He said, “No witnesses, and she may have wandered off, or taken off with a boyfriend, but no one has heard from her. And her cell phone was found a block from where she was last seen.
“The FBI hit the twenty-four-hour window without the return of the first girl. The ransom was paid, and there hasn’t been any activity, which violates traditional HST procedure, which provides for return of the abducted within one hour of receipt. As you know from Spook School, when this window of time elapses, there is, statistically, a drastically reduced chance of warm-body rescue. After that, it usually means a recovery attempt, not a rescue.”
“Warm body?” I asked.
“Rick’s shorthand for living and still human,” T. Laine said. “He has personal experience in that department.”
“Not relevant to today’s briefing.” Rick stepped into the back room. When he returned, he pulled behind him a whiteboard on a wheeled stand. It had been divided in two with a marker, and a photograph hung on each side, with pertinent information beneath, like height and weight. I knew without being told that they were the missing girls. Rick passed JoJo a sheet of paper with two names written on it and an address for an FBI Web site. “JoJo, you type faster than the rest of us. Will you merge and update our files?”
JoJo grunted and said, “Sure. Make the black girl play secretary,” but there wasn’t any heat in the words.
Tandy smiled as if he was feeling pleasure from her. He said, “Not secretary. Computer geek and all-around IT specialist.”
JoJo said, “I can live with that, if I can have the superhero name of SuperGeek or SuperHacker. Or maybe Diamond Drill.” The last one made no sense to me, but I didn’t ask, continuing my practice of sitting still and silent and learning by listening.
Amused, Rick said, “You gave up that lifestyle, Diamond Drill.” JoJo’s full lips spread into a wicked smile, and I didn’t understand the humor. Rick said, “Because of the expired window, we’ve been asked to meet in person with the FBI.”
He tapped the left side of the whiteboard and the photo that hung there. “Let’s recap everything for Nell and update our board. Girl One was taken from school grounds following cheerleading practice,” Rick said. “Witnesses and security cameras indicate that three males jumped out of a white panel van, no plates. Slight dent in the rear passenger-side panel. All three wore hoods and gloves. They grabbed the girl and threw her into the van. The van has since been confirmed to be a 1994 Dodge Ram panel van.” He looked at me, “This is the stereotypical kidnapping I was talking about. It fits the textbook, nonfamily, political, ransom-style kidnapping. It required planning and an intimate knowledge of the girl, her whereabouts, and her schedule, all of which was posted to social media.”
JoJo whispered a curse under her breath, her fingers tapping on her laptop keyboard so fast it sounded like rain, a steady drumming.
“Girl Two disappeared after ballet class. Her mother had engine trouble and was late to pick her up. No witnesses. Cell phone left behind. Private security cameras two blocks away caught sight of a panel van matching the description in the first kidnapping, no plates. There was no confirmation of the small dent, due to camera angle and low def, but it’s assumed at this point that the girl was taken by the same people. That will be confirmed when and if they get a ransom demand.”
I remembered what I had read on the government study about stereotypical kidnappings. “So some kidnappings are crimes of opportunity,” I said, “but these kidnappers have treated this like a hunt.” Rick looked at me curiously. I lifted one shoulder and said, “The church is pretty good about planning things. They’re hunters. Hunters plan, stalk, build duck hides and deer stands to wait, watch, attack, and kill. Hunters are patient. These people are hunting humans, so they track their prey, but instead of tracks in the ground or spoor or territory marking, they track social media. Right?”
Rick gave me a small nod, and a flush of pleasure sped through me. “The FBI is also looking into whether the discarded cell was synced to a stranger’s.”
“Why do you call them Girl One and Girl Two. They got names,” I said, frowning at Rick. “Names and histories and pictures.” I pointed at the boards. “Rachel Ames and Shanna Schendel.”
“He does that for me,” Tandy said softly. “It’s . . . difficult for me to work cases. Any cases. Everything is so personalized, everyone on the team feels the pressure. It can hit me hard.”
