“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.
SIXTEEN
I made it to the top of the stairs without touching the icky handrail. By the time I reached the top, I was shivering. The day’s heat had been nice, but the chill of early evening was blowing in on the river breeze, following the course of the Tennessee like the breath of the world. My clothes were soaked and bloodstained, making me colder. Occam was behind me, carrying the egg that nearly cost me my life.
We reached the truck with no interruptions, even from the security types. There was a wreath on the front door and dozens of cars up and down the road and parked in the yard. People wearing black walked from the cars to the front door, looking away from us, the way they might if we were homeless, not wanting to engage. Official word had been released that the senator was dead and his wife was still missing and presumed dead. The crows were flocking in.
What a tragedy, assuming the burned-up senator and his shot-up wife and his charred sister-in-law were really dead. But if some of them were shape-shifters, maybe they weren’t dead at all. What if they had each traded off with some dead body and burned it? How did we even find out? DNA, fingerprints, dental records. All had been falsified before, altered, replaced.
Occam opened the passenger door and I climbed in the truck, not too tired to drive, but not wanting to drive anyway. He got in the driver’s seat and I found my keys in a pocket of my jacket, slightly damp and sand encrusted. Occam placed the egg in my lap and started the Chevy. Pea clawed out of the gobag and onto my lap with the egg. I cradled them both and sent a quick report to HQ before I laid back my head and closed my eyes.
I must have dozed off because suddenly we were back at HQ and my eyelids were stuck together, forcing me to rub them open. I had gotten insufficient sleep for days and the catnap did me good. I chuckled quietly at the thought. Catnap. The movement of my laughter caused a reek of rotten fish to waft into the air. My clothes were ruined. There was no way I could get the stink out of them. “What’s so funny, Nell, sugar?”
“I was attacked by . . . salamanders? I was saved by a cat. I took a catnap. I smell like rotten fish. I’m growing leaves. I have to laugh or I might cry.”
Occam smiled and opened the door for Pea to scamper out and away. Occam leaned over. Closer. His voice the low rumble of a cat, he said, “I’m gonna kiss your cheek, Nell.”
I held very still. “Even though I stink?”
“My cat likes the way you smell.” He put his nose and mouth against my jaw and rubbed along it. Like a cat. Scent-marking me. There was something that felt . . . safe in his touch. I burbled a laugh that sounded almost real, almost free. His lips touched my cheek, held for a moment, and then withdrew a fraction of an inch. He was still so close that I could feel his breath on my face as he said, “My cat likes you just as much as I do. Let’s get you inside so you can clip and shower.”
“Occam? You talk about your cat as if it isn’t you. But then so do I. Is that strange?”
He hadn’t moved away, his breath still on my cheek. The leaves in my hairline moved with each exhalation. “It is and it isn’t,” he said. “Cats don’t have brains that work or reason the same as humans. Limited frontal lobes. Greater vision, faster reflexes, quicker aggression instincts. So I’m me and not me when I shift.”
“I thank you both for saving me.”
Occam kissed my cheek again. “Don’t forget that improper kiss I got planned.”
“I don’t think I can forget that improper kiss. Occam. I ain’t—I never had an improper kiss.”
“Must remedy that. Soonest.”
I shoved the egg at him. Grabbed up my gear bags and got out of the truck. Aware that my color was high and I was overwhelmed with sensations, images, improper thoughts. Occam behind me. I let us into the stairway and climbed to the second floor. And walked alone into the locker room. I stepped fully clothed under scalding water and let the shower wash away the stench and gore and the river water. And my blood. I stripped, then wrung out and bagged my clothing. Then started in on grooming myself. Or landscaping myself.
It wasn’t funny. Not at all. But I was laughing quietly as I started clipping. I used the mindless landscaping tasks to let my brain go free to ponder and ruminate and reason, trying to see how all the unmatching pieces might fit together. They didn’t. Not yet.
