The bone-wood in the circle of stones...
Had she lost control of the land? Had she begun to become a tree, like I had? Occam said I had been learning control. Had I learned enough control to try to heal without spilling the blood of an enemy? Without needing to harm myself? Without my friends needing to call in a military strike to take out the darkyinehithat I could become?
Occam got back in the car. “Nada,” he said. “Not a single blip. Hugo’s mama’s as human as they come. She’s the last of her female line. The Ames witch blood dried up.”
“But, maybe like with Margot, there were some geneticsleading to a gift of some sort,” I said. “We need to find Hugo’s wife. And we need to know who stayed before at the rental trailer where Cale lived.”
***
We walked into the local county law enforcement center, which was bustling and overcrowded. We were just in time to hear JoJo on the para freq channel, saying, “LaFleur, FireWind. I got something.”
Both bosses waved us all into a small conference room, we shut the door, and Rick called HQ on his cell. He put it on speaker and said, “LaFleur here, with FireWind, Ingram, Occam, Kent, and Racer. What do you have?”
“Hugo Ames’ estranged wife is one Carollette Myer Ames. Until two weeks ago, when she quit, she worked part-time at Merry Promotions as needed. With her husband. She worked there while Stella was on tour. I tracked her phone for the day the T-shirts were delivered to the horse farm. Guess who made the trip from her own home to the horse farm that day?” Everyone in the little room perked up until JoJo added, “Only problem is, there is no record of Carollette being a witch.”
I turned her name over in my mind. “Did we read the woman... What was her name? The one with the cigarettes and the liquor?”
“Ethel Myer,” T. Laine said. “Hugo’s landlady.” Her eyes lit up with more life than I had seen for days. “Myer! EthelMyerand CarolletteMyerAmes, Hugo’s wife. I’m betting good money Ethel and Carollette are related.”
“She knew an awful lot about the families and the affair.” I looked up at Occam. “When we got to Ethel’s house, not a one of us opened her file. Not a one of us read her. Why didn’t you read her with the psy-meter?” My face scrunched up. “Why didn’t I read the land when we got close to the house?”
“Daaaaang,” T. Laine said. “I bet good money it’s because there was a suggestion, a compulsion to listen, believe, and get out of there.” The light left her eyes. “I didn’t catch it.”
“And if she’s a paranormal death practitioner?” FireWind asked softly.
“We had our chance to take her out,” Occam said. “She won’t be surprised again.”
“She’ll hit us withdeath and decayif we go back there, or she’ll just be gone,” T. Laine said. “JoJo, does she have a cell? Can you track it?”
“Already on it,” Jo said through the cell phone speaker. “Already looking up DL, voter registration, social media presence. And one thing to know. Our country hick chick had me research who rented the property before Cale Nowell moved in. That mobile home is where Carollette Myer Ames grew up with her mother, Reba Myer, single parent, deceased. No father was listed on Carollette’s birth certificate.”
“So it’s just coincidence that Cale moved into that same trailer? No way. They have to be connected some way,” T. Laine said, pulling up her tablet. “Checking witch family ancestry sites for Myers.”
“Cale was in the commune,” I said, pulling myself out of my mental mire. “Hugo was in the commune. They likely knew one another there. It’s also likely that Hugo would have known where his wife grew up. Maybe Cale and Hugo talked? Maybe they were still friends? Maybe that’s how Hugo found Racine/Cadence Merriweather and started blackmailing her, through Cale? That makes sense. Everyone liked Cale. People were trying to help him after he got out of jail. Hugo was probably one of those people and helped Cale rent the trailer, where he also ended up contaminated bydeath and decay.All because he knew Hugo. But how did he end up dead and being ridden by the necromancer, Hugo’s wife, Carollette? Unless the power sink and the kettle full of people-soap was still there because Carollette needed to use her power or store it when it got to be too much, and she needed the power sink to do that.”
JoJo said, “I’ve got the GPS on Hugo’s car somewhere here. Hang on.” We heard keys tapping.
“Timeline fits,” Occam said. “Commune, to Stella, to Cale, to Hugo, to Carollette, who was betrayed by Hugo sleeping with one of the people at Melody Horse Farm, which leads us back to the commune. A nice, convoluted, but circular trail.”
Her voice vibrating with excitement, Jo said, “Got it. Hugo Ames’ car made the trip to Cale’s trailer four times since Cale got out of jail. We have our connection point.”
“Good work,” FireWind said. For him that was high praise.
“If we can find Carollette before she sees us, we could deliver null pens all around her,” T. Laine said.
“How old is Ethel Myer?” I asked, my fingers having found their way into the soil of my potted plant. I hadn’t realized that I was carrying it around.
“She’s forty-two,” JoJo said. “Hang on for DL pic.”
T. Laine cursed softly and said, “Jo, she looks eighty. Wehadher! And we didn’t take her.”
I placed the pot on the table beside me, my hands around it, my eyes on it so I didn’t have to look at them. “Ethel is a witch. Maybe even a death witch, because her magics are slowly killing her, that and the cigarettes and the liquor. Butdeath and decaykills faster than what we saw at her place. Anddeath and decayis not witch magic,” I said, “although it could have come from the same source, back far in the past, mutated genetics that resulted in witches, inyinehi, maybe other creatures, maybe recessive genes that pair up when certain people breed too close.” I felt T. Laine’s eyes on me and I took a steadying breath. “Anyway. What I’m trying to say is thatdeath and decayis old earth magic, ancient magic like mine, but turned on its head and perverted, fueled by sacrifice.”
I could feel my bosses’ eyes on me. I had told FireWind, Soul, and Rick a lot about my magics. Rick knew even more from the time Paka had nearly killed Ephraim. It had been kept off my record. So far. I didn’t look up or meet anyone’s eyes. I was staring at my potted cabbage, my fingers touching Soulwood soil. I was growing tiny green leaves on the tips of my fingernails. One unfurled, dark green with red veining.
“When was this determined?” FireWind asked.
“Today,” I said. “That’s what I’m here to report. I recognized the origination of thedeath and decayon the old Ames farm. The family were normal witches. One of them married... I don’t know, maybe a second cousin. Or even a boy from the church. Stranger things have happened. And then, probably due to intermarriage, recessive genes began to pop up. Around seventy-five to a hundred years ago, ayinehi, a nature creature like me, was born, grew up, and was killed and buried on the Ames farm.Yinehimagics appear most strongly when the woman is attacked and has to defend herself. Something aboutthe adrenaline spike of self-defense brings them to full power. The bones I discovered under the ground were mostly tree.”
