“Our team started research and testing on both workings.” She stopped and picked up her coffee mug, cradling it, her long, brown fingers striking against the white glaze of the stoneware.
“I’m confused,” I said. “I thought you were looking for energy sources, not weapons.”
Lazily Makayla waved away my statement. “We would never have turned over a weapon to them. We just wanted their money to keep LuseCo going until the research was complete. And as thetwo workings were similar,” she said, “it was supposed to be a two-pronged research project with two covens meeting on opposite days of the week to keep them from overlapping magically. Then on the new moon last week, there was an... incident.”
“Tell me about the incident,” Tandy said.
I nearly jerked. I hadn’t heard him come in. But... I was feeling very mellow, as if I’d had some of the wine made by Sister Erasmus in the church. Makayla’s expression was placid, as amiable as I felt myself. Which made something inside me sit up and take notice, the mellow sensation beginning to drift apart. “Tandy...?” He didn’t look my way. And I realized that Tandy had learned a new trick... or found it after the sonic explosion. He not only could read the emotions of others, he had learned how to alter our emotions to his needs. He had gained his empathy gift after being struck by lightning. Had another bit of likely brain damage caused an alteration in his gift? “Tandy?” I asked again. He lifted his hand at me. The mellow sensation flooded back, though Tandy looked strained and he was sweating. I had never seen the empath sweat before. His skin was pale, the Lichtenberg lines standing out, scarlet on his pallid, ashen skin. I sipped my tea. It was delicious. And I was so glad that Tandy was trustworthy.
I blinked and frowned. Tandy... trustworthy. The mellowness dried up and blew away like chaff in my mind. Tandy was projecting at me. I pushed the last of the equanimity away and narrowed my eyes at him. Tandy was abusing his gift. On Makayla. Andme...
Makayla yawned in lazy leisure. “On the night of the new moon, there was an explosion in the second basement lab. It disrupted everything.” She stretched, moving like a dancer, limber and graceful.
“Where is the key to the second basement elevator?” Tandy asked.
Makayla pulled a chain out from her cleavage. On the end was a round key. It would fit perfectly into the elevator keyhole I had noticed.
“You want to give it to me,” Tandy said.
Makayla held it out to him. Tandy accepted the key and handed it to T. Laine. The PsyLED witch took the key and turned away, but not before I saw her face. T. Laine was troubled. She knew what he had been doing. And she let him. Therewas a quote about that. George Orwell had said something about power not being a means to an end. He said that powerwasthe end. I stared at Tandy, who ignored me. He looked exhausted, his reddish eyes bloodshot, his fingers, laced on the table, trembling. This—whatever he was doing—was painful. Good. I hoped it hurt so bad he never did it again. I pushed my empty teacup away.
Tandy said, “Originally, before you hired the witches, how did Kurt find Aleta?”
“He and Daveed Petulengo and Colleen worked on it for weeks, trying to find someone who could give us access to a coven. Mostly social media research and ancestry and genealogical research sites.” Makayla stretched again, twisting like one of my mousers. “Colleen hit pay dirt. She discovered a promising young physicist at Stanford, Aleta Turner. Her grandmother had been part of a Scottish coven working on a form ofInfinitio,outside of Glasgow, in the last two years of World War Two. They were very close to achieving success with it, and only terminated the research when the war ended. The witches disbanded, scattering across various parts of the globe.” A faint smiled crossed Makayla’s face. She picked up her mug again, wrapping long fingers around it. “Aleta’s grandmother had passed on after immigrating, but her mother, Wendy Cornwall, and her aunt Rivera Cornwall had the notes onInfinitiofrom the war research. Both were practicing witches, here in the States. Aleta accepted a position here, a very lucrative one for a physicist still working on her thesis. Once here, Aleta convinced Wendy and her twin sister, Rivera, to move to Knoxville to work with the local coven on a contract basis.”
“And was the research intoInfinitiosuccessful?” Tandy asked, his voice beguiling.
“Beyond our wildest dreams. Up until the night of the new moon. When everything was ruined.” She set the mug on the table and hung her head over it. “Ruined. Three dead.Ruined. All our plans ruined.”
