Among the wood and stones, black and white and striped and patched forms moved, leaped, hunted. Feral cats, everywhere, some in silent hunting mode, others mewling in what sounded like excitement. I searched out what might have attracted the cats, and finally saw dead fish floating on the water. Hundreds. Caught in the slow current, lying in low piles on the shore, white bellies swollen. I had thought they were piles of white sand, but the river sand in this area wasn’t white.
I was reminded of the slime mold that had grown from a curse, but there was no shimmer on the water, no evidence of a mold or a spell. I sat and tried to read the earth once more. It shocked fear and pain up into me and I shook my hand again. This time my fingertip was hot and painful to the touch. The land had burned me. I stood and yanked my blanket off the ground, swooping under the fence rail and toward the house.
“What do you have?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Margot was standing in the shadows. “You’un scared three years of gray into my hair,” I said. She had seen me read the earth. Seen me shake my hand. Rather than hide it, I reshook my hand.
“Something hurt you?” she asked.
Truth. Margot could read lies. “Yes. It feels like it’s burned.”
“Something stung you?” she pressed, her tone slightly different now, even and low and controlled.
I thought about that. Truth. No lies. “That’s what it feels like.”
Margot clicked on her flash and gave me a Let me see it gesture. I held my finger up in the beam of light. “Burned,” she said. “Blistered.”
“Really?” I leaned in, surprised that my pain came with a real cause. I looked back at the steep bank and then jiggled my blanket. Nothing fell out. Not that I expected it to. Lying by omission. I felt guilty as all get-out. To distract her, I said, “Something’s on the bank below. Dozens of feral cats and piles of fish. Any chance you could get one of your men to bring in some of the fish, send them to a lab for sampling?”
“Looking for what?” Margot asked, her tone still too uniform and too unemotional. She suspected something, knew I was hiding something. Her gift at work.
“Poisons? Parasites? Bacterial or viral infection? Industrial contamination? Magic?” I hazarded.
Margot walked past me, ducked under the rails, and shined her light down to the water. She made a sound like, “Humph.” She swept the light back and forth. “Look at that.” I heard a click and realized she was wearing a mic and was attached to a comms system. She said, “Probie, get over to the shore. I got a job right up your alley.” She clicked off the mic and muttered, “Collecting dead fish. Perfect.”
Hamilton jogged over and Margot adjusted her flash, creating a small personal light. I had never seen a flashlight that would do that, but it was a brilliant idea. I wanted one. Margot told my cousin what needed done.
“You gotta be kidding me. Do you know how much these shoes cost?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. Put on your field boots and get down there.”
“I didn’t—” He stopped.
“You didn’t what, Probationary Special Agent Hamilton? Please don’t tell me you packed your field boots in your gear bag and then left it at headquarters.”
Hamilton’s face contorted and then smoothed out. “I’ll be right back, ma’am.”
He vanished into the night and when he reappeared, he was wearing waders up to his knees. I vaguely remembered seeing waders with the fishing gear. Probie had borrowed the senator’s wading boots. He had a small evidence kit in one hand, and he dipped under the fence and jogged upstream, to the small deck and the stairs that led down.
Margot and I watched as he made his way by the light of a small flashlight down the steps, which seemed to be slippery and filthy, to the shore below. He kicked the grayish rocks out of the way and kicked at the feral cats as well. They jumped in the way of cats, spinning in midair, and raced away so that none of Hamilton’s kicks landed, but it didn’t appear that he tried very hard to miss them. Hamilton had some serious anger and self-control issues.
I didn’t like people who were cruel to animals, and I felt the bloodlust start to rise. Margot flashed me a look, one that was oddly familiar, enough so that it helped the desire to feed the land to wither. “You’re part empath,” I said. “That would explain your gift.”
“No empaths in the family tree. Just Gramma the witch.”
