Tandy and I stopped dead.
The weird slime mold was covering the entire front lawn of LuseCo. It moved as if breathing and even as I watched, tiny buds pushed up on tiny stalks and opened. “I thought the groundskeeper crew said it was a black mold,” Tandy said, his voice muffled through the plastic faceplate.
“They mowed some.” I pointed to the place where the mower had stopped. It was still in the middle of the lawn. “Maybe cutting it released the slime mold to a new state of... whatever this is.”
Tandy followed me single file to the front doors where a 3PE-suited National Guardswoman allowed us entry to the lobby and told us to dispose of our suits that had been outside and put on fresh suits for inside. She was stone faced and not talkative. Just pointed with her weapon to a door. I hoped the safety was well set, and leaned away from the weapon, just in case. “Change in there,” she said. “When you get dressed out, the asshat CEO’s office is down that hallway”—again she pointed with her weapon, but deeper into the building, past a receptionist’s desk where a perky, petite woman sat, the gatekeeper of the VIP kingdom—“to the left. The CFO’s office is on the right, and the COO is at the end, across from the conference room. Daveed Petulengo is on leave in the Alps somewhere, but the CFO is in. Have fun.” Her tone said we wouldn’t.
We entered the changing room, leaving behind the laconic guard. “Tandy?” I asked while we were changing out of dirty suits and into clean ones. These weren’t the ugly white suits with orange stripes PsyLED wore, but slim, trim, silver gray, the fabric coated with something that felt slick beneath my fingers. The gloves were elastic, like built-in nitrile gloves worn at crime scenes, but they felt slicker, and my fingers slid into them easily. “What’s a CEO, CFO, and a COO?”
He didn’t smile, an unexpected strain showing on his face. He turned his back as he pulled the booties on, and answered, grunting a little. “Chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and chief operations officer.”
“Let’s start with the financial one. I have a feeling about the infinity loop dancing in the ground.”
He didn’t reply, and was standing facing away from me, shoulders hunched up slightly.
“Tandy? What’s happening?”
“Someone in this place is... sick. In his head. Or her head.”
“Mentally unbalanced?” I had learned in Spook School not to saycrazyorinsane. The terms were politically incorrect and also not descriptive enough. Proper medical terms had to be used in professional conversations, especially where agents might be overheard or taped. To saypsychosiswas okay. To saynutsoorbattywasn’t.
Tandy shook his head, not in negation, but as if he wasn’t sure how to say what he was picking up on. Then, “Howling. There’s howling. Inside his head. It’s... loud. It hurts.”
“Okay. Breathe. And if you need, take my hand.” I reached around him at his elbow and Tandy looked down at my hand. Slowly he slid his into it. And he let a breath go. “Better?”
“Yes. Thank you. So how do you want to handle this?”
“I’ll play bad cop and you read the emotional responses.” Tandy nodded and I said, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
***
The receptionist’s desk was empty, so Tandy and I walked past it, down the hallway. We reached the COO’s office, and I opened the door and peeked inside. The office was decorated in leather and browns, and there were animal heads on one wall, rams, big-horned goats, moose, and elk. There were photos with him standing over the kills of three spotted big-cats. The COO was a hunter and wanted people to know that he could kill an animal from a long distance with a big gun. Big whoop. I closed the door and went on to the office markedCHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER. We didn’t knock and the woman behind the desk didn’t look up when we entered, so we stopped in the open doorway, Tandy releasing my hand, taking a reading of her. Clearly she wasn’t the source of the crazy vibes he had picked up. She wasn’t howling at the moon or spitting foam like a rabid dog.
The CFO was Makayla Lin, the tall, intimidating woman I had met the first time we came here. Her office temperature had been set at a crisp sixty-eight, according to the thermostat at the door, and the bronze, silver, and copper metal décor matched the temps with an icy intensity. There was no other exit door,and the only windows were up high, near the ceiling, about three feet by three feet square. The floors were walnut-stained wood, and the upholstery on the couch and guest chairs were copper-colored cloth.
Makayla was wearing a sleeveless black dress, even in the cold, and her hair was cut scalp short, worn plastered to her head with some sort of solid, hard goop. Silver and copper hoops hung from her ears, a single set, one copper bangle per wrist, and a single copper and gold ring per hand, each ring set with a black stone, as if she had accessorized for the interior design. There was no splashy bling for the CFO. She looked like she might have walked directly from a fashion magazine to the black leather desk chair and sleek laptop. It was bronze too.
I turned on my best God’s Cloud of Glory accent and said, “I’da thought an operations officer woulda been wearing a T-shirt with a tool belt weighing down his jeans to show his butt crack. Instead he’s got dead animals hanging on his walls. And the CFO’s office would be stacked with money around the walls. But here it’s just cold as Hades with an ice queen sitting behind a desk.”
Makayla didn’t even look up from her laptop. She lifted a hand away and pressed a button on a small box beside her and said, “Shonda, call security. We have intruders.”
“Shonda ain’t at her desk,” I said. “And since I’m the cops, maybe you might want to show a little smiley face and cooperation, okay, Makayla?”
She swiveled her head and narrowed her eyes at me. I gave her my best Sunday-dinner grin as I crossed the space to her, holding my ID and badge out for view. “We ain’t been properly introduced as I recall. I’m PsyLED Special Agent Nell Ingram, and this here’s my partner, Special Agent Thom Andrew Dyson.”
Tandy did a little double take at my introduction of him by his full name. It was the first time I’d used it, and I right liked the sound of it. He held out his ID too.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I won’t be shaking your hand.” I put away the badge and ID in a pocket in the front of the gray suit. “See, somebody’s done let loose a magical working for self-perpetuating energy, into the earth. There’s odd growths in the city and a few peculiar deaths and we haven’t ruled out itbeing contagious. And that spell? We got proof that it come from here.”
Makayla tightened all over in shock. And I knew I had her.
“But then you’un know all about that, right? Being as how LuseCo was the ones who let it loose in the first place? Tandy? How’m I doing?”
“You’re bowling strikes, Nell,” he said, his accent a little more crisp, Seattle, maybe. I wasn’t much good with accents, having never been anywhere or met many people, but there had been a guy from Seattle at Spook School.
“Strikes? Is that like a touchdown, Tandy? I ain’t never been bowling. What’s the name of thewyrdspell, Makayla? And where’s the witches who let it loose?”
Makayla’s slight tell was gone and she reached to pick up her desk phone. I leaned in, putting one hand over it, my weight supported on her desk, only inches from the laptop. Where I could see the screen in my side vision, clear as a bell, even without focusing on it.