“In training, we learned how to work together,” T. Laine said. “It’s all business, no emotions allowed. At least not in front of Tandy.”
“Oh.” That made some kind of sense. Strange sense, but sense. “Did the girls know each other?” I asked.
“They both attend Farrington High School and had French class together last year, but there isn’t anything else to connect them, not that we’ve been able to discover, beyond that casual acquaintance.”
I studied the pictures of the two girls, both pretty, looking vivacious and happy and fulfilled. And . . . soft, somehow. Not exactly innocent. Just untried, unpunished, as if they had lived easy lives. By the time I was their age, I had buried one sister-wife and been married according to church law for years. My sister Priss had married and had a baby on the way by the time she was fifteen. Looking at the faces of the missing girls, I felt odd and old and worn, as if I were fifty years old, not twenty-three, feelings I stuffed deep inside as all good women are taught to do from an early age, and plastered a smile on my face, hoping Tandy hadn’t noticed my change in emotions. This was going to be problematic, working with what had to be a human lie detector.
Rick’s cell made a tinny burbling sound and he picked up. “Special Agent LaFleur.” He made a face and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door. The others talked and Tandy made a pot of coffee while I experimented with the laptop, opening the new file JoJo had sent, with all the information updated on the abductions. Once I got the file opened, I could see everything the FBI had on the girls, and I could also watch JoJo work in real time, updating and editing as she went. As the others said, this was “so freaking cool.” When Rick returned he said shortly, “The feds say we have permission to take a look at the kidnap crime scenes. Gear up. We’ll eat on the way.”
I said, “I’ll need to go home and eat lunch, since according to the contract I signed, I don’t get paid for three weeks. Which is really not a good way to do business. When I make a deal with someone I get half up front. That way if they stiff me, I’ll at least have something.”
“You’re getting paid by the federal government,” Rick said, closing up his laptop, his smile making him look younger and less harried. “They don’t stiff people.”
“The federal government has been bankrupt since nineteen thirty-three, when they devalued the dollar and got rid of the gold certificate. Look it up. I wouldn’t trust them to pay for a bag of flour.” Which I still needed to pick up at the store. “I prefer to barter when I can. Plants for eggs and meat and chicken. Whatever I have for whatever someone else has. That’s value. And right now, I’m hungry and nearly broke, so I have to go home.”
T. Laine made a pfft noise.
JoJo said, “No way are we letting you drive all that way back out there, girl. Good God, it’s like fifty miles. I’ll feed you.”
“I don’t need to take charity,” I said tartly. “I have food at the house.”
“When we’re doing fieldwork, expenses are covered,” Rick said. “And that includes meals. You can submit an expense report. But for now, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. You’re part of this team.”
“But—”
“What was that you said to us?” Tandy interrupted. “‘Welcome to my home. Hospitality and safety while you’re here’? You’re in our home now.” Which left me totally nonplussed. To the others he said, “Mexican?”
“We did Mexican already this week,” JoJo said, closing her own laptop. “Burgers.” Still bumfuzzled, I followed them out the door.
* * *
Following a fast-food meal that was mostly beef and potatoes, we drove by the school where Girl One was taken, and we all got out to suss around a bit. There was crime scene tape blocking off a large area, all of it concrete or asphalt and no place for me to take off my shoes and feel the ground. The werecats didn’t smell blood or semen or urine, just a lot of humans. Rick used a little device called a psy-meter. It was about the size of JoJo’s playing cards, and it measured what he called psy-energies, the energy left behind by all living things, even more so by magic-using nonhumans and by magical spells or workings. But there had been too many people around for anyone to get a good reading.