I nodded, but she was wrong. Empathy was a rare gift. Somewhere in her family tree an empath had hidden, and if Margot had the proper stimulation, that gift would roar to the surface. There wasn’t time to suss out the genetic trait. Footsteps rang, dull and muted, on the stairs. “I’ll get a reading from Hamilton when he reaches the top.” I pointed to some heavy shadows. “I’ll be there. Make sure he walks alone.”
Margot moved toward the small deck. “What did you find?” she called to her probationary agent.
“Fish dinner,” he said as he reached the top of the stairs. Hamilton was filthy, his suit grubby, soiled in streaks, his pants and shirt cuffs and the senator’s waders smeared with slime and crusted with sand, his hands grubby. He didn’t mention his clothing, but held out a fish, its white belly exposed, where a cat had bitten deep and torn through. “The fish are half-stewed. All the white parts, the bellies, are cooked.”
I thought about the hot water boiling toward the surface on the hills near DNAKeys. What if the magma was still reaching toward the surface, heating even the river water? I had a feeling that I had done something dreadful.
“I used to fish with my dad,” he added. “This is cooked flesh, not raw.”
Margot said, “Take them to my SUV. Make sure the COCs are properly filled out. And set one aside for the PsyLED agent.”
“You’re going to— Never mind. Yes, ma’am.”
Hamilton headed my way and I woke the psy-meter 2.0, quickly checked the ambient readings, and aimed the reader wand at my cousin. It lit up on psysitope one. A perfect reading for a witch. Hamilton hated paranormals, yet he carried a witch gene himself. He had to know, on some level, that he was gifted. Fear or training at the knee of a witch hater had taught him to loathe what he was, to bury it so deep that only fear and hatred were left. He passed me in the dark without seeing me, the stink of spoiled fish dank on the air, and he disappeared into the shadows near the pools.
In my hands, the machine lit up again, a dim glow. I still had the reader rod out and it was picking up something. Psysitope number four redlined. Something was here. And then, in an instant, before I could find its direction by turning in a circle, changing my position in the yard, it was gone. I spotted P. Simon in the shadows again and I turned the wand to him. And got a full human reading. Humans everywhere.
Frustrated, I walked back and forth, trying to pick it up again, before giving up and closing the device. As I worked, Margot came up in the night. Margot who wanted to know what Hamilton was. Margot who would know if I lied. “Don’t ask,” I said. “I can’t answer.”
“Which means he’s a paranormal.”
And because his being one of the rare male witches meant he was a PsyLED problem, and I had to report to Rick before I told anyone else, even his immediate supervisor. “Don’t. Ask.” I moved through the dark, back to my truck. I loaded up and drove off into the night.
FOURTEEN
It was later than late when I got back to the office, trudging up the stairs, keying in my code to enter. Half the lights were off, in nighttime mode, and I didn’t bother turning on my cubicle lights while I unpacked and repacked my gobag, thinking. T. Laine and Tandy would be airborne by now, and the remaining day team—JoJo—would be sleeping somewhere, leaving only the night-shifters on duty, only our cars in the parking area: Rick and me. I didn’t know if I was delighted by Occam’s absence or something else.
I took off my weapon, letting my belly relax when the waist strap slid away. Too many pizzas and not
enough greens had put a few pounds of weight on me. I hadn’t liked being beanpole thin, but I wasn’t thrilled with the small muffin top I was developing. I locked away my weapon and was about to leave the office when I caught a glimpse of the plants in the small window box. They looked slightly wilted. I stuck my fingers into the soil and yelped, leaping back. Almost instantly I heard footsteps approaching at a run.
“Nell!” Rick rounded the corner, weapon first. “What?” he demanded.
I shook my head, trying to piece together what I had just sensed.
“I’m okay. No intruders. I’m not in trouble or hurt. Not exactly.”
“What does not exactly mean?” Rick growled, holstering his service weapon.
“The plants,” I said. “They’re all sick.” I stepped back to the planter and ran a rosemary stem through my fingers. “Dying,” I amended softly as several of the small stiff leaves popped away from the green stem.
“And that means?” Rick asked.
