Spells for the Dead

by Faith Hunter

  “I was on church land. I was shot. I fell on an oak tree. I called on Soulwood to heal me. Soulwood used the oak, shoved its roots into me. They grew into me and healed me.”

  “The tree near your land, eating the mouse, was not an oak.”

  “Right. Well. What I didn’t know when I was trying to stay alive, was that when my blood and the tree mixed, and Soulwood was healing me—” I stopped and breathed, forcing down nausea. The words felt odd in my mouth, on my tongue. “The tree mutated. Into a tree that eats meat. And . . . it’s sentient.”

  “Sentient. You created a sentient plant.” There was disbelief in his tone.

  I wasn’t looking at him, didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see derision on his face. “Yep,” I said softly. “Not that I knew right away it was sentient, and a separate sentience from Soulwood itself. But I figured it out. It calls itself the Green Knight. It fights for me.”

  “Did you know of this?” he said accusingly to Occam.

  “No,” I said, before Occam could answer. “I mean yes. Sorta.” Occam knew. So did Tandy and Rick. But we hadn’t put that into a report. And I was now aware that I probably should have. “I can’t prove it. It might not even be true. My body’s changing, so my brain is probably changing too. I might be learning to think in a different way, with my evolving, mutating brain. Or I might jist be insane. Or hallucinating.”

  “When were you going to report this?”

  Never? I thought. “I pretty much only figured all this stuff out in the last few days.” A few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, but I wasn’t offering that unless he cornered me.

  “The little tree you have carried around is more than simply a container of Soulwood soil that allows you to commune with your land?” he asked, his tone colder. “Have you endangered the unit and the integrity of the mission with a stunt that uses wild magic?”

  I got my eyes open again to see the big boss towering over me, one hand on the car door, the other on the car roof. Something heated and pure flared in me, some part of me that had survived the church, its menfolk, its followers, its traditions. “You want to tell us how,” I said, dragging out the last word. I slid away from the warm blanket. Swung my legs over and got to my feet. FireWind didn’t move so I straight-armed him away from me. He didn’t stumble back, but his braid flew, so it had been a good shove. I lowered my voice into a growl that might have come from Occam and started over. “You gonna tell us all about being a skinwalker dog and how you get stuck in nose-suck? How you get lost in the tracking and the chase? Is that in your personnel files? Might that cause problems with this case?”

  The flesh at the corners of FireWind’s yellow eyes tightened.

  “Yeah. I figured not,” I said, taking a step closer to him, feeling fresh green leaves twitch at the back of my hairline. “Tell you what, boss. You report how being in the skin and the brain of an animal affects your brain and I’ll do the same with my tree being self-aware. Until then, this is need-to-know and that means you and me and Occam. Now get outta my way before I feed you to the land.”

  “Feed me to—”

  I interrupted him because if he thought about that sentence he might figure out that I had just threatened his life. “I dropped the damn tree and I need to see what it’s doing.” Steady on my feet, the spike of adrenaline giving me energy I hadn’t had a moment past, I walked away.

  “She cursed,” FireWind said softly, shock in his tone.

  “I heard.” There was laughter in Occam’s voice and he jogged after me.

  Someone had moved the car up to the shed when they put me into it, which was a good thing because my legs were not going to make it far. I reached the shed and the adrenaline gave out. I grabbed the wood corner of the shed as I rounded the back and I stopped, breathing hard, though how much was fury and how much was fatigue I didn’t know. I stared at the scene behind the outbuilding.

  “Well, dagnabbit,” I cursed more appropriately.

  The vampire tree was a good two feet high, but all the leaves on the lower branches were turning brown. The death and decay was stronger than the small bit of Soulwood soil that had spilled from the pot to the dead land. Or . . . Or the death and decay was enough to kill the tree. Maybe all the tree, everywhere, even on church land. If I could reproduce the dark magics.

  Shock went through me that I would even think of using death and decay.

  “Nell?” Occam asked.

