Spells for the Dead

by Faith Hunter

  Mud hollered a woot from the kitchen. Instantly the tension vanished from the house. I kicked off my shoes and placed my socked feet flat on the floor. The old floorboards had been cut from Soulwood land and they knew me, as well as dead wood can know anything.

  “Not fair. Two against one,” I said, faking a sigh but feeling quietly happy. When Mud reentered carrying the slow cooker, I got up and went to the kitchen to help. “Okay. Fine on the chickens. We’ll need to ask Sam about building a henhouse. Mud suggested setting chicken-wire runs through the garden and the greenhouse and letting ’em run free every day to chase pests and to keep the hens free-range.” I got salad fixin’s from the refrigerator. “Mud, see if the mamas will sell us six laying hens in exchange for future eggs, and let us borrow a rooster. We can have chicks inside of a month, and triple our hens.” The mamas would likely just give us the hens and the chicks too, but it was always polite to offer payment and have a plan.

  “Will do,” Mud said, sounding like a normal twelve-year-old kid. “I’m’a ask for Easter Eggers and Isbars, so we can sell ’em for more.” Easter Eggers and Isbars produced varicolored eggs: white, green, blue, yellowish, speckled, rust, and a dozen shades of brown. The townies loved them. “They sell good from the get-go,” Mud said, rearranging the slow cooker on the countertop and getting out bowls. “I figger we need at least twenty laying hens to make steady money selling the eggs.”

  My heart dropped. Twenty hens?

  “Selling chicks is another way to make money. I’m right fond of Barred Plymouth Rocks, Red Wyandottes, and Red Orpingtons,” Esther said, naming hardy kinds of chickens.

  “Them’s all brown and white eggs. Of course, we’uns could order us some fertile emu eggs,” Mud said with a sly smile.

  “Emus are dangerous,” Esther said. “No emus.”

  “Fine. How ’bout some Dampierres and Deathlayers,” Mud suggested, referring to totally black chickens that laid black eggs. “We could hand raise ’em, breed, and then sell fertile eggs for big bucks.”

  “We could call the business the Nicholson Sisters Organic Eggs and Specialty Hens,” Esther said.

  We? I almost asked how Esther got in on the eggs deal, but my sisters were chatting back and forth about chicken varieties, pleasant with each other for the first time in weeks. In the interests of peace and financial security, I said, “Not now for specialty chickens. Spending fifty bucks for a fertile egg or a hatched chick is a gamble for the future.” I ladled stew and set the bowls on the table, thinking, gamble for the future. My future and my sisters’ futures were major gambles. For starters, it was time for my pregnant sister to grow up. And to be protected. She would have to do the former on her own, but I could help with the latter.

  After dinner, I called Daddy and put a toe into the water with a long discussion about counseling sessions for Jed and Esther, and who he should petition for the counseling. Daddy didn’t like it. He was reluctant to drag Jedidiah and Esther before the church elders’ court, since Jed had already demanded divorce and Esther had leaves. I didn’t push it. Not yet.

  Then I mentioned requesting back her dowry and Daddy went dead silent. Quietly he said, “Tradition is a strong thing in a church life. Asking for a dowry to be returned is a mighty rare occurrence. There might be . . . repercussions.”

  “I imagine so.” I finished the call with the words, “Thank you. I just wanted to know our options, which include fighting this divorce tooth and nail. Or getting back Esther’s dowry. Options are good things. ’Night, Daddy.” Touching the cell’s face, I ended the call.

  I was thinking like a townie woman, modern and self-sufficient and sneaky. And it was about dang time.

  * * *

  * * *

  Sunday morning meant a leaf-scaping for Esther and me, and a drive to the church for devotionals and church services under the protection of the Nicholson patriarch. It was dawn, and my legally adjudicated custody requirements meant Mud attended church on Sundays. I attended with her, except when I had a case. The Stella Mae Ragel case meant a quick escape. I dropped my sisters off at the Nicholson house and drove away fast, before Daddy could call me in and talk some more about the brewing Esther-war.

