“I’m twenty-three. Not so antiquated. Aunts and sister-wives were present when I was born. I tested not witchy when I was eleven or twelve.”
“So you have said. Yet the land—”
A scream rent the charged air. I didn’t see Soul stand, but she was suddenly simply flowing to the front door. She unlocked and opened it and called, “I told you to go play.Hunt.” Her voice deepened, and she added,“Go!”I felt the land respond at the command in her tone and knew that the cats had turned and raced off. Even with my bare feet off the floor, I could follow their progress. Soul shut the door and came back.
“You wanted to talk. I assume it isn’t about species,” I said, sounding grumpy. “I’m tired and need to go to bed.”
“I found something in your research. You need to look at it again.”
“I found something and you want me to find it again? I’m not in school with some info to put together for a training exercise.” My grouchy tone was growing, not at all subservient, like a good probie should sound. “You know what it is, so tell me.”
“I know what it might be. Look at the World War Two information. Especially the photographs. The names.” She stood and set down her mug. “The cats are quiet now. I’ll check on them as I leave.” And she walked back to the door and out. And disappeared in a flash of light. I locked up again and put the dishes in the sink to soak, took the fastest shower ever, and climbed into the cold sheets, my oven-warmed cast-iron frying pan at my feet, wrapped in towels. The cats piled on the bed with me, Jezzie climbing under the sheets to cuddle with me. I was asleep instantly.
***
I woke when my cell beeped at five a.m. and crawled out of bed feeling rested and wide-awake, despite the scant hours I had been allowed. The house was still cold, so I made a hot fire in the stove, took a hot shower, added more water to the water heater—a never-ending process, as letting the boiler go empty meant melting the seams, an expensive repair—and dressed for the day in layers. I was wearing navy pants today, with a navy tee and button-up shirt, and a black jacket and shoes. It was the first time I’d worn the new outfit, and I had to figure out how to position my shoulder harness over the shirts and under my suit jacket to make it fit right.
Outside, it had sleeted, and the ground was treacherous, so I texted JoJo that I’d be late to the eight-a.m.-sharp meeting, and went back inside. I opened my laptop and pulled up the witches’ names, Kurt’s timeline, and a summary on the research on World War Two, all from Kurt’s computer.
I found something. A Kurt Daluege had been executed in the postwar trials.
A frisson of certainty heated its way through me. Below the ground, Soulwood reacted to my interest with a clatter of tree limbs in the wind. I poured a cup of coffee and returned to my open files.
The original Kurt Daluege had been an SS officer of some kind, tangentially associated with paranormal research. And had been hung in the trials as a war criminal. His wife and children had survived, and some of the children immigrated to various countries. I did an ancestry search of Kurt Daluege and quickly discovered that Kurt was named after his grandfather. Who had been in Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squadronin WWII. My heart rate sped and the roots in my belly went tight.
One of the local witches was Irene Rosencrantz, who traced her Jewish lineage to a witch who died near the end of the war. There was a Rosencrantz listed among the witches who’d died of suicide rather than give their weapon to the SS officers and Hitler’s war machine. Now we had two Rosencrantz witches and a Daluege in Knoxville. Impossible coincidence. Three coincidences in a row stopped being flukes. It became enemy action, according to Ian Fleming in a James Bond film. I had to agree.
According to a police report, at two a.m. Irene Rosencrantz’s car had gone off the Gay Street Bridge into the Tennessee River. Which was ridiculous. I had driven that bridge, and there were thick concrete curbs about two feet high on either side of the lanes and a walkway with an iron handrail beyond both curbs for walkers. The bridge area allotted to cars was narrow, and it would be difficult if not impossible to get up enough speed to go over the impediments and into the water. But her car had done just that. According to news reports, divers were in the water and had found the car.
I studied the police reports. I wasn’t a traffic accident investigator—there were people specially trained for that—but the photos looked staged. There was a lack of tire skid marks. No damage to the curbs beyond... a single skid mark on thetopof the curb.
This wasn’t an accident. Something else had happened. I kept reading and discovered that the investigative officer had called in his supervisor. So I wasn’t the only one who thought things looked off.
There had to be a connection between Germany in World War Two, with its slime molds, and this accident. With Kurt being the grandson of a Nazi. Witches from all over the world in Knoxville, Tennessee, including some that sounded Germanic. A witch working here that made no sense. Attacking slime molds here. People drowning and killing each other at a pond here.Enemy action.
I sat back to find a cat had settled in behind me. I picked up Torquil and placed him on my lap, where he started purring.An accident in the twenty-first century that traced back to World War II?
I marked the list of witch names and the accident report tocome back to. Had both of the Rosencrantz and the Daluege grandparents or great-grands lived in Germany? Had they worked opposite sides of a war that was mostly aboutethniccleansing?
On a hunch, I began a search on odd growths in Germany during the war. And I struck pay dirt. At the end of the war, outside of Kassel, Germany, an entire small town had been overtaken with four forms of distinctive, disgusting, and dangerous fungi.
Bleeding tooth fungus, which was repulsive, looking like rotten, bleeding teeth and gums. The fungus was capable of absorbing cesium-137 from the environment, a radioactive isotope that could be toxic at sufficient levels.
Doll’s eye fungus, which looked like dolls’ eyeballs on the end of scarlet stalks. This fungus was deadly.
False morels, also deadly.
And... black slime mold.
There were photographs of the slime covering buildings, budding in rainbow hues of ugly, spore-forming, fruiting bodies, looking like fantastically shaped flowers. Soooo... I stroked Torquil, and the former mouser cat rolled over and exposed his belly for me to rub, batting my hand when I was too slow. There was a connection between Knoxville’s slime, the pond, the deer, the dancing infinity loop, Germany in World War Two, and the accident on the bridge at South Gay Street. Even I knew that sounded bizarre. My whole body on alert, I went back to my research.
The Allied bombing of Kassel had ended the attack of the slime molds and toxic fungi. Similar slime mold attacks hadn’t been documented anywhere else, even during the war. But... now we had the slime mold and the presence of two Rosencrantz witches and the great-grandson of Kurt Daluege in the same place. Therewasa connection. I just didn’t know what it was. I thought about Tandy and his ability to force info out of Makayla. I wondered if he could get Kurt to talk, once Kurt was back in his right mind. And that thought left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d do this the human way—research.
According to Makayla, Kurt had tracked down the covens from the war. So maybe he had also specifically traced the Rosencrantz witches. Maybe he had set up his business here in this city, with the intention of using a Rosencrantz to re-create thespell that the witches had died to hide. Maybe a Rosencrantz was necessary to the workings.
My fingers tapped nervously on the edge of my tablet. Torquil batted my fingers, this time with a bit of claw, and I went back to stroking him.
Blood was an integral part of blood magic. A blood sacrifice was needed in most black-magic ceremonies. Maybe Rosencrantz blood was necessary to make the spell work. Maybe the working was a blood-magic curse and not just a working. And maybe Kurt hadn’t told the coven that. If so, then maybe Kurt had gotten Aleta and her mother to move here under false pretenses. And gotten them to bring their own family’s research notes. That sounded plausible. Maybe the Knoxville coven had been successful this time. And maybe the success had resulted in black slime, death, and destruction. And a faked accident. Maybe the death of a Rosencrantz. The sisters were missing, along with the other witches. Where were the Rosencrantzes? Had they been sacrificed, their blood used in the working? I opened a file and looked at the photos of the sisters, both gray haired and stern faced.
