started to ache. As I neared the basement stairs, my fingers started to tingle and felt cold to the touch. But I forced myself to dress out in a spelled uni and gloves, requested a null pen from T. Laine, and went downstairs.
The plants near the basement’s French doors, close to where the bodies had been found, were brown and dead. I thought back. For once I hadn’t noticed the houseplants consciously, my attention on the bodies, but in my memory, they had been green when I was here last. I didn’t touch them, curling my arms around myself in a hug.
For safety’s sake, I returned to the stairs, holding my middle, looking around at the rotted guitars, the cracked plastic casings of electronic equipment, the pile of dust and rusted wire where the piano used to stand. The metal chairs were piles of rust. The wall colors were faded and brittle. The carpet was gone and the slab cracked, as if I looked at a long-abandoned house.
At the top of the stairs I heard a thump and shout. I stripped off the uni and other protective gear and raced down the hallway, into the kitchen, my heart in my throat, breath fast. No one was in the kitchen. And then I heard a faint panting. On the other side of the island, Occam was kneeling beside FireWind, who was still in St. Bernard form. He was panting in distress, his tail down, head hanging. FireWind’s legs quivered, his knees unable to hold his weight. He dropped to the floor in a doggy heap.
“Nell,” Occam said. “T. Laine!” he shouted.
I was by FireWind in an instant. I touched him and jerked back fast, shaking my hand. “He’s covered in the death and decay.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Occam growled.
T. Laine raced in from outside and dropped to the floor, her hands tracing over the dog in a professional manner, checking for fever against her own skin, checking pulse and respirations, shining a light into FireWind’s eyes. T. Laine had been to vet school and was the unit’s were-creature medic in the few times when shifting wasn’t enough to heal them. But what did she know about skinwalkers? Had FireWind told her about his species’ health? I told her what I thought had happened and T. Laine wove a null pen deep into FireWind’s silky coat. Nothing seemed to happen, so she wove in several more. “Don’t lose these,” she whispered to the dog. “My boss says they’re expensive and he might kill me.” She was talking to said boss and it might have been funny if FireWind wasn’t having trouble breathing. “Why aren’t you shifting?” she asked him.
Occam sat back on his heels and watched. “What do we do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the witch said. “The null pens don’t seem to be making a difference. I don’t know how to help a skinwalker shift. Can you?”
“Methodology is totally different. Magics are different. If it’s the death and decay keeping him from his human form,” Occam asked, “do we put him in the null room or would that mess up his skinwalker energies?”
I envisioned FireWind stuck in some broken shape of mismatched parts forever.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We need a manual. ‘How to Skinwalk for Dummies.’ Nell? You healed LaFleur and Occam. What do you think?”
I studied the panting dog. He had never hunted on Soulwood. He wasn’t mine. Still, I reached out a hand again. The death and decay grabbed my fingertips as if it recognized me. I jerked back. “I need my plant from the car.”
Occam moved out the door werecat-fast and was back in a moment with the potted tree. I scattered a little of the soil over FireWind and stuck my fingers into the pot, shoving them deep. “You try to stick your roots into me or my boss and I’ll let the death and decay take you,” I warned the tree.
Occam raised his uneven eyebrows, a gesture that was both cat and human and would have made me smile if FireWind wasn’t in such distress, his panting growing faster. I drew on Soulwood through the soil, and my land welcomed me, warm and safe and full of joy. Through that connection, I could tell that Esther and Mud were in the house and were fighting. Cherry was inside with them, miserable at the anger in their words, her tail thumping softly on the floorboards. The cats were in the garden chasing mice in the dark.