“The senator’s PM is scheduled for four p.m. today,” Rick said, “and Occam and I will be there, along with two feds and two members of the Secret Service. Meanwhile, JoJo’s been digging sideways and has discovered that the daughter who produced Justin Tolliver—Miriam—and who fell off the map right after Justin was adopted by her parents, was never reported missing.”
“So we don’t know if she disappeared as in ran away or disappeared as in presumed dead,” I said. And then realized how dreadful it was that I could say such a statement in a calm and rational and unemotional tone of voice. I didn’t know what I was becoming as a special agent, but it wasn’t the woman I had been.
Rick said, “Disappeared as in there’s been no sign of her since—no leads, no official search, no credit report, no death certificate, and she isn’t on any missing persons databases—nothing.”
“That’s odd,” Soul said, “especially for the family member of a public official, who could pull strings and find her, get her case special attention.”
JoJo said, “We have an incoming call from T. Laine and Tandy.”
The overhead screens flickered and Tandy’s face appeared, his lips moving, his eyes to the side. T. Laine appeared beside him, and she was clearly looking at him, listening. Rick said, “We have visuals. Why don’t we have audio?”
Oh. Sorry, Tandy’s lips said, without sound. He punched a button and looked at the screen, saying, “Starting over. Healy’s prison cellmate died in an infirmary fire last night. We were just shown in and saw the place. It looks like either he was attacked with a flamethrower or he suffered self-immolation.”
“But there is no accelerant smell,” T. Laine said. “One of the warden’s trustees said it was spontaneous combustion. That’s what we got. A dead witness.”
Rick cursed inventively and rubbed his head. His eyes were glowing slightly green, the color of his cat. We were getting too close to the full moon. “So now we have three players? And one’s in Texas? Get home,” he said to Tandy. “We’ll see you late this afternoon.”
“Okay, boss,” Tandy said. “Out.” The screens went black.
Rick swiveled in his chair to the partial team in the conference room. “Clearly we have more than one killer. It’s highly unlikely that a killer managed to get inside a maximum security prison, find and fry a specific prisoner, and then get back here in time to locate and fry the senator, and shoot up Clarisse Tolliver’s car.”
“Unless he could fly,” I said softly.
Rick cursed again and threw himself out of his chair. Pea, the grindylow, appeared at his side and leaped onto Rick’s shoulder, chittering madly as Rick stormed down the hallway, calling for Soul.
A flying, fire-throwing, gun-shooting paranormal. Which would explain how the shooter got away each time. He/she/it shifted shape and flew away. Like an arcenciel?
There were no other known species that could do all the things we had seen and that had been attributed to it. If it could fly or even teleport . . . how would we stop it? Without commenting further, I went home to shower off the stench of fire and death and to sleep, a feeling of failure riding on my shoulders, and later, into my dreams.
T. Laine and Tandy were in the conference room when I got back to HQ, both wearing fresh clothes, hair still damp from showers, and the EOD meeting was in midswing. On the screens was a new case file. What had been a protective investigatory case was now an examination of data and evidence with national importance: the investigation into the extraordinary and bizarre death of Senator Tolliver by unknown means and under unusual and possibly paranormal circumstances.
A stranger stood in the corner, a man with a face like a piece of oak and a suit that had to cost a month of my wages. He was a Secret Service agent, one of the ones who had come to the hospital after the senator was blasted with fire. And he was staring at Occam.
I didn’t have to be Tandy to know why he was here. Occam was a wereleopard. Occam had been in the presence of the senator at the time of the bizarre and unexplainable fire. Occam had survived that fire when the senator and his security detail had not. And Occam the wereleopard looked fine. Occam was a suspect. I looked around the table as I took my seat and saw from their body language I had missed some important stuff. I pulled up the files that were open on the big screens, scanning to catch up on the intel.
An irritated burr in his voice, Rick said, “Clementine, record the attendance of Probationary Special Agent Nell Ingram. Time is six twenty-seven.”