“Who died?” Tandy asked.
“Three techs. We were able to cover it up, so none of the others knew about the failure, but we think Aleta had heard rumors aboutUnendlich, and the witches in Germany. We think she and Colleen found that they were working on Hitler’s paranormal research and sabotaged the tests.”
“Why would Aleta and Colleen ruin it after they worked so hard to put it all together?” Tandy asked, his voice growing hoarse with the effort of doing whatever he was doing.
“They hadmorals,” Makayla said, softly scathing. “Aleta went to HR about themoralityof a working that mightpossiblyaffect the structure of atoms or degrade biological cells or damage matter nearby. Themoralityof re-creating a weapon that the German witches had died to protect. When there was so much money waiting for us if we pulled it off.”
“Wait,” I said, sitting up fast. “The German witchesdied?”
Makayla frowned and shut her mouth, her eyes going narrow and accusing. She turned to Tandy, stunned, recognition dawning that she had spoken her company secrets aloud. Tandy reached over and took the CFO’s hand. The accusation on her face melted away and she smiled again. Patted Tandy’s hand. T. Laine, who had been tapping on her laptop at the head of the table, said, “I’ve been looking through Kurt’s electronic files and I found a summary that explains a lot. “The German coven was close to a finishedInfinitio. But they knew Hitler was going to weaponize it and turn it on the world. They created a death spell and set it over themselves. It was too late for Hitler’s SS to re-create the research and save the war effort. The witches destroyed everything, except one copy of the notes, which was smuggled out of Germany by the wife of an SS officer and her children. The notes were recovered by Kurt at his grandmother’s. The notes mentionUnendlich,a similar working but with the ability to store immense amounts of energy and then direct it to other uses. Like the weapon he envisioned.”
“And you think Aleta discovered all this?” I asked. “Maybe after she introduced the coven to Kurt? And felt responsible for setting them up, for releasingInfinitioandUnendlichon the world?”
“She was afraid ofInfinitiobeing combined withUnendlichand weaponized,” Makayla said, sounding sleepy again. “That wasn’t a big part of what Kurt was looking for. Hoping for.” Makayla sipped her coffee and made a face. It must have grown cold. “That was what the DOD wanted. A weapon that no one would expect, that could be set off with a single spoken word. That needed nothing to make it work but the will of the witch and the air she breathed to speak. A thing of deadly beauty.”
“God bless quantum mechanics and psysitopes,” Tandy said, his voice hoarse. He had sweated through his clothes and I could smell him from across the table. His skin looked sallow, a dull yellow as if his liver had stopped working weeks ago and he was dying. I hated what Tandy was doing, but... he looked so bad that he might reallybedying. I looked at T. Laine, but she refused to acknowledge my stare.
Makayla laughed softly. “Exactly. But we would never have given such a thing over to them.”
“So why are you still in business?” T. Laine asked.
“Because of the success ofUnendlich. And the money that came in from the Department of Defense.So. Much. Money. Initial testing suggested that we were closer to an end product on the energy research than we expected. And then the readings started going haywire. The growths started. Our power grid kept going down. We knew we had been sabotaged, but we weren’t sure who on our team was responsible. We had been able to keep it from the DOD and our backers, until you showed up on our doorstep.”
“Unendlich?”Tandy rasped. “What does that mean?”
“Unending,” Makayla said. “Unending power.” She closed her eyes, some mixture of anger, despair, and exhaustion. “All the power. Everywhere. It...” She stopped, and her eyes moved behind her closed lids as if she was dreaming or thinking very fast. “It may have gotten loose and... caused a problem. And now we can’t stop it.”
I blinked. The dancing infinity loop—Infinitio—had been created by LuseCo’s coven, and it was trying to wake an Old One. How the slime and deaths related to the Old Ones, I didn’t yet know. Except that magic is power, and power has to come from somewhere, despite people’s hunt for a self-perpetuating energy device. Were the Old Ones part of the power they were trying to tap and use?
