Blackmail Earth

Chapter 20





Gruesome. The most sickening thing that Forensia had ever seen. Rick Birk, the old reporter taken hostage, was on TV all the time, and you couldn’t miss his thumb. Only it wasn’t attached to his hand. It was pinned to his shirt. A thumb, just hanging there like a bloody brooch, right below his collar. Forensia almost threw up the first time she saw it.

Birk looked like he was in seven kinds of agony, propping up his bandaged hand with his good one while he spoke, yet he was so brave. Somehow he’d managed to keep talking all day. Even though he sounded weary and hoarse, he still joked about his fingers: “One down, nine to go.” But it wasn’t funny, and he was shaking so badly that his thumb looked like it had come back to life.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Oh, God no. She could barely bring herself to look at the worst part. But how could she not? Only one thing poked out of the blood-soaked gauze hiding Birk’s hand—his index finger! The terrorists had clamped those awful wire cutters on it; any second he might clip it off. Any second. The tension was unbearable.

All regular programming had been canceled. Every channel was showing Birk, with lots of close-ups of his bloody thumb and those horrid wire cutters. The shows were calling it “The World Held Hostage” and “Doomsday and Dismemberment,” crap like that, and they were playing special music and running flashy graphics. You’d think people would get tired of it, but not with the gut-wrenching suspense over whether a terrorist would slip into the picture and snip his pointer right off.

But it wasn’t just Birk’s suffering. Those terrorists were hell-bent on pouring enough iron oxide into the ocean to freeze the planet. And if people thought that was seriously scary—and Forensia knew they did because there had been huge runs on winter clothing all over the world—wait till they got wind of the North Korean rockets.

Her eyes were drawn quickly back to Birk. It was like she could see all of the world’s pain and fear in the face of that poor old guy on the tanker, talking about those awful coal-fired power plants and how they should be shut down or the whole Earth was going to get “colder than a witch’s titty.” That was another of his bad jokes, which he probably shouldn’t have said, and which Forensia couldn’t help but find personally offensive. But he really did look and sound kind of delirious. And who couldn’t forgive such a brave old-timer with his thumb hanging from his shirt like a piece of rotten—

Rrrrriiiinnngg.

The doorbell interrupted Forensia’s thoughts. She tore herself from the TV and opened the screen door for Akina, the frail elderly witch from Ithaca who’d presided over GreenSpirit’s memorial service. She’d brought her daughter Magic Margaret, who was as heavy as her mother was light. Sang-mi and Richtor came out of the kitchen to greet them.

They were gathering in Forensia’s small house before heading to a sundown séance, where they hoped to make contact with GreenSpirit. With the twin calamities of the tanker takeover in the Maldives and the North Korean rockets, Forensia and Sang-mi felt like they needed GreenSpirit’s guidance more than ever.

Their first plan had been to conduct the séance at the cabin where their leader had been murdered, but that idea had been squelched when Richtor reported that the crime scene was still cordoned off. He’d seen as many investigators crawling around the place as there had been on the day that Sang-mi discovered GreenSpirit’s mutilated body.

Richtor pushed his lush dreads out of his face and quickly briefed Akina and Magic Margaret on what he’d found.

“Maybe they got a break in the case,” Forensia said, “or else they’ve got nothing and they’re desperate.”

“Can we shut this off?” Magic Margaret turned in disgust from the TV image of Birk with his bloody thumb.

“No,” Forensia blurted out. Then: “Sorry, but I just feel like the least we can do is bear witness to his suffering.”

“He’s mainstream media,” Magic Margaret said. “Who cares?”

“Yeah, really,” Richtor groused.

“I care. Okay?” Forensia was genuinely horrified at what she was hearing from her fellow Pagans.

“It would be nice,” the elderly witch said, “if they would shut down those power plants, like he’s saying.”

“Sure, but not because of this cruelty.” Forensia was still stunned by Richtor and Magic Margaret’s chilling remarks. If you cared about people, then you had to care about all people—even a decrepit old TV reporter. “I’ll turn down the sound,” Forensia said in the spirit of amelioration. Birk had been on all day and was repeating himself anyway.

She plopped down next to Sang-mi on an old couch. Akina sat across from them in a tattered armchair, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. Her daughter, who was older than Forensia’s mother, settled on a love seat next to Richtor, and said, “The scuttlebutt at work is that they sent more forensics folks down here. They’re up to something, I guess.” She was a parole officer in Ithaca and had friends in the state police.

