“Stop, Nell. Don’t do this.”
I laughed, that odd-sounding, near-hysterical laughter that had frightened the deputies. “Too late. Hey there, sweetie. How are you?” I freed the child from the restraints and picked her up. Which made her scream more. “Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. I know. You’uns been all alone all day, ain’tcha. I got’cha now. Yes I do. Com’ere. Yeeees, you got a load full of the uglies, don’tcha? Let’s get you outta the sun and over to the car here. And let’s get that diaper off. You still here, Occam?” I added in the same baby-voice tone.
“I’m here,” he said, sounding off somehow. Probably spittin’ mad at me for going off protocol.
“I’m changing her diaper now. And lemme tell you, it’s bad. This little girl hasn’t been changed all day. She’s sunburned and her bottom is scalded. You’uns miserable, ain’tcha, darlin’? Oh my, there’s a load in this thing. Ugh. Here. Let’s wipe that messy bottom.” She squealed like I’d just stabbed her. “I know that hurts, but I’m almost done. There, sweetie pie. All clean, and a new diaper.” I figured out how to use the disposable one, which was a new concept for me, as the church didn’t use anything disposable, only cloth diapers, and changed often. “Yes, sweet’ums. Just like that.” I sealed the adhesive tabs. “And now let’s find you’un a bottle for the formula. Here we go. Your mama mighta swum herself to death, but up until then she was mighty organized. Oh yes, baby. That’s a good girl. Occam, I’m sitting in an ancient Toyota station wagon. Tell Rick.”
“Oh . . . Nell,” Occam breathed.
* * *
The Para–Haz Mat van from PsyCSI in Richmond arrived at long last. It was shaped like a bread truck with a navy-blue-and-brown paint job in slashes and swirls like an RV and was equipped for paranormal events. The techs—and there must have been twenty or more in their POVs—personally owned vehicles—were dressed out in white null uniforms, paranormal protective suits each with an orange stripe across the front. The unis were made with heavy-duty antimagic spells worked into the fabric, and since no one seemed inclined to go for a swim, I figured that the unis were effective. The suits had been treated by the Seattle coven, a full, powerful coven that worked with the DOD and Homeland Security. The unis were called 3PEs, which stood for personal paranormal protective equipment. The coven also constructed custom-made armor, but there was no way I could afford a set of those. The suits resisted all passive spells, to appear to magic itself as though the techs were nothing more than leaves blowing across the land instead of a bunch of people tramping. The techs could be attacked by an active, direct attack spell, but as their feet moved across the land near the pond, they didn’t elicit any attention at all from the thing beneath the ground.
Farther away from the pond, at a site T. Laine selected by taking measurements with the psy-meter 2.0, were the PsyCSI tents, for collecting evidence and ending the active workings on the bodies. And COD, TOD, and ID, where possible. Cause of death. Time of death. Closure for the families who wouldn’t see their loved ones alive again.
The tents were white, waterproof, and had been spelled against workings and magical attack, inside and out. There was an inverted hedge of thorns working on the inside to keep anything magical inside, and a regular hedge of thorns outside, except at the doorway. The three tents were set up, facing away from the pond so the come-hither spell bounced away on the treated tent walls.
I was the only one not dressed out in the special clothing. Well, the baby and me. She had eaten and cried and finally fallen asleep in my arms. It had been a while since I’d coddled and cuddled a baby, and though I had no desire to have a young’un myself, it was kinda nice. If I’da been at home, stretched out on the sofa, with a book to read and the Waterford Stanley wood-burning cookstove putting out enough heat to keep me toasty, Soulwood and a sturdy floor between me and the shadow-and-light dancer in the ground, I’da been mighty fine, but Rick had shown no interest in offering me any comfort beyond the basic amenities. Instead of comfort, I was sitting on a webby-aluminum chair, the frame digging into my thighs, and was isolated in one of the antispell tents, just the baby and me.
A single portable toilet booth had been brought in and set up near the trees. A food truck had come by the street several times and provided tacos and hot dogs and burgers at inflated prices. I had been allowed a meal and bottled water and a Coke, which T. Laine had brought in, set on the gurney, and walked out. Without a word, without eye contact. I knew I was in trouble, but I couldn’t seem to care. The baby had been without attention long enough to be burned and dehydrated, and no way was I leaving her alone. Period. She had drunk down three bottles of Pedialyte and formula and gone through three diapers. I had found cream to smear on her sunburn and her bottom and she was asleep, finally.
No one was talking to me, but I overheard everything that was spoken nearby, since no one was using their library voices, but rather nearly shouting to be heard between the faceplates they wore as part of the 3PEs. Therefore I knew a lot about what was going on: Access to the entire area had been shut down, with cops on every possible line of entrance. The scene had been set as a no-fly zone, which went for drones and kites, as well as the usual planes and helicopters. The press was gathered on the roadways and conspiracy and antiwitch sentiments were flying in the media.
