by Faith Hunter
“Oh my God. Tommy!” his sister said. Robinelle flew from the chair to his side and burst into tears. So did Thomas.
Ginny said, “We just got his four a.m. labs back. His kidney function improved dramatically overnight. His liver enzymes are improving, and his gases are excellent.” To Thomas, she said, “We’ve turned down your oxygen and your ventilator isn’t doing much at the moment. The unit’s hospitalist, Dr. Pench, plans to try and remove the tubes this morning. But you have been a very sick man, Mr. Langer. You aren’t out of the woods yet. And if you fight the ventilator, that will slow down your progress. I need you to relax, okay?”
Thomas gave a second faint nod and his shoulders relaxed slightly.
Ginny looked back to Robinelle again. “Do you want to tell him about his hands and feet?”
Robinelle closed her eyes tightly but nodded yes. “He’s going to want to see.” Ginny began to unwind his bandages. Robinelle started telling her brother he had lost some fingers and toes.
I slipped out of the room. I didn’t need to intrude on that painful moment, and any interview could take place later.
In the next room, I found Erica Lynn Quinton, who played lead guitar. Or, I should say, who had once played lead guitar. Her hands were heavily bandaged; blood and green goo had leaked through to the outer sticky wrap; the stench of death and decay was strong and Erica was on a ventilator. I started to back out, but someone wearing scrubs stopped me. It was the hospitalist from my previous visit, the one who had been—legitimately—too busy to talk to me.
“I’m Ruth Pench, the hospitalist. I’m responsible for general medical care of hospitalized patients on the paranormal unit this morning. You’re with PsyLED, right?”
I gave my name and she asked, “What can you tell me about the efficacy of the null rooms?” It sounded more like a demand than a question, but she was entitled. She was a human battling a paranormal disease, one with deadly symptoms but no typical medical cause. “We put Thomas Langer in the one outside and he improved drastically overnight. We put Quinton in it and it hasn’t helped.”
“The one at HQ is better. Every time you move a portable one, it loses some of its—” I stopped and frowned. “Some of its nullness? And the sooner you get a patient into them the better.”
“How long do they stay inside? Do they need medical personnel to stay with them?” Pench asked.
Dang FireWind for making me be here instead of a more senior member of the unit. “It’s more of an art than a science. There haven’t been any double-blind studies on witch energies or null energies and certainly none on whatever this is. There isn’t any money for that kind of research. The Nashville coven suggested half an hour for anyone before they start showing symptoms. After symptoms, a minimum of an hour was their suggestion, and the patients need to be read by a witch after to see if the death and decay has been neutralized. That’s what we’re calling it. But frankly, longer time in a null room won’t hurt them, and might help them. Medical personnel are absolutely essential.” I was laying down rules to a doctor. FireWind should not have put me in charge . . . “You don’t want investigators taking care of your patients.”
“The patient who died with this magic working began to decompose immediately. The body saponified a green goo and the fingers and toes fell off before we got it moved to the morgue. I hear it decomposed so fast down there they had to scoop the body parts off the autopsy table and into plastic bags.” Her eyes were hard and brittle as glass. “She was melting like wax.”
I said, “Melting. Yeah. Good a term as any.”
“Okay. I’m initiating a new protocol. The plan going forward is to take all stable patients from Cookeville to your headquarters before they come here. The EMTs and paramedics will have to stay with the patients. Then, I need a witch to read them. I have a few names and contact info on file somewhere.”
I tilted my head to show I had heard and that I didn’t disagree.
“Then we can send any patient to your office for more null time as needed. It’ll cost a fortune, and no one is gonna be happy with me.”
“Except your patients and their fingers and toes and internal organs.”
Pench whipped sharp eyes to me. “There is that.”
“You could request a budget increase next year for a null room here on the paranormal unit.”
“In-house. Yeah. Are they expensive?”