  “The death and decay is killing it. Which I’ve never seen happen before. And which is probably a good thing because otherwise it might take over the property and then we’d never learn—” I stopped abruptly and said instead, “Did you open the kettle?”

  “Yes. Nothing in it but a thick, foul-smelling, tan liquid. Not soap, which is what FireWind was expecting, by the smell.”

  I breathed out slowly, thinking about the death and decay that had grabbed me and tried to pull me under. I took up where I’d left off. “If the vampire tree took over, we might never learn how many people were killed, dissolved, and dumped out here. Because there’s a body in that kettle, or there was originally.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, but I can’t prove it. That military paranormal woman might be able to, though.”

  “She and her team will be here shortly. Do you want me to cut down the tree?”

  I crossed my arms over my middle and closed my eyes. “You’un better,” I said, fatigue driving the church-speak into my words. “You’un know what it can do and you’un’ll stay far enough away from it to keep from getting hurt.” I chuckled, the sound and the words sour and rough. “It might eat them crime scene techs, jist to stay alive.” I opened my eyes to see Occam studying me to see if I was serious. “It wasn’t a joke. The tree might really do that,” I whispered.

  “I got an ax in my car. Hang on.” He trotted away. I leaned against the shed and watched leaves flutter to the ground as the little tree fought to stay alive and failed and continued to grow and die. A butterfly fluttered near and landed on the top of the tree. A vine whipped out and snared it, the yellow wings broken and quaking.

  We were a mile from Holy Bear’s house, but Occam was were-creature-fast. He reappeared, an ax over his shoulder. He approached the small, hungry tree. Car and van engines sounded from out front as the rest of the law enforcement personnel arrived. We didn’t have much time.

  “Be careful. It’s hungry,” I said, “and so is the death and decay under the ground.”

  Occam made a cat chuff and ground his work boots into the dead earth for a firm stance. He took a two-handed grip and reared back with the ax. He swung. The blade bit deep into the narrow trunk and Occam wrenched it out. In the deeps of my mind I heard the beginnings of a scream. Occam swung again, and again. The trunk separated. The top two feet of the tree fell onto the dead earth. Its leaves shriveled and turned brown. Occam stepped away from it, the ax over his shoulder. With the top gone, the small roots that had tried to find life in the dead earth shriveled and died. The faint scream grew feeble and vanished.

  “Your shoes?” I asked.

  Occam came close and lifted a foot to me.

  I touched the shoe and felt only leather, no death and decay. “Nothing,” I whispered. “I got a feeling that were-creatures can’t get it.”

  “You know why?”

  “I got no clue, cat-man. But the cats in the barn were fine too, so maybe it’s a species thing? Tell the big boss that this location is part of the death and decay recipe. It’s too strong here to be anything else.”

  He touched my shoulder and walked away. I studied the scene before me.

  The death and decay and an ax had killed a small vampire tree. I honestly wouldn’t have thought it possible. Did the Green Knight know? Did it know it had lost part of itself? Did it know I had a part in its death? Would it retaliate?

  Three witches from the
North Nashville coven walked around the side of the shed. They were here to contain and shield the death and decay energies. They had to be getting tired of all this. But they were probably making a huge amount of money each time they had to do magic, so I didn’t worry about them being tired.

  I walked after Occam, to the staging area where someone had already set up a field stove and put a metal percolator on for coffee. I took a paper cup and poured a cup of weak coffee. Trudging back to the parking area at Holy Bear’s farmhouse, I sat in my car and drank down the coffee and tried to read updates and reports.

  I got as far as reading a report from JoJo stating that the box of sabotaged tour T-shirts had been hand delivered after Stella Mae’s band had left for the tour. They had what they thought was the delivery on security cameras, though the suspect was wearing a hoodie and loose pants and they were speculating it was a man, simply because Cale was so clearly involved in the death and decay. Visual inspection and chemical testing showed that the shirts were from the same company, the same dye lots, and the silk screen ink was the same lot number as all the other shirts.

