Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

Rick blew into HQ like a storm, his eyes glowing the green of his cat, his black and silver hair flying around his head and shoulders as if caught up in a wind. He dropped his gobags and took his place at the conference table. Occam wasn’t with him, and I felt a shaft of disappointment. “I assume you’re all up to speed on Loriann,” he snapped. When Tandy and JoJo nodded, he said, “Fill me in.”

Crisply, JoJo said, “She’s twenty-seven years old, lives in New Orleans on the second floor of a two-bed, one-bath, Victorian-style two-story duplex just outside the Garden District.” She pointed to a photo of a house on the screen overhead. “She owns the house and two others, courtesy of her grandmother’s will. She’s single, has two cats, and works for NOPD Crime Lab and Evidence. She rents out the lower floor of her home to a doctor of paranormal species at Tulane Medical. She has a brother with a drug problem. She reported him missing twelve months ago. The number she gave us is the CLE direct number, but it’s possible that your call will be diverted elsewhere. This”—a second photo popped up on the big screen over the windows—“is from her most recent driver’s license, and the one beside it is from her NOPD ID.”

The woman had dark brown eyes and pale skin. She wore her brown hair parted down the middle and hanging close to her face in the driver’s license. In the NOPD photo, her hair was back in a tail, exposing her ears. Ear cartilage, shape, and placement on the head were better identification markers than facial markers, which could easily be changed by surgery. In both photos, she was unsmiling. I got the impression of heavy burdens and years of sadness from the photographs.

“She stopped dying her hair,” Rick said, his voice going soft. He cleared his throat as if something clogged it, and I remembered that odd sound when he told us about the ink spell earlier. “After I was rescued, Katie Fonteneau, once number two in the Pellissier vampire clan of New Orleans, and who is now Master of the City of Atlanta, saved Lori.”

“Why would a vampire help a witch?” Tandy asked.

His voice hoarse, Rick said, “Isleen was Katie’s scion—her blood-made vampire child. Isleen was also a psycho fanghead. Katie felt responsible for everything done to Loriann. And to me, I think.”

A vampire had to have known that her scion was insane.

Rick put his hand on his throat. Coffee gurgled into the pot behind him. Raspy, he said, “I helped Loriann get a job as a consultant at Crime Lab and Evidence. She did good work for a couple of years. Then she vanished. I haven’t had contact with her since.”

Jo said, “She was rehired by CLE this past January when the European Mithrans tried to take over. She’s full-time now, instead of the former consultancy. Her six-month evaluation was excellent.”

“Has she been researching something in private?” Rick asked softly.

“I can’t tell,” Jo said. “Her work computer files are encrypted and her personal system is set up to give an alarm if anything tries to read it. I can’t get in easily, if at all.”

“Really?” he said, as if he found that interesting. “Okay. Let’s do this. Clementine,” he said to the voice-to-text software, “record. Rick LaFleur, Jo Jones, Tandy Dyson, Nell Ingram, on conference call to Loriann Ethier”—he spelled it out—“currently of NOPD CLE.”

“CLMT2207 recording,” the system said.

He gave the date and time and punched in the phone number.

It rang once. “Crime lab. Loriann Ethier. How may I help you?”

Rick’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. I felt an odd, tugging sensation on Soulwood. “Rick LaFleur,” he said, sounding calmer than he looked. “How are you, Loriann?”

“You’ve had fifteen minutes, you and Diamond Drill. I’m sure you know everything about me.”

Jo’s head snapped to Rick at the use of her old hacker name. Loriann had been researching us, it seemed.

Loriann continued. “How are you? Since the calling started, I mean.”

Jo tapped on her laptop so fast it was a tiny little burr of sound. Tandy focused on the far wall, as if blocking out everything except the voices.

“How do you know about the calling?” Rick asked. I’d have thought him steady, uninvolved, except for the brightening green glow of his black eyes.

“Your tats are being pulled on. I can feel the magic attacking them. So I did a little research.”