Forensia thought Magic Margaret affected an eccentric appearance for someone affiliated with law enforcement. She was an exceedingly large woman with blunt-cut, jet-black bangs and straight white hair. Not charming—weird. The same could have been said for her thick layer of black eyeliner with its even thicker globs of white glitter, lending her the heavy-lidded, piebald look of a basset hound–dalmatian mix.

Magic Margaret’s mother, who eschewed all makeup, suggested that they hold the séance where Forensia and Sang-mi had been inducted into the coven. “I can’t imagine a more sacred spot.”

The Pagans decided that as long as they were going to the clearing, they might as well set up the altar in the circle of white stones to make it as welcoming as possible to GreenSpirit. To that end, they gathered up all their supplies, including the boline, the black-handled knife with the foot-long blade, and the large pentagram of woven animal skin. After the initiation, they’d stored the heavy, rough-hewn altar itself in the nearby forest.

“I’ll ride with you,” Sang-mi said to Forensia as they were deciding which cars to take.

“Me, too,” said Richtor.

After they had been trailing Akina’s shiny red Prius for about ten minutes, Forensia noticed her friend freeze. Her dark eyes were focused on the sun visor mirror.

“Don’t anybody turn around but there’s a car following us. It’s been there since we left town. It was back two or three cars, but now it’s right behind us.”

Forensia glanced in the rearview, which was filled with the reflection of a late model green SUV, but it looked like a smaller sport utility vehicle, like a Honda or Toyota.

“Can you see who’s in that thing?” Sang-mi asked.

“No, it’s too bright.” Late afternoon sun.

“I could reach back behind me,” said Richtor, who had gallantly given up the front passenger seat to Sang-mi, “and act like I’m digging for something in my pack. See if I can get a look.”

“What do you think, Sang-mi?” Forensia found it odd to defer to her friend, who normally proved so reticent, but Sang-mi had spotted the tail, if that’s what it was, and suddenly seemed more adept at this cat-and-mouse business, probably because she’d grown up in a police state.

“Go ahead,” Sang-mi said to Richtor.

Both women listened intently as he leaned his long torso over the backseat and rummaged around in his pack.

“They look Asian to me,” he said softly, as if he feared being overheard. “Kind of like you, Sang-mi.”

“Oh, shit-shit-shit.”

Those were the first profanities that Forensia had ever heard from her quiet Korean friend. “Don’t worry, you’re in the U.S. now,” Forensia said.

“The North has assassins that go after defectors everywhere,” Sang-mi said, alarm bracing every word. “Even their families. They murdered the nephew of one of the Supreme Leader’s former wives. Her nephew.”

“They’re really that crazy?” Forensia glanced nervously at the rearview.

“They’re crazier than crazy,” Sang-mi said. “They have a Web site called Uriminzokkri, roughly translated, it means ‘Our Nation.’ Two days ago they called my father ‘human scum,’ and showed a photo-shopped picture of him with an ax in his face and said, ‘You must not forget that traitors have always been slaughtered.’”

“And you think those guys behind us might be assassins?” Richtor asked.

Sang-mi nodded. “From the General Bureau of Surveillance. They are really scary. After their missions, those assassins will commit suicide, anything to avoid capture.”

The young Korean defector buried her face in her hands.

* * *

Jason had Aly Wennerstrom snuggling by his side in his bright blue 1977 pick-’em-up truck. They’d had to rendezvous by the entrance to the state park because her father hadn’t been gulled by his daughter’s declarations of Christian chastity, much less by her shrill claim that “I’m still a goddamn virgin, Daddy.” But as Aly licked Jason’s ear, she allowed that she shouldn’t have lost her temper with her papa.

“It’s just that I’m such a passionate person,” she cooed, pressing closer and running her hand over his thighs and swelling enthusiasm, lingering over the latter for teasing, squeezing seconds. “If I like something, I can’t help myself—I want all of it, and I want it all the time. Jesus would understand, don’t you think?”

“Sure, he’d get it,” Jason mumbled.

Was she kidding? Jason didn’t know, didn’t care. But he did love the way that girl could reason her way out of her panties six ways to Sunday. Loved even more the way she unzipped him now and eased him out. A monster hard-on, a real barnacle boner. He’d learned in biology only yesterday that those boat-sucking scum had dicks twice as long as their bodies. About the way Jason felt right now with Barnacle Boy in her hot little hull of a hand. Oh, yeah. Sweet Aly was moving her fingers up and down and making him so hard. Making it hard to drive, too, but what was a horn dog to do? Stop? Slow down the momentum? Hell no. Just keep dem rubba on dem road, mon. He’d drive clear to Buffalo and back as long as Aly was showing her passion. Showing more than passion—sitting sideways and slipping her clingy, baby-blue top over her head. Girl had on one of those see-through bras, and Jason could see everything: her youthful perkiness; her budding excitement; and her hands holding and squeezing herself, doing things he’d like to do.