“I think that if you have a slab floor system and a designated place for it, it isn’t too bad. Construction and then fifteen to twenty-five thousand for the working?”
“Twenty-five K?” Pench made a chuffing sound like Occam often made. “I can raise the money for that myself. And we can take over an existing patient room.”
“Be careful that you get a well-regulated, full coven for the null working.”
“Suggestions?”
I handed her one of T. Laine’s business cards. “She isn’t a coven-bound witch, but she can give you good advice on the best people to call for creating a null space.”
Pench pocketed the card. “Thanks.”
“One thing I’ve noticed,” I said, “—and it might be more positional and locational than anything else—but so far we’ve had one male fall really badly ill. Thomas Langer. And he got better. All the dead and accelerated-decomp bodies are female. Well, so far. She needs to be in a null room. Like, right now.”
“Hmmm. It’s interesting but not the enlightening epiphany I was hoping for.” Pench spun and left the room.
“Enlightening epiphany,” I repeated to the comatose patient on the bed. “That’d come in right handy. Like a genie in an old lamp. So,” I said to Erica. “Is it all right if I read you the way I read the land?”
She didn’t answer, not that I expected her to. I pulled off my glove and approached the bed. I touched the bare skin above Erica’s bandages. Electricity snapped at me hot-cold, scalding-freezing, and I leaped back, rubbing my fingers on my spelled gown. The feel of death and decay was a vile hot/icy/slimy sensation and I’d be doing no deeper read at all. Erica was dying. Fast.
I tried to interview more patients and got nowhere. No one was physically able or willing to talk to me. FireWind would be unhappy, but there was no help for that.
Quietly, having accomplished little, I stripped off the protective gear, scrubbed my hands in hot water and vile-smelling soap, and left the paranormal wing for the pathology department.
* * *
* * *
It was Monday, so the office was open and working on a normal schedule. When I rang the bell in the outer office, a young woman came to the window. She was wearing an ID with the word Histologist beneath her name. I asked for Dr. Gomez; she shook her head and disappeared. Moments later, Gomez came to the window and gave me a look of distaste. It was similar to the expression I gave the cats when they deposited a hairball or dropped a headless rodent on the floor at my feet. Her uniform scrubs looked spiffy clean, but her face and hair looked as if she had been dragged through the wringer. I was guessing she was still here since I saw her last, hadn’t been home, and wanted someone to blame. “You again,” she accused.
“Me again,” I said with equanimity. “I’ve been threatened with death by a bunch a churchmen pointing shotguns at me. A doctor who’s pissy after being on the job for twenty-four hours is nothing.” My mouth clamped shut. The word pissy had come out of it. Out of my mouth.
“Pissy?” Gomez said, blinking. She barked a laugh. “A gun, huh? Somehow I’m not surprised.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a sneer against churchmen or against me. Maybe both.
“Come on back.” She punched a button and the door beside me opened. I followed her through a narrow space with a receptionist, offices to either side, and down a hallway that smelled of chemicals, to a back elevator. We got on, the doors closed, and the elevator descended. Gomez didn’t look at me so I didn’t look at
her. I knew the silent treatment when I saw it. The doors opened and we were in an even stinkier place, the reek of formalin on the air and the sound of a negative-pressure exhaust fan going in the background, and the stench of death and decay underneath it all.
“Lemme show you something,” Gomez said. She led me to a microscope, shoved a rolling desk chair up to it, and pointed at the chair.
Feeling as if I were about to be smacked for doing wrong, I sat. I had never looked into a scope like this one, with double oculars and all sorts of magnifiers. I put my face against the oculars and figured out how to focus the fancy scope. I discovered some pretty blue and red and brownish circles and things. “What am I seeing?”
“Liver of a normal human.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah. Dead.” She touched my shoulder and I sat back. She removed the liver and stuck something else under the magnifier.
I returned to the microscope. There were greenish and brown things. Some were washed-out looking. “Looks like ghosts of the previous one. What’s this?”