Tension shot through me. Loriann knew something about the magic in Rick’s tats, and not just from the original inking. Could Loriann be the witch cursing Rick? It made sense, except for the logistics. She wasn’t in Knoxville. But … she knew too much and there was no reason why she should know. Unless she had left a backdoor into Rick’s magic tats. I sent that possibility to Jo, who shot me a startled look.

Tandy scribbled something and passed the note to Rick. It read, Too far away to be sure, but I think she’s half lying.

Rick rubbed his eyes and temples as if his head hurt. “Go on,” he said, sounding a lot more cop-like than he currently looked.

“I heard about the Knox vamps being attacked and the witch who’s casting a curse there.”

“Who is the witch?” Rick asked. “What is she casting?”

Loriann said, “I got a look at the photos of the circles and they look a lot like ones I saw on the bank of the Mississippi last December, a month or so before the European vampires were destroyed.” Her voice took on an intensity that sharpened her sibilants, making her next words almost hiss. “Three circles. All created to be cast on the three days of the new moon. The spells are called Circle of the Moon-Cursed, or Circle of the Curse, or more commonly, Circle of the Moon.”

“Ohhh,” I whispered as something seemed to fall into place in my brain. As a curse, it would be cast as a new moon circle. Curses and new moons had been taught in Spook School, but the course info had been sparce. Curses were rare, against witch law. We had already considered that this spell was brand-new, experimental. If this was the testing phase, then it worked like a pulse of magic and then stopped. Was that why Rick was aging slowly—a pulse at a time? If so, then the final, full curse was still to come. It all made sense, but my knowledge of magic lore wasn’t extensive. I pulled my laptop to me and sent my info to the unit. JoJo’s system pinged softly and she shot me a look, nodding once to say she agreed.

I had missed something and looked back up to see Rick’s hand drop. “You know what the spells are,” he said softly to Loriann. Because until now, we hadn’t fully known how to classify them or the spell they contained.

“Yes. Maybe. I think so. I don’t know for sure. But I think I can help. I’ve requested to be assigned to Knoxville to assist you. My boss said there’s no crossover with NOPD and KPD or PsyLED Knoxville. But if PsyLED DC asked for me, and offered to pay my salary while I’m there, he would let me go.”

The home office of the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security was located near the District of Columbia. She was asking for help from the main PsyLED office. She had already worked out the knots in her request. “Go on,” Rick said.

“Soul could ask,” Loriann said. “And I’d be there to help Tammie Laine Kent if you needed spell casting. Since the local coven has gone in hiding.”

Loriann knew a lot about what was happening in Knoxville. A lot about our agents. She’d had access through NOPD CLE channels and she hadn’t wasted the opportunities. She’d done her research. I wondered if she had gotten all that from our employee sleeves or was a hacker like JoJo. Of if she had a contact in Knoxville. And who that might be. Perhaps Margot Racer?

Working at PsyLED had made me a suspicious woman.

I didn’t like that about myself.

Rick promised to talk to Soul, though he didn’t promise to request that Loriann be loaned to the Knoxville PsyLED field office, an oversight I caught even if Loriann didn’t. After the call ended, we sat around the table, three of us silent and thinking, JoJo tapping away like a madwoman, jerking on her earrings between attacks on the tablets and laptop. Rick watched us, the green glow in his eyes diminishing slowly. I caught him reaching up, several times, to rub the mangled tattoos, to touch the amulets hanging around his neck, to rub his throat, and I wondered if he was aware of the gestures. Abruptly, he turned and went to his office.

Softly, I said, “she has access to the magic in Rick’s tattoos.”

No one responded.

I excused myself and went to my cubicle, where I stuck my fingers into the soil of the plants in the window boxes, trying to decide how I’d research curse circles, tattoo magic, and my boss. Because no matter how much we hid it from ourselves, Rick LaFleur could be a security risk. A big one. Propped against a basil was a small envelope. I tore it open to read a note from Occam. Nell, sugar, no matter what time you read this, you should know I’m missing you something fierce. An unfamiliar emotion, soft yet intense, swept through me, and I tucked the note in my gobag to take home.





THIRTEEN