I flinched and whispered, “Traffic.” And then I flushed with anger, cleared my voice, and said, “I was caught in traffic. There was an accident on South Illinois Avenue.” Rick looked at me blankly. “On Sixty-two near Tuskegee Drive,” I clarified. Unit Eighteen was composed of out-of-towners, not local people, and for months now, I’d had to refer to roads by their number instead of the pike name or street name.
Rick said, “Okay, so why aren’t you at the senator’s place, reading the ground?”
“Ummm.” I flicked my eyes around the table, meeting Tandy’s. “Because the senator’s dead?”
Tandy gave me a slight nod telling me that Rick was not himself, but that he was working to share his own calm with the boss. The full moon was close. Rick was antsy. I put a sugar cookie shaped like a gift box tied with a bow onto a paper plate and passed it Rick’s way. He didn’t take it, instead looking even more annoyed.
Calmly, Soul said, “Nell is where she should be. In fact, I think Nell should concentrate on a timeline. We have murders to investigate. This is now our case. The FBI and Secret Service will still be involved but on the periphery.”
“Fine,” Rick said, his voice tight, his green-glowing eyes on me. “Read the file notes, Ingram. T. Laine, continue.”
T. Laine said, “I spent the last half of the day and the flight back working on the legislation angle. The senator had three bills before Congress: one that would make all paranormals born in this country equal citizens with all protections under the law; one that provides regular law enforcement equal power over all paranormals; and the last one unrelated, that requires much deeper background checks on all gun buyers and a three-week waiting period. All this is totally out of character for a Republican senator, especially since several of the Tolliver companies contribute to the production of weapons.”
Tandy said, “I’ve been talking to his aides. They say he’d been acting strange for the last three months, taking breaks and disappearing, missing meetings, postponing trips to DC, abstaining from votes he normally would have strong feelings for or against. It means nothing by itself, but taken together with a possible paranormal turf war, it might eventually make sense.”
“Occam,” Rick snarled. “Update us on the senator’s PM.”
Occam didn’t raise his eyes from his computer screen, eyes that were glowing the golden brown of his cat, but his lips lifted in a snarl of his own. The tension in the room was suddenly too high, the air feeling too hot. The werecats were acting catty, not human. It could be from the stuff I missed before I arrived. Or because when it came to cat shifting, Rick was a brand-new were and had little control over his emotions. Or because the dominance games in the null room had been unsuccessful. Or because, when I helped Rick shift back to human during the last full moon, breaking the wereleopard curse he was under, maybe I didn’t succeed all the way. I had tried not to think too much about that event, but I had never broken a curse, let alone one applied by a cat-woman. Maybe I just partially solved his problem and he was still in trouble. Or maybe the tattoo magic spell on and in his flesh was the problem. Whatever it was, Rick acting hotheaded or out of control would be bad for him and for all of us in Unit Eighteen. Rick tilted his head in a catty, nonhuman manner.
At the gesture, the Secret Service guy slid his hand inside his jacket, moving like former military, instincts on high. I glanced to Tandy, and he looked spooked.
Out of nowhere, Pea landed on the table, chittering madly. She leaped over the little Christmas tree, dropping onto Occam, landing like a cute kitten, a grindylow reacting to the rising violent were-pheromones in the room.
Tandy stood, his Lichtenberg lines too bright, too red on his white, white skin. His face was caught in a rictus of fear, his eyes on Rick, his hands reaching, as if to hold the SAC in place. And failing. Something was about to happen. Something bad.
There was only one grindylow. Where was the other?
The Secret Service guy was drawing his weapon. Occam’s eyes flashed golden fire. Rick reached for his service weapon.
I barked, “Rick!” I pulled on Soulwood. Pulled peace and calm from the sleeping trees and bound them around Rick’s cat. I had claimed Rick soon after I met him, claimed him for the land, to heal him, to heal his were-magics. Now I used that, and reached out to Tandy too, hoping he could help calm the cat. But the empath was panicked himself, picking up the wereleopards’ territorial anger.
