“He’ll be in too much pain to eat until after we let him out and let him shift,” Occam said.
“You’re gonna let him out?” JoJo asked.
Occam said, “As soon as he’s fully shackled his cat, yeah.”
“You can tell when he’s in charge?”
“Scent never lies.”
“He’s hurting,” I said softly. “Is it okay for me to pull on Soulwood to calm him and take away some of the pain?”
“Yes,” Tandy said. “That would help.”
I glanced from the screen that showed us Rick in his misery to Tandy. The empath was pale and sweating, reacting to the strongest emotion in the building. Rick’s pain.
JoJo frowned and said, “Oh. Damn. I didn’t realize—Fine. Go for it, Nell. Tandy, if you need to, go use the null room. If not, why not go lie down for a bit.”
Tandy nodded and left the conference room for the break room, and the sofa there.
I went to my cubicle and stuck my fingers into the soil of a potted plant, hearing the unit talking about Margot Racer and how they should handle her. The dirt was Soulwood soil, and the farm answered my call instantly, coiling around me like a snake or a living vine. I reached out with the power of my land and found Rick, a familiar snarl of cat magics and new red pulses of energy that weren’t there the last time I soothed him. I held back, studying the magics. Spook School classes had taught me that foreign magic wasn’t something to be trifled with, and this was different from Rick’s usual magic. This was a bright pulse of light with a braided luminescent tail. The pulses seemed to wrap around his heart and his brain and twine through his tattoos. I slipped in between the pulses and called on the magic that claimed Rick for my land. I drained off some of his pain and felt him chuff and settle.
•••
An hour later, Occam opened the cage door and Rick crawled off the silver tray that was keeping him in cat form. He lay on the hallway floor, panting and mewling softly in pain, his legs still at odd angles, even with were-creature healing abilities. The breaks had been thorough. JoJo turned off the camera, giving Rick an illusion of privacy, and we waited, only Occam and T. Laine close to the cage when the boss shifted, Occam to stop Rick if he lost control, Lainie under a small ofhedge of thorns, to evaluate the magic of the amulets and Rick’s shifting.
I had hauled T. Laine aside and explained, verbal report only, what I had seen in Rick’s magic and what I had done to calm him. “Not bad, Ingram,” she’d said. “Good work.”
The simple words made me feel as if I had contributed something important to the unit, more than filing reports,transcribing anything Clementine missed or messed up, and the occasional reading of the earth. Being useful felt good.
The shape-change took fifteen minutes, shorter than the last time I measured his shift. The camera came back on when Rick was human shaped and dressed in jeans, his hair longer, face with a silvered beard. He was still bare chested and the tattoos of cat eyes were glowing gold in a field of dark tattoo ink and scars and his olive-skinned chest. Occam handed him a T-shirt. Rick dragged it over his head and I heard T. Laine say, “Jo, don’t turn on the antispell music yet. Thanks to Ingram’s insights, I did ascanworking and looked at Rick’s magic. Someone’s using the spelled tats to call him.”
“Hurts like a mother,” Rick said, his voice rough and pained. He rubbed the mauled tattoos on his shoulder and arm. “And the cat-tat eyes are burning hot. I need the music.”
“Just gimme a minute,” T. Laine said. “While you were shifting, I followed the magic calling you. It came from out toward the river. If you’ll hold still I can try to get a more precise location and can pinpoint it with a scry.”
“Hurry.”
Rick stood still, half sitting on the cage that had held him, rubbing his arm, his body tense.
“Okay. Got it. Music.”
A woodwind melody played by an air witch flowed through the speakers. A measure in, Rick released a pent breath, walked to the conference room, and took his place at the table. Occam gave him a cup of coffee and a paper-wrapped deli sandwich from the fridge. Rick said softly, “Thank you.”
Occam nodded, his eyes kind. “When you’re up to it, I need to ask you some questions.”
“Okay. I’m good now that I got music,” Rick said, biting into his hoagie. “Go ahead.”
“Tell me where you were, what you were doing, and anything you remember.”
“I was watching the game at a sports bar on State Street. It was midafternoon and the moon had been up for hours, but I wasn’t thinking about it consciously. Why should I?” he asked, as if asking himself the question. “It was nowhere near full. Hell, it was nearly moonset. I was wearing the amulet. I should have been fine. But I felt the draw of the summoning. It startedlike a buzzing in my chest and my fingertips. I remember that I paid my bill. Got in my car. Somehow ended up here. I probably have all kinds of tickets coming from traffic cameras.” He chuckled wryly. “Worse, I have to wonder how many security cameras got footage of a big black cat racing the streets.”
T. Laine entered last and placed a paper map on the table, the creases worn. “I think I have the location of the witch circle, at least the general area. It’s different from the last time. It’s out off Alcoa, near the Woodson Drive exit, on the bank of Spring Creek. There’s grassy areas and wooded areas there.” She looked at Rick. “Do you want us to try and get there?”
“No point in running lights and sirens.” His face wrenched down in banked rage. “It’s starting to ease up. I think the witch is finished with the spelling. You can wait and check it out in daylight.”
Occam leaned over the paper map. “As the crow files, that’s more than five miles. Either she’s getting better or she used a bigger sacrifice. And we still don’t know if the effect on Rick is deliberate, coincidental, or incidental.”
“The calling was drawing on Rick’s tattoos,” I said. “I saw it. It isn’t coincidental.”