Now her fingers were working the single clasp in front, where the cups came together in true sartorial inspiration. She paused to caress herself one more time, keeping those doorbells of hers ringing. Jason’s eyes were darting back and forth so fast—road to breast, road to other breast—that he might have had money on a Chinese table tennis tournament.

Oh mon, you see dem puppies? She was peeling off that filmy fabric and, Yes, he could see dem puppies. When she pressed his hand up against them, he could have yelped. Or howled. Or hooted like a screech owl.

“I’ve got to pull over,” he gasped. He thought he’d explode.

But she moved his hand over her breasts, letting him feel both of them, then said, “No-ooo. I like it like this. You do your job behind that big wheel, and I’ll do my job with something pretty dang big, too.”

She put his hand back on the steering wheel and slipped off her skirt, a short denim number that hadn’t hidden much anyway. The girl was killing him. All she had on now was a white thong that he could have flossed with, and she didn’t have it on for long. Then she had her hand back on him, pushing her naked, nubby nipples against his arm. “Ever had a BJ,” she whispered, “while you drive?”

Time to lie, Jason advised himself. “Nope, never done that.”

Without another word, with only another wet kiss to his ear, she disappeared into his lap, and all that thick curly blond hair fell like sprinkles on his legs and belly and balls.

Jason closed his eyes in gratitude, might have said a word or two of prayer, like, “Thank ya, Jesus.” Or maybe something along the lines of “Oh, God. Oh, God.” Direct and to the point.

Then his pick-’em-up truck flew off the road at sixty miles an hour, and whatever mumbles of appreciation might have been passing from Jason’s lips were lost to oblivion, just like the hundreds of millions of tiny sea creatures exploding from Barnacle Boy.

* * *

“Jason Robb, you’re under arrest.” The very first words that Jason heard as he came to, and they hailed directly from Sheriff Walker himself, who had bent all the way over to look in the open driver’s side window. To Jason, the sheriff’s head looked odd—suspended in space.

Aly was already out of the cab. Jason peered past the sheriff and spotted his honey’s feet first, then her legs, and a strange-looking dress that he knew she hadn’t been wearing before. No, it was a blanket. Looked like an Army surplus thing. He looked up and saw her face. Kind of banged up—and not the kind of banging they’d been working on.

He kept staring at Aly, who didn’t seem pleased to see him, and wondering how the hell they went from having such a good time to this mess. Nothing made sense. Least of all Sheriff Walker: Under arrest? For what?

It slowly came to Jason that most likely it was against the law to drive with a naked girl going down on you. Not just any naked girl, either, but a naked underage girl. The next instant, the word “sodomy” came a’calling, chilling him to his … bone.

He gradually became alert enough to spot Aly’s thong, skirt, and bra on the ceiling, which made no sense whatsoever till he finally realized that he’d flipped his pride and joy upside down. The sheriff’s head was starting to make sense, too. It was still hanging there, studying Jason like he was some kind of strange barnyard animal, a five-legged lamb or a two-headed chicken. Something nature spit out and wouldn’t take back.

“Anything broke, near as you can tell?” Sheriff Walker asked it like he had to.

Jason grabbed his crotch in raw panic, remembering a fine old movie in which a guy was getting a really cool BJ when his car was rear-ended—and the woman bit off his dick so fast that she might have been a snapping turtle foraging in his lap. But Barnacle Boy was starting to get hard as hickory again. Go figure. Down, boy, down, he commanded, to no avail. His dick always did have a mind of his own.

Not only that, Jason’s balls ached. How the hell do you still have blue balls after being knocked out? But then he glanced at Aly and recalled her efforts seconds before the crash.

“Why’d I close my eyes?” he mumbled to himself.

“Because you’re a murdering sex maniac,” Sheriff Walker answered. “Now get out. Unhook that safety belt carefully so you don’t die on us before we can fry you. And make yourself decent.”

Jason bent Barnacle Boy back into his pants, zipped up, and unsnapped the seat belt, lowering himself to the ceiling of the truck’s cab. A few seconds later he crawled out the window.

Walker cuffed him. Then the big dawg read him his rights. But Jason didn’t hear much beyond the “Anything you say can and will be used against you” because the words “murdering sex maniac” kept bouncing around his rattled brain.

