“Catriona Doyle,” the leader said. “The FBI took her into custody as a person of interest and they won’t let us see her. The agent sent social services to pick up her kid.At school.Herchildhas been remanded into the system instead of to her sister or to one ofus.”
“The child’s other parent?” T. Laine asked.
“We’ve attempted to notify the child’s father, but he and his second wife are on a documentary photoshoot somewhere in the Australian outback. Doyle’s sister showed social services notarized papers giving her custody in the event of problems. Social services and the FBI refused to even look at them.”
“Sheriff Jackett,” T. Laine said, without looking away from the witches. “You know anything about that?”
“I don’t, Special Agent Kent. The FBI shares office space with the Cookeville PD. The chief agreed this scene was outside his jurisdiction, and he left around noon,” Jackett drawled, his voice a familiar-sounding Tennessee cadence. “I’ll find out what’s happ’nin’, but I got to say, what the witch is describing is all by the book. It ain’t uncommon to hold a person of interest and, according to established protocol, to make sure any children are safe for the duration. Social services will hold a custodial ruling as soon as possible and see that the child is returned to the rightful family member, but short term, the safe place is with a foster home.”
“I don’t think so,” the leader said. “Foster homes are notoriously dangerous, especially to children of witches.”
“It’s protocol, ma’am,” the sheriff said, his tone composed and unemotional.
“Really?” T. Laine said. “Protocol can be interpreted. This sounds like extreme measures to me. Measures that might suggest Catriona is dangerous just for being a witch, measures that would pit the magic workers we need at this scene against us in law enforcement, at a particularly bad time. We are not looking at adeathworking or curse. You aren’t even certain that this isn’t an accident of some sort. Catriona isn’t a death witch, so she isn’t a suspect.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jackett said, equably. “I ain’t here to argue. But in the interest of interspecies harmony, I can make a call.”
“We aren’t different spe—” she started.
Occam stepped up to the sheriff, all man-to-man, a hand on the older man’s shoulder. The change in the sheriff’s demeanor was immediate: his shoulders relaxed and his face lost the hardness he’d worn when watching all the womenfolk.
I’d seen just that reaction among churchmen. Fear of women created a need to control them, especially among weak men who didn’t know their place in the world and feared anything that might take their little bit of power from them. T. Laine’s eyes went narrow and hard at the obvious body language. Occam’s tactics would not have worked for a woman. Had Lainie stepped up all backslapping bonhomie, a man like Jackett would have been put off. Of course, had Jackett been a woman, Lainie might have had the best results. Sexism was a peculiar thing.
Occam pulled Jackett back into our little group and said, “From what I’ve heard of him, FBI Senior Special Agent Macauley Smythe is a racist, a misogynist, and a witch hater. Everybody here knows it. Most all your people saw it when he handcuffed the witch in question and hauled her away. He was not gentle. He enjoyed it a mite too much.” Occam looked around, as if to point out the numbers of people who had seen the unprofessional and unnecessary tactics. “I think you might want to do more thancallthe chief of police and the FBI office. Maybe you would consider a personal appearance and make sure nothing untoward is happenin’ to Catriona Doyle, a woman currently living in your county. A citizen of Ireland, with rights under U.S. and international law. A citizen protected by herembassy. Your cooperation and assistance might make the Nashville witches a tad more willing to assist us. And wedoneed their assistance to keep all your people and our people and the civilian victims here alive.”
Jackett was a middle-aged man with a paunch that moved when he took a deep breath. He didn’t look happy at being maneuvered into doing anything to help the witches, but sheriffs are political beings. They want to keep the voting public happy and anything that got in the way of finding Stella Mae’s killer would be bad for Jackett’s future occupational and happiness factor. “I reckon I can do that for you’uns.”
I jerked at the familiar church-speak, but no one else seemed to notice.
“And woe betide the man or woman who harms her or her child,” the coven leader said, loud enough to be heard.
“That a threat?” Jackett called back, not sounding as though a threat would bother him much.
“Never,” the witch said. But the smile she sent the sheriff said otherwise.
Sheriff Jackett hesitated, watching the witch, before he pulled his key fob from a pocket and walked to his car. No one spoke as the official vehicle departed. Into the uncomfortable silence, T. Laine stepped forward and extended her hand to the coven leader. Softly she said, “Special Agent T. Laine Kent, of the Kent witch clan.”
“I didn’t think they let witches in to PsyLED.”
“I was one of the first.”
The coven leader made a humming noise, then took her hand, and the two women shook. “Astrid Grainger, of the Grainger clan, coven leader of the North Nashville coven.”
“We can use some help,” T. Laine said. “And that null room you trailered in is desperately needed.” Gesturing us to the side, Lainie lowered her voice and we all gathered around her as she filled the coven in on the situation. She ended with, “I can’t guarantee full funding for your services, but I can guarantee you great PR.”
Astrid gave a mighty frown and T. Laine pushed on, fast. “You need something to work past the long-standing witch phobia in the rural parts of this state. This case could be it. It’s garnered national media attention and, if witches are part ofsolving it, part of saving the victims and deputies, you’ll be heroes. We need you. The site’s not reading like witch energies and we don’t know what it is or, frankly, if there’s even been a crime committed. Needless to say, that part can’t reach the media. Not yet.”
Astrid Grainger made a harrumphing sound that conveyed a sour acceptance of what couldn’t be changed, but her shoulders relaxed. “First let’s set up a circle and recharge the null room, which it needs after travel. Then we’ll see if we can spot anything clinging to the humans.” She waved her arm at the band members peering out of tents. “They’ll have to remove the null suits and aprons. If something magical’s clinging to them, we can then decide if a stay in the null room would help or make things worse. And then we can recharge the null pens, if you know the working.”
“I do.” T. Laine pointed to a flat place on the back lawn, away from potential horse droppings, a spot that would make overviewing by drones difficult. “Circle there?”
“Good,” Astrid said. “I’ll take two of my people and recharge the null room trailer. Etain,” she said, louder, “get the chalk, the chalk spreader, and the implements.”
“Aye,” one of the witches said. With the single word, I knew she wasn’t from around here. “String and stick, bell and candle too?” She was Irish. I had never met an Irish person before and I loved the way the lyrical sounds fell from her mouth. She had freckles the color of light brown sugar, pale skin, and straight brown hair with just a hint of red. She was wearing a black Stella Mae tour T-shirt, with the white and scarlet logo of a silhouetted Stella Mae and her guitar on front and the tour dates and cities on the back.
Astrid waved a hand in awhatevermotion and, except for Etain, the witches followed her away. I bent back to the timeline database I was building. There were dozens of names already attached to the potential crime scene. One of the pitfalls of Unit Eighteen covering such a large region was that we didn’t know the law enforcement officials or the microculture of the small towns we visited on official business and we were always playing catch-up. It meant starting from scratch with each out-of-town case. Databases were the stuff that kept us on top of cases.
“Ingram. Hang on,” Occam called out, loping from thedirection of the barn. I hadn’t even noticed he had slipped away. Cat stealth, cat grace. He looked so much better than he had. Hunting every full moon on Soulwood meant each time he shifted back to human he was more healed. “We got company,” he murmured. He nodded his head toward the car moving slowly up the drive. “One of the deputies says that’s FBI from the local office. Evidently he was here with the feeb senior special agent earlier.”
