“Who goes with me to cut me loose if the earth has other ideas than letting me go? That’s gonna require opposable thumbs and a sharp blade.”
“Me,” Occam said, his tone forbidding. It was clear he didn’t agree with me doing a reading so soon. Well, neither did I.
I didn’t look at him. I took a bite of salad and said, “The reading will have to be no longer than half an hour. Not deep enough to touch the sleeper consciousness. Call it a surface scan.” Then I added, “I’d hate to end up disabled my first week on the job.”
The table fell silent as the unit took that in, several pairs of eyes on my stitched and swollen hand. Which made me angry on some level. So far this had been a fun case to them. For me, not so much. I wanted them to remember that.
“She shouldn’t do a reading,” T. Laine said. “Not so soon.”
“I agree,” Tandy said.
“She must,” Paka said, her arm moving beneath the table, probably placing her hand on Rick’s knee.
I didn’t much like Paka, but she was right in this situation. “Rick needs to rule out if this is an accident or a deliberate working,” Thinking about our chat, I said, “That’s why he wants me to take another reading. Right?”
Rick frowned as if Paka’s touch was unwelcome, but he didn’t know how to dislodge it. A heartbeat or three too long later, he gave me a scant nod. It was my understanding that Paka had more magic than most werecats. She had been brought to the US by PAW (the Party of African Weres) and IAW (theInternational Association of Weres) to help Rick, the United States’ first black wereleopard, one changed against his will and left unable to shift because of magic tattooed into his skin. Also against his will. According to the scuttlebutt, Rick had been used and abused most of his life, but he was still standing. That said something about a man, even if he had broken Jane Yellowrock’s heart. He and Paka had—not fallen in love. That was too pale a thing for the magnetism between the two. More like they had been mated at first sight, Rick following her like steel to a magical magnet. Their relationship made a lot more sense now that I had heard the Spook School gossip than it had before. “I’m going too,” T. Laine said. “I know what she looks like when she’s too deep now. And I worked on a few things during the night that might get her back if something pulls her down against her will.” At my questioning look, she said, “Magical things. There’s awyrdworking calledBreakthat severs energies in assault spells. I’ve been practicing.”
“Good,” Rick said. “Keep her safe.”
I nodded, uncertain about the efficacy of magic against plants sending roots into me, but any kind of backup was good.
JoJo, who had been keying in all the chitchat and decisions into the SODR—the start-of-day report—broke the somber mood with the words, “Attack of the plant people. Got it.”
Tandy glanced in her direction, an indication that he caught some emotional shift in her.
JoJo added, “Possibility of pranking philodendrons and sasanqua shenanigans.” No one laughed at her lame joke, and she looked around the table. “Tough room. Pass the red pepper flakes; this salad is bland and too sweet.”
***
We pulled over and parked on the side of a neighborhood road, large lots around us. Most of the small houses were unkempt, weeds tall and fall’s leaves unraked. There was the rare car up on blocks or buried in brush. A moldy and sun-faded RV listed at an angle. A pit bull on a chain, lying in the sun, watched us with a malevolent eye. Fewer of the houses were meticulously neat, with fall flowers in plantings and pots, the grass groomed. One had iron bars installed over the windows and a rebel flag flying.
I looked away from the passenger window and down at myself. I was wearing my field boots and a pair of jeans with a flannel shirt over a thin sweater. I was now officially out of clean clothes. I either needed a bigger gobag or I had to plan to leave clothes in the locker in the shower room. And I had to wash clothes tonight. And repack. I picked a cat-hair fuzz off my shirt and dropped it on the floor.
“You getting yourself ready or woolgathering, Nell, sugar?”
I let a breath escape and said, “Neither. I’m procrastinating.”
“You don’t have to do this,” T. Laine said from the backseat.
“What the witchy woman said,” Occam agreed.
Paka, in her cat form, hissed in displeasure and leaned her big head over the seat to me. She hissed again, showing her teeth.
“I know,” I said to her. “I have to do it,” I said to the others.
“Because of those thoughts about accident versus deliberate workings you sent to Ricky Bo?” Occam asked. I nodded and he said, “You gonna tell us what you told him?” The werecat slid his back against the door and swiveled in his seat so that his legs spread and one knee came over the console, close to me.
I pressed my lips together. There was nothing in the handbook that said I couldn’t tell them. Both of them had higher security clearances than I did. “We all know there’s a possibility of an MED here, simply because strange energies are running beneath the ground. Almost as bad as a planned and executed MED would be magical energiesnotin a working like they’re supposed to be, but free because of a magical accident or released by means or creatures we don’t know about and can’t combat.”
“An MED,” T. Laine said. “I admit that the possibility intrigues me. Always has. Spook School still taking wagers on the first unit to uncover a verifiable MED?” I nodded. “Yeah. Intriguing. Set a working on a timer, maybe tied to the moon’s phase or something, and walk away. Later the spell is triggered and spreads the purpose and intent and will of the caster all over. Like a bomb with a delay timer, so no one has to actually set it off. I’ve been playing with workings to break a curse that sophisticated, but my coven isn’t particularly powerful, so, no go so far.”
“Procrastinating,” I said, opening the car door and stepping out onto the verge of the road. The denim pants felt all wrong,too tight in some places and too loose in others. Other than the long-lasting nature of the cloth they were made from, I didn’t understand why the entire world was so enamored of them. I dragged on my pant legs, trying to stretch them into a more comfortable shape, and grabbed up the pinkish blanket and a pad and pen.
T. Laine carried the P 2.0 and a laptop for taking notes and entering data. Occam had two blades, a machete to cut a path through the brambles and a vamp-killer. I didn’t think we were likely to meet a vampire in broad daylight, but maybe the silver plating on the blade would be useful for cutting me free from the Attack of the Plant People, which was a real movie, to hear Occam and T. Laine talk. He led the way between two lots, a chain-link fence on one side and the chained pit bull on the other. The pit bull was a mean one, leaping at us, his growls and barks so loud they were a vibration through the air, abrading along my skin.
I kept back from Occam as he cut his way through the overgrown field behind the two houses, the blade rising and hacking down. I was probably better with a machete than he was, being that I used one every year to take down overgrown plantings, but Occam seemed the kind of man who needed to protect the women around him. There were plenty of women who would take him down a peg or two, and fast, on the sparring mat at Spook School, but I didn’t have the physical strength to defeat a wereleopard, unless I was sneaky and kicked him in the privates first. I had to admit that he looked good swinging the blade, his jeans shifting with the muscles underneath, his back muscles pulling on his shirt.
And my appreciation was, again, totally, totally, totally unsuitable for a widder-woman.
