The plants in a narrow opening between two maples were beginning to die, exactly the way the plants had died at the other house. Standing again, I traced the passage of death. Sliding into the dark undergrowth between the trees, I switched off the flash. Tucking my coat under me, I sat in the shadows and placed my hands flat on the ground, digging my fingertips into the soil beneath. The roots were dead. Here was the spot the assassin had come in by. I got up and brushed my hands off. Using the flash, I followed the trail back through the woods, along a rivulet creek that fed the Tennessee River, to a tertiary road, where I lost the trail of dead plants. Tracking my way back, I fingered the plants, tearing off leaves and small stems and digging out rootlets. They looked and felt dead, but also smelled, very faintly, burned. Had I missed the scent at the Holloways’? It had been much colder that night. I had been exhausted. Hungry. It was possible I missed something.
Back at the house, standing in the overhang of trees, I studied the yard, where I’d felt a second patch of dead. It was near the garage, where the Tollivers seemed to park their cars. I needed to go back to the Holloways’ and smell the plants at the first crime scene.
Rick caught my eye across the lawn and I nodded slowly, hoping he understood what I was saying, that it was the same attacker. He nodded back curtly and gestured me over. I made my way along the edge of the property back to the small group. “So,” I asked, “gas?”
“Yes and no,” said a man in a fire department uniform and a winter coat. “Gasoline was recovered from the gas can under the porch, but the can was below the worst of the heat and didn’t explode. Didn’t contribute to the fire at all. From the way the fire started—on both stories at the same time—and the way it spread—inward from both levels and fast—I’d say the structure was targeted with a flamethrower, but we didn’t get a hit on known accelerants except the gasoline. If the sprinkler system hadn’t come on, some of the family, particularly the kids, might not have gotten out alive. The fire ate right through their rooms.”
Sonya Tolliver sobbed, gathered her children close, and herded them toward a big SUV. She opened the door with the keypad and climbed in with the children, shutting the door on the fire and the unwelcome information. Her husband looked us over and then fled after his family.
When the vehicle door closed, Rick asked me, “Ingram, what did you determine?”
“It’s the same attacker,” I said. “Or the same species as the previous attacker, a paranormal.”
“You can’t know that,” Schultz said.
“In a couple of days, the plants in a specific trail are going to start to die. If you want, I can mark it off for you once the fire department is finished. At the Holloways’ house, I detected the same kind of trail. There should be dead plants along it now. Go look.”
“And how do we know you didn’t create this ‘trail’?” Hamilton asked, his eyes hard, piercing me through the smoke-filled air that swirled our way. This man, like other law enforcement officials, knew that Unit Eighteen was composed of mostly paranormals. Although he probably didn’t know what I was, it was a good guess that I wasn’t human. My cuz didn’t like paranormals. Which just ticked me off something terrible.
I narrowed my eyes at him and drew on my churchwoman accent. I had learned that deliberately using it seemed to throw people off their game, as if they didn’t quite know how to relate to me. Oddly enough, it had become part of my arsenal. “Are you’un asking me if I am the unknown suspect who shot the people at the Holloways’ fund-raiser party?” I asked, squaring my shoulders and advancing on him. “Are you’un asking me if I have a flamethrower? Are you’un jist trying to cause trouble, or are you’un trying to make me, specifically, mad? I’m jist curious, since you’un’s bein’ an ass an’ all.”
Rick coughed, but I had a feeling the choked sound was laughter stuck in his throat. It also let me know that Hamilton was being difficult to all the paranormals, and not just me.
Schultz said, “Hamilton, do you have a problem with Special Agent Ingram? If not, back off, probie.”
Hamilton shoved his fists into his suit coat pockets and took a step back, but he was staring back and forth at Rick and me. Hamilton was looking more and more like a paranormal hater and had decided to dump me in with the weres and witches on PsyLED Unit Eighteen. Or maybe he was another one who hated me for exposing his former boss as a shape-shifter and cannibal, when they’d had no idea. That seemed to have left a bad taste in a lot of FBI agents’ mouths.
Schultz went on as if nothing rude had been said on either side. “So either Justin Tolliver was the primary target all along, or the entire family is under attack.”
“Politics or money?” Rick asked.
“Both?” She looked at the house. “First I’ll get Hamilton to pull records: financials, political contributions, life insurance, marital problems.” She glanced at the SUV where the Tollivers had taken refuge. “Follow the money.”
“I agree,” Rick said. “This means we’ll have to guard the senator and his entire family at work, home, governmental buildings, travel, and school.”
Schultz made a rude sound and said, “I’ll call it in. We need more people until we stop this guy.” She studied Rick. “Can you, you know, smell anything?”
“You mean like smoke?” Rick asked, an amused glint in his eyes.
