T. Laine took a slow breath, holding back her annoyance. “Fine. Here’s my deal. You reimburse PsyLED Unit Eighteen for the unis your people wear and the cost to recharge the null pens they use, you agree to make sure your people spend the proper amount of time in a null room, no matter where they have to go, and you can get in there.”
Jackett rubbed his chin as if it itched. “That’s agreeable to me. Send me a text with the itemized costs. I’ll approve it and get the paperwork to your HQ. If it does become a federal PsyLED case, I’ll eat the cost of unis used now and during the paperwork transition.” He dropped his hand. “And I’m sorry I used inappropriate words about the witch situation. One of my deputies informed me why they were ill chosen.”
T. Laine took a moment to let the words sink in between them. Stiffly, she said, “Sorry I mouthed off. I don’t know what these energies are, and I need to make sure all our people are safe.” She stuck out a hand. They shook. “Oh,” she said. “No electronics inside. I can’t protect them.”
Jackett nodded agreement before he turned and started shouting orders. To us, T. Laine said, “And that, boys and girls, is how to smooth troubled waters and ruffled feathers, lessons courtesy of SWAT’s Gonzales.” I wasn’t sure who had soothed who, but I didn’t disagree.
Two deputies, who had already been inside and knew the protocol, requested gear and null pens. Dressed out, they started manual timers, as opposed to electronic ones, and went inside. The stench in the house puffed out each time the door opened, and I reapplied mentholated rub to my handkerchief and kept it folded inside my shirt collar.
Around us flies buzzed, the biting kind, and the sun beat down, making me miserable. At least the sound of horses and birds in the distance was pleasant.
I still didn’t know exactly why I was here, but I knew how to make myself useful. Sitting on a deck chair in the shade behind the house, I expanded my database, this time on my laptop, exporting it every few minutes to HQ in case the paranormal energies of death whatever messed with the electronics. Along with Occam, I initiated prelim interviews with the victims who were still conscious, and stayed out of the way of the paramedics.
* * *
* * *
By midafternoon, the sickest victims had been transported to UTMC for evaluation and treatment, we had indications that time in HQ’s null room had helped mitigate the two cops’ minor symptoms, and the media furor had reached a fever pitch. Rumors that witches had attacked Stella Mae were rampant. Photos taken by some of the band members were making their way to the Internet and going viral. Public hysteria was building. And we still had little idea what was really happening.
As we worked, Alvin kept a sharp eye out and caught two reporters sneaking in through the back acreage. They were arrested on trespassing charges, but the arrests did nothing to stem the tide of nosiness. More and more media vehicles were lining the road out front. At one point, I counted six drones and two helicopters filming overhead.
Most importantly, the Nashville witch coven finally showed up, two cars and a van pulling a cargo trailer down the road. The trailer was the portable null room, which the LEOs, the paramedics, and the remaining human victims on-site needed badly. T. Laine had to request a police escort to get the witches onto the grounds, but their faces were apparently known to the locals because their movements were followed by a Primitive Baptist preacher with a bullhorn.
The preacher seemed to feel he had a right to give everyone migraines while he assigned every soul but his own to hell. He was stopped at the entrance to the drive and turned back, but even so, things weren’t copacetic with the witches, and the media drones were making sure everything went out to the public.
I watched as they pulled up, parked in the middle of the driveway, got out, and—in unison—slammed their vehicle doors. They were all wearing long black skirts and black shirts, like tropes out of a novel about witches. There wasn’t a smile in place as they spread out in a semicircle across the lawn, seven of them, a good number for a coven. They approached the house and the quarantine tents like hunters flushing game. They seemed to have a collective mad on, their eyes taking in everything from the tents to the victims in the unis to the law enforcement types, who were watching them back with penetrating curiosity and a measure of hostility.
I moved closer to get a better view and ended up near Officer Alvin Hembest, who stood with one hand on the butt of his service weapon. It wasn’t a very calming stance, and it was echoed by the other LEOs. Putnam County and the surrounding environs appeared unwelcoming to the witches who’d come to save them.
When the witches stopped, every eye was on them and the officers were silent, watchful. The witch in the middle was a short woman with shoulders like a linebacker. She was clearly the leader, and she raised her voice, shouting, “Why should we help you, when you took one of ours into custody?”
“One of yours is in custody?” T. Laine asked, her tone practical and her volume moderated. Though she surely knew the answer to her own question.
“Catriona Doyle,” the leader said. “The FBI took her into custody as a person of interest and they won’t let us see her. The agent sent social services to pick up her kid. At school. Her child has been remanded into the system instead of to her sister or to one of us.”
“The child’s other parent?” T. Laine asked.
“We’ve attempted to notify the child’s father, but he and his second wife are on a documentary photoshoot somewhere in the Australian outback. Doyle’s sister showed social services notarized papers giving her custody in the event of problems. Social services and the FBI refused to even look at them.”
“Sheriff Jackett,” T. Laine said, without looking away from the witches. “You know anything about that?”
“I don’t, Special Agent Kent. The FBI shares office space with the Cookeville PD. The chief agreed this scene was outside his jurisdiction, and he left around noon,” Jackett drawled, his voice a familiar-sounding Tennessee cadence. “I’ll find out what’s happ’nin’, but I got to say, what the witch is describing is all by the book. It ain’t uncommon to hold a person of interest and, according to established protocol, to make sure any children are safe for the duration. Social services will hold a custodial ruling as soon as possible and see that the child is returned to the rightful family member, but short term, the safe place is with a foster home.”
“I don’t think so,” the leader said. “Foster homes are notoriously dangerous, especially to children of witches.”
“It’s protocol, ma’am,” the sheriff said, his tone composed and unemotional.
“Really?” T. Laine said. “Protocol can be interpreted. This sounds like extreme measures to me. Measures that might suggest Catriona is dangerous just for being a witch, measures that would pit the magic workers we need at this scene against us in law enforcement, at a particularly bad time. We are not looking at a death working or curse. You aren’t even certain that this isn’t an accident of some sort. Catriona isn’t a death witch, so she isn’t a suspect.”