I said, “If I know which of the psysitopes is actually redlining, I can do a deeper reading.”
“No,” Occam said, his voice unyielding.
I scowled at him. I hadn’t heard him come up. “I did more than one reading already today, one here while you were inside. I was fine. T. Laine’s methodologies are working great at keeping me from being noticed.”
“No,” he said again, his eyes cat gold.
“Occam,”Rick said. “Earbud. Now.”
The other werecat growled low in his throat but worked the earbud into his left ear.
Rick said, “It isn’t our job to figure out how to deal with thesituation on the ground, with the public, with the medical problems, or with media fallout, which is surely coming. KEMA, UTMC, and Soul are here to spearhead that. We have a job. It’s problematic for some of us near the full moon, but the job doesn’t change.Focus. LuseCo’s energy experiment went bad. The result is becoming a massive problem, and it’s our job to make sure nothing falls between the cracks. So figure out how this happened, who at LuseCo is responsible for the damage and the deaths, and who to charge with a crime, if one was committed. That’s it. We have a job, so let’s do it.”
Rick gestured us to follow and walked into the shade, where he removed his tablet from an oversized uni pocket. Even with gloved fingers, he was able to pull up the case map and highlight the locations of the land where the unusual energy readings were taking place.
He said, “We have a nearly perfect triangle. Triangles and circles are the most basic magical maths, pi and circumference and angles, used in every witch working. And they are the most common ones used in a witch circle when one witch is working solo.”
He was giving us Witch Magic 101, which might have been insulting, but I just nodded.Take it back to basics.That was the way problem solving was done in school and in the field.
“The most common geometrical configuration when three witches are sitting is the circle and the triangle. Basic triangles are used to channel rising energies in the buildup for a magical working, to contain them as they escalate. So the question arises—is the triangle being used now, by witches or some other magical being, to some purpose? Is someoneor somethingdeliberately keeping it going? If so, who? How? And if we accidentally allow the energies to release during the course of our investigation, what happens? If the person who may be keeping the energies going deliberately lets the energies release, what happens?”
And what happens if we shut off the working and kill a sentient being?But I kept that to myself because I knew the answer. It had hurt humans, therefore it would be put down like a rabid dog. I said, “The area first affected was the pond and the geese, and looking at the other sites, that location becomes magnetic north of the working.”
Rick lay a finger on the tablet screen and made a strange chuffing sound. “So it is.”
“The dancing infinity creature is running on the circle, with those three points maintaining the circle’s stability.”
“Good,” Rick said. “When we’re granted access, we’ll be looking for previously undetected paranormals, hiding as humans. We will also be looking for witches. For anyone who might have brought in a magical item that interfered with the testing, or any signs of blood magic that might have been added to the testing. Blood would have altered any experimental working. JoJo has already started with company employee records, including upgrading existing background checks. This is new research for them, and to this point no company employees have been routinely monitored for magical energies. So I want every single one rescanned with the P 2.0. We have to look for magical beings who are still in the closet, employed here in hiding. Also, consider things like the possibility of an unknown witch involved tangentially with an employee, who used the relationship to somehow influence the experiment. We need to know about secret love affairs, personality changes, changes in lifestyle, finances, or habits. This is Interview 101 with a twist. Tandy, you will be present on every interview, silent, observational only, unless you sense anything out of the ordinary. At that point, you take over.”
Tandy nodded.
“Nell and Occam, your first order of business is to ascertain if these paranormal energies were activated by magic-working terrorists, imported or homegrown. If terrorism is involved, then we have to assume that someone or something will be targeted, and we need to know who and what, fast. I don’t expect you to find anything, but if I’m wrong, contact T. Laine, who will turn over the interviews to Tandy and to me, and join you on the info gathering. Second order of business is to detect if the witch circle was sabotaged, for any reason from a lover’s spat, to financial concerns, to terrorist activity.”
The door opened behind us. Standing there, wearing a gray LuseCo uni with an apricot stripe across it, was Makayla. It conformed to her body far better than our pick-a-size-and-hope-it-fits 3PE unis. “Your unit’scumulativesecurity clearance is below the projects taking place here,” she said, her eyes still spitting sparks. “However, I have been informed by avery important personat DoD that PsyLED’s access is confirmed. You have permission to talk to the techs involved in what wenow agree may have fallen out of the experiment’s paradigm. Not a single tech will stand in your way.”
That was an odd way to phrase it—notechwill stand in our way—but half the team tramped inside, their unis swishing. Occam and I went to the parking lot, removed our unis, and drove away in his vehicle, not speaking to each other, the antimoon music playing on his earbuds, hanging around his neck. It wasn’t precisely the silent treatment, but it wasn’t pleasant either. I figured out what was happening. Occam was acting like an alpha cat, giving me the silent treatment, protecting the probie kitten, not wanting me to do my job. That was not acceptable in any way, shape, or form. I just had to figure out how to tell him that without damaging his cat sensibilities or the unit’s cohesiveness. That had been covered in Spook School too, but only for human teams, not in any way that I had been able to utilize or even make sense of for a paranormal unit.
In the multifamily household where I grew up, the silent treatment was an unsuccessful weapon of choice, because in a home with multiple wives, the husband always won in that game. Someone always talked to him, so the silence of one wife was hard to detect unless she resorted to slamming doors or crying, both of which had always been deemed immature. The silence of the husband was ignored totally as the wives were consumed by child rearing and running a home. I had never spent time in a home with adults, watching them work through problems. I’d left home too early. With Leah dying, there had been no cantankerous discussions between John and Leah. Therefore I wasn’t really sure what adults did to resolve problems. So this was confusing.
The sun was in my eyes and I pulled down the visor to cut the glare. There was a small mirror there, showing me traffic and more traffic behind us, but my eyes settled on a small green car weaving in and out and back and forth, trying to force its way through the crush. I kept my eyes on it rather than look at Occam. I crossed my arms over my chest, thinking. Finally I said, “I could shoot you.”
“What?” There was an alarmed tone in his question.
“I’m not good at playing silly games. You got something to say, say it. Or I could shoot you.”
Occam laughed, a spluttering sound that made me want to laugh with him, but I kept my eyes on the road behind us. “That’sone of the reasons I like you, Nell, sugar. No nonsense.” He slanted his eyes to me and back to the road as he took a right into traffic. “Silver or standard?”
I hid a smile. “Standard. You ain’t worth jail time.”
Occam chortled. “You do know why I don’t want you to do a read, don’tcha, sugar?”
“Tired of dulling your blade on roots?”
He laughed again, his hands visibly relaxing on the wheel. “There is that. But mostly because leaving a woman in bloody pieces is not a way to inspire confidence or to get her to agree to take in a movie.”
I dragged my eyes from the green car to him in confusion. “I like movies.”
His mouth turned down, puckering in thought. “Chick flick or action?”