I used the tools I had and wrapped Soulwood around all of them: the cats, the grindylow, Tandy, the government warrior. More quietly, I said, “We’re all happy here.”
Rick blinked. His eyes lost the green leopard sheen. Pea looked up from Occam and leaped all the way across the table to land on Rick. Stuck her nose into Rick’s face and chittered. It seemed everyone in the room took a breath. “Everything is okay,” I said. I looked at Tandy and said again, softer, “Everything is okay.” Tandy nodded and closed his eyes, his body language wilting. The empath had learned that in times of extreme stress and fear he had the ability to share his own emotions, to change other people’s reactions, but he hadn’t managed to do that, instead falling back on old patterns of being controlled by the rages and passions around him. Now he too drew on Soulwood, pushing the calm of the land that lived inside me into the room. It was a bizarre sensation, similar to the touch of a slow spring rain pattering down on the earth. I liked it.
The tension in the room went down fast. The Secret Service agent blinked in confusion and replaced his weapon with a soft click of hard plastic holster.
Rick’s weapon disappeared; he took a breath and released it. “Where were we?” he asked.
The glow in Occam’s eyes died and he said, “I’ll skip the weight of the senator’s liver and brain and heart and conditions of his internal organs to give you the English translation of the COD. Cause of death is listed as third-degree burns and inhalation of superheated air, resulting in the shutdown of his respiratory system. It’s transcribed in medicalese, but that’s the gist. They were starting on the security guys when I left, but prelim results were the same.”
“But he was human,” Rick stated.
Occam hesitated, glancing at the Secret Service agent as if weighing what he wanted to say, and it was clear he had held information back. “His organs were . . . off. His digestive system wasn’t normal.” He looked at Soul and she tilted her head, telling him to continue. “He had no kidneys, no gallbladder; his liver was bluish. His blood smelled weird and it was darker than expected. The unburned parts of the senator’s skin turned a deep bluish color that looked nothing like livor mortis after death. The forensic pathologists sent patches off for DNA workup and they’ll be processing it through chemicals and dyes to look at it under a microscope in twenty-four hours. We should have a report in forty-eight hours or so. But no. The senator was not human.”
The meeting lasted too long. When it was over, the Secret Service agent left and the others went home or to their office cubicles. I printed out a dozen files and spread the pages over the conference room table, to put together a timeline and a possible family tree. I worked for hours, as the moon passed by outside the windows, marking the night’s progression. I drank eggnog right out of the carton. It wasn’t near as good as Mama Grace’s nog. I ate cookies. Also not as good. When I was done, I organized it into a new file with bullet points.
I did a little more research and added to the list:
As I pulled together the timeline and possibilities, I found something that T. Laine had entered into the files just before she went to Texas. Soon after the birth of Devin, there was a huge fire at then-state-senator Tolliver’s mansion and two bodies were found in the building, an adult female and a child. Fire investigators determined that a servant and her child died, and death certificates were issued in the names of Monica Smith and Marcus Smith. Which was interesting, but not particularly useful information. Unless . . . I sat back in my chair, watching Soul, who was standing still as a glass statue, both of us thinking.
“Soul?”
She turned from the window and the brightening sky, which had held her unfocused attention. She raised her brows in a gesture that said I could continue.
“What if someone killed the real-life real wife Clarisse and the real Devin, and replaced them with shape-shifting pyros?”
“If so, then why burn up Sonya in the limo?”
“Hmmm. Unless Devin accidentally set off the fire. Or unless Sonya was a problem and she had to die for some reason, say, to protect them, or Sonya was like them and it was time to replace Sonya’s pyro identity?”
Soul gave me a head-shaking shrug that suggested I was guessing and my guesses were getting too complicated to make sense, and she was right. I sent my lists off to JoJo and went back to work. But something kept nagging at me. Something about the timeline and the sequence of the deaths through three generations.