“Something humans can’t pick up?” E. M. Schultz shrugged, her gaze taking in the lean wereleopard. “House is damaged, too hot to work up right now, but U-18’s investigatory technique goes about things a bit differently, I’ve heard.”
“Sometimes,” Rick acknowledged. “And underneath the stench of burning wood, brick, synthetic fibers, wallboard, shingles, stone, and a dozen other household stinks, I do smell something odd. Not magical, not were, not anything I can put my finger on. But if it comes to me, I’ll call.”
Schultz tilted two fingers into a chest pocket and removed a card. “Business and personal numbers. Anytime.”
I watched Rick take the card, his eyes alight, but when Schultz glanced back at the house, the flirty glow in his gaze faded fast, into something bitter and grieving. Weres can’t have sexual relations with humans without passing along to them the were-taint, which was an automatic death sentence carried out by grindylows—the cute but deadly judge, jury, and executioner of the were community. Not that many humans knew all that, likely Schultz included. Which meant that if I was interpreting the little scene correctly, Schultz wanted to date Rick and he couldn’t date her, but wanted to, and maybe flirted by instinct. Even outside of a polygamous church, romantic and physical relationships weren’t easy.
I scowled, my mind envisioning Occam, the way he had looked last time I saw him, blond hair floating, scruffy beard. And for some reason that image hurt me on a level that made no sense, except that Occam couldn’t have anyone either. Unless he and Rick wanted to get together . . . And I didn’t see either of them wanting the other.
Unless . . . My body and mind stilled. I wasn’t human. That meant that Occam and I could—
“Nell?”
I flinched, looked up into Rick’s black eyes, and realized he had been talking to me for a while. The other agents were gone and it was just Rick and me under the trees. “Ummm. Yeah?”
“The feds will be providing protection for the senator and his family, and Justin and his family, and they have requested a paranormal LEO on-site. That means that our unit will be doing double duty, tracking the assassin and providing body detail.”
I tilted out my thumb in a gesture that meant, Please continue.
“The senator’s house is a huge chunk of real estate, with a six-thousand-square-foot main house, a guesthouse, three pools, and tennis courts, in Sequoyah Hills, on Cherokee Boulevard. It backs up to the Tennessee River and is well protected from all sides. The feds intend to move all the extended family onto the property.”
I tapped my cell and checked the time. It was a little after four a.m. The night had flown by as I read and communed with the grounds. “You want me there?”
“You can go home. I want you to sleep today if you can and take the night shift tonight, nine to nine a.m.”
“Good, I’d like to sleep me some sleep.”
“Go. I’ll send Senator Tolliver’s address to your cell. Be on time.”
“Copy,” I said and made my way to my truck. I could barely keep my eyes open on the drive back home. But I didn’t make it home before my cell rang and I knew instantly that my morning nap was about to be tampered with. “Good morning, Mama,” I said, tiredly.
“Nellie girl, I’d be most appreciative if’n you’un would drop by for a bit. Breakfast in half an hour?”
“Mama, I—”
“We’uns having French toast and waffles and eggs and bacon. Thank you’un, pum’kin. See you in a bit.”
The connection ended. I didn’t know what Mama wanted or what she had up her sleeve, but I knew it was likely something sneaky. Probably several somethings sneaky. Manipulation was an art form among the women in the church. Knowing I should go straight home to my bed, I put on the blinker and turned toward the church lands.
FIVE
My ID was sufficient to get me onto the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church and I turned off the C10’s lights as the truck crawled forward. Holding my flash out the driver’s window I searched into the shadows on either side of the road, looking for fresh shoots of the vampire tree. It was too dark to make out anything in the gloom of a cloudy dawn, in the darkness beneath the scrub pressing up against the twelve-foot-tall fence that surrounded the church grounds.
Dissatisfied with my perusal, but unwilling to abandon the heated air and search on foot, I rolled the window back up, put the lights back on, and took the most direct route to the Nicholson house. The fact that the most direct route bypassed the vampire tree was just happenstance. Mostly. It was still there. Still creepy.
I parked the old Chevy beneath the trees in front of the three-story structure that was home to my extended family: my father, my mama, her two sister-wives, and all the assorted sibs and half sibs. Before I could get out of the truck, the door was yanked open and Mud, or Mindy as the rest of the family called her, threw herself inside and hugged me so hard I thought I might break in two. “I missed you’un,” she mumbled into my coat. Before I could respond, she reared back and said, “You’un stink like fire. Not like a campfire, but like garbage burning.”
I dropped off the seat, to the ground, and said, “I was at a house fire. Part of my job.”
She narrowed her eyes and studied me like she might an unfamiliar beetle she found eating basil in the greenhouse. “Did somebody try to burn a family out? Was they witches?” Her voice dropped. “Did they burn her at the stake?”