Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

I stopped frowning and fidgeting. This was Tandy’s story and I’d never heard it from his lips. “What happened?”

“At the time, I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror.” Tandy touched his face, the pale skin and the darker reddish Lichtenberg lines that traced across his flesh like the veins of leaves or the tributaries of rivers as seen from the skies. “The lights were off. She walked in and took my hand. She had been crying. She said, ‘I thought you were dead. I was so worried.’ A nurse followed her in and turned on the light. And I felt her reaction. I was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. She jerked away, with a little scream, and ran out of the room.”

“Did you ever see her again?”

“Yes,” Tandy said softly. “With her new boyfriend. We passed on opposite sides of the street. She pretended not to see me, but I knew her enough to feel her revulsion even across the lines of traffic.”

“That stinks.”

Tandy tilted his head as if agreeing.

“And yet you and JoJo are together,” I said.

“Jo likes my skin. She thinks it’s sexy.” He gave me a grin showing his slightly yellowed teeth, even the enamel marred with fractures of Lichtenberg lines.

“That’s good,” I said, feeling out of my depth and uncertain.

Kindly, Tandy said, “It’s time to go, Nell. JoJo wants us back at HQ.”

I figured that meant the conversation was over. “Okay. By now, JoJo can probably monitor the place on Rick’s security cameras. Talk about snooping.”

Tandy chuckled softly. “Come on. We can leave the back door unlocked in case he comes back here.”

“The doorknob is round. Cats can’t handle round doorknobs.”

“Rick’s cat is smart. Let’s go.”

? ? ?

Unit Eighteen—JoJo, T. Laine, Tandy, Occam, and me, but still no Soul or FireWind and no Rick, who was presumably still a cat—had gathered around the conference room table, laptops and tablets open. On the overhead screens were the photos Occam had taken at Rick’s accident scene. This was the official end-of-day summation, and Rick’s vanishing act was now a matter of PsyLED record. He was in danger and was potentially a security risk. Even now, he might be a prisoner of the witch. Or dead. We had to find him fast and keep him safe until we caught the black-witch who was calling him, or he would end up on administrative leave with his job on the line. We still had no idea where Rick was or what he was doing, and T. Laine had not managed to scry the location of the working.The sun was setting and the moon wouldn’t rise until around two in the morning. If the boss had been spelled and summoned so early, it was a good bet the spell would only get stronger as night deepened and the waning moon rose. It was shrinking each day, edging to the new moon, and tonight it would have a claw forming on either end.

Because this was official, Clementine was taking everything down in voice-to-text software. Clementine was much easier to say than CLMT2207, but no matter how cute the software’s name was, we had to be careful or we might give away our personal secrets, and none of us wanted that.

Unfortunately, no one had any idea who was calling/cursing Rick, or why, or what the calling might have to do with vampires. We hadn’t heard back from Ming about her far-flung scions being called. This was a case that had generated only a minor amount of evidence and no leads, a nice way of saying we had nothing.

Occam said, “JoJo—Jones—and I have determined no tracker dogs should be brought in for fear LaFleur in cat form would attack the dog and the handler. Cats in the wild do not like to be chased. I attempted to track by scent in human form, but I lost him. Soul, when she returned Jones’ call, instructed us to let him go.”

Tandy said, “You could chase him in cat form.”

“I could. With a camera. And he might let me chase him. Or he could kill me. I’m more experienced, but I’d hold back in a fight because I don’t want to kill him. I don’t know what his cat wants and Rick doesn’t dominate it very well in a fight.”

“Never mind, then,” Tandy said.

Occam ended his report summation with the words, “My final topic is Special Agent Margot Racer. She showed up at the car crash even though she was off duty. She stood around watching the accident investigators and me work. Spent a long time studying the skid marks on the road and searching through the inside of the car.”

“What was she looking for?” Tandy asked.

