I glanced back and saw the destruction I hadn’t detected until she mentioned it. One guitar body had separated from the neck and was hanging by the strings. There were half a dozen guitars hanging near it, all showing signs of dry rot. The percussion equipment was dull and powdery looking. I remembered the RVs out back. The purpose of the band and crew lunch had been to unpack the tour gear. That probably meant there were more instruments and equipment out there. “Did you say the deputies got photos of the room earlier?”
“Yeah.” T. Laine’s jaw tightened. “The piano and the guitars looked fine when they arrived. Come on. Let’s get out of here. Even with null pens we’ve been in here long enough.”
As we walked back upstairs, a tension I hadn’t noticed fell away from my shoulders. I guessed it was death energies pushing on me, but it didn’t feel like witch magic. It felt scratchy and cold and odd, but not in a way I could put words to.
On the landing, we changed out of the blue unis and put the contaminated gear into the disposal bins for crime scene workup. I returned the null pen to T. Laine and tucked the handkerchief into my pocket for later use. I crunched the mint and let the flavor flood my dry mouth.
As we climbed the last steps, T. Laine asked, “You glad to be out of the office and away from the search for the Blood Tarot deck?”
“Until I got a whiff a this place, I was. Now, not so much.” I pulled my jacket lapel out and took a sniff. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the smell out of these clothes. I might have to burn ’em and that goes against the grain for a ch— for me.” I’d almost said “for a churchwoman,” but I wasn’t one a them anymore. “But yeah. I’m happy to stop the Blood Tarot search for a while. Don’t tell JoJo, but it’s boring.”
JoJo Jones, the special agent who sent me here, was the unit’s second in command and our highly prized former hacker. Or not-so-former, sometimes. JoJo loved research better than anything else in life.
The Blood Tarot was one of three black magic tarot decks known to be in existence and it had been missing since our last big case, possibly destroyed. Possibly not. We hadn’t been able to prove either possibility, and it was too powerful an object to be forgotten, out there, somewhere, tempting someone to use it. I wasn’t having any luck locating it in a pawnshop, on the Internet, on the dark web, or on the magical black market.
In the kitchen, someone had made a pot of coffee in Stella’s fancy Braun. It was probably against regs to make and drink coffee in a victim’s house, but it smelled fresh and there were stacks of paper cups to the side, so I took that as an invitation. I slid a paper cup out of the plastic sleeve and poured coffee. The effect of the mint was gone and I needed to get the taste of rot out of my mouth and breathing passages. T. Laine and Occam, who had been talking to the uniform guarding the door, poured cups too. The uniform, a different deputy from the sheriff’s cousin, was a substantial black man in his fifties. He took a cup and went outside to talk to someone approaching the house.
I sipped, breathing the rich scent, and leaned my back against the edge of the fancy stone countertop. Only the sound of murmuring voices disturbed the quiet of the house. Every time I blinked, I saw the soapy greenish flesh and the bones in the hand holding the black tour T-shirts screen-printed with white and scarlet in words and images.
In spite of the death, the afternoon sun was warm through the windows and there was an illusion of peace in the kitchen. Two people sat on the sofa in the gathering room, their heads together, speaking softly. I rose up on my toes and made out two young, tattooed white women with spiky rainbow-colored hair, wearing trashed jeans and sweatshirts. They had been crying, their makeup smeared and faces chapped.
In a mutter, T. Laine said, “Okay. Five-minute break’s over. I originally requested this site be treated as if it was a level three biohazard/spelled site, but I didn’t get to follow through. Since the site didn’t read like typical witch death energies, and because I couldn’t prove it was a crime scene and not an accident, and since the family had driven up and were demanding access to the premises, the sheriff elected to downgrade it to level two.”
“Family? Where?” I asked, looking at the two women.
“Outside for now,” Occam said. “In Stella’s RV, which I cleared and released to them, per FireWind.”
“He’s taking a strange interest in this case,” I said.
“He’s a fan,” T. Laine said, shaking her head. “I’d never have guessed. Anyway, whatever is causing this accelerated decomp isn’t decelerating like I expected, probably because I was treating it like witch magic and it isn’t. I may have to pull rank on the sheriff and upgrade the threat level. Thoughts?”
“I’m leaning toward an upgrade,” Occam said. “At this rate, with the accelerated decay, I doubt we’ll even get PMs. I—”
The two women on the couch slumped and toppled over. I dropped the cup on the counter. At a dead run, I leaped for the women. T. Laine snagged my shoulder and yanked me back. “No!”
“But—”
“No! They’re with the band. Backup singers.” Meaning they might be contaminated with something we couldn’t see. “They were downstairs when the LEOs arrived,” T. Laine said, “without null pens to mitigate the . . . hell. The death whatever-this-is.”
“Right,” I said, my heart feeling like it might bust outta my chest. “Death whatever. We have to call it something.”
T. Laine gave us each a null pen and we approached the women slowly, keeping a good ten feet away. The women were unconscious, barely breathing. A door to our right rammed open and a man stumbled into the kitchen from a set of stairs leading to the second story. He reeled against the wall, bounded off, and fell.
Lainie grabbed Occam’s shoulder and my wrist, shoving, backing us out of the gathering room. She shouted, “Clear the house! Clear the house! Level five containment protocol. Clear the house! Clear the house! Level five containment protocol. We got a problem, people!” To us she said, “The locals locked down only the crime scene, not the upper floors, so people on Stella’s approved list have been up and down for hours. Stupid starstruck sheriff.”
Law enforcement officers boiled out of the hallway leading to the basement and rushed outside. Standing to the side of the door as people raced past, T. Laine said, “I want everyone quarantined. I have a feeling this is getting worse instead of better.”
Three more civilians rushed down the stairs from the second story and T. Laine called out, “Special Agent Kent, PsyLED. Outside, all of you. Occam, keep them together and don’t let anyone leave, law enforcement included. Nell,” she shouted, though I was right beside her, “get the quarantine tents out of my vehicle.” She placed her keys into my hand and said softly, “I’m calling FireWind for an ETA, and to bring a warrant for the entire house. The locals only got one for the basement, which was stupid beyond stupid,” she practically spat. “I want full access and a full crew.”