Human candy cane? Tandy did have white skin and very red Lichtenberg lightning lines sketched across his body, but that term sounded awfully pejorative to me. Except that Tandy blushed. I looked from him to JoJo and back, and I suddenly realized that Tandy and JoJo had a . . . a thing. They were involved . . . romantically.
My own blush went scarlet. Wow. That went against all the rules. If anyone figured it out. Except that there was Rick and Paka . . . and everyone knew about that. Maybe Unit Eighteen—which was special among all the PsyLED units because we were composed almost entirely of paranormals—had different rules, rules no one had told me. I had started off without the mandatory policy and guidelines meeting. I hadn’t even thought about that until now. Maybe rules for strictly human units didn’t apply to a unit made up mostly of paranormal creatures. I shook my head and listened to JoJo who was into a diatribe.
“—ying-yang is a hip-hop duo. And it’s also the street term for a vagina.”
I wished I had not tuned back in so quickly.
“So, up the ying-yang make sense to you yet?” She was talking to me.
“Sadly yes,” I said. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. “A great deal makes sense now.”
JoJo flinched the tiniest bit and I smiled in a way that mighta been a tad mean. I decided I needed to get this meeting back on track. I said, “I can see the energies of the working that’s affecting all the sites. I thought everyone could. But I guess it’s just me.”
Rick said, “I thought you were using hyperbolic, metaphorical terms in your reports.”
“No. I see the underground energies. I didn’t see the energies of T. Laine’s tabletop working, but I see the stuff underground. Even T. Laine’s Break working. Even the Old Ones. So I need to double-check the readings at one of the sites and then do a deep scan on the land on both companies’ sites. And even maybe look at the hospital patients to see what I can see there. Today.”
“Is that safe?” Occam asked.
I scowled at him. “You wouldn’t ask that of him.” I pointed to Tandy. “Or of them.” I pointed to JoJo and T. Laine. “No. It probably isn’t safe. But I need to do it anyway.”
“Fine. I’ll be with you, Nell, sugar, supporting you all the way.” But his tone said he was thinking about ways to make me change my mind.
Rick looked at Occam, then at me. His face softened in an emotion that I didn’t understand. “You two”—he pointed at Occam and me—“go. Read some land. And make nice while you’re gone. No arguing this close to the full moon. T. Laine, you go referee. And while you’re out there, see what magic is doing and try to figure out how to Break this working.”
“The leader of the Knoxville coven, Taryn Lee Faust, finally agreed to meet with me,” T. Laine said. “Me alone. I’ll be breaking off from the others for a while.”
“Be safe,” he ordered. “Keep your cells on. Carry a GPS backup and a stack of 3PE unis. They’re in the supply closet outside my office. You two”—Rick pointed at JoJo and Tandy—“get the paperwork started on warrants for both businesses. I want this sitch solved by nightfall. Figure this out, people. Before more humans die.”
“And if it isn’t solved by nightfall?” JoJo asked, her tone steady and uninflected.
“And if it isn’t, you’re senior agent. You’re in charge, JoJo, just like always.”
They were talking about the full moon. It was nearly here.
* * *
Antimoon music playing on the fancy sound system, Occam drove his sporty little car. T. Laine, who had to break away at some point for her witchy meeting, followed. She called my cell when we were partway there and offered some advice about how to do a scan without attracting the attention of the things below the surface. It was good advice, and I cogitated on ways to implement her suggestions.
The day had warmed again, proving the old Southern saying, You don’t like the weather? Wait’ll tomorrow. Southern weather seldom lasted more than a few days before shifting into a totally different pattern. An ice storm, followed by clear skies and seventy-degree temps. An abnormally warm fall, followed by a freezing spell with an early snow.
As if reading my mind about the variability of the temperatures, or making small talk, Occam said, “I thought when I moved up here”—his long legs worked the pedals and the little car made good time, weaving in and out of traffic—“I’d get snow and sledding and skiing.”
I looked back and saw that T. Laine was a long way behind us. “You ski?” I asked, my mind occupied elsewhere, less than half on the conversation. I pulled out my tablet and opened a new topographical satellite map of the area.
“Not yet. I was hoping to learn. Can’t be harder than riding a horse. You ski?”
“Snow, like a horse, has a mind of its own. Churchwomen don’t ski, so I never learned. And I never saw the point after I left. You want to ski, you can head east, into the mountains.” On the tablet, I studied the rows of hills west of Knoxville, curving like a fishhook, row after row.
“You offering to show me the way, Nell, sugar?”
“What? Oh.” I pointed to the GPS. “You won’t get lost.” I twisted in the seat to face him and asked, “You ever hear of the Old Ones?”
“I guess that’s a no,” he muttered. Louder he said, “Nope. Native American tribes out west got all sorts of legends and myths to explain the world around them. I figure the eastern tribes got much the same.