I didn’t answer. Cautiously I reached into the box, letting my fingertip—the unblistered one—brush across the surface of the soil. It felt like the earth at the Holloways’. At Justin Tolliver’s. At the senator’s.
The nanny had touched my plants.
I turned from the dead herbs and strapped my weapon on.
“Nell?” Rick said, warning in his tone.
“She killed my plants. I’m gonna shoot her.”
“You’re not shooting anyone,” Rick said, standing so that I’d have to shoot him to get out of my cubicle. “Tell me what happened,” he said, with that tone people use when they think they got a crazy person on their hands.
“I ain’t—I’m not insane,” I corrected. “The nanny’s what happened.” I gave Rick a fast debrief. “And she’s the only new person to touch my plants. She killed them.”
“I get that. But shooting people for killing plants isn’t nice,” Rick said, laughter hiding in his words. “And it’s a bit of overkill.”
“That isn’t funny,” I said precisely. “The nanny may have killed the people at the Holloways’ party, and Sonya Tolliver in the limo. The nanny may be our shooter. And she is at the senator’s house with all the remaining Tollivers.”
“I’ve seen the video of her in the office,” Rick said. “She doesn’t look like the shooter. Doesn’t move like the figure we’ve caught smudged images of on video. Body mechanics are all wrong, and most people can’t hide body kinetics.”
“I don’t know about that. Maybe she isn’t ‘most people.’ But she’s the same kind of creature who killed the plants everywhere we’ve been. If she’s the same kind of creature as Devin—”
“Then that clarifies this as a turf war or intraspecies war,” Rick said. “I have some calls to make. You”—he pointed at me—“are not to go after the nanny.” He turned and nearly bumped into Soul. “We need to dig into the nanny. Hell, we don’t even have a name. How did we miss her?”
“We’re near the full moon. Are you okay?” she asked Rick.
“I’m fine,” he snarled, clearly lying. “Come with me.”
Soul followed Rick toward the conference room, Soul saying, “We might have to interfere in a war that would out the senator’s family”—she hesitated—“or the senator’s extended family, as paras.” The two left me alone with my gear and my dead plants and my thoughts.
If more of the high-powered Tollivers were paras in hiding, that could mean a divorce, loss of the senator’s job in DC, and a lot of other bad things for them. People who hid parts of themselves from a spouse, from the public, often paid the consequences in the deaths of both marriage and career.
I had considered, for a moment that was as small as a hair split three ways, hiding what I was from Ben. I had considered going back into the church because it would have been easier—on the surface—than living in the real world. We would both have suffered something awful.
Occam, who knew what I was, or mostly so, still wanted me. And yet, he had called me churchwoman. I dialed his number and it went straight to voice mail, as I had expected. I said, “I’m a little bit ticked at you, cat-boy. I am not a churchwoman going backward in life instead of forward. You can apologize to me over that dinner.” I ended the call and a strange feeling swept through me, something almost joyful, to be speaking to a man in such a manner. In the church, I’d been punished for such forward speech. Here, in my new life, I was safe, and safety was making me bold.
“Nell,” Rick called. “If you’re finished reacting to whatever you’re reacting to, get in here. We need help.”
Laptop and tablet in hand, I followed LaFleur and Soul down the hall into the conference room.
• • •
By dawn, as the day shift—JoJo and Occam—were dragging back in, Soul and I had uncovered a small hill of new evidence on the Tollivers and the nanny. The others gathered in the conference room, placing a box of Christmas-tree-shaped pastries on the center of the table, the smell of fresh coffee in various flavors riding on the air. Travel-weary images of Tandy and T. Laine were up on the big screens. They had arrived safely in Texas and were present via Internet. I didn’t look at Occam when he came in, but I didn’t have to be an empath to know my message had snagged his attention. I could feel his eyes on me from the moment he entered, with full-moon werecat intensity. We were in the time frame of the three days before the three days of the full moon. Occam was cat-itchy.