• • •
Twenty minutes later, my longer, straggly hair still wet, but my leaves and vines all clipped away, I joined the rest of the team in the break room: Occam, Rick, T. Laine, Soul, JoJo, Tandy, and me. The egg was in the small sink and they were discussing what to do with it. I stepped into the room and spotted a box of donuts on the table. The Krispy Kreme jelly-filled pastries looked almost fresh. I took one and stuffed half of it into my mouth. It was raspberry flavored and so good and so sweet that my mouth ached as the filling squished into it. I might have moaned, just a little, because Occam whipped his head my way.
He was dressed in clean blue jeans, field boots, and a T-shirt the same color gold as his eyes. His hair was dry, but too long, and his beard was scruffy, telltale signs of a shift to his cat. His expression was severe, stark, and he was staring at me with eyes that carried the faint golden glow of his cat, reminding me that we were very close to the full moon. Rick was looking at Occam, and his gaze swung to me, his nostrils widening as he scented, probably taking in the smell of my blood, tadpole blood, the stinking water, and the egg. His eyes too were glowing, that green that signified the coming phase of the moon. Pea was sitting in a corner, cleaning her nether regions, just like a cat. Not something I needed to watch. Occam passed me a metal travel mug of coffee, pale with cream and smelling of sugar. It was prepared the way a cat might like coffee. I drank half the mug empty. It was delicious. Someone passed around a platter of cold hoagies; Occam took three, and started eating like a starving cat.
“If the egg is still viable,” T. Laine said, breaking the silence as we ate, “then cracking it might kill the creature. If it’s sentient, that’s murder.”
JoJo added, “It would be handy to have it alive, whatever it is, to study.”
“That’s keeping a sentient creature against its will,” Soul said. It didn’t sound like disagreement, but more like information added to the discussion. “Civil rights and protections of paranormals haven’t yet been addressed by Congress or the Supreme Court or the UN and are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.”
“Special Agent Ingram,” Occam said, his voice slow and growly. I whipped my eyes to him and saw his dimple appear and deepen. “What do you think?”
“’Bout wha’?” I said through the sweetness.
“About the viability of the egg.”
“It’s not alive. The creature inside’s dead.”
Soul leaned in so she could see me around the others. She reached up and coiled her hair, which she did when she was deliberating. “And you know this how?” Her tone was arch, as if she might be ticked off. Or doubting me.
I shrugged. I was pretty sure I’d said all this to someone once before. “I know it. I knew it when I touched it the first time.” I scowled at her and then at the others. “You people really can’t tell when something’s alive or dead when you touch it?”
“No,” Soul and T. Laine said together. Soul asked, “Are you always correct in your evaluation? Your judgment?”
I shrugged and stuffed the rest of the donut in, chewed, and eventually swallowed. The others were all looking at me, waiting. I drank more coffee, thinking back. “I don’t remember being wrong, but then I d
on’t remember always proving it to myself that I was right either. So I guess I coulda been wrong and not known it.” I licked my fingers to get the last of the sugar. “I knew when Leah died. I was out of her room and I felt her going. I ran in and she was mostly gone. I shouted for John and we were both there when her pulse stopped. Same with John.” I shrugged. “But that was on Soulwood.” I took a second donut. I sipped more coffee. “Tandy, you agree?”
“I do,” he said softly. “But I must admit that my lack of familiarity with the egg species and your conviction may be overriding my judgment.”
Occam freshened my cup and adjusted the creamer and sugar. I pretended not to notice him serving me, but the room was awfully silent. “Thank you,” I said. He gave me a dimpled smile, one that felt warmer than it should have.
“So we open the shell,” Soul said, “and see what we have.”
“What about PsyCSI?” JoJo asked. “They’re supposed to do all necropsies on paranormal creatures.”
“On my authority,” Soul said. “I want to see this thing now. This thing”—she glared at me—“that is most assuredly not a salamander.”
