T. Laine threw a ballpoint pen at her and said,“Contineantur.”
The flames of Lidia’s working snuffed out. Before Lidia could react, T. Laine said,“Finis,”and threw her entire body across the table. In a power roll, she slammed into Lidia and dragged her to the floor. Faster than I could follow, T. Laine snapped witchy cuffs on her prisoner and set a ward, repeating thewyrdspell,“Contineantur.”
Good Lord a Moses,I cursed internally. Lainie wasfast. She held the other witch facedown, one of the silver-toned pens I had brought from Spook School on Lidia’s back. It was temporarily blocking or draining her magics. It was a small version of a null working, but clearly a directional one, because Lainie herself wasn’t affected by it.Lordy baby Moses and all the water in the Nile,I swore to myself. Lidia moaned in pain.
The other witches were staring openmouthed, their power dissipating, their amulets unused and unnecessary. “Lidia? Nooo... ,” Faust said, sounding tired. “Why?”
“Lidia and probably her sister Irene,” I said. “Just after I gothere, I saw an updated report on the single-car accident at the Gay Street Bridge. The accident was magically enhanced, according to psysitope readings. Magic sent the car over the curb and railing and into the river. With Colleen Shee MacDonald inside. She’s dead.”
Taryn closed her eyes, her face crumpling as if someone had crushed her in an immense fist. “You killed Colleen... ,” she murmured.
T. Laine yanked Lidia up by the cuffs and a shoulder and shoved her into a chair. The witch had begun to cry, and tears gleamed on her face, but her lips were tight, mulish, and her eyes focused on the near distance, with quick back-and-forth motions, as if she was trying to figure out what to do next. Or was trying to cast a working while in witchy cuffs, which was not going to happen. The last of the painful spears of magic in the air died away.
“What just happened?” Soul’s voice rang in the room from a laptop on the table. I closed my eyes. Soul had been part of this meeting of witches. I had gone all rodeo again, as Rick had said. I was likely to be fired.
“I think our probie didn’t get the text,” JoJo said, “and interrupted our conference call.”
“Conference call?” I tapped my cell screen and saw that the texts I hadn’t looked at were both from JoJo, saying not to interrupt T. Laine’s conference call at LuseCo. My face flamed. “Oh.”
“T. Laine,” Soul said, sounding exasperated and spent, “update.”
“Lidia Rosencrantz attacked and is in cuffs,” Laine said, “under arrest, which I’m sure everyone back at HQ heard.”
To the room in general, Soul said, “The police have BOLOs out for Irene and Petulengo and are staking out all the private and commercial airports for a hundred miles.”
With a knee, T. Laine nudged Lidia’s bound hands and leaned close to the witch’s ear. Gently she said, “You know. Because of the tickets we discovered to the Marshall Islands, a country the US has no extradition treaty with.”
Lidia closed her eyes at the words. “Vacation,” she said, wiping her nose and cheeks on her shoulder.
“Right,” T. Laine said. To the other witches she added, “Yes. Both Rosencrantzes and Petulengo are part of the problem with the workings and with the fungi and the pond and the deaths.We believe they knew that activating both workings in one locale would result in problems and strange growths and attacks on wildlife, and they did it anyway.”
“Did you know it would harm humans?” Taryn ask Lidia softly.
Lidia’s mouth went even harder, but her head tilted to the side in what might have been shame. Or not. I find it difficult to tell real shame from faked shame.
“Oh, Lidia,” Taryn Lee Faust said in a drawn-out sigh. “They’ll blame witches for these deaths.Allwitches.” She put her fingers over her eyes and pressed gently as if her eyeballs ached. “It will bring all the racial and species tensions back to the surface. We’ll have to start over to be accepted here.”
T. Laine asked Lidia, “Where is Daveed Petulengo? Where is your sister?”
Lidia glared at the table, silence her only answer.
A knock sounded in the room and two male deputies stood at the door, one Caucasian, the other African-American. Both stood with their hands free, ready to draw their weapons if needed. I stepped out of their way, my childhood in God’s Cloud of Glory making me see cops as the enemy, even though I was one of them now.
T. Laine pocketed the pens and pulled Lidia Rosencrantz to her feet. The U-18 witch looked cool and in control, and I remembered telling JoJo to send multiple witches to arrest Lidia. But it hadn’t been necessary, not when we had Lainie and her new equipment. Lainie, who was a... moon witch, during the height of the full moon. My mouth formed an O of understanding.
Lidia looked scared, her breath coming in pained gasps. “The cuffs will hold her,” T. Laine said to the men. “I’d appreciate it if you would take her to PsyLED HQ. We have a holding cell there that will negate her magic.”
At the wordmagic, the human males’ mouths pulled down. Neither was happy to be dealing with witches, and I got the idea that they would rather drown her in the river than transport her anywhere. But they both nodded.
Lidia growled and tried to jerk away, clanking her cuffs. “Fools. Every one of you! I curse you and the land you walk on.”
“You ever wish you had duct tape?” I asked T. Laine.
The darker-skinned man chuckled and the two carted Lidia away, down LuseCo’s hallways.
I tried to think what kind of problems could result if law enforcement, or worse, the general public, got their hands on the silver-toned null pens or reverse-engineered the witchy cuffs. I tried to think what effect the pens might have on me. Neither was a happy thought.
I said, “Ummm...”