Rick put a cup of coffee at my elbow, the steam curling up. Hot enough to burn my mouth.
I stopped, my fingers motionless above the tablet. I remembered the burned and dead plants at the senator’s house, and the cooked fish in the water below. My mouth came slowly open. “Ohhh,” I said. “I need to go to the senator’s at dawn.”
“Why?” Rick asked, the question low and concerned. I’d heard my cats use that specific interrogative tone.
“Something I saw. It was dark. It might be nothing so I’d rather not say. But I want to see it again, in the daylight.”
“Fine. Work on the timelines and try to narrow down the species of pyro. Take off near the end of your shift. I’ll send Occam with you.” I wasn’t sure that I wanted Occam with me, not with so many things unknown and undecided between us, but I shrugged. There wasn’t anything I could do about my wants.
I spent the night in the conference room, the Christmas tree and a sleepy grindylow keeping me company. Just before dawn, I heard Occam come in and I left the conference room to pick up my gear bag. We headed out, Occam behind me, his gait limber, supple, and flowing, more so than other days, as his cat rose with the lunar cycle. Small hairs lifted on the back of my neck, the way they might if I was being pursued, tracked by an apex predator. Which, of course, I was. But I didn’t give in to that awareness, instead carrying my gear down the stairs to my truck. Standing out in the warm air—winter in the South was changeable at best—I said smartly, “You got Pea with you?”
“Yep. In my shoulder bag. Why you asking, Nell, sugar?”
“I’d rather she kill you if you go off leash. The paperwork for shooting a teammate has gotta be a pain in the backside.”
Occam started laughing, a purring chuff of sound that brought a smile to my face and made me tease further. “You cat-boys are hard to get along with in your time of the month.”
“Time of the— Nell, sugar, that is an appalling insult.” Occam was still laughing as he got in the truck beside me and we drove off together.
“You didn’t tell me we’d be climbing down a couple thousand slippery, slimy, and stinking stairs to the river,” Occam said to me.
I’d known about the stairs but not their condition. They were vile, sticky beneath my field boots. Even the handrail was sticky and slimy and I couldn’t make myself touch it. It was no wonder my cousin’s clothes had been so filthy when he came back up. In the dark, Chadworth Hamilton had to have touched everything. I bet he had to throw his expensive suit away. “Didn’t think I needed to. What do you smell?” I figured his senses would be heightened in the moon-time.
“Dead fish. Some cooked, some raw. All of it rotting.”
“Mm-hm.” We reached the bottom and I looked back up. The stairs were the only way down or up without some kind of parachute or a rappelling rope. The vegetation at the top was brown, desiccated, dead. Below the deck, there was greenery in spots, rooted in the rocks.
On the beach, the sun was warm, casting short shadows on twisted, broken driftwood. The water was placid, reflecting back the sun. There were fewer dead fish and a lot of animal tracks from raccoon to ’possum, to bird tracks. There were crows perched nearby on the rocks and the scant vegetation. Seagulls calling, flying overhead, watching. There were also a lot of flies on the rotting fish, all of them showing the effects of scavenger predation. The sand was a dun color here, the bank narrow, the gray rocks in small piles, each rock ovoid, about the size of a basketball, but . . . cracked, and broken. I walked to the water’s edge, bent, and picked up a broken piece. It was pale gray with small white and brown specks, lightweight, thin, and hollow. The inside was white, with a dried film stretched around the concave curves. “Shell,” I said softly. I looked out over the water. “Salamander eggs.”
“What’s that?” Occam asked.