Much as he could see, Aly was alive and so was everyone else standing around—all the damn cops, EMTs, and firemen with their big red extinguishers just in case his truck burst into flames. So where were all the dead people? Where was even one dead person?

The answer came to him with the greatest reluctance, as cold and clear and deadly as black ice. That’s when he knew that driving naked, even with an underage honey, would likely prove the least of his worries—and the last sex he’d ever have outside a prison cell.

* * *

Forensia eased off the gas when she spotted the highway patrol officer directing traffic into a single lane. Two ambulances and five patrol cars, including Sheriff Walker’s old Bronco, lined the side of the road, lights flashing in the setting sun. A pickup truck lay upside down about fifty feet from the shoulder. It had driven through a farm fence; broken slats littered the ground and a post had been sheared off to a ten-inch stub.

“I wonder if anybody’s hurt?” Richtor said from the backseat.

Slowing down forced the small green SUV—a RAV4, as it turned out—to within spitting distance of Forensia’s car. Akina’s shiny red Prius was two cars ahead.

Sang-mi pretended to fix her unflappably straight hair in the sun visor mirror—with her gaze firmly on the vehicle behind them.

“I can see them now. They are definitely Korean.” She shrunk into the seat, as if she expected bullets to come flying through the car at any second.

“There are cops here, let’s just pull over.” Forensia slowed her Subaru.

“No!” Sang-mi shouted. “Don’t stop. They don’t care about police. Keep moving. I’m not kidding. They will kill us.”

Shaken, Forensia kept driving.

“There are thousands, probably tens of thousands of Koreans in New York,” Richtor said. “I think they own every other fruit stand in the city. Maybe they’re ordinary, innocent people.”

Sang-mi shook her head. “Go, go,” she said to Forensia.

But they were forced to creep past the accident as a young man crawled out of the driver’s window. The RAV4 stayed close.

Forensia kept checking her rearview mirror to keep an eye on the SUV and the road ahead to make sure that she didn’t drive off the road. As she drew even with the wreck, she glanced over at it, just when the young man turned his head.

“It’s Jason,” she shouted as the sheriff handcuffed him. Everyone in the car turned to look. An EMT led a young woman in a blanket to one of the ambulances.

“Whoever she is, she looks like she got off lucky,” Richtor said.

Sang-mi stayed scrunched down in the seat. A quarter mile later the RAV4 turned onto the highway heading south to the city. The young Korean woman stared silently till the small SUV disappeared under an overpass.

* * *

In the White House Situation Room, President Reynolds stared at the supertanker on the TV screen and shook his large head. Bad enough that he had to listen to a washed-up correspondent with a chopped-off thumb mouthing the implacable demands of Al Qaeda, but now the North Koreans had sent him a top secret communiqué that announced they were going to exploit the crisis as much as they could.

Reynolds lowered his eyes to the President’s Daily Brief, which summarized all the threats to the United States; the North Korean communiqué was item number one. That dingdong kingdom was ruled by a crazy little bastard in platform shoes who Reynolds long ago had dubbed “the Demon Dwarf.” This morning the Dwarf was saying that he would launch thousands of missiles loaded with sulfates that would explode in the stratosphere—releasing billions of sun-blocking particles—if the United States didn’t send his country massive shipments of food, grains, seeds, and a full array of high-tech gear for everything from agriculture to nuclear arms. The creepy Dwarf also wanted the top twenty U.S. coal-fired plants shut down, no doubt to top Al Qaeda’s demand to close ten of them. There was to be no public disclosure of any of this, of course, “including the receipt of this communiqué.”

The Dwarf insisted on secrecy in everything. No wonder that was his first condition. But Reynolds hated, hated the idea of complying with any of Demon Dwarf’s demands. The first concession in any government-to-government negotiation set the tone for every issue to follow. Complying with anything that crazy weasel wanted would send the wrong signal, and it would put the United States on a slippery slope long greased by the blood of his foes. Much better, Reynolds thought, to reveal the Dwarf’s threat to the planet so that everyone would know what he’d slipped into his silos. Neutralize the bastard with exposure. But if Reynolds did not keep North Korea’s secrets, the madman might very well launch his sun-blocking missiles, spreading SPF 1,000 all over Mother Earth.

The goddamned dictator had boxed him into a corner three days before the election. It was just like the little creep to pull a stunt like this when the last thing Reynolds needed was a crisis of this magnitude seventy-two hours before voting booths opened for business.

