I thought about that for a moment before answering truthfully. “I’m done using cute”—and my childhood—“to look harmless. So, again. Are. We. Clear?”

  “Abundantly,” she said, flinging a heated glance at the lawyer as he rushed back to the men’s room. “The security footage is ready. Would you care to view it now?”

  “We would,” T. Laine said from behind me. “And as Special Agent Ingram has just implied, any further hindrance to our investigation will be viewed as accessory after the fact, if not collusion, in what might be considered by the federal prosecutor as homegrown terrorism. Now. Are we clear?”

  “Yes,” Makayla said. “This way.”

  * * *

  The footage was set up in security, and I watched as the hallway camera showed Tandy throwing me down, landing on me, and the debris shooting out. The lawyer falling back against the wall and sliding down to the floor. Colleen walking out of her office and later out the front door.

  At that point, the video, which was all digital, went on the blink as she wrapped a witchy working around herself and walked through the advancing military crew as if they couldn’t see her. And they couldn’t because the spell made them not want to see her. It was called an obfuscation spell, and it worked like a doozy. She was gone.

  I left T. Laine studying the footage, discussing various sections with JoJo at HQ, and walked back to the first basement. Something seemed off, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. So I did what agents were good at. I was very nosy. I looked into the kitchen and the bathrooms and the labs. There was a short-order cook in the kitchen, who kept breakfast foods, coffee, tea, salads, and sandwiches available all the time. I discovered that groceries and other supplies had been delivered to the front door since LuseCo had gone on lockdown. The bathrooms were set up with schedules. There were showers in the labs, also with schedules. There were three coffee lounges and sleeping areas with folding cots.

  As no one had been allowed to leave, the employees had been given cots and had claimed different parts of the building for sleeping in shifts. The employees with no assistance for child care had been given subsidies, and LuseCo had hired a bevy of part-time nannies to care for the children at the employees’ homes. For a company that might be involved in an attack on Knoxville, they were taking really good care of their personnel.

  I found the cot used by Colleen. She hadn’t taken the time to clean out her sleeping area, and it was full of personal belongings—which meant information. There was also a tiny spiral notebook, inside of which was contact info on all the witches in Knoxville, intelligence that was much more comprehensive than that given me by the HR department. I photographed and sent everything to Jo and Lainie, and again, the density of the records took time. Back in Colleen’s office, I did the same thing with the electronic data. And with the info from human resources. To be on the safe side, I also copied it all to a micro–thumb drive, which I hung on my key chain.

  As I worked, I tried to think, but I wasn’t having a lot of luck with that. How did an investigator get a clue when she didn’t know what the instigating incident was? Or who it was aimed at? Or even if there was a deliberate crime, with motive and intent, or just an accident? But someone had shot at Occam and me a while ago, so someone wanted us out of the way. And Colleen had sent a bomb our way. I wandered back up to the main level, thinking.

  While I was pondering the uselessness of my brain, there was a strangled scream close by. It was Shonda, who was standing in the open doorway of the office of the CEO, Kurt Daluege. I wasn’t the first to arrive, but joined a small group to see the CEO, who was standing on his desk, buck naked, facing the outside window, orating about going to space and seeking out the final frontiers for the fatherland. It was all psychotic-sounding gibberish until he said, “Pools and flows and dies in the land.” That was vitally important to the case.

  He shifted his feet to the side, his body following as he turned around in a circle, slowly, slowly, his bare feet
shoving papers and desk equipment to the floor while saying things about energy for all people, mumbling the name Midas, several times, and saying, “All the gold in the land will be mine.” Very strange things.

  I got a good look at Kurt’s naked body, which was blotched with black spots, just like the patients in the hospital. Just like the neighborhood land and the hospital walls and the drawer in the office downstairs.

  Kurt faced the doorway once more and his tone softened as he seemed to focus on our growing group. He held out his hands in a blessing and said, “It was lost to us, but it is ours again. Flows, flows, flows. Pools, pools, pools. Dead. All dead. All dead. Forever . . .”

