Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

“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.”

“Hurry.”

Rick stood still, half sitting on the cage that had held him, rubbing his arm, his body tense.

“Okay. Got it. Music.”

A woodwind melody played by an air witch flowed through the speakers. A measure in, Rick released a pent breath, walked to the conference room, and took his place at the table. Occam gave him a cup of coffee and a paper-wrapped deli sandwich from the fridge. Rick said softly, “Thank you.”

Occam nodded, his eyes kind. “When you’re up to it, I need to ask you some questions.”

“Okay. I’m good now that I got music,” Rick said, biting into his hoagie. “Go ahead.”

“Tell me where you were, what you were doing, and anything you remember.”

“I was watching the game at a sports bar on State Street. It was midafternoon and the moon had been up for hours, but I wasn’t thinking about it consciously. Why should I?” he asked, as if asking himself the question. “It was nowhere near full. Hell, it was nearly moonset. I was wearing the amulet. I should have been fine. But I felt the draw of the summoning. It started like a buzzing in my chest and my fingertips. I remember that I paid my bill. Got in my car. Somehow ended up here.I probably have all kinds of tickets coming from traffic cameras.” He chuckled wryly. “Worse, I have to wonder how many security cameras got footage of a big black cat racing the streets.”

T. Laine entered last and placed a paper map on the table, the creases worn. “I think I have the location of the witch circle, at least the general area. It’s different from the last time. It’s out off Alcoa, near the Woodson Drive exit, on the bank of Spring Creek. There’s grassy areas and wooded areas there.” She looked at Rick. “Do you want us to try and get there?”

“No point in running lights and sirens.” His face wrenched down in banked rage. “It’s starting to ease up. I think the witch is finished with the spelling. You can wait and check it out in daylight.”

Occam leaned over the paper map. “As the crow files, that’s more than five miles. Either she’s getting better or she used a bigger sacrifice. And we still don’t know if the effect on Rick is deliberate, coincidental, or incidental.”

“The calling was drawing on Rick’s tattoos,” I said. “I saw it. It isn’t coincidental.”

No one replied.

“What does that do to any overlapping areas?” JoJo asked.

“Swings it all over the place,” T. Laine said. “Why can’t it be easy?”