  On the way from church to HQ, JoJo texted me that Catriona had been officially charged with murder. I might have cussed just a bit, but when she sent an order to detour to the University of Tennessee Medical Center, that cut my reaction short. Her text informed me that everyone, including Tandy, was in Cookeville interviewing the dozens of people involved in Stella Mae’s life. FireWind was deeply involved in trying to stop the FBI SAC’s witch hunt, while simultaneously using his position to get her daughter turned over to Etain, the child’s aunt. This was my solo mission. Except for Tandy, who hadn’t been his best self, no one from PsyLED had been there yet.

  I had been to UTMC before to interview patients and it was never fun. I wouldn’t have minded had Jo sent someone else. Except there was no one else.

  The University of Tennessee proper was on one side of the Tennessee River and the medical part was on the other. It was a sprawling hospital, with insufficient special parking for law enforcement, but it was Sunday, with few scheduled procedures and surgeries, and it was early enough that the church folk were still in church, so my trek to the paranormal unit wasn’t too onerous. As I entered the para unit, I passed by the portable null room trailer, which was parked at a side entrance with caution cones all around. It looked empty, though with no windows, who knew?

  In the paranormal unit, I showed my ID at the nurses’ station and asked to talk with whichever paranormal hospitalist was on duty. The doctor was busy, so I dressed out according to instructions and meandered down the hall until I found the first patient, Stella Mae’s drummer, Thomas Langer. Thomas was the man in the ambulance who had waved at me a little less than forty-eight hours ago. It seemed a lot longer. He was a heavily tattooed, bearded black man with dreadlocks. I loved dreadlocks. Normally they looked alive and vibrant, but not so much now. Thomas was on life support, a ventilator whooshing and ticking. His hands were bandaged and wrapped with sticky wrap so that I could only see the tips of his middle fingers, but they were green, and the gauze bandages were wet with greenish fluid.

  I texted T. Laine, asking if null pens could be brought to the para unit of UTMC. If there was any chance to help the patients, we should take it.

  She texted back, On it. Will messenger them over.

  I tapped on the glass door and was let in by a woman dressed the way I was, in a sky blue paranormal biohazard gown, gloves, mask, and booties.

  I identified myself. She said, “Robinelle Langer, Thomas’ sister.” Her dark eyes looked exhausted above the blue mask, her dark skin salt-cracked and rough from tears. “Have you people figured out anything? What caused this? Who did it? Any way to treat it? Anything?”

  “We’re working as fast as we can. I promise.” I looked at Thomas’ bandaged hands. There was a little blood there too, and the stench was familiar from Stella’s house.

  “They say he’s in cascading organ failure,” Robinelle said. Tears leaked from her eyes and she sniffed beneath the mask. “Nothing’s working. He’s dying.”

  I had no idea what to say. There was no way to question Thomas.

  “He had such a great time on the tour,” Robinelle said as the ventilator punctuated the quiet. “He was on top of the world. Stella Mae was like family. We all loved her.”

  “How long had Thomas been with the band?” I asked carefully.

  “Since the very beginning. He started out with Stella back in the commune.”

  I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I guessed, and her tone suggested that I should have understood her words. I pushed on. “Did you communicate with your brother while he was on tour? Text or phone calls?”

  “Constantly. Not that he ever said anything substantive.” She turned to me. “You think th
ere’s something in the texts? I can send them all to you.”

  “I don’t want to abuse your privacy,” I said while my PsyLED half was shouting to see them right now. “But if you don’t mind, yes. There might be something there that would help.”

  “No time like the present,” she said. I followed Robinelle’s lead when she pulled off her gown and gloves, scrubbed her hands at the sink, and motioned me out of the room. Robinelle was pretty, in a spare, bare-boned way, with good bone structure, no makeup, and blond braids up in a big bun with loose hair sticking out all over from the hat and the elastic bands of the mask. She moved like a self-assured, accomplished woman. Nobody’s victim here, even with her brother in such bad shape. I wondered what others saw when they watched me move, victim or not-victim, confident or prey.