The words were laced with venom and that brought my head up fast. Mostly because I’d sent in the report that we might have found a salamander egg. “Why not a salamander?” I licked my sugary fingers again.
“I know of a certainty, for three reasons.” She held up one finger. “Their eggs were said to be white, with a pearly iridescence and small brownish spots. This one is dull and gray with white and brown spots.” She uncurled a second finger. “Salamanders were killed off to the last egg, in the year 4000 BCE.” And a third finger. “Because arcenciels killed them.”
I went quite still, only my eyes flitting around the room. Everyone looked as surprised as I felt but for different reasons. The information about an arcenciel/salamander war was not in the databanks. And Soul hadn’t yet released the intel that she wasn’t human to the group at large, so not everyone knew. She was skirting the truth about her species, and releasing that information could change the dynamics within our unit.
Drawing the same conclusions I had, Rick asked softly, “Arcenciels and salamanders? At war?”
Soul dropped her fingers. “It was six thousand years ago. Long before my time,” she said wryly, as if inferring a human age. “There are no arcenciels on Earth who lived then, but the oral accounts and tales persist and the songs continue to be sung. This is not a salamander egg.”
Interspecies war and genocide, I thought. And what was I supposed to do about it? For all of two seconds I considered texting my mentor at Spook School for advice, but the thought died.
“Ingram, is it rotten?” Occam asked me, breaking a silence that was fraught with potential, none of it good.
I frowned, thinking. “Sorta. A little bit. It won’t stink too bad. Not near as bad as the dead fish did.”
Occam held up a bit of grayish shell, pulled from a pocket with finger and thumb. “Shell’s this thick. Maybe use an icepick to chip it open.”
Soul took the shell and worked it in her fingers. “Brittle but stronger and tougher than a chicken egg. More like ostrich egg.”
T. Laine pulled open drawers in the small cabinet, slamming them one by one. She came up with a bottle opener. “This is the only metal thing I see.” She handed it to Occam.
“What?” he asked. “Because I’m a man you expect me to do all the dirty work?”
“Because you handled the shell,” Soul said, “and are familiar with it.”
“And because you got all those big strong man muscles,” T. Laine added, putting her hands over her heart and batting her eyes.
JoJo faked gagging.
T. Laine added, “And because I do not want to get rotten egg all over my nice office clothes.” She exhibited herself by moving a demonstrative hand up and down her form. “You, on the other hand? I don’t care if you stink.”
I could tell by Tandy’s expression that the tension in the room had lessened.
Occam shook his head. “Uh-huh. It’s fine for the dumb cat to get slimed, if Nell’s wrong about the extent of the rot. I’ll remember this.” However, he elbowed the others away from the sink and put the sharp tip of the bottle opener on the shell.
“Wait,” I said. I looked at Soul and asked, “And if it is a salamander?” Because I had seen them underwater. I had a feeling Soul was very, terribly wrong.
Soul glowered at me and said, “Dyson or Jones, record this for the records, please.” But she didn’t answer my question.
JoJo punched and swiped her cell and balanced it on a chair back for stability. She gave the date and time and named all of us in the room.
“Go ahead,” Soul said to Occam.
He brought his palm down on the metal bottle opener three times. It tap-tap-tapped, and the egg cracked. Occam moved the point to the side about four inches and repeated the tapping. This time it took four taps and the cracks both spread but didn’t meet. He repositioned the tip at a triangle point, tapped again, and this time a chip broke free. A sour fishy smell filled the room as Occam pulled the shell shard away. A long line of goo followed the fragment out and dripped down into the sink. The others leaned in. Studied the exposed part of the creature. It was a clawed hand, of sorts, three odd-shaped fingers curled in a tight fist. Mottled gray-brown skin. Spots on the wrist that seemed to grow larger as they rose up the arm.
