I was seeing all kinds of confidence from the empath, and not a one I had expected.
“I have evidence bags and some plastic baggies in the car,” T. Laine said as she opened the passenger door.
Tandy took the baggies and the paper evidence bags from herand moved slowly toward the tree. No roots sprang from the ground. No branches whipped at him. I walked to the side so I could watch him, see his face. Tandy looked calm, peaceful, as if he was meditating, his odd white skin shining pale, and the Lichtenberg lines bright in the morning light.
T. Laine was holding the psy-meter 2.0, taking a continuous reading as Tandy slowly, step by step, approached the tree. The mutant oak still didn’t do anything. T. Laine murmured, “The levels read like plant... Wait,” she announced to Tandy. The empath stopped. Her voice modulating into calm again, she said, “There’s a little spike in psysitope four.” She glanced at me. That was what I read on the P 2.0.
I said nothing, studying Sam’s expression. My brother was interested in how Tandy could get so close to the tree without it grabbing him. Like the way some people might walk right up to a deer. Or a wolf...
“Okay,” T. Laine said. “Levels are back to tree-ish.”
Tandy took the last three steps and reached out a hand. His fingertips brushed the soot-blackened bark of one branch. I realized he was reading the tree the same way he read people’s emotions. Carefully he traced his fingers up the branch to a thorn and snapped it off. The tree did nothing. He broke off two more thorns and dropped them into a plastic baggie. He opened another baggie and snapped off several leaves. The break sites began to bleed. The tree quivered.
Over T. Laine’s shoulder, I checked the P 2.0 and it spiked on psysitope four for three or four seconds. Tandy placed his palm on the tree and closed his eyes as if meditating, and the levels settled back to... normal. Notme-normal.Tree-normal. Tandy had calmed the tree. Restrained it maybe?
“This may sound weird,” I said, “but... is the tree sentient?” Tandy cocked his head, his eyes opening and coming back from far away to focus on me, but he didn’t answer. “And if it is, can you suggest, or maybe nudge it to do something?”
“What do you have in mind, Nell?” he asked, his tone was relaxed and peaceful.
“Put it to work.” I studied the tree. “It clearly wants to do something, become something. So... give it a job?” I raised my brows at Sam, who tried not to respond to me talking about the tree like it was a working dog. “What do you think?” I asked my brother. “Guard duty at the gate?”
I watched as Sam’s brain tried to wrap itself around my questions. He asked. “You think it would let us transplant it?”
“Not so much that as tell it to send runners or roots underground to the gate.” I looked at the tree and at Tandy. “It’s a long way. Nearly half a mile. But if it had a job maybe it would stop being so rascally.”
Tandy closed his eyes again and his breathing slowed. Minutes passed.
Slowly Tandy drew his hand away and walked back to us. My brother’s mouth was pursed and he was nodding.
“Tandy?” I asked when he got back to us, my thoughts racing and rolling over one another like squirrels playing.
“I asked it to move itself to the gate. It’s willing if it gets some kind of nourishment. This spot has the best...” He stopped abruptly and his face screwed up with confusion. “I can only think of the wordcompostto interpret its needs. This is the best spot in the entire compound.”
My mouth managed to stay closed. To heal from gunshots, I had fed the tree my blood. “We’ll think of something,” I said. “Will you come back later and attempt to encourage it to move? If I can make the other place more palatable to it?”
Tandy gave me a full smile, eyes crinkling, his Lichtenberg-cracked teeth showing back to the molars. A full smile was so rare I had ever only seen the one. “Palatable. Yes. I’ll come back.”
T. Laine’s celldinged and she said, “Text from JoJo. We’ll have to take a rain check on breakfast. Duty calls.”
Sam grabbed me. Hugged me. I stopped all movement, as still and stiff as a board in his arms. There was a definite one Mississippi, two Mississippi before I patted his shoulder and he backed away. “I’ll tell Mama you can’t stay,” he said. “Pity, as my wife will be there and you two still ain’t met.”
I nodded and searched his face for the reason for the hug. Sam chuckled wryly, shaking his head, as if he understood my reaction and wasn’t happy about it. He lifted a hand in farewell to the others. “Don’t be a stranger, sis.” His boots clomped into the day, and my eyes tracked his retreating back.
Wordless, I drove to the gate and I pulled over. T. Laine and Tandy followed, our vehicle lights bright. I got a single piece of equipment out from behind the passenger seat, walked to the twelve-foot-tall fence, and stood there for a moment. Standingin the headlights, I pulled a vamp-killer from its leather sheath. I didn’t have any alcohol wipes, but I could worry about infection later. With the well-honed steel edge, I nicked the pad of my thumb and hissed with the pain. Then I squeezed out several drops on the ground.
The earth of the compound reached up to me, hungry, interested, the way a flower turns to the sun. I deliberately did not claim the land. Deliberately kept my mind blank.
I walked back and forth, squeezed out more drops. Then I went to the truck, wrapped my thumb in a handkerchief I found in the glovebox, and cleaned and put away the weapon. I felt, more than heard, Tandy approach. He took my hand and pulled the stained cloth away. He dabbed a bit of ointment from a tube onto the laceration and wrapped a self-adhesive bandage around it. “Keep it clean,” he said, before leaving for T. Laine’s Escape.
While I had worked, T. Laine had texted the address and I followed them out of the compound. As I drove, it occurred to me that using death magics on the mold in the slimed neighborhood might be counterproductive. It seemed as if there was a curse on the land already. So maybe the working that started all this mess might have been a blood-magic curse, not a working, and we needed to bless the land. Or something. But I was too tired to figure out what I should do about that little germ of an idea.
***
We stopped at the neighborhood and parked at the police barricade, where we all dressed out in the ugly unis with the orange stripes. I was beginning to hate the sight of them, but after seeing the man run toward the pond as if to dive in, I understood how important they were.
We were running low on the contamination suits and T. Laine sent a text to JoJo to order more while Tandy and I chatted with two new deputies. T. Laine got back a snarky comment that our monthly budget was not going to be happy. The rest of us ignored that one. When we were all in the paranormal personal protection equipment (3PEs), we walked down the road, through the neighborhood, taking the same route I had last night.
The residents had been gone only a few days, but their land was eerie, silent, lifeless. Bicycles and cars lay abandoned indriveways, the occasional child’s toy lay in a yard, already dusty and unused. Odd, low-lyingthingswere spread across flower beds; plantlike things in colors of yellow, purple, orange, pink, and black were everywhere. Some had strange flowers a few inches high, blooms that were purplish or black with a reddish tinge and sharp, pointed, curling petals, red stamens and pollen the same color. The flowers seemed to move, as if breathing, or crawling, a slow and nearly invisible motion, but my eyes kept tracking it, like a long, low ripple in the various beds.
