“What? Oh.” I pointed to the GPS. “You won’t get lost.” I twisted in the seat to face him and asked, “You ever hear of the Old Ones?”
“I guess that’s a no,” he muttered. Louder he said, “Nope. Native American tribes out west got all sorts of legends and myths to explain the world around them. I figure the eastern tribes got much the same.
“You do know that Rick is still hung up on Jane Yellowrock.” I nodded and Occam finished with, “It’s a very catlike thing you do, Nell, sugar, to keep bringing her up.”
I made ahmmmsound and slid back into place, my fingers tapping on the tablet. Occam fell silent. Or I blocked him out, thinking. Until the small car pulled off the road and around the crime scene tape, into the entrance of a two-rut road. We were at the pond. I tapped the tablet to sleep and set it in my bag. “Are...” My voice sounded reedy and thin, all of a sudden. I cleared it and said, “Are the bodies all gone?”
“Yes. They are, Nell, sugar.”
“Okay. That’s good.” The car rolled slowly around the curve. The turn around the trees opened out and the pond appeared. No cars, no fire pits, no tents, no bodies. I blew out a breath. The grassy area around the small body of water was still churned up. The few snowflakes had wet the ground and the tracks, leaving them damp and softly contoured. The pond itself looked tranquil. When the car stopped at a safe one hundred feet from the pond, we got out and put on unis. Carrying my faded pink communing blanket, I picked out a patch of thick grass in sight of the water and the tree where the camera had been. I sat on the folded blanket, peeled back one inelastic glove, and held my palm gently, carefully, about six inches above the ground. And closed my eyes.
I was going to go slow. Very slow. I was going to do nothing to attract the energies in the land. All I wanted was to observe. Like a hunter in a tree, watching a trail that a deer might take to water. Dropping slowly, I let my fingers extend and point downward, until my index finger touched the dirt. I let my mind ease into the ground a few inches, into the roots of grass and around some root runners that had come from near the lake. None of them seemed to notice my finger or me. Maybe my previous approach had been a lot like a wrecking ball rather than a surgical probe. I pressed a bit deeper. My descent into the earth waslike entering a pool of still water so slowly that I left no ripples, leaving no sign that I was here if no one was looking.
That was T. Laine’s suggestion.Go slow. Hiding just below the surface, I scanned down.
The dancer infinity loop was different now. The rotating lights of its energies were tighter, more compact. It was moving in a regular, unvarying path, like a race track, but perfectly circular. The circle it circumnavigated was clear and concise and seemed to glow a very deep green, right at the edges of what my mind could perceive, marking it as a magical, or psysitopic, energy circle. The green circle was marked with three red-glowing spots of the equilateral triangle, and was centered with a golden glow. The glow was bright and steady, as if the infinity loop had settled into orbit around a false sun.
I hadn’t seen all this so clearly before, but then I hadn’t thought to drop in and simply watch, like a spy, and not attract attention with looking too hard. Before, I had dropped in fast and looked around, moved around a lot. Been conspicuous. This silent and still observation was much smarter. I eased down even more, a probe instead of a battering ram.
Below all that activity, the Old One slumbered, silent. But from the center of the circle, a faint green trail slid down, deep into the earth, to touch the Old One’s presence. Not tapping, not nudging, simply touching. I waited for a pulse of energy as on my land, but this working—whatever it was—wasn’t pulsing with anything or doing anything, at least not right now. It simplywas, a thing in a state of being.
I withdrew to the surface and let go the breath I had been holding too long. Lifted my fingertip away from the ground. There were no vines. No roots. Looking up, my eyes met Occam’s, his glowing golden, a vamp-killer in one hand. The blade caught the light of the risen sun. T. Laine stood behind him, watching me, the psy-meter 2.0 open in her hands.
I breathed for a few seconds and then said to them both, “T. Laine, you were right. There was a way to observe and not get caught. I might have a future as a sneaky trespasser.”
The moon witch gave me a preoccupied nod and closed up the P 2.0.
Occam sheathed his blade and held down a hand. His eyes bled back to human, but his jaw looked leaner, his expression more fierce. I took his hand and he pulled me to my feet,steadied me with a hand on my waist. His palm was heated, scorching. I stepped gingerly away from him and his hand dropped. “What’d you discover, Nell, sugar?”
“I’m pretty sure that something is emitting psysitopes in a slow, steady release. The dancer, reshaped into an infinity loop of energies, is orbiting it in a circle. Three points of the circle are still bright red with energies that may be getting tighter and smaller, but no dimmer. Let’s go to LuseCo and Kamines so I can do a read there.”