“One of the potential pyro paras was a salamander. According to mythology, salamanders were created in volcanoes but live in freshwater environments.” I looked around. “We got freshwater. Water that was heated somehow, enough to parboil the fish swimming in it. We got eggs. Someone—something—hatched babies here.” I looked up at the cliff face and the slimy steps. Slimy from salamanders coming and going? “The entire yard above is dead, burned at the roots, though still greenish in places. The trail of dead vegetation leading to the river is a lot more dead, as if it was injured more often, for a longer time, as something went back and forth to the river.” Still holding the shell, I bent and placed my fingertips in the water. “The river water’s heated. Warmer than good dishwater.” I shook my head as disparate and formerly unrelated bits of evidence began to settle in place. “Perfect for keeping eggs warm to hatch? Or maybe the eggs hatch on the shore and the warm water is just a result of their physiology? Pyros who live in water at least part of the time. Pyros who are attacking the Tollivers. Maybe trying to take their places. Maybe already took their places, long ago.”
I walked up the beach. On the sand, I found a matching part to the shell in my hand and pieced them together. The creature that had been contained in it, assuming it was boneless like a tadpole, shaped like one, and could curl up tight, might be a slender five feet long with a small, narrow head, or three feet long with a wider head and body. I could imagine it weighed anywhere from ten to twenty pounds, but if it wasn’t an Earth creature, then weight-to-mass ratio might be different. If the substance from which its body was composed was more dense than an Earth organism, then gravity, while still a constant, might make it heavier than similar-appearing material.
Weight-to-mass ratio. I was surprised I remembered that. I had tried to educate myself on mathematics while Leah was dying, but a lot of it was hard to understand without a teacher. I had given up on lots of learning for just that reason.
Out in the water, about two feet deep, I spotted something pale. Ovoid. Solid. An unhatched egg? I handed Occam the broken shells and my jacket, then pulled off my field boots and socks, tossing them to the beach. Rolled up my sleeves. Pea leaped from Occam’s gobag and raced up and down the beach, chittering at me as if she found me amusing or alarming.
“Nell, sugar, what the Sam Hill you doin’?”
I rolled up my pants legs above the knee, conscious that no one had seen my knees since I was twelve. Even John hadn’t seen my naked legs. I felt embarrassed, shy, and daring all at once. “Getting that.” I pointed at the shell. “It might be whole. And what’s inside would tell us everything we need to know.” I stepped into the water. Warm, bathwater warm.
“Nellie, stop,” Occam said. No. Demanded.
I flashed him a look. Pretty sure it was Mama’s look when one of her young’uns got uppity. I took a deeper step, the water to midcalf, then deeper to my knees as I walked out.
“Nell, let me do this.”
I ignored him. This little woman did not need protection from a little water. The river temperature rose to uncomfortable as I stepped deeper. Then one more step, the water just above my knee. The egg was only about a foot away. With the toes of one foot, I scooted the egg closer to me, the warm water wetting my pants where they were rolled. Pea chittered again, sounding less amused now.
“Nell!”
“Don’t bark at me like a dog,” I said, ignoring him otherwise.
“I smell something. Something bad.”
“It’s rotting fish.” The egg was heavy, twirling in a circle instead of inching closer. I wriggled another inch out, my foot now buried in the sandy bottom, my pants legs quite wet. But I got a firmer toe grip on the shell and pulled it toward me. Stepped back and pulled it again. “Got it,” I said, easing it closer to shore. I stood on two feet and bent to pick it up.
Something sliced through the water, fast as a fish. I felt it touch my wrist and I jerked away. Splashing the water. I held up my arm. My wrist was bleeding. Three distinct, but not linear slashes.
“What the . . . ?” Occam growled.
The water splashed and swirled. I turned to race from the river.
My feet flew out from under me. My ankles in a vise. I hit bottom on one hip. Was dragged under. Deeper. Into blacker, hotter water. The current caught me as I flailed. Fighting. Pulled deeper. Blacker. Hotter.
Something gripped my wrist, slicing, multiple times at once. Something else caught my short hair. Pain cut at my abdomen. Above me, a three-fingered hand slashed down. I jerked back my head. Claws caught my collarbone. Different sizes of clawed tadpoles.
The need to breathe strangled me. Water burned. Need to breathe. Breathe. Breathe!
Deeper. Hotter.
I pulled my gun. Shoved it hard against one of the things that held me. Squeezed the trigger. Heard a thump. Saw nothing.
