“A brownie is a household paranormal who does chores in return for a safe place to live and food to eat.”
I stilled. That sounded like what I had been when I lived with John and Leah Ingram.
“Spriggans are bug-ugly haints. Sprites are fairy creatures.” She tilted her head. “Yeah, so you’re a sprite.” She took the laptop from my fingers and showed Astrid. “Greenish liquid.” She pointed to the last photo. “Do you be thinking the bottle burned and the liquid was used up in the energies?”
“Interesting,” Astrid said. “A trigger. This may explain everything.”
“Not to me,” I said, wanting to return to fairy creatures and sprites, but the conversation had moved on. I would have to add those terms to the list of research into what Mud, Esther, and I might be.
“If it’s a trigger, then it was set to discharge, if you will, when the box was opened,” Astrid said. “However, before the lid was opened, some of the liquid amulet could have evaporated through the hole in the lid, coating the silver wire, which is why we’re seeing the low-level but widespread decay and then the fast-acting decay later. The curse slowly entered the air and the first women who went to the basement this morning breathed it in for, what? Over an hour? Then died. The ones present when the box was opened got the highest concentration of the energies, but for a much shorter time.”
“Monica Belcher got the pure dose,” I said.
“When Belcher opened the box,” T. Laine said, “she was hit with massive energies.”
“Apreservationworking, to keep the box and the shirts in a form of stasis,” Astrid suggested. “Apreservationworking could have been calculated to not break down the shirtsorthe box until the trigger was activated. If a witch did this, if it was a witch-made trigger, it’s a very sophisticated, layered mechanism.”
“But the shirts are still breaking down more slowly than anything else in the room,” I said. “Things were breaking down before the box was opened. So... it’s in the air.” Dread filled me.
“You’re saying thatdeath and decaywas in the air we were breathin’,” Etain said.
“Breathe in and out,” T. Laine commanded me. She looked me up and down, using aseeingworking as I breathed. Etain joined her, both of them silent. “I missed it. You’re right,” she said to me. “It’s in us, small odd little magics on each exhalation.” She looked around. “So that means those of us who spent the most time in the basement need more null room time. It’s magic, but I don’t know what kind.” She shook her head. “Maybe it’s speeded-up nature, like you said.”
“It’s glad I am that I’ll be spending more time in the null room, then,” Etain said, “but ma sister is in jail and has no access to the null room and she was down there, in the basement.” She looked at her watch and blinked away sudden tears.
“I’ll find a way to get her a null pen,” T. Laine said. “We also need to find a way to get the T-shirts and the potential trigger into the null room,” T. Laine said, “along with what’s left of the bodies. We could put them in coolers, but there’s no way to carry all that safely up the stairs.”
“Open the French doors and back the trailer inside the basement,” I said. “Shovel it all into the null room.”
“Well, slap me silly,” Astrid said, whirling and striding away, her black skirt flaring wide.
“What just happened?” I asked Etain.
The girl laughed. “That meant we witches should ha’ thought of it, though I never knew there were doors down there. I thought it was all windows. Come on. Let’s get your cowboy and go stand in the null room again together. Like a threesome but without the fun. Maybe he has a brother?”
“No,” I said. “He doesn’t. And he’s taken and we aren’t interested.”
“No ring on your finger says different.”
I scowled at her, my very best churchwoman scowl, and Etain grinned.
“I’m teasing you. I admit it’s mostly to keep ma mind offa ma family. I promise not to poach on your man. Or on you, though you’re cute as a bunny when you frown.”
***
All the witches agreed thatdeath and decaywasn’t witch magic, not that local law enforcement understood the difference. They were more prosaic. If it walked like a duck, paddled like a duck, and quacked like a duck, it was a duck. As stars came out, small groups of deputies, investigators, hazmat people, paramedics, witches, and band members spent crowded half-hour intervals in the null room to remove any lingering traces of the energies we had breathed in, potential internal effects that didn’t register on an outward scan of our bodies with either a typicalseeingworking by the witches or use of the psy-meter.
Etain got her wish and the three of us spent a crowded half hour together in the null room with the other Nashville coven members and T. Laine. A very uncomfortable half hour. The Irish witch seemed to have come to a conclusion and might have been flirting with me. She tried flirting with T. Laine, who rolled her eyes and told the young witch to find greener pastures, whatever that meant. And then, as if she couldn’t help herself, Etain looked from her watch and her cell and once again eyed Occam.
While she made eyes at my cat-man, I went green in the deeps of my heart, jealousy green. That jealousy poked at old memories, old sorrows like bruises on my soul, reminding me what it had felt like to be married to John. In the eyes of the church we had been wed, but I had known that Leah was his wife for real, the woman he loved. Sharing his bed. Being the female head of the house. Even though I hadn’t loved John in a romantic way, even though I hadn’t wanted his physical attention, I had always been the second wife, the lesser wife, the wife who came to them with nothing—or so I had thought—a beggar with no way out.
That lesser position had created feelings in my twelve-year-old heart I hadn’t understood then and still didn’t now—a strange type of impotent jealousy built of enforced subjugation and insignificance. It was the recognition of lack of power and lack of value and importance in our shared household, in my small world.
Etain was clearly an inveterate flirt, perhaps made worse because her family was in trouble and she was distractingherself. Her flirting likely meant nothing to her, but in my mind she was indeed poaching on my cat-man. And in a small way, I hated her for that. And hated myself for hating her because I knew the jealousy was a weakness inside me.
After our half hour of enforced close proximity and my greenness, Etain and the others took off to do witchy things and Occam and I went to my car. Silently, I shared a packet of commercially packaged salmon jerky and some of my homemade fish-flake protein bars made for the werecats. After the stench of Stella Mae’s house and the uncomfortable time in the null room with a witch who was looking for a companion or two to break into the county lockup and then spend the night with, I wasn’t very hungry. I nibbled. The salmon was pretty good. The protein bars needed more salt and I’d adjust the recipe next time. Occam added a packet of ketchup to his and thought it was delicious.Cats. He grinned at me in the dark, his scarred face pulling up on one side. “You should try it,” he said, knowing what I thought of ketchup. “It’s good on eggs with Tabasco, good on burgers, good on anything.”
I made a face that said plainly,Gross, and he laughed. And added another packet of ketchup to the bar.