At the sight of the flesh, Soul stopped dead, a look of dread on her face. For an instant her body seemed to flicker with light. Bells clanged softly, clear and ringing, but the tones dissonant. Then the light and bells stopped, and Soul stood again, but in the hallway. I had seen her shift into her dragon, and the light was all the shades of color, but the off-key tones—that was new. And the expression on her face was new. Fear.
Tandy’s eyes went wide and shocked. He had seen her move and felt her terror. This egg had struck a chord in her and Soul was not as cautious as she should have been.
His eyes on the assistant director, Rick asked quietly, “So, tell me. What is a salamander?” And I realized his voice was soothing and soft, so as not to startle a wild creature. Soul.
Just as quietly, JoJo, reading from her tablet, told us, “Other than the lizard-shaped thing that likes rain and lives near water, reports allude to their ability to turn their bodies so cold they can extinguish fire. They have both medicinal and poisonous properties and excrete toxic, psychologically and physiologically active substances.” Her eyes flicked to Soul and back to her tablet. I was sure she too had seen Soul flicker and reappear in a different place. There was no hiding Soul’s nonhumanness now. “The Talmud says salamanders are creatures born in fire and anyone who is smeared with salamander blood becomes immune to fire. Muhammad said salamanders are ‘mischief doers’ and ‘should be killed.’ Other myths say they are hatched and live in volcanoes.”
“Mythologists have some of it right,” Soul said, her voice too lyrical and ringing, again giving too much away. She seemed to glide across the room and sat at her accustomed place, her gauzy skirts buoyant on the air, her silver hair lifting and floating. T. Laine was watching her too closely, one of the handheld psy-meters in her hand, reading Soul’s magical signature.
“Fire salamanders came through to this dimension from inside active volcanoes. They were evil, twisted things, shape-shifters who could take on human forms, who could take the place of kings and moguls, and, if they chose, could take to the air, as winged dragons.”
I thought about Jane Yellowrock, the Cherokee skinwalker who could take the shape of animals if she had enough DNA to work with. “They absorb or use the genetics of the beings they want to replace?” I asked. “Including arcenciels?”
“Salamanders,” she said, her lips curling in a snarl, “do not have genetics as humans understand them.”
Which wasn’t an answer. Did that mean that they were lik
e light dragons? Like Soul? But no. The look on her face suggested that they were very different and had indeed been mortal enemies. Her expression said the war had been horrific.
Tandy closed his eyes and I could feel the gentle calm the empath was sending out. As if to encourage what should have been a normal debrief, Occam broke off more shell pieces. I ate another donut and drank coffee. JoJo was updating something on her laptop, oblivious. I’d seen enough of the slimy ugly critters underwater.
Rick watched Soul the way a cat might a snake crawling nearby—cautious, concerned, and warily respectful. “What else can you tell us? Habitat requirements? Life span? Reproduction?”
Soul reached up and pulled down her floating platinum hair, twisting it into its long spiral, her fingers threading through as she coiled it tighter. “They were said to reproduce like lizards, living in harems of four females to each male, with the primary leader being the eldest wife. That female chose the other wives first, and then selected a mate strong enough to protect the harem. They were said to mate within families, with no regard for lineage or blood ties. They did not—do not, as the tales of their demise seem to have been grossly exaggerated—bear live young but lay a clutch of eggs in fresh running water, with the hatchlings unable to breathe air. They live the first five years in the water, tailed, like a tadpole, but with arms and hands with one clawed finger and two clawed opposable thumbs.” Soul looked down at her hands twisting her hair and stopped the motion. “They were—are—amphibians, not reptiles. According to the histories, there was one that lived over five hundred years. But then, the shells were supposed to be beautiful. Much of what I think I know may be wrong.”
“Shakespeare’s historical plays prove that history is written by the victors,” I said. “Churchill said so too.” I pulled my tablet to me and began to add all her comments to my bullet point file. “It’s been six thousand years. Some things might have been forgotten or changed in that time span.”