“Fubared?” Fubar was Rick’s term. I was used to hearing it.
“That works better than bollixed up, I guess. Though I’m surprised to hear you say it.” Her expression was sly.
My face relaxed at the teasing. “Yeah. Well. Bollixed up is fine. We routinely castrated animals in the compound.” I leaned to her and said with a straight face, “That means cutting off their bollocks. Want to know how it’s done?”
T. Laine made a face. “Remind me not to try and shock you.”
“Okay,” I said.
She shook her head as if I had misunderstood her request.
“And the situation with the case isn’t really that bad,” I said. “We knew all along that it was either homegrown terrorism, familial infighting, or business. So now we’ve narrowed it down to family. Pyro against pyro. We just need to figure out how many of the Tollivers are pyros, what kind of pyros, and then which pyros have done the attacking and why. And if the attacking is a para-war.”
“Right. That’s all. And then we have to decide what to do about the pyros. The current legal system can’t deal with a pyro. If the senator or a member of his family is a pyro, what happens to his career? What will the public think about it? What happens in Congress and to the bills the senator has in place when it all comes to light?”
Lainie was right. A pyro wasn’t a witch, to be jailed by her own kind in a null room. Not a vampire to be chained in his sire’s basement or destroyed by a vampire killer. Not an insane werewolf or a gwyllgi to be killed on sight or sent to the Montana Bighorn Pack for training. A pyro was a totally new paranormal creature that could set a courtroom on fire. Explode a courtroom. That could use fire to kill. “Oh,” I said, sounding lame.
“Until today there were three kinds of paras.” She lifted a finger with each class: “A mutation of basic human stock like you, the Welsh gwyllgi devil dogs, and witches; vampires and were-creatures who start human and are infected and then can pass along the trait to their offspring; and arcenciels and whatever the fangheads’ Misericords are.” She dropped her hand. “And now we have this thing. It doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. We don’t know what it is. And Soul’s really worried. She hasn’t said a word since Devin shot fire at you.”
Lainie extended a hand again and I took it, letting her pull me to my feet. I said, “I have to go to the locker room and shower and . . . ummm . . . clip my leaves.”
“Good plan. I have kiddie guard duty. See you in a bit.”
She left me alone and I went in search of my gear bags. I hid in the locker room, shaving my legs and clipping my leaves and studying my face in the mirror. My eyes were greener, a leafy spring green with flecks of evergreen. My pupils were larger, or maybe that was just a temporary adaptation to the low light. I hadn’t turned on all the switches when I entered. My hair was longer. Brighter. A richer nut-brown with reddish tresses. Was I becoming a plant? I smiled at my reflection and it smiled back, so that part was still good. It was long after two a.m. and I should have been exhausted, but I felt pretty decent considering my several days with poor sleep and nearly getting burned to death. I repacked my gear bags and went in search of information. First up, and most important, were my plants. Someone had placed the live ones on my desk. Ten dead, two sick, eight still thriving. I placed all ten in my window box and bolstered them with a little love. Once they were okay, I headed for the conference and break rooms.
• • •
Devin was on the couch in the break room, sleeping the sleep of the spelled. Someone had pried up the blistered flooring and pulled the table over the bare underflooring. A chair had been removed. I could still smell the stink of fire over the fumes of vinegar that had been used to clean up the mess. I was glad I had been out for that one.
Soul tapped on the wall at the door behind me. “Are you well, Ingram?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned to her. “Well enough.”
“This child’s nanny and child protective services just drove up. I had Jones set all internal cameras to record every moment.” Jones was JoJo. I tilted my head to show I understood. “I want you watching the transfer with Jones and Dyson.” Dyson was Tandy. Soul was doing everything by the book, her face utterly expressionless. I figured Clementine was active.
“Are the cats still catty?”
“Yes, though they have calmed down greatly and seem to have sorted out their burgeoning dominance issues.”
I didn’t ask how that had turned out. “You know Jo has to be going on twenty-plus hours with no sleep.”