A senior member of PsyLED HQ had come in to handle the magical incident and talk to the press. Soul, Rick’s mentor, was to be the PsyLED PR spokesperson for this magical event.
There were lots of initials in my new life. They called it “alphabet soup,” which was funny until I had to actually use the letters in a report.
Anyway, Soul had been in the area—not that any of us had been aware of that—and she arrived at the site within half an hour of Rick himself, to oversee the investigation.
I had met Soul at Spook School. She was a legend among the graduates, and though she was tiny and curvy and made you want to protect her to your last dying breath, she scared me on some level I didn’t have words for. Soul, no last name, just like Occam had no last name, was all of five feet four inches tall, with long platinum-silver hair that she wore loose and down to her hips, as long as I had worn mine, before I’d whacked it off.
I hadn’t touched the ground with my boots since the first tent was set up, but I felt Soul enter the site. Or, rather, the land felt something different, and it sucked its presence away from the bottom of the tent I occupied, back to the deeps. I had known that the dancer consciousness was hanging around, aware of me but not able to get to me through the tent’s spells, and I was suddenly lighter, an unseen weight gone from my shoulders and rib cage. Quickly, even before I took a single breath, the shadow-and-light was back, fast as a reflection of sunlight on the pond. It . . . tapped was as good a word as any, on the bottom of the tent, and raced back to Soul, back and forth between us, like the puppy I had compared it to. But now its greatest attraction was Soul. Interesting. The land, especially the puppylike dancer in the land, liked Soul. A lot. The spell could be designed to search for magical energies and creatures and then attack them and take their power for itself. That would require it to have the AI capabilities that had been mentioned. Without letting my feet leave the protection of the tent, I leaned out and watched the legal and CSI goings-on in the acres of cut grass.
Even on a dangerous paranormal crime scene, Soul was wearing only the spelled cloth/paper booties the rest of the LEOs wore. No uni with attached faceplate and gloves. Rather, she still wore her street clothes, a flowing georgette dress that reminded me of the gorgeous clothes worn by Hindu women, this one in shades of lavender and purples and orchid, with jeweled and beaded fringe, sparkling like her eyes. She was gorgeous. But mostly, to the cavorting thing in the land, she was a creature of significance, and its attention to me and the baby continued to lessen as the dancer centered its devotion on Soul.
I took my first deep, easy breath in hours. Not that I had told the others that I was having any problems. No one had asked. No one had spoken to me. I was learning the hard way that when one bucked the system, one suffered all the consequences.
But even if they fired me, I was glad I had saved the baby.
Unconcerned by the possibility of contamination, Soul walked around the site, talked to people, made decisions. I heard her request that T. Laine contact the Knoxville coven leader, Taryn Lee Faust, and ask her to come down as part of the ongoing paranormal evaluation. T. Laine told her that request had already been issued. Soul told her to reissue it forcefully, and send a police escort from her house to here. I heard Soul ask Rick if protocol had been followed.
His voice muffled behind the spelled uni faceplate, he replied, “Up until the new girl decided to run her own rodeo.” They were standing on the side of the tent, not trying to hide the conversation.
“Until then?” Soul asked.
“Day one, she completed the human-sense evaluation, with initial technology, followed by enhanced senses,” Rick said, “which went well at first. A few hours in, Nell was attacked by fast-growing grass that Occam had to cut out of her. She received hospital treatment for dehydration and stitches for lacerations.”
“More roots? That’s interesting.”
Rick didn’t disagree, nor did he offer more information, which made me feel as if things were not as horrible as I feared, because Rick had been there when tree roots had grown into me not so long ago. He had seen. The fact that I wasn’t human wasn’t a secret, not anymore, but he wasn’t offering up any details that weren’t specifically asked for, a gift of privacy that I appreciated.
“Day two?”
“She tried to read the land again at a different site and had to be cut free again. No hospital this time.”
“Day three?”
“Far as I can determine, without her filing a report, today she was fine until she got a wild hair to retrieve a wildlife camera in the trees about a hundred fifty feet from where she found the baby. Admittedly I had listed the camera as one of the objectives for the day, but the moment they found dead humans and a spreading contamination, they should have retreated and initiated protocol.” They were closer to the tent now and I had to assume that Rick wanted me to hear them, because he kept talking. “From the moment she went after the camera and found the baby, she went rogue, without urgent need and with potential increased danger to herself and her unit. She screwed up.”
Soul asked, “If she hadn’t gotten the baby and the camera when she did, would the lack of either have compromised the rescue mission or the camera retrieval?”
“No. Camera would still have been there and the baby would likely have survived a few more hours until CSI and null suits got here.”
I scowled down at the toes of my leather field boots. I didn’t care. I had done the right thing. A baby that might likely have survived a few more hours wasn’t good enough for me. Even a baby that might be magically contaminated.