Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

Rick said, “I honestly don’t know. I let his sister ink a bonding into my flesh to keep him safe. There’s no reason for him to hate me.”

“He may not know the true story,” I said. “Sometimes people leave things out, thinking that it will be easier for the victim to be kept in the dark.”

“Personal experience?” Rick asked, his lips twisted into a wounded smile.

“Yes.” I thought about the welfare fraud and the money paid to John for my dowry. “Secrets are stupid and evil.” Except my own, of course. I refrained from saying that.

Rick nodded. “Yes.” He looked up at the screen. “Loriann is here. Are we all agreed? The null room?”

“Yes,” T. Laine said, grim. “Loriann’s been holding out on us to protect her brother. That’s gone on long enough. If we can’t find him, we can’t help him. And if we can help her brother, she might help get rid of the messed up spells in your tattoos.”

Rick sent her a quick, fierce smile, all teeth, like a snarling cat. He gave quick directions and we moved into place. “JoJo,” he said when we were all in position, “get her computer. Crack it. See if she has photos of witch circles on it.”

“And photos of Jason,” I suggested.

“Yes,” Rick said, sounding more like the boss I knew. “Photos of the little bugger would be nice.”





FOURTEEN




I stood out of the way, in the opening of my cubicle, watching. Holding a plant, my fingers in the soil of Soulwood. Not that I had any idea what to do if Loriann started throwing around wyrds of power or hitting people with magic.

Tandy led Loriann up the stairs, their feet muffled and yet sharp in the enclosed space. Rick stood in the hallway, the open null room door between the witch and him, the cold, deadening energies spilling from the room. T. Laine stood down the hall, hidden by the open stairway door, her null pens ready to throw and a wyrd spell of sleep, ready to speak. JoJo was in the conference room, monitoring everything on the screens. Tandy reached the top and stepped to the side, as if waiting on Loriann.

I watched as the pale woman reached the hallway and stepped toward Tandy.

Occam shut the stairway door and leaned against it. Loriann came to a complete stop, looking around fast. Seeing the trap. Some emotion combined of numbness and terror carved its way onto her expression. Her hands rose as if to grab something at her waist.

Rick said, “Wait. Please.” Loriann hesitated and he went on. “I have approval from NOPD CLE for you to work with us on this case. But we need to talk, one on one, about your personal involvement. About Jason.”

“Dear God,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and her hands fell to her sides. “I knew you were going to figure it out. I knew it. I had to be here to keep you from … from hurting him.”

“I’d never hurt Jason, Lori. You know that. You made sure of that, didn’t you? You inked his survival into my flesh. You put something in my tattoos to force me to protect him. And to make it difficult for me to talk about him.”

She opened her dark eyes and said fiercely, “You won’t hurt him. I made sure of that. But your team is a different matter.” Lori looked at T. Laine and then to the null room. “I guess this isn’t a weak threat. That you’ve contacted the U.S. witch enclave for permission to put me in a null room.”

Rick stared at her, waiting.

T. Laine said nothing, though there hadn’t been time to get permission to use the null room on Loriann.

“I’ve never been in one of those. Is it going to hurt?”

“Every second,” T. Laine said. “For all of us.”

“Shit,” she whispered.

Rick held out a hand and said, “Your electronics.”

Loriann’s mouth curled in distaste, but she dug into her bag and handed over a small stack of electronics—laptop, tablet, and cell phone—to Rick, who passed them to Occam.

Loriann squared her shoulders and walked into the null room. Rick, Tandy, and T. Laine walked in after. The door closed, cutting off the miserable energies.

The rest of us went to the conference room, where we could watch everything on the screens from the cameras in the room, filming every angle, every nuance of speech, tone, and body language for later analysis. JoJo plugged Loriann’s laptop into a special system she kept for just such purposes. The host system promptly began to mine Loriann’s.

Rick told Loriann to remove all her weapons, magical and mundane. Loriann placed her satchel on the table. “My weapon’s in there. And I have these, which will do me no good whatsoever in here.” She slid off a ring I hadn’t noticed and placed it on the table. Beside it she added a bracelet, a pair of what looked like reading glasses, and small things from her pockets. She took the seat Rick pointed to and sat. Looking around at the windowless room, she hugged herself, shivering, and not just from the air-conditioning temps.

“Tell me about Jason,” Rick said. Loriann looked down, her mouth tight with bitterness and grief. She seemed to be thinking through what she might be willing to say. “Lori?” Rick pushed.

“I’ll tell you what I have on Jason,” JoJo said to Occam and me, muting the volume. “The kid vanished off social media over a year ago. Wiped his accounts, not that he used them much except for searching witch sites and black-magic chat rooms. His sister reported him missing within a week of him wiping the accounts and no one has seen hide nor hair of him. Prior to that, he was in and out of the juvenile system for years, and ended up in therapy mandated by the state, which usually means some fresh-faced counselor just out of school.”

“We should have had prints from the focals,” I said.

“His records were sealed when he turned eighteen. I’m trying to get them, but that can be harder than you think.” Her fingers were flying over her keyboard as she spoke, and files began to pop up on the screens overhead. “Jason ended up with a Dr. Robert Perkins, a well-respected psychologist in New Orleans. Looks like payments went through the state and all overages were paid by a …” JoJo stopped and yanked on her earrings. It looked painful. “Isleen was Katie Fonteneau’s scion, and Fonteneau paid the overages, until Jason went missing. As an aside, seven or so months ago is when Katie left New Orleans and took over as Master of the City of Atlanta.”

I said, “I’m starting an Internet search on public events that took place twelve months ago, something, anything that might have set Jason off.”

“Is Perkins alive?” Occam asked. “Patients who go off the deep end sometimes try to kill the therapist. And what can you tell us about Perkins’ therapy files?”

“Alive and well. Old money. I’ll never get into the doctor’s accounts, not from here, and maybe not even if I was in the office. He has a nice firewall or three and the files may be encrypted. I’ll come back to it.” She put something else up on the screen. “Ah! Got something. Hang on.” A moment later she said, “Pictures of Jason, one from only two years ago. Aaaaand, Nell guessed right. According to the state’s records, Jason was sexually abused by a vampire. Because he was so young, he developed an addiction to vamp blood.”

“He was a child,” Occam growled, repressed fury in his voice. The memory of his cage glowed in his eyes.

I glanced at him and back to my laptop, thinking about the churchmen. Tender youth was a turn-on to pedophiles. My computer screen showed multiple news articles. “I found something,” I said. “Twelve months ago in New Orleans, a single vampire killed more than fifty people in a dancehall-bar and sexually assaulted some of them. It was all over the news, twenty-four/seven. That might have brought it all back to Jason. Might have been the tipping point.”

“I remember that,” Jo said. “Good work.”

“Listen,” Occam said, pointing to the screen with the null room video.

Jo hit a key and the speakers came on again.

“Jason stole my grandmother’s tarot deck,” Loriann said to Rick. “And yes, it was the same deck I used on you. He stole all the gauze and things I collected from the barn where I inked you.”

“You kept some of the gauze with my blood on it. You were planning on … what? Finishing the working? Binding me to yourself?”

“No, I—I don’t know why I didn’t burn everything. I wasn’t planning on anything. I swear.”

Surprise in his tone, Occam murmured, “I sniffed the gauze and I didn’t recognize Rick’s scent, because he wasn’t infected with were-taint when it was collected. His scent’s different.”

“And that’s not the point,” Loriann said to her interrogators. “The point is that Jason has your blood even if it isn’t your werecat blood, it’s still yours. When he calls you, he can get you.” She looked around at the walls. “Unless you’re in here. God, this place makes me want to puke.”