“No idea, but she informed me that she didn’t find the amulet necklace created for Rick by the local witches, so I assume Rick was wearing it.” Occam rubbed his disfigured hand over his scarred scalp as if they both itched. “I’d judge Racer’s emotional and mental state as calm but pensive, but next time you’re around her, Tandy, get a read.”

Our empath said, “Copy that.”

Occam said to T. Laine, “Just so you know, Racer wasn’t wearing the spelled cat necklace she had on before.Did you get a read on her amulet?”

“So far as I could tell it was a protection working. A charm a witch might give her child. I’m betting all her grandmother’s gifts are charmed the same way. But we didn’t know that at first. I may have overreacted.”

Tandy said, “It was a magically charged situation. Additional energies might have been dangerous.”

T. Laine twisted her hand open in a gesture of uncertainty.

JoJo asked, “Is that all?”

“Occam, end of report,” he announced to Clementine.

JoJo said, “Jones reporting. As of the discovery of Rick’s car and his disappearance, Soul made a personal call to PsyCSI and put the testing of the witch circle focals on the front burner. Ten minutes ago, I received a prelim report. We have fingerprints back from the focal objects found at the circle. Some older prints that are too badly smeared to have reliable markers. Also some clear prints. They’ve been run against every database we have and we got nada. No matches. The techs think they have some acceptable DNA from the golf ball and from the outside of a glass vial that contained black liquid. They’ve tested the substance inside the vial and determined it to be decomposed Mithran blood. It was too far gone to get DNA. However, the rotting scraps of gauze cloth were indeed stained with human blood, type A positive—which, by the way, matches Rick’s—and it’s currently being run for DNA comparison, along with fluid from the other vial. There was a trace of blood on the small steel paring knife, and it too is being run for comparison. This may or may not be important, but Rick always played golf with his dad when they were together, so it’s possible—not likely, but possible—that the ball and tees were his. With his DNA. Which could have been used in a circle.

“The lab also ran mass spec on the clay sample from the circle. The biological and mineral markers put it as coming from the Tennessee River. Local clay. The black walnut tree was also likely local. So we finally are getting something to work on, people.”

JoJo punched a key on her laptop. “Some really pixelated security camera video of the witch who is doing the spells, or someone who is helping her. These are from the pet supply store where our witch got the white rats and didn’t pull a no-see-me spell over herself. Or her human helper. Whichever. Her face is hidden in the shadow of her hoodie, but she appears younger than T. Laine or I expected, moves like a teenager, eighteen at most. She has shoulder-length dark hair or wears a wig, and we can’t see the face above the chin. Caucasian. All legs and long limbs. It’s summer and she’s in long sleeves and a hoodie. We’re thinking a junkie, maybe? The clerk doesn’t remember her at all.

“Ingram, you’ve got a strange look going on there.” She made a circle in the air where my face was.

“What? I don’t …” I stopped as it came to me. “Those are the same clothes worn by the subject who robbed the Pilot Gas and the pawn shop. But the body is different.”

“Different how?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think she’s … familiar? Maybe wearing a glamour that throws us off?”

“Which means we have no idea what she looks like,” T. Laine said.

“Fine. Dyson”—Jo looked at Tandy—“I’ve printed stills of the few places we get a hint of the face, but I’m guessing that a glamour means there’s no chance of a composite sketch?”

“It’s unlikely,” he said. “The best information we have from witnesses is a description of her chin.”

“Occam,” JoJo said, “if LaFleur comes back here in distress, we can use the null room again, yes?”

“If he’s in human form, yes, if we have to,” Occam said. “I don’t think his cat will come here and I don’t think the cat will go into a null room willingly. I suggest we set up a silver cage. It’s more painful than a silver bracelet or necklace, but more effective, and less likely to result in a fight that spreads were-taint. I have the feeling that a silver cage will stop any calling, even his own magic, because it stops the ability for a were to change shape. Two birds, one cage.”

Occam had spent twenty years in a silvered cage. Occam knew what they could do and what they might be able to do.