  I pushed my way inside, wondering what about this job and my life was making me see so much naked male flesh. But that was a discussion with the Almighty, if I decided to talk to him again someday, and with Soulwood—all for later. For now, I read Kurt with the P 1.0 and he was redlining. I called JoJo who sent in the military medics and carted him off, not telling me where they were taking him.

  I rounded on Makayla. “Talk to me. Now. What was being tested. What was Infinitio? And for the love of God, what went on? Or I swear by all that I hold holy, I will place you under arrest and this place will be locked down and under quarantine until the devil builds igloos in hell or the government nukes the place.”

  * * *

  The conference room was well appointed, with padded walls, a carpeted floor, and a table big enough to seat twenty easily. Makayla was sitting in the center of the table, a place she had migrated to without thinking, as if it was her assigned space at meeting time. She sat slumped, resting her weight on her elbows, and stirred the mug of coffee placed at her left by Shonda. I reined in my impatience and waited.

  Eventually Makayla said, “Kurt and I had been working on energy and propulsion research and were making headway on a quantum vacuum plasma thruster. Real headway.” She met my eyes as if to convince me, which instantly left me unconvinced. “But Harold White and his team at the Johnson Space Center beat us to the first US working model. NASA showed interest in their design. We lost our funding.

  “We were on the verge of closing our doors when Kurt’s grandmother died and he came upon some old papers in her attic. When he translated them, they proved to be the research notes of a coven in Germany, circa World War Two, testing a self-perpetuating magical energy device. With a little research, and interviews with the local coven, he discovered that covens all over the world had been testing similar workings before the end of the war, with special success in Britain and the US.”

  “Witches weren’t out of the closet in World War Two,” I said, feeling a little muzzy headed from the blast. I sat across from Makayla and propped myself on my elbows.

  The CFO sat back in her chair. “Long before they came out of the closet, witches all over the world were in contact. Had been for centuries, via private couriers, almost since the concept of writing. The SS in Germany discovered the existence of witches and covens during their early paranormal studies, long before the war even started, and they captured every witch they could find and eventually put them to work, including the powerful Rosencrantz family.” She waved a negligent hand as if it was ancient history and didn’t matter.

  “Following a trail of coded letters, Kurt managed to acquire notes about self-perpetuating energy workings from eight covens from around the world, from the same time period, and he and Daveed Petulengo, our COO, hired Aleta to get us an interview with the local coven leader, Taryn Lee Faust. Together, Kurt and Daveed convinced the local coven to help with our research into a revolutionary energy source. The working is called Infinitio.”

  That was a lot of information to process, but even with my dazed head I got some important things out of it. Kurt had a lot of ancient research papers. A self-perpetuation energy device would totally revolutionize energy as we now understood it. A lot of rich people would lose everything if and when it became available. And a lot of less-rich people would get really rich. All were reasons to help or hinder the research, depending on where people stood on the financial benefit/detriment line. Shonda brought me a cup of herbal tea, something red and aromatic and sugary. I thanked the woman. She was so sweet. They all were. Which seemed odd for just a moment, before that thought slid away as unimportant. I stirred my tea and remembered what I wanted to ask. “How?” I asked. “How did he convince the local coven to help him?”

  “Money. Lots of money that he was able to raise in South America and Europe, using the notes as bait. Initially the money was paid to the coven itself, as if hiring a subcontractor. He provided them a place to work that was totally safe and insulated from the outside world. He offered them shared patents, if they could make Infinitio actually work, and ten percent of the energy company they would form together if they were successful.” She shrugged and giggled. “Money.” Her tone suggested that nothing else had any value.

  I needed to talk to Kurt, but I had let the military cart him off. That was stupid of me. Very stupid. The CEO had started this stuff. The workings had been his idea. Now I needed to figure out why and how. “What happened next?” I asked, not thinking that there would be more, but Makayla was amazingly forthcoming.

  “In the papers from Germany, Kurt found a similar working to Infinitio, a version stronger and more promising than Infinitio alone. The working was called Unendlich. It was supposed to be more than an energy working,” she said, “and we knew that the DOD would jump on it. But we needed the research to show promise fast, and that meant some form of testing that pointed to a possible successful weaponization of the workings, to garner some of the Defense Department’s budget. Those pockets are so deep they have no bottom. Not anywhere.