“You do know that Rick is still hung up on Jane Yellowrock.” I nodded and Occam finished with, “It’s a very catlike thing you do, Nell, sugar, to keep bringing her up.”
I made a hmmm sound and slid back into place, my fingers tapping on the tablet. Occam fell silent. Or I blocked him out, thinking. Until the small car pulled off the road and around the crime scene tape, into the entrance of a two-rut road. We were at the pond. I tapped the tablet to sleep and set it in my bag. “Are . . .” My voice sounded reedy and thin, all of a sudden. I cleared it and said, “Are the bodies all gone?”
“Yes. They are, Nell, sugar.”
“Okay. That’s good.” The car rolled slowly around the curve. The turn around the trees opened out and the pond appeared. No cars, no fire pits, no tents, no bodies. I blew out a breath. The grassy area around the small body of water was still churned up. The few snowflakes had wet the ground and the tracks, leaving them damp and softly contoured. The pond itself looked tranquil. When the car stopped at a safe one hundred feet from the pond, we got out and put on unis. Carrying my faded pink communing blanket, I picked out a patch of thick grass in sight of the water and the tree where the camera had been. I sat on the folded blanket, peeled back one inelastic glove, and held my palm gently, carefully, about six inches above the ground. And closed my eyes.
I was going to go slow. Very slow. I was going to do nothing to attract the energies in the land. All I wanted was to observe. Like a hunter in a tree, watching a trail that a deer might take to water. Dropping slowly, I let my fingers extend and point downward, until my index finger touched the dirt. I let my mind ease into the ground a few inches, into the roots of grass and around some root runners that had come from near the lake. None of them seemed to notice my finger or me. Maybe my previous approach had been a lot like a wrecking ball rather than a surgical probe. I pressed a bit deeper. My descent into the earth was like entering a pool of still water so slowly that I left no ripples, leaving no sign that I was here if no one was looking.
That was T. Laine’s suggestion. Go slow. Hiding just below the surface, I scanned down.
The dancer infinity loop was different now. The rotating lights of its energies were tighter, more compact. It was moving in a regular, unvarying path, like a race track, but perfectly circular. The circle it circumnavigated was clear and concise and seemed to glow a very deep green, right at the edges of what my mind could perceive, marking it as a magical, or psysitopic, energy circle. The green circle was marked with three red-glowing spots of the equilateral triangle, and was centered with a golden glow. The glow was bright and steady, as if the infinity loop had settled into orbit around a false sun.
I hadn’t seen all this so clearly before, but then I hadn’t thought to drop in and simply watch, like a spy, and not attract attention with looking too hard. Before, I had dropped in fast and looked around, moved around a lot. Been conspicuous. This silent and still observation was much smarter. I eased down even more, a probe instead of a battering ram.
Below all that activity, the Old One slumbered, silent. But from the center of the circle, a faint green trail slid down, deep into the earth, to touch the Old One’s presence. Not tapping, not nudging, simply touching. I waited for a pulse of energy as on my land, but this working—whatever it was—wasn’t pulsing with anything or doing anything, at least not right now. It simply was, a thing in a state of being.
I withdrew to the surface and let go the breath I had been holding too long. Lifted my fingertip away from the ground. There were no vines. No roots. Looking up, my eyes met Occam’s, his glowing golden, a vamp-killer in one hand. The blade caught the light of the risen sun. T. Laine stood behind him, watching me, the psy-meter 2.0 open in her hands.
I breathed for a few seconds and then said to them both, “T. Laine, you were right. There was a way to observe and not get caught. I might have a future as a sneaky trespasser.”
The moon witch gave me a preoccupied nod and closed up the P 2.0.
Occam sheathed his blade and held down a hand. His eyes bled back to human, but his jaw looked leaner, his expression more fierce. I took his hand and he pulled me to my feet, steadied me with a hand on my waist. His palm was heated, scorching. I stepped gingerly away from him and his hand dropped. “What’d you discover, Nell, sugar?”
“I’m pretty sure that something is emitting psysitopes in a slow, steady release. The dancer, reshaped into an infinity loop of energies, is orbiting it in a circle. Three points of the circle are still bright red with energies that may be getting tighter and smaller, but no dimmer. Let’s go to LuseCo and Kamines so I can do a read there.”
T. Laine had been looking out over the pond as I spoke, and now she gestured with her chin. “What’s that?”
Both Occam and I looked out over the water. It took me a moment to see what she was talking about. Just beneath the pond surface something glistened, something midnight black and oily looking, smooth and round. I took a step that way and Occam grabbed my arm. “Don’t,” he said.
“Oh. Yeah. That might be dumb.” I shook my arm and Occam’s fingers slid free again. It was surely my imagination that the touch seemed reluctant to release. “Can we get a camera-mounted drone to make a flyover? Or an RVAC?” RVACs were remote-viewing aircraft, small, quiet, easy to control, and fast. I didn’t know if Unit Eighteen possessed one of our own or just had access to one, but we had used them before.