  Standing in the hall, she pulled up several months’ worth of texts between her and her brother and forwarded them to JoJo at HQ. When she was done, Robinelle handed me a business card that told me she was a tax attorney. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything? Please?”

  “I’ll tell you anything I can,” I said.

  As an attorney, Robinelle seemed to understand that meant almost nothing, was more platitude than anything real. She made a face that was angry and sad and futile. The beginnings of grief. It wasn’t standard operating procedure to touch people, but I couldn’t help myself. I held out an arm and she moved into me, her face dropping to my shoulder, her arms going around me. We stood there, hugging, long enough that her breathing calmed. She sniffed and stepped back. “Thanks. I needed that.”

  “Me too,” I said. And I realized that I really did.

  The next patient was Connelly Darrow, who played bass guitar and had been among the first to be stricken ill, along with Langer. Just as I got to the door, an alarm went off and I was shoved out of the way as medical personnel dressed out and rushed in, and family was pushed into the hallway with me. I stood there with her weeping family as the team drew the drapes around the bed and tried to help their patient. Tried to save her. In shadows against the drapes, we watched as the medical team compressed her chest. Ventilated her. Drew blood, gave meds. As people rushed in and out. The curtain caught on the ventilator and we gathered at the corner of the glass doorway, watching.

  Connelly’s right big toe fell off and splatted onto the floor in a spray of greenish goo. Someone picked up the toe and closed the curtain.

  From behind the curtain I heard the words, “We have a pulse.”

  Her family wept silently, holding on to the hope of a heartbeat. I couldn’t make myself stay any longer.

  I passed Robinelle Langer, standing at the closed glass door inside her brother’s room, dressed in hospital blue, her eyes on the family in the hallway. There was an expression of horror in her eyes and she met mine, hers pleading.

  A coward, I looked away. There would be no questioning Connelly or her family right now, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak to the others who had been admitted. Their families were standing like Robinelle, watching the shadows on the glass wall. I left the paranormal unit.

  Stopping a security guard in the hallway, I asked directions to the medical university’s pathology department and got into my car, following the hastily scripted directions. I parked and found the weekend pathologist just leaving. I identified myself and said, “I hate to bother you, but—”

  “Then don’t,” she said, sounding tired and taciturn. Her name tag identified her as Dr. Gomez, her accent placed her as a Tennessee native, and her expression said she had worked a long shift and was mighty unhappy. She was a take-charge, no-nonsense woman with very dark copper skin tones and a curly Afro that sprang around her face when she released it from a clip. “You can walk out with me. But I can’t talk to you. HIPAA laws make all patient matters confidential.”

  She might not have meant it to hit me the way it did, but anger shot all through me. “Murder investigations precede HIPAA,” I said, “especially since a subpoena was delivered to your department at seven a.m. While I appreciate you being in a hurry and your desire to protect patients, you can talk to me now or I can have a marked car show up at your home and bring you in to PsyLED for a more formal discussion.”

  Gomez stopped and swiveled to me. “I don’t like being threatened.”

  I blew out a breath as the anger dissipated. I had no idea where my attitude had come from, except from the vision of Connelly Darrow dying and being brought back behind the curtain. “People are dying. I need information,” I said. “Please. Tell me what you know about the body.”

  Gomez frowned. “We received jars of sludge from a crime scene, and I thought it was a joke. Seems it wasn’t. The preliminary reports from the early samples show nothing of substance. So far nothing is growing on the plates or the broth. Today I received four fingers from the paranormal unit from two different patients. They dissolved before I could do more than measure and weigh them. I sent parts of the remains to the clinical lab for chemistries, to mycobacteriology for cultures, and to CDC for virology and infectious disease testing, and my tech worked up what he could in histo.”

  “What is histo?”

