room, where the third victim, Monica Belcher, fell and died. That room reads so strong of these death energies that, so far, I haven’t found a way to stay inside safely, and the two city cops who went in to take crime scene photos before I got here were contaminated. They just arrived at HQ to sit in the null room for a while, in case that helps.”
“What kind of psy-meter reading?” I asked. Every species of paranormal creature had its own specific levels, even me. And magical workings and magical energies always read on the psy-meter.
“All four psion levels are up, but they bounce up and down, as if the energies are being affected by something else, like compasses going haywire over the Bermuda Triangle. Almost everything in the basement is showing signs of disintegration, not just the bodies.” T. Laine rubbed her hand through her hair, a gesture that was part frustration, part something else. Maybe headache. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she repeated, “and I don’t know where to look to help me categorize it since no one up-line has answered my calls yet.”
Her eyes cleared slightly and she gave me a wan smile. “No maggots yet, though.”
“Ha-ha,” I said. Vampires called me Maggots or Maggoty, or Little Maggot Girl. The nicknames were a thing of perpetual amusement to my coworkers. “What’s a swag storage room?”
“It’s storage space for promotional merchandise and display stands.”
“What do you need me to do? Why am I here? This thing is in the house, not the earth.”
“FireWind requested you on-site.”
“Oh.” FireWind was the new up-line big boss and he scared the pants offa me. Being scared made me mouthy and so Ayatas FireWind and I had not gotten off on the right foot, if there was a right foot with him.
“FireWind is on the way from New Orleans. For now? Familiarize yourself with the site. Then you can start organizing the electronic file tree for PsyLED’s inquiry, take photos and notes, hand draw the crime scene, and start the prelim witness interviews.” She took a breath that ended in a frown. “Let’s take a quick tour of the basement. That’s a vision that’ll melt all the red off your lollipop.”
I would never understand what lollipops had to do with dead bodies. I followed Kent through the gaggle of officers at the end of the hallway and down the stairs to a landing where the stairs turned. There was a narrow window there with three houseplants on the ledge, and a table stacked with sky blue unis. Under the table was a huge plastic container for contaminated unis. I opened one of the super-strong mints and placed it on my tongue before we both dressed out in the null P3E unis. The one-piece biohazard uniforms had been designed for contact-based biological pathogens and had then been altered and spelled by the Seattle coven against magic. They covered the wearer from head to toe, starting at the oversized booties, rising up our legs to a waist that never fit, to the head cover that could be cinched over forehead and chin. To go with the unis were extra-thick spelled nitrile gloves and darker masks, which could be fitted to our faces to create a seal so that all air exchange had to pass through the specially treated null cloth.
The stench coming up the stairway was enough to make me nearly gag, even with the mint. Some people said they breathed through their mouths when they encountered bad smells, but that left my tongue coated with a nasty smell/taste sensation. That perception lasted longer than the smell alone and made me not want my dinner.
On Unit Eighteen I had gotten sort of used to foul smells, but this stench was in a category all its own. If I could have stopped breathing entirely, I would have. The scent was a sweet, sick reek of advanced rot mixed with . . . I didn’t know what. Mixed with other things I couldn’t identify. When we were dressed, T. Laine handed me a null pen to protect me from the paranormal energies and a cloth handkerchief with mentholated vapor rub on it. I took both and tucked the cloth inside my mask, near my nose, and the pen into a chest pocket of the uni.
The stairway ended in a landing centered in the tan-carpeted basement. Musical instruments were everywhere, hanging on the walls, on stands in rows along the walls, in cases stacked in a