“The girl calling herself Mary Smith was earnest. She was a believer and full of anger and frustration. She was real. Why Candace sent us to Mary I don’t know. But I will say that I have a feeling something is going on inside DNAKeys. Where there’s smoke there’s . . .” I stopped. “Well, you know.”
Soul said, “I’ve listened to most of both interviews. It sounds as if some of the women’s reports might have a basis in truth, but to what degree I can’t speculate.”
“Got something,” JoJo said. “I just cracked DNAKeys’ HR records.”
“What did you just say?” Soul asked.
JoJo’s head came up from her laptop; her spine went vertical as a two-by-four. Jo wasn’t supposed to be hacking without a warrant. “Uhhh.”
“CLMT2207,” Soul said. “Strike the words beginning at ‘Got something.’ JoJo meant to say—” She gestured to Jo.
JoJo pulled on her earrings, a sure sign of nerves. “I just discovered information in an unsecured database. Right. That.”
“Continue,” Soul said, but there was a bite to her tone. I had seen her dragon teeth, but Soul was scary even in human form.
JoJo said, “Candace McCrory is really Evelyn McCrory. She has a history of paranoia and conspiracy fears. She’s on antipsychotic meds, or maybe she’s off her meds. Maybe the truth is a little less woo-woo and a little more cuckoo.”
I shook my head. “No. I’d agree that Mary Smith was someone who needs meds, who might even have been broken somewhere along in her life. But not Candace. Underneath it all she was . . .” I held both hands in front of me as if holding a large vase between them. “Carrying a burden, but self-confident.”
JoJo tapped her tablet for a moment and said, “Well. Probie’s right. The doctor treating Candace is the same as the doctor treating Evelyn. And he died in 2004.
“So besides creating a mock social media persona, DNAKeys went so far as to falsify and plant HR records for their double agent in two names? Both McCrory identities are false? Why?”
“We did it,” I said. “Shaundell has school and work records and has donated regularly to the ASPCA and rescue groups.”
Rick grunted. It sounded like a cat, all breathy and exasperated. It had to hurt when the bad guys were just as effective as the good guys.
“Elephant in the room,” T. Laine said. I looked at her. I hadn’t heard that one before. And she was looking at me. “Nell read humans back when we had a plague. Why not let her read the kid?”
My eyes slid to the doorway. “That was adults. Is it even legal to read a minor? No. It isn’t right without his parents’ permission.”
“We sniff them,” T. Laine said, “listen to them. How is this different?”
Soul tilted her head. Her platinum silver hair slid forward and she caught it with a hand and smoothed it, as if it was alive. “It is not illegal, evil, or against PsyLED protocols. Nor will it harm the child. Will it?”
I scowled at her. “This feels wrong. Churchmen think it’s okay to do things to children too.”
T. Laine’s eyes went big and startled.
“Just a surface read,” Soul urged. “Just deep enough for us to know if Devin is human.”
Devin Tolliver. That was his name. And they wanted me to invade him. It made me feel squirmy inside and my rooty middle ached.
“Hello? Can I have some water?” a plaintive voice called.
The kid. Awake. I narrowed my eyes at Soul. She tapped her ear, indicating that the child had been trying to listen to us. She made a shooing motion to me. I pushed out of my chair and stood, glaring around the table to show them that I thought this was invasive and a personal assault on the kid. Soul just shooed me on again, hands waving.
I turned on a heel and left for the break room. “Hey, Devin,” I said, going to the sink. “I’ll get you some water.”
“Thanks. Can I have my cell and play some games?”
I poured water into a paper cup and carried it to the couch. The smell of fire was much stronger here, fire and gasoline and scorched hair and something musky and sour like burned flesh. Rather than pull up the upholstered chair in the corner, I knelt on the floor by the couch and gave him the cup. “Your cell was lost in the fire,” I said gently, knowing he had lost much more than a cell phone in the fire that took his aunt’s life.
“Oh,” he said, and I couldn’t interpret his emotional reaction to the mention of the fire. He wrapped his hands around the cup and lifted it to his mouth, drinking the contents down. He blew a breath and said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Devin, may I check your head for fever?” And I felt like a fiend. This was wrong. But if Devin was a paranormal, and if we could figure out what he was, then we might also figure out who was after the Tollivers and killing people. This was important. This was necessary. It was also a rationalization. I hated justifications. Hated them.
Devin nodded. I touched his head. It was unexpectedly cool when I had been prepared for sleep-sweaty and hot. I closed my eyes and let my consciousness flow down through my body and into Devin.
I was met with cool energy, gray and . . . It wasn’t the right word, but he was chatoyant, as if a band of bright light reflected through him, the way light carried through stone. Or, better, perhaps, the way light carried through river water, reflecting on the dappled bottom, gold and green and gray and blue, with faint purple places, all glowing. I followed the light deeper.
I heard the word, “No!”