At the ballet studio it was pretty much the same, except for a strip of land in the parking area where one tree, a dogwood, had taken root and another had tried to and died. The ground was covered in pine needles, and when I pushed a hand through to the soil, it was to discover that the lone tree was afraid, fearfearfear leaking through every rootlet and stem and reddening leaf. It had been afraid since its partner tree had died, thinking it the last tree on the face of the Earth. I willed it to listen to me, while the others sniffed around and muttered to themselves. I willed it to live and promised it I’d bring another dogwood back to plant in the place of death, and I’d bring fertilizer and water and help them both to survive. When I pulled my hand away, it was . . . not happy. But maybe looking forward to winter rather than fearing death.
* * *
We had done all we could at the old crime scenes, and headed back to the hotel. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and was nodding by the time we were ensconced in the suite of rooms again. I fixed coffee while Rick and the others checked e-mail and made calls. From the few comments they made, I deduced that Girl One was still among the missing, meaning that the Human Speakers of Truth were looking less likely to be culprits, and the girl was more likely to already be dead. The team’s emotions were both excited and fearful, and Tandy looked drawn and worn from trying to ward them off. I made sure he had coffee with plenty of sugar and cream, and I stood over him waiting for him to drink, trying to project happy emotions toward him.
I had just taken my own first sip when Rick stepped in from the back room, ended a call, and said, “Listen up.” His face was empty and cold. “The news media finally caught up with social media about the abductions. An hour after it hit the airwaves, a third girl went missing, a human girl with a strong paranormal association to one of Ming’s scions. Her mother is Claretta Clayton, and so her daughter falls completely under PsyLED jurisdiction.”
The tension in the room ratcheted up so high it took my breath away. T. Laine sat up straight. JoJo grabbed her laptop and started a search for something on the Internet. Tandy’s skin went a bit pale, his Lichtenberg lines going brighter.
“Who’s Claretta Clayton?” I asked.
“A VIV—Very Important Vampire,” T. Laine said, her eyes focused far off.
Occam paraphrased from his tablet, “The Clayton family helped settle Knoxville in the late seventeen hundreds, and Claretta married into the family in the eighteen hundreds. Her husband died in the Civil War, and she was turned by a marauder. She broke with the family. According to our files, Ms. Clayton has a human daughter, age eighteen.”
“How much was released to the public?” T. Laine asked. “The paranormal family, compounded with the time . . . Could this abduction be a copycat?”
Rick made a noncommittal sound, his face grim. “We can’t rule anything out at this point. But with the FBI already entrenched and because the cases are currently linked, the director decided that the feds will remain in charge. This unit will be offering our expertise and our data on HST. But this has nothing to do with the readiness of this team to take on an assignment, nothing to do with division of responsibilities, and everything to do with needing a bigger team than PsyLED can offer at this time. So we’re working with the feds, and everyone in this unit will accept that. Understood?” There were impassive nods around the room, but Tandy looked distressed, and I knew that not everyone agreed with the decision to work under the FBI. Or maybe some thought that the FBI wouldn’t work with them.
Someone turned on the huge TV, and I saw a gorgeous blond woman talking about three missing girls in Knoxville, believed to all be abductions, but it was quickly clear she knew that and nothing more, because she immediately went to a specialist on nonfamily kidnappings. I downed my coffee, thinking about what I knew and what I didn’t.
“There are other significant differences with the third girl,” Rick said. “She didn’t attend Farrington High. No white panel van was seen. However, she did disappear from school, after being dropped off by a limo driver. He’s at FBI headquarters being questioned now.”
“Which school?” JoJo asked, typing again.
“Private school. Senior at Wyatt,” Rick said. His cell chimed again and he turned back into the bedroom, saying, “LaFleur.”
I didn’t know much about nonchurch schools, but even I had heard of the private Wyatt School of Knoxville, and I pulled a map of it up on my laptop. Wyatt had a soccer field, a baseball field, a lacrosse field, whatever that was, a tennis center, plus two arts buildings and a theater, a sciences building, and a swimming pool. I’d never been in a swimming pool, hadn’t even seen one except on films. There was one teacher or staff member for every ten kids, which, according to the Wyatt Web site, was much lower than in public schools. Wyatt was a day school for rich kids, though financial aid was available. Tuition and food went for nearly twenty thousand dollars per year. Per child. I’d never made that much altogether in a single year. And I’d been homeschooled all my life, until I had taken over my own education at age twelve. Photos of the student body suggested they all were from a financial upper class, all with perfect teeth, athletic bodies, and artistic, scientific, or political leanings. The future artists, doctors, lawyers, and politicians of the state went to school at Wyatt.
