T. Laine was on a stretcher, wheeled past me to an ambulance, Margot trotting at her side. “Where?” I croaked.
Occam cat-growled in my ear, “Heading to UTMC. Shesuffered a crushing injury. FireWind called Gonzales to meet her there.”
“He’s turning into a softie,” I whispered. I was cold. So cold. I closed my eyes, pulling the sweater around my shoulders with my leafy fingers. I didn’t know when or how the sweater had gotten here, but it was warm and fuzzy and comforting. The heat blew across me. I slept.
***
“Nell?”
I woke again, this time from a confusing dream full of angry people teetering on the edge of violence. I got my eyes open and blinked, confused. I was at HQ. I didn’t remember getting here.
“Nell?” FireWind asked. He had used my first name. That was enough to wake the dead from sheer shock. He was kneeling in front of me.
Occam’s arms were no longer around me, but he knelt beside my chair, his paws—paws—on my hands, his eyes the brilliant gold of his cat. He was... part cat. That was strange.
I looked around, discovered I was in HQ’s conference room, with no idea how I had gotten there. “Occam?” I whispered. He cat-hissed. “Boss?” I whispered.
“Kahwi.Asvhvsga,”he said.
I smelled coffee. There was a mug of coffee in FireWind’s hands, extended to me.Kahwi. Cherokee for coffee? I had no idea of the other word. I accepted the mug, warm in my icy hands, and drank. There was sugar and creamer in it, a lot of both, and the sweets and the caffeine and the fat of the creamer went to work. When the mug was half-empty, I looked around the room to see JoJo, Occam, and my boss, who was still kneeling in front of me. “I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t. I was lying. FireWind knew that. “T. Laine? And Rick? And... Carollette?”
The skin around FireWind’s eyes tightened ever so slightly.
I remembered the vines wrapping around her neck. “Did I kill her?” I asked.
Occam’s arms tightened around me. He snarled silently at our boss.
FireWind stood and moved away from me. “No,” he answered. “Lainie is alive, at UTMC. After undergoing treatment she will be spending a few days here at HQ in the null room.”
He called her Lainie, not Kent. Did that indicate she was in very bad shape? Or was FireWind softening?
“LaFleur was down, but shifted in time to survive,” FireWind said. “Carollette Ames survived, with six rounds in her and her throat crushed by vines. She is in custody. And we are all alive, thanks to you.”
“Where?” I managed, sipping again. My throat was raw, and my hands were leafy, though not so leafy as I remembered them being. Occam must have groomed me. Cat mating ritual. I softened all over and rubbed my jaw against his furry forehead, knowing I’d have to deal with this weird partial-cat-state at some point.
“She is on her way to New Orleans. Catriona and Etain borrowed the portable null trailer from UTMC, put her in it, wrapped her in a dozen null cuffs and all of the unit’s null pens.”
“She shouldn’t have been able to survive being shot.”
“No.” He smiled slightly. “Which is why she is being trailered directly to New Orleans and the null prisons kept by the witch council there.”
“No trial?” I asked.
“No,” he said again, the word sharp. “She admitted nothing, but our investigation amassed enough evidence to make sure she is never released.”
“The deaths had nothing to do with Stella,” JoJo said. “And everything to do with her. Everything went back to the commune and the relationships that Stella forged there. And the kind of human jealousy that kills instead of walking away.” Jo pulled on her earrings, stretching her ear. “Carollette deserves to be dead, not in a null room.”
“Not our call,” FireWind said. “She may not read as a witch, but she isajasgili. She isdeath and decayand they think only the strongest witches are capable of restraining necromancy.”
“The trigger in the T-shirt box?” I asked. “Was that set by Ethel?”
FireWind shifted his position on the edge of the conference table where he was propped. “Similar elements of the trigger were found in the remains of Ethel Myer’s house, her fingerprints on a bottle of absinthe. Kent believes that Ethel helped Carollette build the power sink to contain her death energies atpuberty. If so, that was a brilliant, though temporary solution to control such dangerous magics.” His mouth turned down, a frown that said he was thinking. “It worked until Carollette was betrayed and found a use for her magics, to get back at her cheating husband. Conjecture. But it seems to fit the evidence that Carollette took the power into her own hands and Ethel assisted. But we may never know everything.Death and decayis destroying the evidence.”
JoJo said, “The witches will probably study Carollette for the next fifty years, until she dies. Let me play my tiny violin.”
There were still things that didn’t add up. I knew I’d be asking questions for a while, as would all the team. “What about the dead plants?” I asked.
FireWind said, “Verna Upton cared for the houseplants. I am speculating that Carollette brought contaminated dirt from herdeath and decaycircle and sprinkled some in each pot in the studio to act as a focal, to contain the energies to the house.”
