An hour later, I had a short list of questions, unanswered inconsistencies, and timeline problems. I left the null room to the paramedics and EMTs who delivered Thomas Langer, his sister Robinelle, and two other patients for a stint in the antimagic room. Thomas was free from the ventilator and waved at me, gave a thumbs-up, as we passed in the hallway. It was reminiscent of the gesture he had given me in the ambulance as he pulled away from Melody Horse Farm on day one. I was glad he still had a thumb. And someone would be taking his statement while he nulled out. Even if it was JoJo Jones herself.
The stench trailing behind the stretchers reminded me to rinse out my clothes and hang them up in the locker room. I hung them over the sink with my undies hidden behind my outer clothes. Some girlhood habits never died.
I checked on JoJo, who was multitasking and talking on the phone, and went to my desk, spending hours on files, reports, and answering the calls that got by Jo. Info came in, but it was all insignificant. I was getting good at saying nothing with a lot of words, comforting nothings to family, stilted nothings to the press. JoJo interviewed Langer when he came in to be nullified,but she learned nothing new either. I learned just how difficult it was to carry patients up narrow stairs and how badly we needed the elevator that had never been installed in the back.
I forgot lunch. Midafternoon, my stomach reminded me and I raided the break room fridge for leftovers, putting pizza into the microwave to heat, and walked into the conference room. Today Jo was wearing dozens of long clip-on braids in several shades of brown and gold, the braids woven in a complicated bun with long hanging braids and little gold beads woven into it. It looked heavy and uncomfortable and gorgeous. She was dressed in a black military-style jacket, gold braiding at the shoulders and epaulets, and silky gold frog closures. Some of the churchwomen made bespoke clothing like this, and...
“Mama Grace makes fabulous knotted and tied frogs like that,” I said.
JoJo canted her head at me, her scarlet-painted lips stretching into a smile. “I did not go behind your back and get your church ladies to make my clothes. If I’d wanted them to do my clothes, I’d have told you first.”
“Ummm. Okay?”
“Uh-huh. This came from a consignment shop.” Her tone went smug and amused. “Someone in your church made it for thepreviousowner, some rich woman. Which makes me an astounding fashion-conscious-shopper-on-a-budget.”
I chuckled. “You look fantastic. I wish I had half as much fashion sense as you do.”
“When this case is over, we’ll do a girls’ day out and hit the high-end consignment shops. Then get massages. And maybe we’ll charge it to His Almighty FireWind. You ever had a massage?”
“No. And I’ll be honest. I’m not real comfortable at the idea of a stranger rubbing up on me.”
“Put that way, me neither.”
I had a feeling she was laughing at me. Jo sat back and cracked her knuckles, her scarlet fingernails flashing. “Where are you?” She meant on the investigation.
“I got thoughts and questions.” I put my list of curiosities up on the screen. “What can you tell me about the timeline of the T-shirts? Some of the sick never touched the shirts. So far as I know were never in the room with the shirts. Yet they’re sick or dead.”
“T-shirt timeline, I have. The band manager handledordering swag for the tour and the screen-printing company shipped them in boxes. The roadies opened the boxes and packed them in heavy-duty plastic bins, according to size, for easy transporting back and forth. They took forty T-shirt bins, unpacked from forty-eight T-shirt boxes, with them on the tour. They ordered additional batches of forty-eight boxes while on tour, drop-shipped to various hotels. I have records that all were delivered and are accounted for in the manager’s accounting database, along with the original twelve boxes. When they got home there was one box in the studio, unaccounted for, no shipping label.
“Things get lost or misplaced on a tour. Even expensive musical instruments and electronic equipment. But there is never extra stuff just appearing; the manager insists it was not present when they left on this leg of the tour. I’ve tracked every single sale and accounted for all the shirts, including two full bins on the RV. And then there’s the mystery box.”
She looked up. “I’ve verified that the shirts are official tour shirts, not a knockoff. Some unknown person put that box in the swag room, at some point during a twelve-week tour, while people were all over the property. Dozens of people. Not one of them was a death witch or an evil magic practitioner. Not that death witches advertise, since the U.S. military complex and a dozen foreign enemy combatant states would want them, find them, take them, and they would end up dead or disappeared.”
“How would anyone get to a death witch?” I asked.
“They’d set off a sleeping-gas bomb—assuming anyone was still alive—after she went to bed, and walk out with the witch wearing null cuffs.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. You know, for a child raised in God’s Cloud of Glory, you are the epitome of innocence.”
I made a face at her. “So we are nowhere?”
“We are nowhere.”
“Well, dang.”
The microwave dinged and I brought in plates and slices and sat. I pulled up research on death magics. There wasn’t much. All magics worked differently for each witch, depending on the individual, her element (earth, air, water, etc.), her power level, her training, and any previous coven affiliation. Death-magic witches didn’t associate with covens because a coven wouldstick her in a null room and leave her there until she rotted. Death-magic users were not blood-magic users. Blood witches used the usual methods of working energies, but powered with blood sacrifice. Death-magic users were a group all their own. Death was raw black magic—not worked with math and focals, and always a curse. It was a direct interaction with life forces and earth forces and something darker, more predatory.
This... thisdeath and decay...
My mind went still, remembering it under my fingers, in the land at Stella’s farm, in the body of Erica. I made a fist, my fingers still not completely healed, thinking. The Green Knight had recognized the magics and attacked instantly.
Death and decaywas oddly familiar. To the Green Knight and to me. Where had I encountered it before? When a demon had been summoned and tried to rise to Earth? When the salamanders bred?
Minutes had passed. JoJo was scanning multiple files and photos and her hands were clicking and clacking all over multiple keyboards. I said, “Jo?” She grunted; I took that as permission to continue. “I wondered what I would feel if I tried to read Erica. In the hospital.”
Her hands went still. “You didn’t.”