“Theodore Roosevelt said,” I quoted, “‘A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.’” Trying not to be sour but not succeeding, I added, “Looks like these kids might be on the way to greatness stealing railroads.”
“Meow,” Occam said. The others laughed, and I realized I was being gently teased, as if they were testing the waters to see if I had a sense of humor or if I was going to be difficult to work with.
Even I knew I’d sounded catty, and fought off a responding blush. I wasn’t accustomed to being sarcastic or snide and it left me feeling itchy and odd in the face of their careful laughter.
Rick walked back in, his face holding an expression I couldn’t identify. JoJo said, “What part of the campus did Girl Three disappear from?”
“We don’t know,” Rick said, studying me for reasons I didn’t understand, that odd look still on his face. “The chauffeur dropped her off at the Upper School Building this morning, but she never showed up for class.”
“Are there security cameras on campus?” JoJo asked, fingers tapping like a snare drummer.
T. Laine whirled her computer so we could see the screen and said, “Two facing the entrance. The chauffeur had to pass them when he dropped her off. Neither one was working that day.”
“Neither camera was working?” I asked, clarifying. “I don’t particularly like happenstance or coincidence,” I said.
“You got a quote for that?” Rick asked.
Tapping the keys of my laptop, studying the map of the grounds before starting a virtual tour, I said, “A paraphrase. Once means happenstance, twice means coincidence, three times means enemy action. Ian Fleming said something like that, I think in one of the James Bond books.” I spotted the cameras on my computer. Both were facing front, both big enough to see at a glance. “If I was planning a kidnapping and I had a way inside, I’d dismantle both of them the night before and then take out my target. A bigger question is how the kidnapper knew she would be let off at that entrance and not one of the others.”
Silence settled around the table, and I looked up. They were all staring at me with looks that ranged from surprise to outright suspicion. I sat back in my chair and folded my arms over my chest, feeling protective and proud, the latter of which was a sin, but not one I could honestly repent of this time, even if I was of the mind to. “What?”
“Trained investigators would know that sort of thing. Not a . . .” Rick bit off his words.
“Not a backcountry hillbilly?” I said stiffly, my church accent creeping back in. “I keep telling you’uns. I was raised by hunters. I snuck around a lot when I was a little’un, listening to the menfolk talk and brag. I also had a husband who intended me to be able to take care of myself when he was gone. I know how to bait a trap, set a snare, shoot a varmint, and skin and dress a deer if I need to. I never have, not since the lessons, but I know how. I also learned how to observe and draw conclusions—that was called deductive reasoning, which linked premises with conclusions or potential conclusions. Or brought up more questions and observation leading to more conclusions.
“And back to that quote? This looks like enemy action,” I finished hotly.
“She was right,” Rick murmured. Paka snarled and, from her reaction, I realized that the “she” Rick was talking about had to be Jane Yellowrock, the vamp hunter who had brought me to the attention of this group. Jane must a said something to him about me, something good, to get him interested in my consulting with his team. Maybe I owed Jane an apology for all the bad things I’d thought and said about her.
“Yes, she was,” Tandy said, his Lichtenberg lines glowing a bright, unvarying red.
T. Laine was watching me with delight; Occam and Paka with something like the way cats look at a new toy, as if they wanted to sink their claws into me and see if I’d bleed. A small smile crept over my face. Here I was in a hotel room with a bunch of people I’d not met until recently, men and women both, in a hotel room, not a one of the people related by marriage or blood—and no one had molested me, not once. The churchmen had been wrong about the constant danger to the womenfolk. And I was having fun. How ’bout that? I hadn’t had fun since before I became a woman growed, but I was having fun.
