back to the surface.” Occam. Upset. Excited. Worried.
I felt his ravaged hand on my shoulder, hot and shaking me, more claw than fingers. I eased my mind back from the battle and took a breath. Blinked. Occam was cutting me free of the ground. My fingers were buried in a tangle of rootlets and leaves and vines. Occam cursed when one extruded a thorn and bit his wrist.
From somewhere in the dark, Rick snarled. “Why is the circle attacking Ingram?”
A woman’s voice said, “It’s not the circle, boss. That magic has been expended. This is Nell’s magic.”
Occam sliced me free of the last rootlet/vine and picked me up, stepping away fast, holding me like a child. It was nice. I was suddenly cold and he was cat-heated. I rested against his hard chest, his arms holding me easily.
Rick yanked and ripped my blanket free of the vines. Cursing. Mad. His Frenchy black eyes glowing cat-green. I didn’t know if he was still reacting to the magic or to an attack on a member of his team. Both probably.
“Don’t mess up my blanket,” I said. “I need it.”
“I’m not messing up your blanket, Ingram,” he growled.
“We were afraid of you going all woody and branching out,” the woman said.
I swiveled my head to her. “Hey, Lainie.”
“Hey, Tree Girl. You got all leafy again.”
“I did?” I lifted my hands in the light of her shielded flash. My nails were greenish brown and leafed out, the skin of my fingers nut brown. I put a cold palm against Occam’s unscarred cheek, which was scruffy. His eyes were glowing gold. “You cut me free again.” Occam growled softly. I smiled up at him. “Thank you. You can put me down now.”
Occam’s arms tightened on me.
“Or not.” I rested my head against his chest, watching the action in the field. Kent was doing some kind of arcane measurements with a stick and the psy-meter 2.0 and recording numbers on a pad in the light of her flash.
“Levels one and four are redlining, which is not typical for a witch circle or a witch.”
“What is it typical for?” Occam asked.
“Nothing I remember from the databases. But with the cat and the strangeness of the circle, I can agree with your evaluation. It’s black magic,” T. Laine said, the words sounding as if they tasted bad. “It’s a strange spell. I’ll know more after I finish analyzing it.” Lainie was the unit’s witch and her analysis would be arcane as well as mundane.
Rick—properly referred to as LaFleur on the job—said, “When you get back, open a file on this, Kent. Run it through the local law enforcement databases and see if there’s anything similar.”
T. Laine asked, her voice carefully emotionless, “What do you want me to say about how you ended up here?”
I shifted in Occam’s arms at that question. The query may have sounded simple, but it was loaded with intricate potentialities. If Rick had been summoned by the spell, it made him a liability to the unit. If we left mention of him out and it was later discovered that he was a liability, then we’d be in trouble for not including it. Internal Affairs would be all over us.
Rick turned his head so he was looking back over the circle; I couldn’t see his eyes. “Say exactly what happened. I was attracted to the working after it was over. Make the file PsyLED Unit Eighteen eyes only for now. I’ll call the up-line bosses and report.” Which was walking a very fine line between the prospective problems. I was impressed despite myself.
“I’m taking Nell home,” Occam said. “She’s growing more leaves. She needs to be back on Soulwood.”
I held up my hands and studied my fingers. “Mighty leafy.” Then I laid my head on Occam’s chest and fell asleep, hardly noticing when I was placed in his car, and waking only when he picked me back up. I sighed and stretched and yawned and pushed away from his body to look up at his disfigured face. But he was still Occam. And he had become a safe haven for me.
That thought coiled through me, foreign, alien. Except for Soulwood, I’d never had a safe haven before.
TWO
“I can walk, you know. I ain’t broke and I ain’t a young’un.”
“True,” Occam said. But he didn’t put me down, just rubbed his jaw on the top of my head like a cat, scent-marking me, carried me up the steps to my door, and leaned down so I