  That seemed really important, but my brain had done all it could. I fell asleep with the laptop open on my lap and the empty coffee cup in my hand.

  * * *

  * * *

  “We’ll see that my car is taken back to Knoxville HQ,” FireWind said.

  I jerked awake, some inexplicable dream ripping to shreds. The big boss was standing near my car, talking to me; he had been talking for a while, probably, as the dream had been about cars that could fly and FireWind had been flying them. “Huh?”

  His face expressionless, he said again, “You are too tired to drive. Move over to the passenger seat. Occam will drive you back to Knoxville HQ in your car while I follow in his car. He’ll see that you get home.” A faint smile lit his face. “I’ve been informed that you haven’t slept sufficiently and that I’m endangering this case by allowing my agents to work forty-eight-hour shifts.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Who told you that?”

  “Jones.”

  “Mmm.”

  “And Kent.”

  I squinted at him.

  “And Occam.” His smile was wide enough now to be a smile without qualifiers. “You have become an excellent team.”

  I made the same noncommittal noise, crawled across the seats, and strapped myself in. And promptly fell asleep. I didn’t wake until Occam pulled onto the mountain and Soulwood welcomed me home.

  * * *

  * * *

  Occam had stopped for a few groceries at some point, a stop I had slept through. While Occam unloaded the car, I dragged my body to my new shower and turned on the water as hot as I could stand it, letting it beat the filth of Cale Nowell’s shed off me while the scent of maple-syrup-cured bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, and tea filled the house. Bacon. Occam was fixing maple-syrup-cured bacon on the new hot plate. My mouth watered and my belly clenched at the aroma of heaven in my house.

  I pulled on sweatpants and a roomy sweatshirt and tied my hair back in an elastic. It grew so fast, and the curls were like spirals of vines, bushy, heavy, and springy. In the mirror, my eyes looked more emerald than they had a week past, my skin darker bark brown. My fingernails were more woody and leaves curled out here and there. I plucked three, but there were too many and food smelled too good.

  I made it to the table and we ate in silence, me picking at leaves in my hairline, snapping off the tiny budding ones from my nail beds.

  Occam finished eating faster than I did and started wash water in the sink. I scraped my plate and sopped up the grease and the last of the eggs with toast. I must have dozed off in my chair because Occam was suddenly kneeling at my side. “Here. Lemme.” He wiped my hands with a warm damp cloth to get all the breakfast foods off them. I watched as he cleaned my hands, the towel warm, his nails clean, neatly pared, his hands tanned and strong, yet pale next to my wood-toned skin.

  I had a flash memory of John’s hands, calloused and rough from a lifetime of hard work. His nails had always been clipped short but not smoothed, snagging on everything, a line of dirt under the nails that he never got clean. I hadn’t minded then, that John had farmer’s hands. We had worked hard all our lives. It was the church way, and my nails often looked just as grimy. But that was my past and Occam . . . Occam was my future.

  His beautiful hands lifted to my hair and he gently groomed me, finding more leaves deeper in my hairline, breaking the thin petioles, piling the leaves on the table. Tears gathered in my eyes and he placed a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth, gentle and sweet and kind.

  This. This right here. This was the romance I had read about in books. This was the beginning of heat and passion and . . . and it was the foundation of love. Tenderness and kindness that had nothing to do with hot sweaty sheets and the moans of passion and orgasm. Not that I didn’t love that too. But this. Just this. This was love.

  I raised my hand and rubbed my fist along his jaw the way he liked, his beard scratchy. I realized he must have used the shower upstairs at some point in his cooking spree. He smelled like my lavender soap. I hoped his cat nose wasn’t offended at the scent. I needed to make him something special that a cat-man would like to shower with. I rubbed harder and twined my fingers into his hair, rubbing his healing ears, his scalp, and the back of his neck in a cat caress. He tilted into my hands, rolling his head.

  “I love you, Occam.” Was I saying that too much? Too often?