T. Laine had been looking out over the pond as I spoke, and now she gestured with her chin. “What’s that?”
Both Occam and I looked out over the water. It took me a moment to see what she was talking about. Just beneath the pond surface something glistened, something midnight black and oily looking, smooth and round. I took a step that way and Occam grabbed my arm. “Don’t,” he said.
“Oh. Yeah. That might be dumb.” I shook my arm and Occam’s fingers slid free again. It was surely my imagination that the touch seemed reluctant to release. “Can we get a camera-mounted drone to make a flyover? Or an RVAC?” RVACs were remote-viewing aircraft, small, quiet, easy to control, and fast. I didn’t know if Unit Eighteen possessed one of our own or just had access to one, but we had used them before.
“Tandy’s been through the training. We’ll see if he can requisition an RVAC and do a flyover out here,” Occam said.
Silent, we went back to our cars and drove to Kamines Future Products. The property was gated, a twelve-foot-high brick wall blocking access, a single drive-in, and a security guard in the tiny guardhouse. Occam pulled up and gave his ID to the guard, explaining that we wanted to speak to someone in charge. The guard asked if we had a warrant to which Occam politely said, “I’d rather just ask a few questions of someone in senior management than make this a legal matter. But I can get a paper, sure. It’ll be extensive and invasive and disruptive, whereas a little convo might be all we need.” I thought he sounded polite and reasoned and the guard and his up-the-line managers must have thought so too because we were granted immediate access.
Kamines was a three-story building with no windows on the sides and a steep roof. It was built of local brick in a beige-brown pattern and the roof was real clay tiles. Occam and T.Laine went to the front door and inside. I waited in the car, thinking about what I had learned today, about the case and about my abilities to sneak around underground. About my brother and his wife. But mostly about the tree I had mutated. Because I was responsible, and only I could fix it. If it could be fixed at all. I had told my brother how to kill the tree, but I didn’t think it would die easily or fast. I thought it would come back again and again, mutating as needed to stay alive. And the fact that Brother Ephraim was in touch with the tree, even through so small a line of energy, suggested that things might be more dire than even I had guessed. What I really needed to know was what the tree wanted. Which was as bizarre a question as I’d ever thought about a tree.
The passenger car door opened, Occam standing there, waiting. The sun was behind his jeans-clad legs, and I saw for the first time that he was wearing Western boots with pointy toes, and his jacket was of a Western design, made of soft leather. I wondered if he had killed and eaten the cow in his cat form, and I smiled. Occam smiled back and stepped out of the way.
“We have permission,” he said as I stood from the car and pulled my faded communing blanket out from behind the seat, “for you and T. Laine to search for wayward paranormal energies inside the lobby and in the front yard. According to the spokesperson, Kamines is involved in research for plastics that can withstand the surface condition of Mars, long-term. They said nothing about the energy research JoJo discovered in her deep drill. Lainie’s readings inside were ambient normal, and she’s ready to take more out here.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”
I chose a spot in the sun, on the well-mown lawn, and set my folded blanket so the sun would be at my back. Just as T. Laine left through Kamines’ front door and approached, I placed the tips of my fingers on the ground and let the fingers of my consciousness drift beneath the ground. Roots and fertilizer. Grubs and beetles and ants. And then I was below the surface. The building to my side was far bigger than it appeared on the outside. It went down in the earth four stories. There were areas that suggested they had heat-producing machinery down there. Maybe very hot. Like things that would melt plastics. Or kilns for ceramics.
I dropped below the building, into compacted soil and the remains of an ancient riverbed. There were signs of water in thecrevices of rocks, and something gemlike, crystalline, but there was no sign of anything golden and glowing below the building. But... there was such a thing not far away. I oriented my consciousness for it and pulled back up. “Not here,” I said calmly. “That way.” I indicated with my thumb toward the east.
“I got only surface readings,” T. Laine said. “Nothing anomalous that couldn’t be explained by them having witches on payroll to see if magic will work on Mars or if it’s an Earth-based-only energy form. So I agree. Not here. Though the spox was a smarmy little woman who somehow made me want to punch her. Despite my calm nature and well-balanced personality.”
Occam snorted like a cat in amusement. He offered his palm to me, but I was already rising. I handed him the ratty blanket, which he threw over his shoulder. “We can work up a grid for this site and get lunch before our next stop,” he said. “We aren’t that far from Tomato Head. I’m in the mood for a beef Cheddar Head.”
“You always want meat on full moons,” T. Laine said.