Suddenly the things let me go. They were just gone, in a frenzied mass. I whirled in the water. Face-to-face with glowing eyes and killer teeth. The fangs reached out and snagged my shirt at the shoulder. Tugged me upward.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe! I needed to breathe! I swallowed water. More water. Gagged.
I kicked hard. Harder. Desperate for air. Caught in a current that pulled me down. I swallowed more water fighting not to breathe the water in. The teeth pulled me upward, toward the light.
I broke through.
Coughing. Gagging. Vomiting water.
The fangs broke through beside me. Took my bleeding wrist between them, fangs clasping and meeting on the other side. Occam. Occam had saved me. His sleek spotted body, as supple and graceful on the water as on land, bumped my side as he swam me to shore while I coughed and gagged and spat. When we were knee-deep he let me go and splashed back into the water and under. Where the egg was.
Something long and quick swirled through the water and grabbed for me. I spun in the shallows and scratched it, my fingernails catching it on the . . . face? Its blood boiled into the water and over my hand. Blue blood. Heated. Bubbling. Metallic and sour. It felt wrong on my hand. Wrong under my nails. Wrong, wrong, so very wrong.
But it was blood. Bloodlust gripped me. I reached out and the blood spewed over my hand and I . . . I fed it to the water. Drained it. Knew it. Salamander. Flaming being. Very nearly immortal. Fishy. Scalding. I killed it. Broke it into its composite parts. The cells floated away. Disintegrated. Others of its kind were caught in the bloodlust. I pulled them apart and broke them down, taking as many of them as I could. The rest of the tadpoles took off for deeper water, leaving us safe. The water cooled.
I pulled away and back to the shore.
Occam’s head emerged from the water, his nostril flaps opening and blowing, breathing and closing, and dipping back underwater. Shock zinged through me, followed by relief so intense it made me shiver. He hadn’t noted my killing the salamander tadpoles. My bloodlust had bypassed him. He was batting the egg across the bottom to the sandy beach. I crawled on my hands and feet out of the water and far up the bank against the rock wall. I threw up again, losing all the water I had swallowed. Heaving, losing everything I had eaten in the last hours. Dry heaving when that was gone.
Exhausted, I rolled over and sat where I could see the water. Now heaving breaths. Nothing had ever felt so good. Air. Blessed air. Pea curled up beside me and made worried moans.
I had thought I didn’t need Occam—a man—to do this thing for me—a woman. I needed to listen more and not let my preconceived notions make me do something stupid. I lay on the sand in the sun and breathed.
I was still holding my gun. Guns aren’t designed to shoot in water. Normal bullets aren’t fabricated to fly true through water. Useless underwater except for the one shot, which I had somehow missed. I pulled the holster to me, around my waist. I needed to service it, give it a good cleaning and oiling. I holstered the Glock. Bloody water squirted out of the hard plastic holster. I was bleeding freely from so many places I didn’t know what to put pressure on. And I didn’t care. I breathed. Just breathed.
Occam came out of the water, pawing the egg before him, up onto his clothes, his pants and jacket and shirt that were scattered in a small area. They appeared to be in ruins. Occam had shifted. Faster than I thought possible. That had to have been an agony.
He had tried to stop me. In the way of cats, he had scented danger on the air. He had saved me when the things—the young salamanders—had taken me under. Had tried to drown me. Occam had saved me. Tears spilled down my cheeks.
The spotted leopard trotted across the sand, dripping, splashing, padding, paw to paw, a sleek, killing machine. He fell at my side and dropped his huge head on my lap. Chuffed. His golden eyes met mine. He squirmed his jaw over my thigh, back and forth, scent-marking me. It wasn’t the first time he had done so. And Pea didn’t seem to care. She rolled over and turned her belly to the sun, closing her eyes.