  “I love you, Nell, sugar.” He pulled back slightly, smiling, one hand twisting a curl in my hair around his fingers. Our hands were close, both cradling each other’s faces. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll carry you to bed. I have the late shift at HQ, so if you don’t mind, we’ll get some sleep, curled up like cats. Mud won’t be home from school for a few hours so it won’t be inappropriate.”

  Inappropriate in a polygamous household was a totally different thing from inappropriate in a two-spouse home, but I nodded without comment and raised my arms. Occam slid his arms around my shoulders and under my knees. As he carted me to the bed, I caught a glimpse of my gobags on the table. I needed to restock them, but not now. I was asleep before I hit the pillow.

  * * *

  * * *

  When I woke it was to the feel of footsteps on the parking area out front. Soulwood told me who it was, and I patted the bed beside me to wake Occam. But the sheets were cold except for three cats all snuggled in where his body had lain. Occam had left for his place or had been called into work early. I was betting on the latter. I rose up on my elbows. Where his head had lain was a brand-new tablet to replace the one that had been killed from the death and decay–contaminated photo memory card. I nearly squealed with delight, grabbed it up, and rolled out of bed.

  I heard the sound of a key turning in the lock and Mud shouted, “We’re home! Are you home?” Mud’s “we” included Mud, Cherry the springer, and Esther, who was waddling like she was gonna bust open at any moment, but she was humming a church song and smiling as if . . . as if she was happy. Which was really strange. I hadn’t seen Esther smile in ages.

  “What are you grinning about?” I asked, walking barefoot into the main room.

  Esther said, “I got me a check for twenty thousand dollars written on the church account. I also got the churchmen to agree to build me a house on the land you’un promised, labor free and clear.” She laughed and said, “Close your’un mouth afore flies fly in.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I done thought about what you’un said and I used them words. I got a contract and everything. They’re starting the septic, the plumbing, and the well tomorrow, and the church is gonna store my furniture and woodstove until the house is built. I’m divorced. A free woman. And Jed has to pay me child support of two hunnert dollars a month.”

  That was nothing in terms of the money she would need to su
pport a child, but so far as I knew, the church had never demanded child support from a man. This was a first.

  Mud, who was pulling off a lightweight jacket, said, “Sam said she was badass. That was his word. Badass. He said so when he picked me up at school and then brung us for shooting lessons.”

  “Took us for shooting lessons,” I corrected, checking the time. Nearly five p.m. Late for a school night. “And that is not a good word to use for your sister.”

  “Whatever. I’m a crack shot. Esther’s pretty good too.” Mud opened the fridge and got out some homemade jelly we had bought from Old Lady Stevens’ vegetable stand. All my life I had canned my own fruit and vegetables, but since joining PsyLED either there hadn’t been time or I’d been a tree and trees don’t can. Mud pulled a jar of Nicholson homemade peanut butter from a tote and unwrapped a loaf of Mama’s fresh bread. Clearly Mama had loaded them down.

  I returned to the subject of the check in Esther’s hand. She had dropped into a rocking chair and was waving the check around, laughing softly in victory. “Money, money, money, money. And no husband to take it away from me.” She looked at me, the glee sliding away from her eyes. “I got a favor to ask.” When I nodded far too cautiously, she said, “I want to talk about my life and my plans.” She stopped abruptly and breathed slowly, steadily.

  I knew those signs. I might have been only twelve when I left Mama’s house, but I knew the signs of a woman in labor. And this was way too soon. “How far apart are they?”

  “I’ve only had a few and Mama says they’re most likely Braxton Hicks, seeing as I’m not due yet.”

  “Human gestation is forty weeks,” I said slowly. “You’re the first plant-woman to give birth so it might be shorter.” When my sister didn’t reply, I continued, still cautious. “Sister mine, it’ll take at least six weeks to build a house. You might have a baby by then.” And it might be a plant, but I didn’t say that. Churchwomen didn’t get ultrasounds or a doctor’s care unless there were problems. “You’ll need help with a baby. That’s what you want to talk about, isn’t it?”