I had done no such thing, but I didn’t contradict him.
“I think it’s possible that I have the scent of the magic user—not a witch in the traditional sense,” he said to T. Laine, “—who cursed the T-shirts. And...” He paused, thinking, finishing up his hair and hunting in a pocket for a tie. “It isn’t truly the human scent of the practitioner, but the scent of foul magic. Yes, that is what I was smelling,” he mused. “I will shift again as soon as I’ve recovered and search the house for more of the scent, hoping to identify the practitioner.”
“The death magic is still active, stronger in the basement than it was before,” I said.
“That’s not possible,” T. Laine said. “The North Nashville coven put a shield around and under the energies. They’re stable.”
“Not now,” FireWind said. “I believe the murderer returned. Perhaps the practitioner got back inside with some sort of focal attuned to the original energies. Nell thought she saw someone in the field. I believe I have the scent. The body in the barn has only been dead a few hours. The horse in the pasture has been dead several hours longer.”
“Can you tell if the practitioner is female?”
“I believe so, though the scent of the energies makes it difficult to be certain. Do we have a list of everyone who was allowed onto the property today?”
T. Laine frowned, thinking. “Yes. Kept by the deputies,” she said, sounding distracted. “I’ve been here all day. If someone got in, right under all our noses, then she’s very, very good.”
“That specific magical scent is all over the pasture where the stallion died and around the barn and the house. If it is also inside the house, then, yes, you are correct. We are dealing with someone quite controlled and powerful.” His lips turned down in an expression I had seen on Jane’s face. “Perhaps she is controlled enough to pull an obfuscation glamour? Or to carry an amulet that provides one? I believe that I can recognize the scent of the practitioner even in my human form now. It was potent, smelling like a whiff of raw, rotten beef, a stronger mix of decaying trees, and even more strong, the scent of blood and...” He shook his head slowly, thinking. “Perhaps graveyard dirt?” His face cleared. “Are there old graveyards near here? Or better still, battlegrounds?”
“Except for Virginia, Tennessee saw the worst fighting in the Civil War,” Occam said, pulling his phone to verify and identify any sites. “There are dozens of them listed, and that doesn’t count smaller skirmishes. The Battle of Stones River, near Murfreesboro; the battle near Gallatin; a battle near Hendersonville; and the Battle of Nashville were all close by. Sherman spent a lot of time in the state. And back a century ago, people buried their kin on their farms as often as they buried them in church graveyards. There are battlegrounds and unmarked graves everywhere. And before that, tribes fought each other for land and resources.”
T. Laine said, “You think the practitioner took dirt from a grave and dirt from a battleground and used it as part of thedeath and decayworking?”
“The plants in the basement,” I said softly. “The soil felt... odd. I need to read it again.” I dashed to the stairs and down. There was a window at the landing and a dead plant on the high window ledge. I grabbed the ceramic pot and carried it back to the kitchen, placing it beside the potted vampire tree. Before I could change my mind, I stuck my left fingers into the dead plant’s dirt, and my right fingers into the tree’s pot. I expected it to hurt. A lot. It didn’t.
Thoughtfully, I inspected the dead soil, the dead roots. The oddity I had noted but paid no mind came clear. There were two kinds of soil in the pot. Most of it had come from here, from the horse farm. That part was rotted hay, dried manure, commercial vermiculite, crushed eggshells, the rotted detritus of green plants. The other was different. The different stuff rested on top of the pot. It was foreign. And dangerous. That small bit was electric, biting at my fingers like tiny spiders.
I drew on Soulwood.
My land raised its metaphorical head and pricked its ears, so much like a cat in my mind. It searched slowly out from the hills that were my home, out and out until it reached me and surrounded me in its embrace. Soulwood stretched like a lazy cat, wanting me back. It warmed me, pressing into me, much like a cat would roll over begging for attention. I thought to my land,This soil has been mixed with death.Where did this dirt come from, this dirt of death?
Holding me, or holding on to me, it swept out and back, from the hills to me, back and forth, as if tying itself to my location. It settled for a moment, then began to reach out, circling farther, hunting, tracking, shadowing, prowling. Searching out earth that was battlefield and gravesite... They were everywhere. Hundreds of cemeteries and family plots. Dozens of battlefields. A half dozen locations within a hundred miles where war and violence had taken place, where blood had been spilled. One was close by, within a few miles. It was a small, ancient plot of ground where a skirmish had been fought, a battle, and men had died, bleeding their life into the land.There... Yes. Right there. All the soil from all the pots in the studio were contaminated from there. But I couldn’t seem to locate it on the surface. It was just farmland, shaped by man for hundreds, if notthousands, of years. I could find nothing that would lead me to that land, nothing that showed me how to find it aboveground.
I marked the place in my mind and pulled back. Closer to the house was a bright spot of grass, the place where FireWind had shifted shape. The grass and roots and the dirt itself were glowing and dazzling. Beautiful. Soulwood wanted to know it, so I reached out to it, sank my mind into the earth there, and sighed with delight.
“Nell!” Occam shouted. He wrenched my hand out of the vampire tree. “Nell, stop. Stop now.”
I tried to speak. Tried to lick my lips. A faint croak came out. I looked at my hands. The skin of my fingertips was white again. Tiny pinpricks covered them. I looked at the vampire tree. It was putting out new leaves. It was growing.
The room telescoped down. I tried to warn Occam, but no words came. I dropped the pot.
I fell forward.
***
In the dark of semiconsciousness, I knew I had been placed on the grass out front. Oddly enough I was close to the place where Occam had laid FireWind. I slid my hand across the lawn to the warmth of the happy grass. My fingers ached and I was cold all over, but the ground where FireWind had shifted eased some of that.
Occam dropped to his knees beside me.
“Good, you’re awake,” he said. “That dang blasted tree put in roots through the floor. I yanked it up by the roots and itstuck me,” he said, irritation in his voice. I smiled. It stuck me too sometimes, when I did stuff it didn’t like. “T. Laine says that in the short time it was rooted in the house, it already sucked up and digested some of thedeath and decay. Did you know it could do that?”
No, I mouthed, but no sound came out. I had a feeling that the vampire tree would be happy to clean the earth of thedeath and decay, but it would claim a patch of land in return. A big patch. And probably the house and all the horses and any people nearby. And it would fight to keep control of the land it had claimed.
I was managing to plant vampire tree forests all over and that would never do. Eventually the tree would be seen killing a human and humans would try again to kill it. I would have to use Soulwood to destroy the tree, just as I had threatened. And if I was unsuccessful, the military or combined law enforcement would bomb it, burn it, and destroy it. Eventually the military and the government would figure out the tree was connected to me and they might kill me too, and probably Soulwood and my sisters. The tree might be sentient, but it wasn’t mature nor did it understand human problems or human judgments. It killed things and people for nourishment. I couldn’t let it be free.
“Is it back in the pot?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Occam groused. “Looking no worse for being dropped, rooted, uprooted, shaken, and replanted. But it probably ain’t happy.”
“It ain’t neverhappy,” I said.