“So, if we were in charge, what do you think should be our next move?” Rick asked, “Assuming we won’t interview the family until tonight.”
I felt the test in the question. He was checking out my vaunted deductive reasoning. I tapped my pursed lips with a finger. “The police are probably all over the crime scene, messing up the scent patterns for the cats among you. But just in case we can pick up something that a human can’t, I say we should go to the school as soon as possible.” Rick didn’t indicate an answer, just waited patiently, like a cat staring at a mouse that was acting distinctly un-mouse-like. “And it’d be nice to get the chauffeur driver to the school to show us exactly where he dropped her off. Exactly. Not in general. It would be even nicer if the local cops were told to stay away from the site so you could all smell it, but I’m guessing that won’t happen.” While there, I’d also be able to take off my shoes and put my toes into the soil where Girl Three stepped out of the car, to see if I could pick up anything, but I wasn’t gonna tell them that.
I said, “If the FBI hasn’t already done it, somebody should talk to all the girls’ friends about whether any of them were seeing someone on the side. Boyfriend, someone their parents were against them seeing. Something secret that they might not put on social media.” They were all looking at me even more weirdly, as if I were some new critter they’d caught in one of my own snares and they weren’t sure what to do with me.
Crossly, I said, “I’ve read a few mystery books. It’s called looking for clues. Like, were there fingerprints where the cameras were disabled?”
“The FBI is on-site, checking everything you mentioned and a good deal more besides,” Rick said.
“But you got cats, and they can smell around to see if anyone new was in the school. The cats can also smell for Girl Three’s scent patterns and blood or body fluids where the driver let her off. If she was scared, she mighta peed a little, and some cats can see body fluids in ultraviolet, in the dark. Can you’uns, when you change into cats?”
Rick laughed softly. “She was right. And yes, Watson, the FBI crime scene techs are doing most of those things, and we will redo anything that looks pertinent. The ones that haven’t been done are on the list for the day.”
Near sundown Rick got word that the FBI crime scene techs were finished with the private school, and we headed for Wyatt, where Girl Three, the vampire’s daughter, had been taken. The team chattered and entered things into their synced laptops as we rode toward Wyatt School. Here, there were trees, enough to actually make a wood.
I studied the roads and the surrounding area the way a hunter might, taking in details like high ground for observation spots—not many—roads in and out, nearby streets and buildings, bodies of water, the thick woods, subdivisions, and a trailer park. Dutchtown Road took us to Wyatt School Lane, and that road took us to the school itself, which occupied a lot of acreage, bigger than most family farms in the state. The school had multiple entrances off Wyatt School Lane, making any observation about the cameras less than helpful. A black limousine was waiting for us at the entrance to the Upper School, parked in a small, paved, circular turn-around area. I got out, looking around like the others were doing. The cameras on this entrance were the ones that had been disabled. On the other side of the road from the school were trees and what most people called natural areas, in this day and age, though the trees were only a few decades old and a grounds crew kept the undergrowth clear. The rest of the team went to talk to the chauffeur and sniff around the spot where Girl Three had been let off by her chauffeur. I went to the woods.
They were oak varieties, maple varieties, poplars, longleaf pine, and sweet gum. This time of year the leaves had started to form a carpet on the ground, but there were enough still on the limbs and twigs to hide a good climber. I walked deeper into the trees, studying, letting the woods recognize me. Trees in general—despite the scared dogwood—are deep thinkers, slow to become aware, slow to recognize new beings in their midst. But if someone spent any time in a wood, they might have been noticed, especially if he, or she, hurt one of them.