Soul narrowed her eyes at me and let a silence build between us, probably at my temerity to speak to the assistant director in such a manner. I might have sounded just a bit judgmental. I probably should have apologized, but I didn’t. I had been stared down by a group of shotgun-armed churchmen in a righteous religious fury. A peeved light dragon was nothing by comparison. “I do,” she said at last. “I’ll see she gets a full twenty-four off starting in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
Soul studied me as if I were a specimen under a microscope. Again, no problem. I just stared back. “Hmmm,” she said and went to the stairwell to greet the nanny and the social worker. I slipped into the conference room, which was lightless, the overhead screens dark, and shut the door. I leaned over Jo’s shoulder. Tandy was sitting close to her so they could share screen views. Their positions had nothing to do with the romance between them. Uh-huh.
We watched as the two women followed Soul up the stairs, the social worker in the middle of the short column. She was a frizzy-haired woman wearing a frowzy sweater, a scarf that had to be twenty feet long wrapped around her neck in rolls, and comfortable snow boots. She was easily identified by the official name tag and the overlarge purse she carried. The nanny was an odd duck. She wore an ugly orange-brown pantsuit, a color never intended for her gray hair, which she wore slicked back, to expose a sun-damaged forehead and cheeks marked with light and dark pigmentation, especially dark beneath her eyes and spotted on her cheeks.
“Is it the screen or the lighting or the clothing or is she sick?” Tandy asked softly.
“Maybe the clothing?” I said, doubtfully.
“No. I think she’s . . . gray,” Jo said. “My aunt looked like that when she was about to die from COPD. Just that color gray when her lungs filled up, just before she passed. Black woman with lung troubles wearing orange clothes is not a good look.”
“You think she’s African-American?” I asked.
“She sure ain’t European,” Jo said, exasperated.
On camera, the three women moved from the stairwell camera into the hallway camera. The volume was turned down on the security equipment to keep the visitors from hearing a delayed conversation and know they were being videoed, but we could tell they were introducing themselves to one another. The nanny didn’t shake hands, just nodded to Soul, who said a few words and led the social worker down the hall toward the break room. The nanny followed and then stopped in the hallway. She lifted her head and sniffed, nose in the air, her head bobbing like a ferret’s.
She raced into my office cubicle.
“What the—?” Jo said, changing camera angles quickly. The odd woman was standing, hunched over, in front of my plants and she . . . stuck her hands into the pots.
I whirled to go stop her, but Tandy grabbed my wrist. “No,” he said.
“But she’s touching my plants!”
“Watch. Let’s see what she does.”
It was an invasion. A personal and intimate violation. It was disturbing and I had no idea why it was bothering me so much. Unit Eighteen members used my plants all the time, cutting them, touching them. But this woman was doing something else. Something odd. Something not right.
The strange woman stuck her hands into all ten pots, dipping fast, as if tasting. As if she knew what I was. Or what Soulwood was. Or something
worse. It was bizarre.
Seconds later, she whirled and raced after the other two women, arriving at the break room only a moment behind them. She rushed in and knelt, running grayish hands over the sleeping boy. She jerked her head to glare at Soul. She picked up Devin like a baby, though he had to weigh seventy pounds, and carried him down the hallway. The social worker had Soul sign some papers before she followed the nanny and her charge away.
“That was freaky,” Jo said.
“I don’t think that either of the women mentioned the stink of burned hair, flesh, and vinyl tile,” Tandy said, still holding my wrist. “Neither reacted or even seemed to notice it.”
“The nanny was aware of, and angry about, Devin’s deep sleep,” Jo said, “but she didn’t do anything about it. She just got the kid out of the office pronto. They were in the building for four minutes, twenty-seven seconds altogether. Soul’s coming back in.”
The conference room door opened. “They are gone,” Soul said. “Play the video, please, with audio.”
Tandy released my hand and I went to my office to check my plants. The soil felt fine. The plants seemed fine. But . . . the strange gray woman had touched them. I didn’t like that at all but I didn’t know what to do about it. But . . . dang it. She had touched my plants!