“Hepatic tissue acquired during the postmortem of the woman from Stella Mae Ragel’s farm. The dead woman’s liver,” she clarified. “And ghost cells is as good a descriptor as any. The microscopic differences are astounding. And the slices of every single organ are similar.
“Come with me. I have more.”
I followed her to a sterile-looking area where we dressed out in sky blue null unis. In the back, she opened a glass-fronted refrigerator and took out a pan full of plastic specimen jars. She opened two. One held a chunk of reddish meat that looked exactly like cow liver. The other was full of olive green goo topped by a green froth. “Normal liver and the death and decay liver? You need to get the body pieces into a null room,” I advised. “The first body we sent here in a cooler never made it. It decomposed through the cooler, through the floor of the transport vehicle, and into the asphalt of I-40.”
Gomez cursed colorfully as she put the containers back in the unit. “So that’s what made my commute home to see Mama so terrible. Maybe I need to check on the recent body.”
I didn’t expect her to let me go with her, but when I followed, she didn’t tell me no. She led the way to a separate cold room. When she opened the door, a reek rolled out, a stench like a jungle abattoir. Green rotting soup lapped out the door and into the hallway. Gomez slammed the door and jumped back all in one motion, and cursed some more.
I was instantly sick from the stink and backed away.
“The floor is rotted through,” Gomez said accusingly.
“You need a full coven to deal with this. They can’t fix it yet, but they can put a shield around the energies to stop them from spreading. Call T. Laine Kent. Get her to help facilitate contacting the North Nashville coven for you. It’ll cost, but if you wait any longer, you’ll have to replace the refrigeration unit and the floor, and you might have to dig out the ground underneath this area.” With a hand over my mouth, I got out of there.
* * *
* * *
My clean clothes still held the death stink, so the first thing I did at HQ was to strip in the locker room, shower, wash my hair, and dress in fresh clothes. I didn’t bother to dry my mop but twisted it into a bun before I put the stinky clothing into a sink with hot water, hand soap, and a cup of baking soda from the break room. Then I took my tablet and caught up on my files while sitting in the null room, as the chill of antimagics crept into my bones. Unfortunately, soap and null energies did nothing to stop the stench that was trapped in my sinuses and memory.
An hour later, I had a short list of questions, unanswered inconsistencies, and timeline problems. I left the null room to the paramedics and EMTs who delivered Thomas Langer, his sister Robinelle, and two other patients for a stint in the antimagic room. Thomas was free from the ventilator and waved at me, gave a thumbs-up, as we passed in the hallway. It was reminiscent of the gesture he had given me in the ambulance as he pulled away from Melody Horse Farm on day one. I was glad he still had a thumb. And someone would be taking his statement while he nulled out. Even if it was JoJo Jones herself.
The stench trailing behind the stretchers reminded me to rinse out my clothes and hang them up in the locker room. I hung them over the sink with my undies hidden behind my outer clothes. Some girlhood habits never died.
I checked on JoJo, who was multitasking and talking on the phone, and went to my desk, spending hours on files, reports, and answering the calls that got by Jo. Info came in, but it was all insignificant. I was getting good at saying nothing with a lot of words, comforting nothings to family, stilted nothings to the press. JoJo interviewed Langer when he came in to be nullified, but she learned nothing new either. I learned just how difficult it was to carry patients up narrow stairs and how badly we needed the elevator that had never been installed in the back.
I forgot lunch. Midafternoon, my stomach reminded me and I raided the break room fridge for leftovers, putting pizza into the microwave to heat, and walked into the conference room. Today Jo was wearing dozens of long clip-on braids in several shades of brown and gold, the braids woven in a complicated bun with long hanging braids and little gold beads woven into it. It looked heavy and uncomfortable and gorgeous. She was dressed in a black military-style jacket, gold braiding at the shoulders and epaulets, and silky gold frog closures. Some of the churchwomen made bespoke clothing like this, and . . .