According to the maps, there were residences nearby, a mobile home park, a few businesses. Nearer the school, there were running paths through the woods for the school athletes, the tracks and the grounds near the campus all neat and weed-free. Farther off, the grounds crew had been less interested in landscaping, just keeping the paths clear. Beside the sculpted paths, there were lower trails used by rabbit and opossum and raccoon, where the shorter vegetation had been reshaped by their passage, higher paths used by deer, the ground cover thinner where the deer hooves had damaged the low plants and higher where their bodies had pushed aside and broken the branches and stems on the way to the water of Kilby Lake, not far from the school. And there were the littered paths employed by nonstudent humans. Random beer cans, plastic water bottles, and used condoms on the trails leading to the mobile home park. I walked toward it along one especially trashed path, and wondered if an upscale teenager had a thing for a trailer park teenager. Or maybe, unbeknownst to her family, this missing girl was on drugs and walked here to buy them, or alcohol. Or any kind of secret a teenager might keep. I studied the metal homes for a while before I turned and went back through the woods. The trees were awake now, and recognizing me, recognizing Paka and the other big-cats, the life force of the woods a low, deep, vibrant pulsation I could feel along my skin. Overhead the leaves rustled as a breeze stirred through them, the trees stretching limbs against the pressure of movement.
The air was brisk, leaves falling steadily now as I walked back toward the school. When I could see glimpses of the limousine again, I stopped and sat on the ground, took off my shoes and socks, bent my knees up under my chin, and, my skirt demurely tucked around me, put my bare feet on the ground, flat, soles evenly distributed, toes pressing in. I put my hands flat beside me. I closed my eyes and sought out the spirit of the trees as I could do so easily at home. Back at the single dogwood, all I had needed to do was touch the ground, because the space was so small and the tree so alone. Here it was harder, the trees not accustomed to communing with anything not plant-based. But they were aware of me now, and they were curious. At which point I realized I had no way to find out what I needed to know.
Even in my own woods, the trees can’t see. They experience the world around them through touch, temperature, pressure, and vibrations of sound. My woods don’t see anything, only the vibrations and awareness telling me what was going on. Here, all I could tell was that people passed through these woods with regularity, from the school and from the residences nearby, some at speed, pounding along, some meandering, some with stealth. Athletes ran. Bored people meandered. The stealth part was disturbing, however, and I was able to narrow it down to two humans who had moved like foxes, one from the trailer park, and one who came back and forth across Dutchtown and into the trees there.
According to the maps, that part of the area was heavily residential, with the woods broken up by roads and tract house neighborhoods. Little by little the trees of the woods had been slaughtered and hauled away. There wasn’t a significant woods until Hardin Valley Road, and that was earmarked for destruction. There wasn’t enough connection for the woods where I sat to speak to the woods across the way, so I had no idea if the stalker routinely came through there too. The woods weren’t strong enough to show me much more.
If the missing girl had spilled her blood here, I might be able track her. I had followed an injured deer once, across Soulwood, its blood dripping onto the earth. Blood was easy to follow. Tracking a human had to be similar. But I was not going to get her blood.
I blew out my breath, opening my eyes, stretching out my legs, flat on the ground. And saw the bulbous moon hanging in the trees. Night had fallen.
“Whadju find, sugar?”
My head jerked toward the sound. It was Occam, high in a tree to my left. I frowned up at him. He shouldn’t have been watching me. “What do you mean?”
Slower, he said, “What did you discover when you”—he made a rolling motion with one hand—“communed?”
Tandy leaned out from behind a tree and softly said, “That was incredible. I never felt anything like it before.”
A spike of fear shocked up through me, like being stabbed and electrocuted all at once. The fear multiplied in intensity. They had been watching. Watching me. Around me, the breeze picked up, colder than only an hour earlier. Chill bumps rose on my skin, prickling, and my fingers started to shake. Hiding my reaction, I pulled on my shoes and stood up, brushing down my skirt and smoothing strands of my hair toward the tight bun. The wind had pulled some loose while I was unaware. The two men still watched.
Watching me. Watching me use my power. I shivered hard.
Occam said, “I never saw anyone commune with a forest before.” There was something like awe on his face. “That was amazing.”
They had watched. They all knew.