“Clementine,” Rick said to the software, “record morning meeting.” He gave the date and time and listed everyone’s name. “Soul. Summarize the night’s intel. Please.” The please was added as an afterthought, as if he just remembered that Soul was the assistant director of PsyLED and not one of his crew.
Soul said, “You all thought the nanny looked a little strange. Now we know she is the same kind of creature who is stalking the Tollivers, though evaluation of body locomotion mechanics suggests she’s not the shooter. The nanny’s name is Connie Bulwer, and she was originally fully vetted through a service that plays matchmaker between certified nannies and potential clients. She was re-vetted through the government service when the senator first went to Washington, then she was re-re-vetted when Senator Tolliver became part of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She passed with flying colors with only a mention or two of her skin color, which was described variously as dusky or grayish. Now we have to consider the possibility that her skin color is indicative of species, not a human ethnic trait.”
Rick said, “Her file is listed under her name. You should each have a copy by now. I want everyone to go through it, see what was missed, because we clearly missed something.” Rick changed the subject and swiped new info onto the screen. It appeared between the images of Tandy and T. Laine. “We discovered evidence of an old, failed, financial takeover attempt of four small local industries owned by the Tollivers. The businesses did not include DNAKeys, as we might have expected. We may have gotten fixated on DNAKeys because of the paranormal aspect. Go on, Nell.”
I put the financial network file up on the screen. “The buyout attempt was by a man named Wilder Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson owned and still owns a munitions company, one that the Tollivers’ plants produce parts for. He wanted to merge the companies together for a chance at a government contract, one that would have required all the plants be under one corporate heading. The Tollivers refused a merger. They also refused a buyout. Things were tense between the companies. Until . . . well, Jefferson also happens to be the father of Abrams’ wife, Clarisse.”
“Where’s Jefferson now?” Rick asked.
“He’s in an upscale nursing home in Nashville,” I said. “Diagnosis is advanced dementia.”
Rick sipped eggnog, thinking. “So Jefferson negotiated or approved a marriage between his daughter, Clarisse, and Abrams Tolliver.” Which sounded a lot like some church marriages, arranged and miserable, though I didn’t say so. “Now he h
as dementia,” Rick said, musingly. “Tells us nothing.”
JoJo was pulling on her earrings with one hand; her other hand was flying over keys, pausing so she could read, and then flying again. T. Laine was frowning on the overhead screen as she swiped through whatever file she was reading. I still didn’t look at Occam.
Rick said, “To summarize, the buyout attempt was eleven years ago and the financial takeover was dropped when Clarisse married Abrams and the companies merged. Eleven years is around the same time as the disappearance of Charles Healy from prison, and Clarisse getting pregnant with Devin. A lot happened that year.”
“So what does it mean?” JoJo asked. “The families married off the children like two kings consolidating countries against mutual enemies?”
“That isn’t as uncommon as you might think,” T. Laine said, “even outside of Nell’s church.” I started to say it wasn’t my church, but she went on. “Offspring of wealthy families marry into wealthy families. They meet each other at debutant balls or Ivy League schools, discover they have things in common, and fall in love.” Lainie’s tone went dark and caustic. “Their families sanction the union and then do business together after the knot is tied. The babies are named after grandparents and great-grandparents and are presented with trust funds and a future to marry—again into the right circles and for the right reasons. Money. They don’t marry grocers or car salesmen or schoolteachers or nurses or preachers or veterinarians or other ordinary people. They don’t marry paras. Only the right people.” Her mouth turned down and her eyes never lifted off her tablet. Tandy was watching her, but it didn’t take an empath to know that T. Laine, the moon witch, had not been the right sort of person for a rich man to marry. At some point in her life, she had been hurt.
Rick said, “Well, that generations-long tradition of intermarriage isn’t what happened here. There are no family records of the Jefferson family before 1950, when the elder Jefferson was delivered to an orphanage, at about three days old. Fifteen years later the children’s home burned to the ground in a massive conflagration.”