I stopped by the null magic room, where the weres had been herded by Pea and Bean, and where they would remain until they were totally calm and ready to shift back to human. T. Laine was sitting in a chair in the hallway, looking sick. Even through the door, the null room affected her magics.
I pointed at the door and lifted my eyebrows, asking for permission. She nodded and I cracked the door and peeked in. The cats were stretched out on the long table and looked bored, a spotted tail tip twitching slightly. The metal chairs had all been tipped over, and one was bent like a pretzel, clearly having suffered from cat ire. Grindys were nowhere to be seen.
I said, “Devin’s gone.” The wereleopards ignored me, as cats are wont to do. I shut the door, catching a glimpse of Soul in Rick’s office, talking on her cell, pacing. I patted T. Laine’s shoulder and left her to her null room misery.
• • •
JoJo and Tandy were in the conference room, sharing a quiet moment over coffee, and probably thinking that no one knew they were an item. There was an open tin of Christmas cookies on the table, half-empty. I sat and fingered my longer hair, not willing to start back on the case, not yet. Soul came in again shortly after and started a fresh pot of Rick’s Community Coffee. We had recently discovered that Ingles grocery stores carried the brand, and he no longer had to buy it over the Net. Best coffee ever. By the scent, this was their coffee and chicory mix, which was coffee with a flavor kick I was coming to adore. The quiet moments passed and we each accepted a cup of coffee from the big boss, letting her serve us all. We sipped. Rested.
Before the cups were empty, T. Laine entered and plopped in her chair. “Pea let the cats out and they started changing back. The daytime crew needs sleep so let’s please do a quick debrief and let us get to bed. You can fill in the cats when they get back.”
Soul inclined her head and said, “Summary. We have firestarters. Jones and Dyson have spent the last few hours going over, again, the Tollivers’ past and current financial, political, and familial status. Kent has been looking at firestarter species. Jones?”
Soul was still using a neutral, demanding tone and last names, which seemed to give this case a gravitas it hadn’t had before, again suggesting that this case was no longer an easy-to-solve one but a dangerous one. I tapped my tablet on and opened the files waiting on my screen.
Jo said, “We’ve been searching through birth and death records and fire and arson records to see if Tolliver firestarters are new to this generation or have been around a while.”
New? I asked, “How could they be new?” Was I new? Or had there been leafy people in my past family tree? Family tree. I repressed a grin, turning my lips under and biting them together, tucking my head so no one would ask what was amusing. But Tandy knew and shot me a look full of questions. I ignored him.
“Recessive genes,” Jo said, “or mutated genes. Tandy’s got the birth history research.”
Tandy hit a key on the remote that controlled the big screens. “If pyro is a new trait, then the mutation started somewhere. So let’s start with the parents. Justin was adopted but from inside the family. An older sister, Miriam Tolliver, got pregnant out of wedlock, which was a social crime in the day. The infant Justin was adopted by her parents, and a father’s name was never put forth. This makes Justin and Abrams biological uncle and nephew raised as brothers.”
Jo said, “Miriam moved away and hasn’t been seen or heard from in more than three decades. I’ve started a search for her whereabouts. Until now, no Tolliver children or adults have publicly displayed pyro capabilities, but it was Justin’s house that burned, so maybe Justin’s kids are pyros or Devin got there somehow and started that fire too. Okay. That sounds stupid for an adult, let alone an eleven-year-old. Never mind. But maybe the appearance of a pyro ability is what started all this.”
“If so, then we’re postulating recessive pyro genes?” I asked, thinking about T. Laine’s listing of the types of paranormal creatures.
“Jones and I are hypothesizing that firestarting is a natural ability that the young Tollivers have to be trained to control,” Tandy said, “and that this isn’t the first time it’s appeared. Just after Justin was adopted, he and Abrams were staying with Abrams’ paternal grandparents, who would be Justin’s maternal great-grandparents, if I have the family tree right. There was a massive fire in their remote home in the mountains near Whittier, North Carolina. Justin and Abrams survived. None of the adults did.”