What would Lilton and his merry band of destroyers make of this wrinkle if it became public? Wrinkle? Hell, it’s a political San Andreas Fault, Reynolds warned himself. Imagine the attack ads. Merciless. Murderous. “Reynolds let America’s most dangerous enemy build thousands of deadly missiles that could destroy the whole world. And now he wants you to give him four more years? Say no to Reynolds. Say no to North Korean terrorists.” Horrible.

If Reynolds made the Korean’s demands public, missiles might begin flying. Yet if he stayed mum, it would encourage the man’s madness.

Reynolds’s cabinet and the directors of the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the CIA were waiting for his response to the Daily Brief. At last Reynolds looked up.

“Before we get started on the subject of secret communiqués, what did we find out about that guy,” Reynolds nodded at Rick Birk, jawing away on a silent screen, “and his blinking eyeballs? Anything worthwhile?”

The NSC chief said, “Our code breakers have found intriguing links to a little-known drumming pattern of the Lokele tribe in the Congo.”

“No kidding?” Reynolds grinned. “Where did that old bugger come up with something like that?”

“That’s puzzling and a little troubling,” the CIA chief answered from the cheap seats at the far end of the table. “He doesn’t appear to ever have had any interest in anything African, other than a liqueur called Amarula.”

“Well, what was he saying with his eyes then?” Reynolds asked the NSC director.

“Four words, sir: ‘fire mountain’ and ‘cow curd.’”

“‘Cud. Cow cud,’” said a bony woman to the NSC director’s right.

“Cow cud? Cow curd? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Reynolds demanded.

No one answered.

Reynolds couldn’t believe this shit. “That’s it? Fire mountain. Cow curd, or cud?”

An uneasy silence followed before Vice President Andrew Percy said, “It’s possible, Mr. President, that he’s just jerking their chain.”

“Or ours,” Reynolds volleyed. Goddamn code breakers could hear The Bells of St. Mary’s in a conch shell.

The president rose to his full height. “Why didn’t we know about these sulfates until North Korea decided it was time to tell us?” Reynolds still couldn’t get over that.

“Mr. President, we did know about them,” said Debra Abrams, the White House national security adviser. She nodded at the CIA chief.

“That’s correct, Mr. President,” the director concurred. “We’ve been debriefing a North Korean defector from their U.N. mission.”

“Then why am I the last to know what he’s been telling us?”

“Verification, sir. We considered the information to be so outlandish that we thought we might be dealing with a double agent. We had to verify everything from sources in situ.”

“And have you?”

“Yes, sir. Those rockets are real.”

“And they’ll really bring on years of winter? Worldwide calamity?”

“That’s right, sir,” Abrams answered.

Reynolds groaned. He couldn’t believe he was enduring this political migraine because of sulfates. Of all the goddamn things. Hadn’t he played around with them with a kiddy chemistry set when he was nine years old? Here he’d worried for years about the North’s nuclear capabilities, and now they were threatening to bring down the planet with stuff that you could buy in toy stores and hobby shops. Like being attacked with a garden hoe, till you found out that the hoe was about to chop down the sky.

“What about a preemptive strike? Is that viable?” he asked.

“We’d lose Tokyo and Seoul immediately,” Abrams said. “The Supreme Leader, as he insists on being called, made it clear many times that the instant the North Koreans detect an attack from the U.S. or NATO, they’re unloading their silos on those two cities. And if he does that, you can presume that he’ll launch those sulfate rockets, too.”

Reynolds sat down and massaged his brow. “What about wiggle room? Do we have any?”

“We tell him that we’ll give him food aid, that we’ve always been concerned about the welfare of the North Korean people, and that—”

“The usual palaver,” Reynolds cut in. “He’s heard that before. Hell, if I had to hear that meaningless claptrap one more time, I’d push the button.” From the stares he received from around the long table, he realized that he’d better add the standard-issue disclaimer: “I’m joking. Jesus, folks, get real. What are we going to do?”

“We buy time,” Abrams said icily.

“What about giving the Dwarf a brownout, or a blackout even? Briefly shut down the plants to send him a signal that we’re serious about negotiating. Can we do that?” he asked his energy secretary.

The energy secretary nodded. “We can.”

Reynolds liked his direct and satisfying answer. “If we’re going to give the Dwarf something in the first round, give him something that feels real. We could think of it as earnest money, a way to say ‘We feel your pain.’ Domestically, we could blame it on a broken transformer, but tell him privately that it was to show our good faith.”

