***
I parked my truck on the street and approached the house, my badge on my belt and ID in my hand. About fifteen feet from the door, I felt magics tingle across my skin. I stopped. The house was protected by a ward, and instantly I wanted to take off my shoes and read the land to see the magics, but not without backup to watch over me. One thing I knew, even without a read, was that the working wasn’t a kill-intruders-on-sight ward, but a someone-is-here ward. Because I was still breathing. I knocked on the ward. The magics buzzed under my knuckles, and a soft gong sounded inside, like an alarm. A small dog started a shrill barking, that of a house yapper, not the baying of a hunting dog. A moment later I heard a woman’s voice and I called out, “I’m Special Agent Nell Ingram. I’d like to talk to you about LuseCo,Infinitio,andUnendlich.And maybe Germany and World War Two.”
The dog went wilder, barking as if he had sighted a dragon. Or a mailman. Until it fell abruptly silent. When no one spoke, I said, “I don’t mean to make your situation worse. But you need to know that the workings at LuseCo might have contributed to the illness and deaths of several humans.”
A moment later, the ward fell with a tinkle of almost-sound and a faint breeze across my skin, and then a second one that covered just the house itself. That one was likely the kill-on-sight ward. A young woman opened the door, and I recognized her from the employee photos. This was Aleta Turner, the young physicist who had—inadvertently or not—set all this in motion. A woman stepped up beside and behind her: her mother, Wendy Cornwall. In the corner, as far from the door as possible, stood Rivera, Wendy’s twin sister. The witch twins weren’t identical, though both were strawberry blond and freckled.
“How did you find us?” Aleta asked.
“Tip from a burner phone,” I said.
“Betcha twenty bucks it was Shonda,” Aleta said. “She always did hate witches. Or Irene.”
They didn’t know about the accident on the bridge. “Irene’s missing,” I said carefully, watching their faces.
The Witches seemed to take a collective breath. “That’s... not good,” Aleta said.
“Lidia,” Wendy said. “Well, now we know, at least. Though what good it does us, I don’t know. Come on in.” She pushed the door wide. “We need to put the ward back up. We’ve had death threats.”
I stepped closer, asking, “Did you know thatInfinitioandUnendlichwould drain the ley lines?”
Wendy sighed, pushing the door wider in invitation. “No. We had no idea. Not until it was too late.”
At which point Wendy fell back. A rifle shot echoed, ricocheting down the road. Rivera screamed, “Nooooooo!” Part of the doorframe splintered into the air. A second shot sounded.
“Down!” I shouted, diving over the spot where the outer ward had been. Landing hard. A skidding scrape. The door still hung open. I rolled upright, raced up the front stoop. Dove again, this time inside. A lamp exploded. A third shot sounded. “Raise the ward!” I shouted.
The ward went back up with a sizzling heat, and I realized that I was holding my service weapon in a two-hand grip at my right leg. Breath heaving, I slammed the door. Flipped off the lights. Crawled over to the two women close to the door. On the floor. One was bleeding. She held a pillow over her waist. I hesitated, but my need to feed the land didn’t rise. Maybe being shot at inside a house held it at bay. A titter of hysteria tickled the back of my throat. I swallowed it down.
“Where are you hit?” I asked as the ward gonged twice like a bell. It had been hit with rifle rounds. Someone was shooting with a high-powered weapon. Without the ward, it likely would have penetrated the brick even though the shots came from far enough away that the sound was a heartbeat later than the damage. Again, and once more, it was hit and gonged in a vibration I could feel. I placed my weapon on the floor beside me and pulled a striped throw off the couch nearby, wrapping it around the woman’s waist and the pillow, applying pressure. Rivera crawled over and pressed her hands on her sister’s side, still moaning, “No. Noooo.”
A gun was pushed into my face. It had been there for a while, but I hadn’t seen it until the cold barrel touched my forehead. My mouth went open. The barrel looked about four feet long and bigger around than a cola can.
“Move and you die.” Aleta wasn’t a witch. But she clearly wasn’t powerless.
“Ummm... not moving.” I could try to grab my ten-mil and fire. I could roll away and hope she missed. I could swat the gun and likely get a head shot for my trouble. I was on my backside. No way to kick or hit or run. With two fingers, moving slowly, I pushed my service weapon toward her. And held up my hands.
Outside, the firing had stopped. In the distance I heard sirens. Well, this was gonna be a mess and a peck.
“How did you find us?!” Aleta demanded, knowing the answer, her tone calling me dimwitted and dangerous.
My mouth opened slowly. “Ooooh. I’m an idiot.” Someone who wanted a chance to kill the women, but who knew they were hiding behind a ward, had sent me the address. Then waited with a high-powered rifle for the ward to be dropped while both women stood in the open doorway because a stupid law enforcement probie had shown up. “Cell text. Address. Turned out to be a burner phone, but I thought I should check it anyway.”
“Is your nameStupid?”
“It is today.” I sighed. With the same two fingers, I removed my badge and ID and slid them across the floor to Aleta. “I’ll call in a GSW. Okay?” I pulled my cell phone and called JoJo. After that, things got a lot more hectic.
I got the chance to ask Aleta and her mom questions before the ambulance pulled away, but it turned out I learned little I didn’t know, except that the COO at LuseCo, Daveed Petulengo, had a mother who was a Romney witch out of the Petulengo family. And there had been a Petulengo clan witch at the German research and development site in World War Two, working under duress to keep her family alive. I texted JoJo to run a check and see if Daveed was back in the country.
Moments later, she called me. “Wouldn’t you know,” she said. “He’s been back in town for a week.”
“Military training?” I asked.
“Sniper,” she said quietly.
I remembered the animal heads on his office wall. There wasa man who knew how to shoot a high-powered rifle. A high-powered rifle had been used against Aleta and her family. A strange, itchy heat buzzed in my palms and through my chest. “He texted me the address. But why would he wait to shoot them now, when he could have killed them anytime at the company?”
JoJo said. “He really was out of the country, so maybe he had no idea things were going bad.”