He looked around the room to make sure he had our attention, his Lichtenberg lines glowing bright in my improved vision.
We all leaned in slightly. He had hooked us. “Arson investigators speculated that the fire started in the master suite, but it burned so hot and fast they were never able to pinpoint the exact location or cause, though arson was ruled out. This was almost thirty years ago, and even then the Tollivers had their hands in every political pie, so it’s possible anything suspicious but unconfirmed was ruled accidental or unresolved, as a favor to the family.”
Follow the money, Spook School taught. “Who got the estate?” I asked.
“Seven million dollars. Equally split between Justin’s missing biological mother and Abrams’ father. A week later, the elder Tollivers’ car went off a cliff in the Appalachian Mountains in the middle of a snowstorm. It crashed into a gorge and exploded, killing both of Abrams’ parents.”
I said, “So the money went to the kids. That would be motive but it’s not likely that the children killed their families, especially not by a car wreck in the mountains.”
Tandy turned up a palm as if to say maybe, maybe not, and shook his head. His reddish curls quivered with the motion. “Abrams’ parents deceased. Justin’s mother disappeared, leaving the family fortune in the hands of the boys. If we follow the money, this feels suspicious.”
“Speculation which we can’t prove,” JoJo said.
“Who was the guardian?” I asked.
Tandy said, “The estate lawyer, who hired nannies and sent the boys to military and boarding schools.”
“And where’s he?” I asked.
Tandy said, “Deceased. Natural causes at age eighty-nine.”
I rubbed my arms. I had been burned. And now that we knew what to look for, pyrokinesis was everywhere, fitting T. Laine’s human mutation theory. I said, “So we think that the Tolliver family has a dominant pyro gene? Justin’s pillow smelled human, right? His wife, Sonya, who wears too much perfume, didn’t smell human?” I worked it through my mind. “Sonya and Clarisse Tolliver both wear—wore—too much perfume; the men wear none. It’s unlikely that the Tollivers are both sc
entless nonhumans and married smelly nonhumans of a different species.”
“Not so unlikely,” Jo said, “if the trait began prior to the dead great-grandparents. But then we’ve got problems tracking it down. Forensic arson investigations were pretty much nonexistent prior to 1950 and records were never computerized or even independently preserved to microfiche. And we don’t have time to search through every single local newspaper on microfiche about fires going back for decades, for every small town in a hundred square miles.”
I nodded agreement. I had done microfiche research. It was tedious and boring and very time-consuming when going through old papers for one county. The idea of searching through newspapers for two states and a hundred years was daunting.
Soul said, “The assassin had an ‘other-than-human’ scent. We’re pretty sure Devin did too, though beneath the smell of the car fire it was impossible to tell. The fact that he threw fire is proof enough. We’ll know more when the cats are back in human form and can tell us what they smelled. For now, speculation is running us in circles.” She shook her head and twisted her hair. “This feels incomplete. We need more.”
I looked up to see Occam standing in the hallway staring at me, his eyes glowing golden, his cat too close to the surface. He looked disheveled and predatory and tightly wound, like a cat tensed to strike. I gave him a slight smile to show I was okay. His shoulders dropped, relaxing slightly, and he nodded, his hair swinging almost to his shoulders, longer after his shift. He was dressed in sweat pants and a tight T-shirt, his feet bare.
Rick stepped around him, into the doorway, and leaned against the frame, black hair and beard shaggy and scruffy, but he looked vital and more healthy than hours past. Except for the silvering hair, each shift seemed to heal him more. “Devin is not human,” he said. “He smelled . . . I don’t know. Watery? Like algae in a pond?”
Occam pushed him aside and entered the room, pouring them both a cup of coffee. “More like a rock that’s still wet from river water. Oddly mineral, fishy, wet, and very different from lizard or snake, otter or weasel family. I don’t know what he is, but he doesn’t smell exactly like his father or his mother.”