Devin jerked away from me and I cascaded back into the break room. Tumbled to the side, to the floor. Blinking up at the child.
“No!” he said again. “Stop that! You’re a bad person.” Heat blasted at me. Sizzling, ripping flame. I dove to the side. Rolled to my bottom, sitting on the floor beside the couch. Disoriented enough that I put both hands on the vinyl tile floor, to stabilize myself. “I’m sorry, Devin,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t touch me!” he shrieked. Another blast, this one hotter. Scorching along my skin. Blistering, roasting. I screamed. Smelled burning hair and leaves. Burning me. I rolled away, to the far side of the room. Covering my head. Screaming. Noting in the instant when I closed my eyes and tucked tight that the flames were orange tinged with purple.
ELEVEN
The tingle of magic was everywhere—in the air, on my skin, in my hair, in the breaths I took. Blessed pure air, cold and rich and heavy with moisture and magic, flooded my lungs. I gulped and realized that I was crying. I was hurt. I was burned.
I fought to open my eyes, my lashes gummed together. I opened them a slit, intensely grateful that I could see through the tangled lashes and the tears. My hands were curled up near my face and the skin was weeping, blistered, and stinging. I blinked and looked around. I was in the hallway outside of the break room and T. Laine was sitting on the floor beside me. “It’s okay,” she said. “The fire’s out. The kid’s out. We’re safe.”
I was gasping, hyperventilating, and I knew it but I couldn’t stop. T. Laine’s face was creased with worry; Soul stood in the break room, standing guard over Devin, looking angry and guilty. And worried. And in shock. At herself? At something else? I had a fleeting thought that her emotions were turned inward and had little to do with what had just happened to me. Then that thought slid away with the pain.
“How?” I whispered, and my voice croaked.
“I keep my null weapons charged and on me at all times,” she said. “Remember?”
As the unit’s resident witch, T. Laine had the tools to stop most magical attacks and the ability to use them. “My hero,” I whispered, straining to see into the break room.
The tile where I had been kneeling was smoldering, wisps of smoke still rising. I touched my head and encountered hair, happy it hadn’t been singed. My face hurt and I touched my cheeks. They were burned, blistered, the pain more than I could define. “Ohhh. Oh, oh, oh,” I whispered, blinking. And then I remembered what she had said: The kid’s out. Null spells didn’t knock people out. “You didn’t hit him, did you?” My voice sounded less husky, but it hurt to talk.
Lainie smiled crookedly. “Just with a sleep spell. He isn’t human, but he reacts to magic like one. Can I help?” She nodded to my hands and held up an amulet. “Healing. It’ll take the pain out. Or it should. Now that you’re growing leaves, I can’t guarantee anything.”
I stared at the amulet. It was a small moonstone wrapped in verdigris-stained copper. I wiped my nose with my wrist and gasped at the bolt of pain that ricocheted through me. “We could try. Probably should try. But I’d rather stick my hands in Soulwood dirt.”
Her smile went more crooked and her expression was both worried and compassionate. My face must be more burned than I thought. It must be bad to make T. Laine try so hard to hide her distress. “We figured you’d say that, so Tandy’s bringing all your plants in from your window boxes.” Having a job to do was important to the empath when someone was feeling strong emotion. He must be suffering my misery almost as much as I was.
JoJo stepped from her cubicle and knelt beside me, holding a bottle of chilled water. I shook my head. “I’m cold,” I managed. “Room-temp water, please?”
She switched it out and placed a blanket over me just as the shivers hit. I think I might have blacked out because someone touched my shoulder and I woke with a start that shocked pain through me like being tased. In the background I could hear cats snarling and screaming, Soul shouting, and maybe the sound of wind chimes, all cut off abruptly. My body stank of fire and pain, and . . . and I smelled rosemary. My eyes were stuck together again, but I got them open and focused blearily on the plants all around me. Without thought, I shoved my burned hands into the soil of two pots and reached for Soulwood.
It was here at my fingertips and yet so far away. I pulled hard on the soil and the life in the plants. Instantly, the soil and the plants were desiccated, dead. I yanked my hands out of the pots and rammed them into two other pots. And then two more. Dropping into the soil and calling on Soulwood, so far away, the land sleeping the sleep of winter. It was dark there, shadowed and cold beneath the sleet that fell again. Two sets of pots later, and many dead plants around me, I felt a change.
In the darks on the horizon, a pale light came awake, deep and deep and deep in the earth. Stretching, curious, seeking me. And we . . . came together. Soulwood wrapped itself around me. The pain eased away.
The healing was the yellow of warm sun after an icy dream, the coolness of a mountain spring spilling down rocks, the touch of velvet moss along bare skin. It was the scent of pine in winter and the feel of roots reaching and spreading, seeking nutrients and water, and sharing life with me. I sighed and the breath didn’t hurt. I realized it had been painful to breathe only when the pain vanished.