“Not sure. Except thatInfinitiowas being tested all over the world during World War Two. But in one place it was being combined withUnendlich. And in that place it grew molds. And the witches died.”
“They committed suicide,” JoJo said.
“Before or after they grew molds on their bodies?”
JoJo grunted softly, her eyes growing wide, but she didn’t answer. She was already fact-checking my report, muttering, “That’s it. The two workings together. That’s the tie.” She pulled on her earlobes, her smile cutting through the exhaustion. “If we know what started it, we can stop it.”
I wasn’t sure I believed it was all so simple, but I didn’t argue. I said, “There are two ley lines that cross under Kassel, the town in Germany where the witches worked. Just like here. Ley lines in both places.”
JoJo added, “If you find the LuseCo witches, bring them in for questioning.” She whirled in her chair to her printer and whipped a single sheet off the tray. “Here. Here’s molds in a triangle.” She slid the sheet, which was a color photograph taken from the air, across her desk to me. “That weird stuff is growing everywhere, from the pond to the deer spot to the three houses in the neighborhood.”
“They seem to be spreading out in the surrounding area.”
“What odds you gonna give me that they’ll eventually fill in to form a circle? That slime mold is indicative of a working that’s going haywire. I’m sending this to the unit and up the line to DC,to PsyLED central. Figure this out and get it stopped before one of those wingnuts in the government decides to nuke the place.”
***
I got gas in the truck, checked the tires, and ogled spanking-new cars in a Ford dealership while stuck in traffic on the way to LuseCo. I figured it was my fifteen-minute break for the day. At LuseCo, the uni-wearing cop checked my ID and sent me to basement level one, without asking me who I wanted to see. Which was interesting. On the way down on the elevator, I checked my messages, found some noteworthy tidbits of info, and mentally added them to the image I was building as I wandered the halls seeing what might need to be seen.
My phone dinged with a text just as I rounded a hallway corner and spotted the U-18 witch in a lounge with four other women. I could make out two of the faces through blinds that partially covered a window between hallway and room. It was two of the LuseCo witches. I hugged the wall and put my cell on vibrate. They were sitting around a small table with T. Laine. There were papers, silver-toned pens, and two laptops on the table, along with cells and brightly colored tablets. It looked like a business meeting.
I was alone in the hallway, and I moved closer to the open door, listening. The smell of stale coffee and old food clouded the doorway. Two vending machines were in the back, and a microwave sat on top of a minifridge. A small cabinet held a bar-sized sink beside an overflowing garbage can.
I wasn’t certain whether to go in or not, hearing the words though the partially open door. “It’s not our fault,” one of the women said. “It was Daveed’s fault. We warned him and he didn’t care.”
The voice.It was the voice I had heard underground. The woman had short black-dyed hair, but her back was to the door and I had no clue who she was. Except that she was a witch and she had done all this. Somehow, she had spokenInfinitioandUnendlichinto life, with dangerous consequences.
T. Laine asked calmly, “What did you warn him about?”
“That using both workings in a confined space, even on separate days, would result in poisoning the land,” the woman said. “In the growth of strange fungi and molds. In... other problems. Just like in Germany.”
“And you didn’t think to tellus?” another woman demanded. Her I could see. Taryn Lee Faust, the Knoxville coven leader. “You letusharm the earth? Youbitch!” Power streamed from the room, a gathering of magic that raised the hairs along my arms and up the back of my neck.
“How do we stop it?” Taryn asked, her blue eyes blazing. If the itchy feeling on the air was any hint, she was powerful and livid.
“It’s too late to stop it,” the dark-haired woman said, her tone exhausted.
My cell buzzed, the vibration unexpectedly loud.
“Who’s out there?” a third woman demanded.
The hum of magic through the partly open door strengthened. Thinking T. Laine might need help, and knowing I was discovered, I entered. T. Laine had been working to locate the witches involved in the LuseCo workings and get them together to tell us what was going on with the testing. From the photographs in the LuseCo consultants’ records, she had succeeded. She had found four of the witches. And unless our exhausted Diamond Drill had somehow forgotten to tell me that, Lainie hadn’t told anyone. “I’m Special Agent Nell Ingram.”
The power in the room spiked. I looked at the black-haired woman and felt my insides crawl. Black eyes glared at me. In her photos she had long gray hair. Now it was black-dyed, cut short, and stood out in a dark corona as if she had spent hours scraping her fingers through it. This was the face to go with the female voice beneath the ground.
I glanced at T. Laine, looking for a cue as to what I should say. Her eyes were wide, full of speculation, darting from one witch to the other. She gave me a single hard look and a minuscule nod that seemed to tell me to talk. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do about it now that I had interrupted the meeting, so I turned on church-speak and manners I had learned at Mama’s knee, in the same instant that Spook School training kicked in. I stepped into the doorway, blocking their only way out.
My cell buzzed again. Ignored. Tucking it into a pocket, I said, “Suzanne Richardson-White, of the Richardson witch family. Theresa Anderson-Kentner, of the Anderson witches.” I stared at the third woman. “And I believe you must be the long-lost Knoxville witch coven leader, Taryn Lee Faust, of the Leewitch clan.” To the fifth woman, I said softly, “And Lidia Rosencrantz of the German Rosencrantz witches.
“You’uns talking about World War Two and a city that came under attack by fungi and molds? And resulted in the suicides of a full coven of conscripted witches working against their wills for theder Fürher?” I paused for half a beat and finished with, “And about the Romney witch whose last name was Petulengo?”
Lidia’s shoulders hunched.
“You, I recognize from the curse on the land,” I said. “I’m not sure why you’re here, unless you’re under arrest for crimes against humanity, including releasing a weapon of mass destruction on the city of Knoxville.”
Lidia raised her hands off the table, her power lifting her crown of hair like black fire. The other LuseCo witches realized we had a problem and they lifted their hands, some already holding amulets with pre-formed spells. This was going badly, and fast. Power filled the small lounge, burning and pricking my skin.
“It’s not my fault,” Lidia said, magic sparking the air. “And I won’t pay for this. I won’t spend time in a null.” Her hands fisted. The air crackled with electric power. Lidia started to speak again.
