concerned that it might have already captured my password entry, I retook my seat, adjusted the laptop so the camera couldn’t capture the screen, and continued with my work. But working, or trying to work, under the eye of a camera was challenging, an exercise in thorny memories. It was like being under the watchful eye of the churchmen. There was no, absolutely no privacy.
I got up and moved away from the chair, out of sight of the camera. I was breathing too fast and anxiety skittered up my spine, which was stupid. Except it wasn’t stupid. It made total sense. I thought about the churchmen. I thought about the ones who tried the hardest to hurt me. I had fed them to the earth. I had won. I had defeated them and I had survived. I had survived.
I had PTSD of a sort, I knew that. But I had survived. I was still surviving.
My breathing steadied. Okay. So what do I do with the camera? I asked myself, thinking like a PsyLED officer, not a victim. I propped myself against the doorway, considering.
A red-brindle and white St. Bernard rammed inside the office, shoving me against the wall. I nearly fell and I whacked FireWind’s shoulder with the flat of my hand. “I ain’t never in my life smacked a dog, but you’uns know better,” I said, shaking my finger at him. “Shame on you,” I said, louder. Just like the mamas might. I clamped my mouth shut on the church words.
The St. Bernard went still, turned his head in a totally not-dog manner, and glared at me.
I could apologize. Or not. “Yeah, I know I slapped you. You knock me over and I’ll do it again. Pay attention. Oh. And jist so you’uns—you—know, death energies are more powerful in this office than anywhere else in the barn. You know who the death witch is yet?”
FireWind dropped the glare and shook his head no, then yes.
“Is that a maybe?”
FireWind chuffed a happy sound, let his tongue loll out one side of his mouth. He gave me a doggy yes and began to snuffle all around the office, up on the cabinet, under the table, shoving my chair around.
“There’s a camera.” I pointed up. “You agreeable with me climbing up there and getting it down?”
He chuffed again and whirled from the office, back into the barn.
I interpreted that as a yes, but to cover myself, I made photos of the camera and texted Tandy what I was planning to do. While I waited for a reply from HQ, I hunted for a ladder and found one leading up into the loft. I brought it into the office, propped it against the rafters, and braced the rubber-coated feet. If the ladder somehow slipped, I’d take a nasty fall, but that wasn’t likely. I climbed the ladder to get a good look at the metal frame holding the camera in place, and determined that I’d need a screwdriver. I climbed back down and rummaged through the tack room until I found a toolbox, which I brought back to the office. I stuck two sizes of Phillips head screwdrivers into a pocket, pulled off my work jacket, and unfolded a medium-sized evidence collection bag from my pocket. I checked my cell for permission to remove the camera.
Tandy’s response was, This is covered under current search warrants. If MC is present, call and I’ll walk you through downloading it.
“MC? Memory card. Excellent,” I said, setting the cell phone down, “because I’m way better with a screwdriver than I am with computer stuff.” I pulled on nitrile gloves, climbed the ladder, reached for the camera, and got a jolt of death and decay. I nearly did fall, and that woulda proved to Occam that I couldn’t do my job. “Dagnabbit,” I cursed.
I shook my death-cursed fingertips, which were hidden inside blue nitrile gloves. The magics on the camera were much stronger than the other ones in the barn, and even stronger than the ones in the coffeemaker. Had the death witch put this up? If so, why wasn’t it disintegrating? There were cobwebs all over one side of it, so it had been here a while. “Death energies are really strange,” I muttered. And then I realized that the clean side was cracked, just a bit. The death and decay was only on one side. And there were smudges on the clean side, like fingerprints.
Carefully, not touching anything I could avoid, I disconnected the camera from