I had been attacked. My sister Esther had been attacked. We grow leaves. My sister Mud had not been attacked and it was my goal to make sure she never was. She could still use her earth gifts to make things grow, but hopefully she would never—
“Ingram?” FireWind said.
I realized I had fallen silent.
“The second time the recessive genes appeared is more recent, about ten or maybe fifteen years ago, if the power sink I discovered is any indication, probably at puberty. The energies there are just a little different from mine, but recognizable. As if they come from common stock.”
My mind went all sorts of places, remembering T. Laine’s fear that the magic would get into the water table. Would infect the earth itself.
Would Soulwood be enough to defeat that kind of magic? Even with the Green Knight to help? The magics had killed the potted vampire tree, at least enough for Occam to cut it down.
His body still as stone in my peripheral vision, FireWind said, “Oral tales speak of such a creature. The Tsalagi might call itajasgili.”
I lifted my head to him. His face was both expressionless and full of emotion at once. Grieving and angry, stoic and firm.
He said, “Theajasgiliwill be very different from the white man’s witches, and I fear this dark magic user will be different from what I might have known once upon a time. Find theajasgili, the magic practitioner ofdeath and decay. I will seek authorization for extreme measures to shut her down.”
Extreme measures was a PsyLED code word for military. The top brass in PsyLED and in Homeland Security were creating—probably had been for a long time—protocols for every magical eventuality. Worst-case scenarios included intervention by fighter jets, special units with high-tech gear, maybe bombs. Margot was standing still as a marble statue in the corner, reading us all for truth, for lies, for things left unsaid. Her face was sheened with strain, as she followed our words and FireWind’s judgment.
Her voice tense, T. Laine said, “I have a Myer witch family, last recorded in 1902. Either they died out or went underground.”
“Ethel Myer isn’t ayinehior anajasgili,” I said. “Ethel didn’t look like me, no wood fingernails, no leaves.” I had a feeling that Ethel would read exactly like a witch, not likedeath and decay. The trigger in the T-shirts had been created by a witch. “Ethel probably made the trigger. And that means she knows who theajasgiliis. She sent us to the Ames farm.” I stopped, thoughts whirling. “What if Ethel recognized what I was? What if she knew what I was and she sent me to the farm?”
“Why would she do that?” T. Laine asked.
Tilting up a thumb in uncertainty, I said, “Maybe Ethel understood how badly the entire thing had gone wrong. Maybe she thinks herajasgiliis growing very dangerous.”
And they would bomb theajasgili. For certain, unless—
“What if extreme measures don’t work?” I asked. “Death and decayworks on everything except null energies. What if ourajasgilishuts down high-tech weaponry before it’s fired? The power sink I found was the place where she stored her magics when they got to be too much to carry safely. That means that theajasgiliknows how to store, use, and directdeath and decay.”
Unit Eighteen were all staring at me. I could feel the weight of their attention, their worries, their fear. I went on, speaking into the silence. “If there was a chance that ambientdeath and decaymagics would cause our semiautomatics to malfunction, why not something bigger.” It was technically a question, but I stated it as a fact.
I could almost hear the frown in her voice as T. Laine said, “Someone sent that man chasing Ingram in his truck. Someone killed a kind old man and forced his body to drive his truck to PsyLED, wait there, and then chase down the first person who exited.”
Occam said, “Someone sent Cale Nowell on a drive in the countryside until he crashed his car. How close was he to his trailer? Could Carollette have been at the power sink, maybe planning to use her kettles, when he came home? Killed him accidentally and made him drive himself away?”
FireWind said, “That makes sense. If theajasgiliis losing control of her magics, then anything is possible.”
I shook my head and lifted a bit of Soulwood soil in my fingers, letting it dribble back into the cabbage pot, my finger leaves rustling. I looked at FireWind. “You were there too, when thetruck charged across traffic to kill me.” I sifted Soulwood soil through my fingers. “You knew what I was when you first saw me. When you first took my scent. At Melody Horse Farm, you said you smelled theajasgili. You had her scent. What if she knew that? What if she heard us talking the night she killed Ingrid Wayns? Or before she killed the stallion? She had access to a witch who might have provided obfuscation charms that let her be there with us.” I looked up from the soil. “Whoever sent the man to HQ may have wanted any of us.”
The rest of the team were silent, watching. FireWind jutted his chin in agreement. “Your scent is like all living things. The scent of theajasgiliwas like the earth of graves. Like the absence of life.”
I thought about Soulwood. About the vampire tree. About its image of killing me. What if I had misunderstood what it was saying? What if it wanted a sacrifice? Was asking permission. Or what if it was simply asking me to give it permission to live, knowing I could, and might someday, kill it? “Oh,” I breathed, my thoughts whirling as too many possibilities tried to find places inside me at once. I looked back at the potted cabbage and kept my eyes there. Without lifting them to LaFleur or FireWind, I said, “May I speak to you both privately?”
Somehow, they knew who I was talking about because the others left the room, Occam’s gaze on me in case I needed him. I shook my head, the tiniest shake, and he went on out. The door closed.
I raised my eyes and looked from Rick to FireWind. Rick’s once-black hair was a glacial white now. With the new age lines, he looked older than FireWind, though FireWind had decades more years. There was compassion in Rick’s near-black eyes, a kindness I hadn’t expected. I had missed him, a man I had detested at first. I had actuallymissedhim. My eyes filled with tears.
“Nell?” Rick asked.
I realized they had been waiting for a while. I had forgotten to breathe while I thought. I inhaled hard. Blew out. Took another breath. “I might be able to stop her,” I said. “Theajasgili.”
Over the cell, which was still on, JoJo said, “Lainie’s searching for a familial connection between Carollette’s parents, something that might create an abnormal witch-type gene.”
I said, “It should be within just a few generations, based on the body buried on the old Ames farm, which was abandoned in the early to mid 1900s. Maybe after 1902 when the Myer witch family went underground.” I remembered the trees on the land. Some had seemed larger, older than I expected. Theyinehiburied there had been like me, like my sisters, not anajasgili.
Theajasgiliwas similar, except her magics drew life from the land and left it barren, and stored death in the land, opposite to the way that I gave lifetothe land. Thisajasgiliwas feeding death to the land, storing and using that power. Feeding death to her enemies.
