Occam’s lips were bloodless in the harsh lighting. His eyes tense as he mentally ran through his options.
The banging came again. And again. I looked back at the window. It was dark out but the moon hadn’t risen yet.
“A grindy is with him,” JoJo shouted. “What do you want to do, CC?”
Occam, one shoulder against the wall, changed out magazines for silver ammo and said to me, “Set up the cage in Rick’s office.”
I grabbed the cage, which was heavier than I expected and bulky, and dragged it more than carried it to Rick’s office. It was easy to assemble, with a tab that read, LIFT HERE. I lifted and the cage opened with relative ease. There were steel supports for each corner and for the top and bottom. I snapped them closed. No pawed creature could open them. It would require opposable thumbs. It took me maybe half a minute to set it up, and the booming continued as I worked. I opened the cage door. Satisfied, I raced back to the stairwell. “Got it.”
“Close all the office doors but Rick’s. Lock yourselves in the conference room,” Occam said. His voice was calm, emotionless, steady.
Slamming doors behind me, I raced to the conference room. I locked Tandy, JoJo, and myself into safety. Turned and faced the room, my back to the door, so I could watch the camera feed overhead. One camera showed a black leopard throwing himself at the outer door. Another showed Occam slapping open a security baton. The volume was up on the speaker system and the sound of the baton opening was a schink-snap. From the way it moved through the air I knew the baton was heavy-weighted steel.
Occam braced himself behind the door and opened it. The parking lot’s lights blasted in.
Rick leaped inside, a black smear in the silvered lights. White fangs bared. His snarl was a growl of menace. The leopard twisted in midair, body lithe, supple, vicious. He reached out with his front claws. Slashing for Occam.
TEN
My heart stopped.
As fast as Rick, Occam spun. Arm back like a batter’s. Brought the baton down on Rick’s front legs just above the paws. Reversed. Rapped Rick’s skull. Fast low thumps while the cat was in midair.
The black leopard went down with a thud. Rick didn’t move.
“Wow,” I said. Blinked.
A grindy jumped from outside onto Occam’s shoulder. Occam petted the grindy, a long swipe down its body. “Hey there, Pea. Or Bean. Whichever you are. We’re all good.”
Bending, Occam shoved Rick out of the doorway and closed the door. He closed the baton with a metallic click and placed the grindy on the step. Holstering his weapon, he bent and grabbed Rick’s front legs near the chest. He heaved Rick up and over his shoulder, a black weight with front legs that hung at odd angles. Broken. He carried Rick up the steps. The amulet created by the local witches swung from its chain around his neck. I couldn’t tell if it was working, but considering the shape Rick was in, I guessed not.
JoJo activated different security cams as they moved, allowing us to follow Occam as he carried Rick to the office. He bent and tossed Rick inside the cage in front of Rick’s desk, banged the cage door shut, and secured it. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Occam went back to the stairs and retrieved the sandwich bag and the gallon of tea, made sure the door to the stairs shut properly, and came to the conference room.
I opened the door. Behind me JoJo said, “My hero.”
“Anything for the ladies. Hey, Nell, sugar. What sandwich you want?”
“Looking at her, I’d say to give her the Dick’s Favorite,” Jo said.
There was something in her tone that made me think she was saying something else, but it was something I had to ignore, mostly because I didn’t know how to react to it. “I’d rather have the Three Little Pigs,” I said. “And extra mayo if you have it.”
Occam gave me a look that I couldn’t interpret, but it might have been tenderness. Or possessiveness. Or neither. He unwrapped the sandwich and passed it to me, then handed out the rest of the food as the others requested. He passed around napkins and paper cups for the tea, which was sweating on the conference room table.
We ate in silence until JoJo spoke around a bite of meat and bread. “So you broke Rick’s legs. That might piss him off.”
“It might,” Occam said, laconic, drawing out the last word as if he didn’t care.
“This part of that dominance thing you two are always fighting through?”
“Rick and I don’t fight.”
“Uh-huh. Right.” JoJo gave up and finished her sandwich. Overhead, on the screen from the camera situated outside of Rick’s office, we watched as Rick twitched, spasmed, and made a mewling sound. He was in pain. JoJo turned off the speakers.
“We oughta do something for him,” I said.
“No,” Occam said. “He needs to dominate his cat better. Maybe the pain will drive the point home.”
“Even if he was being spelled?” I asked.
“Especially then. If Rick can’t control his cat, he’ll lose his job.”
And the job was all Rick had left. I remembered his house and the way Rick was living. I held in a sigh and took a big bite of pork sandwich. No one else spoke.
We had finished eating when T. Laine climbed the stairs carrying a bag from Firehouse Subs. She tossed the bag on the table and said, “Great minds and all that. What happened to the door? It looks like a truck hit it.”
“Rick happened,” JoJo said. “He’s in cat form in a silvered cage. With two broken legs and probably a concussion.”