  “Histology. He put a few small scraps of flesh into the histology tissue processor. If the tissue survives the dehydration and paraffin processes, it’ll be cut into slices of point five to point one micrometers and mounted on a slide, stained, and read under a microscope. Then I might—might—have an idea what’s killing the patients. Your people say it’s a curse, but even curses have a cause—bacterial, viral, prion-based—something has to cause the tissue breakdown and total organ failure. And heat, bacteria, and moisture are usually responsible for decomposition, regardless of magical energies.”

  I frowned. “Radiation doesn’t involve those things. Magic is energy, just like radiation is energy. And we’ve already speculated that this could be a . . .” I tried to think of a way to say this that might be medically helpful instead of investigatively helpful. I went on. “Call it a nonwitchy time curse, speeding up death and decay rather than causing them, because death and decay happen to all of us.”

  Gomez crossed her arms, her scrubs swishing, her eyes narrow in thought. “Keep talking.”

  “You might not have anything except a magically accelerated natural progression. And because the patients were deprived of early access to a null chamber, which would halt the energies and the progression of the patients’ decomp, then the energies might have taken hold and done their damage. Once the patients did get access to a null unit, it could have been too little, too late. All the affected people at the farm were put inside a null chamber and they got better. Accelerated decomposition of inanimate objects stopped. We might have . . .” My words ground to a halt. “PsyLED should have pushed use of the null room at HQ harder.”

  The anger on Gomez’ face faded. “PsyLED has a null room in Knoxville?”

  I frowned. “Yes. There is a null room at PsyLED here in Knoxville, and parked outside is a portable null chamber on loan to UTMC from the North Nashville coven.”

  I didn’t have to be Tandy to know that Gomez was shocked. She hadn’t known.

  “Both are available,” I said, softer. “PsyLED’s room is a better null space because it’s stable. We offered for UTMC to transport patients there for treatment. That didn’t happen.”

  “You offered that to us? Who did you talk to, because this is the first I’ve heard about it,” she said, redirecting her anger.

  “Yes. We offered. I can find out who took the call at UTMC if necessary. We’ve been feeling our way through this, just like y’all.”

  Gomez cursed and walked toward the doctor parking area.

  Feeling despondent, and knowing that communication had broken down somewhere, somehow, I moved to my vehicle and began to write up my reports. Moments later, JoJo notified me that there had been a death on the paranormal floor and for me to get back to the morgue.<
br />
  NINE

  I was standing at the morgue doors, waiting for the paperwork to be filled out, and for family to grieve. I had been here long enough to find vending machines and eat a package of pretzels and drink a Cheerwine, both of which were wonderful snack foods.

  I finally heard a ding and the elevator doors opened. A stretcher was wheeled off toward me, preceded by the stench of death and decay. The body on the stretcher was zipped into a human remains pouch, a white sheet over the HRP. The transport workers were covered head to toe in blue antispelled unis, their faces hidden behind masks and goggles. I showed my ID and requested to see the body.

  They stopped. One of them pulled back the sheet. The other unzipped the pouch.

  It was what I had expected. Pretty awful. Sometime in the last hour, Connelly had coded again, been pronounced, and been moved off the floor. Her eyes had probably been blue; now they were clouded over. Her lips were gray, pulled back tightly from dry, crusty teeth. A greenish slime drooled from one corner of her lips around a tube that was still in place. Her brown hair was falling out. Her skin was weeping, melting from her bones like candle wax. Her hands and feet were green. I assumed I was expected to touch and read the body to verify the presence and type of the magics in it, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I curled my hands into fists. The experience of fighting death and decay was still too fresh in my memory. My finger still ached, the skin still white and dead looking.

  Before I could talk myself into it, the elevator pinged and opened. Gomez strode out, shouting, “This better be worth—” She halted, cursed, and came on. “Worth my time to come back on my day off,” she said softly. She stopped over Connelly’s body. “Astounding,” she said. “And damn it all to hell.” She looked at me. “You get a judge’s order and you can observe the PM. Otherwise get the hell out.”

  I got.

  And I had the perfect excuse to not touch the body.