  “Our team started research and testing on both workings.” She stopped and picked up her coffee mug, cradling it, her long, brown fingers striking against the white glaze of the stoneware.

  “I’m confused,” I said. “I thought you were looking for energy sources, not weapons.”

  Lazily Makayla waved away my statement. “We would never have turned over a weapon to them. We just wanted their money to keep LuseCo going until the research was complete. And as the two workings were similar,” she said, “it was supposed to be a two-pronged research project with two covens meeting on opposite days of the week to keep them from overlapping magically. Then on the new moon last week, there was an . . . incident.”

  “Tell me about the incident,” Tandy said.

  I nearly jerked. I hadn’t heard him come in. But . . . I was feeling very mellow, as if I’d had some of the wine made by Sister Erasmus in the church. Makayla’s expression was placid, as amiable as I felt myself. Which made something inside me sit up and take notice, the mellow sensation beginning to drift apart. “Tandy . . . ?” He didn’t look my way. And I realized that Tandy had learned a new trick . . . or found it after the sonic explosion. He not only could read the emotions of others, he had learned how to alter our emotions to his needs. He had gained his empathy gift after being struck by lightning. Had another bit of likely brain damage caused an alteration in his gift? “Tandy?” I asked again. He lifted his hand at me. The mellow sensation flooded back, though Tandy looked strained and he was sweating. I had never seen the empath sweat before. His skin was pale, the Lichtenberg lines standing out, scarlet on his pallid, ashen skin. I sipped my tea. It was delicious. And I was so glad that Tandy was trustworthy.

  I blinked and frowned. Tandy . . . trustworthy. The mellowness dried up and blew away like chaff in my mind. Tandy was projecting at me. I pushed the last of the equanimity away and narrowed my eyes at him. Tandy was abusing his gift. On Makayla. And me . . .

  Makayla yawned in lazy leisure. “On the night of the new moon, there was an explosion in the second basement lab. It disrupted everything.” She stretched, moving like a dancer, limber and graceful.

  “Where is the key to the second basement elevator?” Tandy ask
ed.

  Makayla pulled a chain out from her cleavage. On the end was a round key. It would fit perfectly into the elevator keyhole I had noticed.

  “You want to give it to me,” Tandy said.

  Makayla held it out to him. Tandy accepted the key and handed it to T. Laine. The PsyLED witch took the key and turned away, but not before I saw her face. T. Laine was troubled. She knew what he had been doing. And she let him. There was a quote about that. George Orwell had said something about power not being a means to an end. He said that power was the end. I stared at Tandy, who ignored me. He looked exhausted, his reddish eyes bloodshot, his fingers, laced on the table, trembling. This—whatever he was doing—was painful. Good. I hoped it hurt so bad he never did it again. I pushed my empty teacup away.

  Tandy said, “Originally, before you hired the witches, how did Kurt find Aleta?”

  “He and Daveed Petulengo and Colleen worked on it for weeks, trying to find someone who could give us access to a coven. Mostly social media research and ancestry and genealogical research sites.” Makayla stretched again, twisting like one of my mousers. “Colleen hit pay dirt. She discovered a promising young physicist at Stanford, Aleta Turner. Her grandmother had been part of a Scottish coven working on a form of Infinitio, outside of Glasgow, in the last two years of World War Two. They were very close to achieving success with it, and only terminated the research when the war ended. The witches disbanded, scattering across various parts of the globe.” A faint smiled crossed Makayla’s face. She picked up her mug again, wrapping long fingers around it. “Aleta’s grandmother had passed on after immigrating, but her mother, Wendy Cornwall, and her aunt Rivera Cornwall had the notes on Infinitio from the war research. Both were practicing witches, here in the States. Aleta accepted a position here, a very lucrative one for a physicist still working on her thesis. Once here, Aleta convinced Wendy and her twin sister, Rivera, to move to Knoxville to work with the local coven on a contract basis.”