“The problem, Mr. President,” Abrams said, “is that Al Qaeda’s demanding a shutdown of coal-fired plants, too, and if we have a power outage of any note, they will take public credit for it. They’ll say it’s a sign of how they’re already dragging the Great Satan to his knees. They’re not going to be quiet.”

“Voters would see that as capitulating to Arab terrorists,” said Ralph Ebbing, Reynolds’s chief of staff, who was leaning against an Oval Office wall a few feet from his boss. “You cannot let that happen.”

“So no blackouts then.” Reynolds leaned back. “Okay, let’s send him a C-17 filled with food. Promise him thousands of tons more.”

“You couldn’t get a single-engine Cessna with a bushel of wheat to Pyongyang without some aviation geek somewhere Tweeting about it. Sending aid to North Korea? Right before the election?” said the chief of staff incredulously.

Yup, he’s right. Reynolds looked around the room and reached out, his hands palms up, like a beggar. “Ideas, anyone? Time is short here.”

“We reply that we are looking at any and all ways to satisfy his requests,” Abrams said. “And we tell him that we will keep our communications secret, as he’s asked.”

“Basically, we give the bastard the first round,” Reynolds said, “and hope that keeps him happy for a few hours.”

“I’m afraid so. It’s the best way to buy time and get you reelected. The last thing the world needs right now is a loss of your leadership.”

Reynolds harrumphed, but not because of Abrams’s toadying. A heretical thought had struck him: After spending more than a billion dollars on this campaign, it wouldn’t matter who was president if those missiles went airborne.

* * *

“Jason Robb, you are charged with the murder of Linda Pareles, also known as GreenSpirit.”

Sheriff Walker spoke formally to Jason in the command post for the joint federal, state, and local investigation into GreenSpirit’s killing. The sheriff sounded as if he’d never met the young man before. As if he hadn’t watched Jason come of age in this small town. As if the Sheriff’s daughters hadn’t gone to high school with the boy.

Walker hadn’t told the FBI or the New York State Police that he’d planned to arrest Jason. His move came after GreenSpirit’s blood had been identified on the scrap of bandana.

None of the agents and state police officers congratulated him. The sheriff’s brow wrinkled as he gazed at his colleagues.

“You want to make your call?” Walker asked Jason, like the kid was such an arrest veteran now that the sheriff didn’t need to explain that all he got was the one call.

“Sure,” Jason said jauntily. “This is bullshit.” When he spoke, the kid looked at the FBI agents. He didn’t sound remotely disturbed by the murder charge.

The FBI profiler, Barb Lassiter, appeared to study the young man. Not in disgust. Probing—that’s what it looked like, as if there were more for her to find out.

She might have suspected she was dealing with a serial killer in her midst. The murder of that Pagan in Vermont and GreenSpirit’s killing bore the same “signature,” as experts like Lassiter referred to it: eyeballs plucked from the skull and left on a floor in candle wax. And Lassiter had been told by Sheriff Walker that on the night of the Vermont murder Jason Robb hadn’t been seen by anyone in town. Not even by his parents. He’d taken off for parts unknown in that old truck of his.

* * *

At sundown, the Pagans gathered in the circle of white stones in which GreenSpirit had initiated Forensia and Sang-mi.

They’d set up the altar as she had instructed them only two weeks ago, using the twig broomstick called a besom, iron cauldron, boline, candles, incense, and the animal skin pentagram. Now they sat, hand-in-hand—for this could take all night—and began to chant a secret invocation, asking for GreenSpirit’s guidance. The world felt leaden with the worst eventualities. Forensia remembered feeling like this as a young teen, as if an apocalypse were about to rain down from the sky. But this felt worse because now she knew that it could really happen.

Another peculiar sensation swept over her: She felt watched again. She tried to dismiss this by reminding herself that Jason Robb had been arrested. And they were fully clothed.

But still the feeling persisted. It felt so strange that Forensia violated the rule against opening her eyes while trying to summon the dead.

Directly across from her, Sang-mi sat with her eyes open, too, but Sang-mi’s eyes were rolled up so that only the bottoms of her irises were visible. They looked like dark crescent moons in a milky sky. Sang-mi began to speak in Korean, beginning in a mumbled monotone, then becoming shrill and desperate sounding.

None of the other Pagans knew her language.

Akina whispered softly in the Korean’s ear, “Please speak English, Sang-mi. English.”

Sang-mi fell immediately silent. But her eyes remained rolled upward, and when she spoke again, seconds later, there was no mistaking her meaning:

“Tell the world. Tell the world.”