“Nell?” Tandy asked. I didn’t look at him. “Oh,” he said. “Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand. Occam, please give us a moment. We’ll meet you back at the van.”
“I said something wrong, didn’t I?” Occam said, leaping from the tree limb with cat grace. The jump was marred when his index finger caught on the sharp bark and drew blood. He landed between Tandy and me on the balls of his feet and his fingertips, microdroplets of his blood hitting the earth. Droplets that I felt through the ground, sharp and heated and . . . Something tugged at me through the ground, needing, wanting, hungering.
Occam rose fluidly to his full height. “Whatever I said, sugar, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Blood. Hunger wrapped itself through me and wrenched, demanding. I turned and ran.
My breath came fast, my heart speeding. I raced through the trees, a zigzag course as if to unsettle a hunter who had me in his sights. Birds startled and called out, the alarm tones shrill. The trees caught my fear, throwing out warnings that felt like, Fire! Fire! Their greatest fear except for man. I could feel them through my thudding feet, their deep rootlets spreading like fingers, siphoning up water from far below ground as my fear spread and they prepared for danger. They shared the warning root-to-root, tree-to-tree, species-to-species—the old fear, Fire! Fire! I ran faster, my breath burning. Leaves fell like rain, hiding my passage.
I realized I was on a path and I spun away from it, into the underbrush. I must be far from the school, because here, there was heavier growth. Blackberries that scratched my skin and pulled at my clothes and hair. I dropped to hands and feet and crawled into a patch of bracken, pushing aside the large fern-leaves and ducking beneath low limbs of trees. Hiding. Heart pounding. Around me, field mice, lizards, and snakes dashed and undulated away in fear.
Lungs burning, I crawled deeper into the bracken until I was surrounded by ferns and my bare hands were buried beneath last year’s leaves, into the mosses and the damp soil. Things crawled over my wrists and arms, many-legged and fast, as my hands disrupted their lives.
People were watching me. Always watching me.
And . . . Occam had bled. Were-blood, hot and potent, all across the earth beneath him. The wood had wanted that blood. I had wanted that blood. Had thought, just for an instant, about what it would feel like to feed him to the earth. I was . . . I was evil.
I was evil, just like the churchmen had said.
And . . . the moon. Were-creatures and the full moon. That meant something, explained something, but I didn’t remember what. I only remembered that I had been terrified, and when I was terrified I wanted blood. Always, even if just for a moment, I wanted blood for the earth, to give the trees strength and power and to claim it for my own as I had Soulwood. Oh God. What am I? What kind of devil am I? My leg muscles twitched, my heart and lungs pumped, my skin burned. With each breath, my lungs made a retching, tearing sound.
My unbunned hair was tangled in a snarl and draped around me like a lank veil, sweaty and full of twigs. I realized I was crying when tears dripped forward and off the tip of my nose and from my chin, falling to the ground like a salty offering. I didn’t know why I was crying. No one had hurt me. No one had even chased me. They had let me go. But . . . but I had seen something inside me. Something I didn’t know was there. Something I couldn’t quite identify, didn’t recognize. Something that I feared.
Occam had bled. Beautiful, strong blood.
I heaved breaths until my trembling eased. Until the tears stopped and dried on my cheeks. Until I heard-felt through ears and palms the sound vibration of someone slowly approaching. I rolled to my butt, sitting up, hidden in the ferns, and wrapped my skirt and my arms tight around my legs, holding myself like a child, my back to a pin oak, the bark rough and soothing against my spine. Night had fallen, the darkness harsh and deep and encompassing. Shadows were long and lean across open ground and hovered, like raven wings spread into darkness, over the bracken.
And then I remembered why the moon was important. I had read once, long ago, about were-creatures. They were moon-called, their blood infected with something called prions that initiated changes in their genetic structure. They changed shape into another creature most easily on the full moon, when the lunar cycle made their blood potent, the prions multiplying during the full moon and forcing the change upon them. Which . . . which might be why his blood had affected me so strongly. His blood was powerful and vital, and, right now, the earth knew that. Liked that.