“Mama Grace makes fabulous knotted and tied frogs like that,” I said.
JoJo canted her head at me, her scarlet-painted lips stretching into a smile. “I did not go behind your back and get your church ladies to make my clothes. If I’d wanted them to do my clothes, I’d have told you first.”
“Ummm. Okay?”
“Uh-huh. This came from a consignment shop.” Her tone went smug and amused. “Someone in your church made it for the previous owner, some rich woman. Which makes me an astounding fashion-conscious-shopper-on-a-budget.”
I chuckled. “You look fantastic. I wish I had half as much fashion sense as you do.”
“When this case is over, we’ll do a girls’ day out and hit the high-end consignment shops. Then get massages. And maybe we’ll charge it to His Almighty FireWind. You ever had a massage?”
“No. And I’ll be honest. I’m not real comfortable at the idea of a stranger rubbing up on me.”
“Put that way, me neither.”
I had a feeling she was laughing at me. Jo sat back and cracked her knuckles, her scarlet fingernails flashing. “Where are you?” She meant on the investigation.
“I got thoughts and questions.” I put my list of curiosities up on the screen. “What can you tell me about the timeline of the T-shirts? Some of the sick never touched the shirts. So far as I know were never in the room with the shirts. Yet they’re sick or dead.”
“T-shirt timeline, I have. The band manager handled ordering swag for the tour and the screen-printing company shipped them in boxes. The roadies opened the boxes and packed them in heavy-duty plastic bins, according to size, for easy transporting back and forth. They took forty T-shirt bins, unpacked from forty-eight T-shirt boxes, with them on the tour. They ordered additional batches of forty-eight boxes while on tour, drop-shipped to various hotels. I have records that all were delivered and are accounted for in the manager’s accounting database, along with the original twelve boxes. When they got home there was one box in the studio, unaccounted for, no shipping label.
“Things get lost or misplaced on a tour. Even expensive musical instruments and electronic equipment. But there is never extra stuff just appearing; the manager insists it was not present when they left on this leg of the tour. I’ve tracked every single sale and accounted for all the shirts, including two full bins on the RV. And then there’s the mystery box.”
She looked up. “I’ve verified that the shirts are official tour shirts, not a knockoff. Some unknown pe
rson put that box in the swag room, at some point during a twelve-week tour, while people were all over the property. Dozens of people. Not one of them was a death witch or an evil magic practitioner. Not that death witches advertise, since the U.S. military complex and a dozen foreign enemy combatant states would want them, find them, take them, and they would end up dead or disappeared.”
“How would anyone get to a death witch?” I asked.
“They’d set off a sleeping-gas bomb—assuming anyone was still alive—after she went to bed, and walk out with the witch wearing null cuffs.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. You know, for a child raised in God’s Cloud of Glory, you are the epitome of innocence.”
I made a face at her. “So we are nowhere?”
“We are nowhere.”
“Well, dang.”
The microwave dinged and I brought in plates and slices and sat. I pulled up research on death magics. There wasn’t much. All magics worked differently for each witch, depending on the individual, her element (earth, air, water, etc.), her power level, her training, and any previous coven affiliation. Death-magic witches didn’t associate with covens because a coven would stick her in a null room and leave her there until she rotted. Death-magic users were not blood-magic users. Blood witches used the usual methods of working energies, but powered with blood sacrifice. Death-magic users were a group all their own. Death was raw black magic—not worked with math and focals, and always a curse. It was a direct interaction with life forces and earth forces and something darker, more predatory.
This . . . this death and decay . . .
My mind went still, remembering it under my fingers, in the land at Stella’s farm, in the body of Erica. I made a fist, my fingers still not completely healed, thinking. The Green Knight had recognized the magics and attacked instantly.
Death and decay was oddly familiar. To the Green Knight and to me. Where had I encountered it before? When a demon had been summoned and tried to rise to Earth? When the salamanders bred?