“Dang,” T. Laine said. “Was he wearing the amulet created by the local witches?”
“Yep,” Occam said.
“I’m guessing it didn’t work.”
“Maybe it helped a little,” Occam said. He sat back in his chair, his sandwich in front of him on its wrapper. “He was human enough to remember to come here. That isn’t a cat’s thought. Lemme eat and I’ll see what’s up with the boss.”
T. Laine flopped in a chair and said, “I’m not quite done with it and it hasn’t been tested, but I’ve devised a leather and black titanium collar for Rick, with GPS tracking, to track him when he shifts.” She plucked a chain from her pocket and placed the necklace on the table. We passed it around as she said, “It’s not too girly, not too disco or surfer boy. It can be worn with the witches’ amulet without the workings going boom. The black titanium chain won’t show in his cat coat, and it kinda looks like Rick.”
It was a small rough nugget of stone, something with a crystalized shape that caught the light but diffused it in the thin linear crystals. It was wrapped with black metal and hooked to the chain, which closed with a lobster claw clasp on one of three rings, making it adjustable. Magic tingled all through the small stone, but muted, as if it was a passive working. “You can track him with it?” I asked, handing it on to Occam.
“Pretty much. Don’t ask me how. It’ll hurt your church-girl feelings, all black magic and stuff.” Her tone was sarcastic but T. Laine’s eyes were dancing with laughter as she bit into her sub. Chewing, she added, “Because he isn’t in the null room, I can follow the magic in real time to test it out. Anyone thought to take the leopard a sandwich?”
“He’ll be in too much pain to eat until after we let him out and let him shift,” Occam said.
“You’re gonna let him out?” JoJo asked.
Occam said, “As soon as he’s fully shackled his cat, yeah.”
“You can tell when he’s in charge?”
“Scent never lies.”
“He’s hurting,” I said softly. “Is it okay for me to pull on Soulwood to calm him and take away some of the pain?”
“Yes,” Tandy said. “That would help.”
I glanced from the screen that showed us Rick in his misery to Tandy. The empath was pale and sweating, reacting to the strongest emotion in the building. Rick’s pain.
JoJo frowned and said, “Oh. Damn. I didn’t realize—Fine. Go for it, Nell. Tandy, if you need to, go use the null room. If not, why not go lie down for a bit.”
Tandy nodded and left the conference room for the break room, and the sofa there.
I went to my cubicle and stuck my fingers into the soil of a potted plant, hearing the unit talking about Margot Racer and how they should handle her. The dirt was Soulwood soil, and the farm answered my call instantly, coiling around me like a snake or a living vine. I reached out with the power of my land and found Rick, a familiar snarl of cat magics and new red pulses of energy that weren’t there the last time I soothed him. I held back, studying the magics. Spook School classes had taught me that foreign magic wasn’t something to be trifled with, and this was different from Rick’s usual magic. This was a bright pulse of light with a braided luminescent tail. The pulses seemed to wrap around his heart and his brain and twine through his tattoos. I slipped in between the pulses and called on the magic that claimed Rick for my land. I drained off some of his pain and felt him chuff and settle.
• • •
An hour later, Occam opened the cage door and Rick crawled off the silver tray that was keeping him in cat form. He lay on the hallway floor, panting and mewling softly in pain, his legs still at odd angles, even with were-creature healing abilities. The breaks had been thorough. JoJo turned off the camera, giving Rick an illusion of privacy, and we waited, only Occam and T. Laine close to the cage when the boss shifted, Occam to stop Rick if he lost control, Lainie under a small of hedge of thorns, to evaluate the magic of the amulets and Rick’s shifting.
I had hauled T. Laine aside and explained, verbal report only, what I had seen in Rick’s magic and what I had done to calm him. “Not bad, Ingram,” she’d said. “Good work.”
The simple words made me feel as if I had contributed something important to the unit, more than filing reports, transcribing anything Clementine missed or messed up, and the occasional reading of the earth. Being useful felt good.
The shape-change took fifteen minutes, shorter than the last time I measured his shift. The camera came back on when Rick was human shaped and dressed in jeans, his hair longer, face with a silvered beard. He was still bare chested and the tattoos of cat eyes were glowing gold in a field of dark tattoo ink and scars and his olive-skinned chest. Occam handed him a T-shirt. Rick dragged it over his head and I heard T. Laine say, “Jo, don’t turn on the antispell music yet. Thanks to Ingram’s insights, I did a scan working and looked at Rick’s magic. Someone’s using the spelled tats to call him.”
“Hurts like a mother,” Rick said, his voice rough and pained. He rubbed the mauled tattoos on his shoulder and arm. “And the cat-tat eyes are burning hot. I need the music.”
“Just gimme a minute,” T. Laine said. “While you were shifting, I followed the magic calling you. It came from out toward the river. If you’ll hold still I can try to get a more precise location and can pinpoint it with a scry.”