Twigs snapped, in what had to be a deliberate sound, since the creature tracking me was probably werecat.
“Nell?”
It was Occam. If he had cat eyes in his human form, then my trail was likely lit up, bright in every misplaced leaf, every broken stem, every disarranged fern, my fear sweat in droplets everywhere. My scent was probably hot on the air from running, from anger and fear pheromones, smelling like prey when I was a bigger predator than anyone, even I, had guessed. I hugged myself tighter.
“I see you in the dark,” he said softly. “May I come in?”
I laughed silently, and wondered if I was a mite insane. An invitation into a wood that wasn’t even mine? Fine. “Yes. You may. But the moon’s gonna be full in few days, and I don’t know how much control you have at this point. So please refrain from eating me.”
I could hear the smile in his words when he said, solemnly, “I promise.” A long-fingered hand, the skin tanned in the daylight, was nothing more than a pale glow in the night as he pushed aside the tall ferns and crawled beneath the trees on his hands and knees. He settled himself near me, leaning his back against a tree across from me. I stared at my arms, hugging my legs.
“Can you tell me why you ran?”
I shrugged in uncertainty. How did I tell him, anyone, about . . . everything? The breeze grew more chilled and the shadows abruptly darker as clouds covered the waxing moon. Occam waited patiently, and the silence pushed against me, demanding an answer even if Occam himself wasn’t pushing. I frowned. “I was running away from myself more than anything,” I admitted unwillingly. “But I don’t like being watched. Wasn’t right.”
I said nothing about the blood on his fingers, but as I sat in the bracken, I realized that the wood no longer hungered, or if it did, then I had somehow cut my awareness of it. Run away from it. I didn’t say, And this wood wanted you.
Occam nodded, his face serious. “You’re a very private person. I get that. Rick said you might be a yinehi. Or a couple of other Cherokee names. I know I’m not pronouncing it right in the Cherokee tongue. But he was talking about fairies, maybe wood nymphs, though in your case, mostly human. He said you were intensely private. And I forgot that. I promise that it will never happen again. I’ll never watch you, not without your permission.”
I thought about that, from the perspective of the church and the menfolk and the way they did things. Nothing was ever free.
“If you’re thinking about quitting,” he said, “I’d like you to stay. All of us would. We’d like you to try again. Find a way to merge with this team. Learn how to get along with all of us.”
I looked into the dark orbits where his eyes hid in the shadows. In the daylight, they were amber-brown eyes, but in the dark they were just holes in his skull. “Don’t watch me unless I ask you to. I been watched and spied on my whole life, hiding who I am, what I am, whatever that is. Been watched by the men in the church as I approached womanhood. Been watched from the deer stand for years. Nothing I can do about none of it. But you. I can stop you.”
“Understood. No one watches you without your permission. Anything else?”
“Never lie to me.”
Occam thought about that one for a moment. “I will never lie to you unless I have to.”
“Why would you have to?”
“Secrets that aren’t mine to share,” he said instantly. “Need-to-know info on cases unrelated to you. PsyLED has certain levels of security clearances. Yours is much lower than mine.”
Occam stuck out a hand and I studied it a moment. Menfolk sealed deals with handshakes, man-to-man. Deals with a woman were usually different. Sealed with other words or in other ways. I had signed a contract, but I had a feeling that this handshake would be much more final, much more permanent. This handshake was about trust, and expectation, and protection, and commitment. Hesitantly I placed my hand into his. His palm and fingers were heated, like a furnace, and in an instant, something wild and fiery flowed through his flesh, skin-to-skin, something that made his eyes glow golden in the night. My hand felt small and cold inside his grip, but just as strong. I gripped his hand back. We shook on it. His eyes faded to human amber. When he let go, he rolled to his knees, all feline grace, and crawled out of the bracken. Silent, wondering if I had made the right decision, I followed him through the deepening dark, toward the lights of the school.