Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4 )- Faith Hunter Page 0,30

short and slight, and the manager had provided Tandy with her ID and address.

Tandy and T. Laine had run the ID. It was real, but the address on it turned out to be an empty lot behind the wastewater treatment plant off of Neyland Drive. They had tracked down her parents, who lived in Nashville, but they hadn’t seen their daughter since they kicked her out for stealing and pawning her grandmother’s silver. There had been no indication of witch genes in the lineage. No one had been able to find the woman and there was no way to determine if she had cast the circle.

The local witch coven had been asked to take a look at photos of the circle and they had no idea who had cast it. They also had no idea what it did except something bad. They had refused to go to the circle in person and had broken off contact. Which they had done before when bad magical things were taking place in Knoxville.

We were no closer to knowing if the witch circle had been a deliberate call to Rick or if he accidently answered it because of proximity and the black cat used as sacrifice. We had nothing except bloody gauze we couldn’t track to the blood source, a bunch of weird focals, and … Nothing. Except that someone was casting nasty curses with unknown magic. This alone had everyone worried, especially the werecats.

Tandy was in charge for the night and also handling comms, should we get a case. As long as no one took a day off or went on vacation we had enough people to staff the office twenty-four/seven. On nights when that wasn’t possible, calls were autorouted to Rick or JoJo and they called us in. Computers were grand things when they worked. Satisfied that I was caught up on everything, I went to work on my assignment, tracking grindylows and their kills and why grindys were indifferent about Rick. PsyLED’s mandate was to investigate paranormal crimes, keep paranormal records, track paranormal trends, and I had traced and amassed a lot of records in my time at Unit Eighteen.

On my first break, well after midnight, the waning moon was visible and the sky was black against the city lights as seen though the windows. I trimmed back dead leaves—on the herbs in the windowsill boxes, not on me—and enjoyed the novelty of air-conditioning. Novelty because I was still mentally stymied about going on the grid or adding to my solar array and solar batteries just for comfort. It was hard to turn away from a lifelong independence. I weighed it all as I worked on the plants.

“Nell,” Tandy called over the in-house speaker system. “Come to the conference room, please.” I put down my small watering can and went back to join him. “It’s probably nothing,” he said as I stepped in the doorway, “but Knoxville PD called in something and are asking for an agent to liaise.”

“You want me to go on a call? Alone?”

He didn’t look up at the obvious excitement, apprehension, and delight mixed together in my voice. “Sending coordinates and address to your cell. Meet Officer Holt at the scene. Convenience store robbery a little after midnight, on the heels of an earlier title loan shop robbery as the employees were closing. The businesses are within a mile of each other and the perpetrator in both cases was described as male, five-nine, black hair, pale skin, and ‘acting strangely.’ He stole cash and a gun and ammo from the pawn shop and food items and cash from the convenience store. Neither business’ security footage shows the unsub’s face, but both describe bloody clothing. The descriptions were similar enough for KPD to put them together. They want the place read for vampire.”

Unsub was cop-speak for unknown subject. “Species profiling because of blood and pale skin? Maybe he’s a butcher.”

Tandy didn’t look up, but the amusement was clear on his face in the glare of his tablets. “You get to decide what species. If human, you can give the investigation back over to the local PD.”

So, no crime workup, just a reading. Scut work. I gave a long-suffering breath and gathered my gear—my weapon and Kevlar/antimagic vest, the psy-meter 2.0, and a comms set.

• • •

I didn’t push my old red truck, didn’t run lights and siren. The C10 wasn’t designed for the strain of pursuit or emergency driving, and since the delivery of my official vehicle had