I lifted a hand that now felt as if it weighed a ton. Placed it on his head. His wet hair was silky smooth. My blood flowed over his pelt. He sniffed. Growled. He sat up and held my eyes with his golden ones. Growled again. “I know. I’m still bleedin’,” I said. “Not having werecat healing abilities, there’s not much I can do about it.”
Occam looked surprised, tilted his head, pushed to his feet, and pawed down the shore and around a huge rounded, pitted rock that appeared to have fallen there long ago. He disappeared. “You better not shift and walk back here all nekkid,” I said. And smiled at the image of Occam, the way I imagined he would look, human and naked, stalking along the beach.
He chuffed from around the rocks. And trotted back to me, half carrying, half dragging a small green plant in his fangs. It was an evergreen, with leaves, roots, and all, pulled alive from the ground. It looked like a boxwood shrub, yanked from the dirt, but it wasn’t. I didn’t know what it was. A waterweed or rock-face weed of some kind.
Occam padded up to me and extended his claws, digging in the soft sand until he had scooped out a hole several inches deep. Water rose in the hole, but he shoved the roots in and then pushed the sand back over it. He looked at me and chuffed, saying clear as English, Draw from the land. From this little tree. Heal.
“You’re a smart kitty cat.” I reached to the small plant and placed my hands on the leaves. Dropped into the earth. And into Soulwood. Not that far away. I closed my eyes. Laid my head back. And felt pain I hadn’t consciously noted flow out of me. I dropped deeper into the earth. And breathed. Just breathed.
When I opened my eyes, the sun had moved and I was in shadow. No. Not the sun. The little shrub was a tall tree, maybe fifteen feet high. There were other trees and water plants growing all over the beach, which had been bare of greenery only moments before. I inspected my arms and ankles and bare feet. My abdomen. I was healed. I was also growing leaves from my fingertips and my toes. I reached up and felt leaves and twisty little vines, like grapevines, growing from my hairline all around.
“I didn’t know if I should trim you or let you grow,” Occam said wryly. I looked around at the voice. He was sitting on a rock, in the shade of a lower branch of the sapling, dry, dressed in ripped clothing.
“I grow leaves and vines now, when I . . .” I made a small flapping motion with my hand. Noticed my fingers were brown and wrinkled like the bark of a young tree. The leaves trailing from my fingers swirled with my motion. I sighed softly. “Oh dear.”
“So I see. Your hair grew out about six inches, Nell, sugar. It’s brighter, like the heart of a cedar tree.” His voice dropped, a caressing sound. “Your skin is still soft and smooth, but the color of bark. With my cat nose, your leaves smell of lavender and cedar and just a hint of eucalyptus, but also, just before I shifted to human, the scent was threaded through with catnip. My cat wanted to roll around in the leaves, the way he might if you were catnip.” There was a laugh in his voice. He sounded happy. I met his gaze, which had gone catty golden again. “And your eyes . . .” His voice trailed away. “Oh, Nell, sugar. Your eyes are emerald and tigereye and just a little blue fire. You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
I blushed hotly and could think of nothing to say at all, thinking back to my mental image of Occam walking along the bank of the Tennessee River, naked and glorious. I shook the thought away. Pea rolled over and blinked at us. Unconcerned.
“I’m not gonna wait till that dinner to kiss you again. I know the men in your life to this point have taken what they wanted and not asked. I want to kiss you again, a possibly improper kiss. I’m gonna back you against a wall and hold you still, gentle and rough all at once. I’m gonna put my mouth on yours and I’m gonna take my time exploring.”
With my background I might have been, maybe should have been, horrified, but . . . this was Occam. And I felt my face flame and a zing of electricity flash through me at the thought of him holding me just so.
“I’m gonna kiss you until you’re gasping for breath and begging for more. Fair warning about that. But I’ll wait until you say yes. You gonna say yes, Nell?”
I was breathing too fast, my pulse tripping. But I let a small smile cross my face. “Oh yes, Occam. I’ll be saying yes. Just . . . warn me. Okay? So I don’t shoot you by accident.”
Occam laughed, a chuffing rush of sound.