T. Laine rolled her eyes and took a slice of pizza, muttering something that sounded like, “Family dynamics suck.”
Without meeting Occam’s eyes, I escaped the meeting.
• • •
Two hours later, I pulled in and checked out possible parking at the senator’s home. Sequoyah Hills was where the movers and shakers of Knoxville lived. If your home was on Cherokee Boulevard, the address itself said you had old money and political ties. The senator’s home, like his brother’s burned one only a few miles away, backed up to the Tennessee River.
I parked on the grass, got out, and gave my ID to the guard, who was a local cop, working after hours—heavy, about five-ten, with brown eyes. I almost remembered his name, but it wouldn’t come, and his name tag was hidden by the lapel of his winter coat. But I had met him when he pulled guard duty not that long ago, in a neighborhood full of slime mold and dead animals. Sharing territory with cops from different levels of law enforcement can be difficult. He had been easy to work with, and gestured me onto the grounds with, “We looking for a fanghead or a witch?”
“Why would we be looking for a vampire or a witch?” I asked, not sure from his tone if he was a paranormal hater.
“They sent you.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and led me down the drive.
“Ah.” That made sense. Paras were PsyLED’s area of expertise. “Neither. Not sure what we’re looking for right now. Except dead plants.”
He looked around the yard and said, “Everything’s dead.”
Midway, I stopped and he stopped with me. “Not dead. Dormant.”
“There’s a difference?”
We both took in the well-manicured but brown centipede lawn and the expensive imported plants. The inner borders of the property had been landscaped with river rock and planted with dozens of varieties of grasses, including feather reed grass, fountain grass, little bluestem, and purple millet, in an appealing array of heights and colors, with three birdbaths, and with birdhouses nailed to the trees everywhere. The bare branches suggested mostly maple varieties close in, with tall, skinny conifers behind them to provide a shield from the neighbors’ yards. Beneath and around the trees at the garage I spotted low hostas, sedges, and rounded mounds of winter-dead flowers, most in winter-dormant phase, protected by mulch. There was a rose garden that encircled a bow-windowed breakfast room, through which I could see a number of kids and three men in the black of ALT Security, as well as a man in a suit, guarding. I made a note to look at JoJo’s file on ALT employees again. I turned around and around slowly, taking more in.
The main house was spectacular—three stories with a round turret-like thing on one side, river rock and brick construction, added on to several times, remodeled often. The garage held six cars. The drive and walkways were made of river pebbles in white concrete. I walked around back to see a lap pool on the left, a hot tub on the right, and a much bigger, heated pool in the middle, with water slides, swing ropes, and brightly colored inner tubes floating on top. The tennis court was on the far side of the house.
The guesthouse was on the river side of the pools, but situated to not affect the view from the house, and looked exactly as described, with three small bedrooms and a big, open living area. Security lights illuminated the grounds; more light poured out through the windows. It looked as if Justin and family were living in the guesthouse.
The landscaping was stunning, with all the grasses at different heights and the outer windbreaks made of fir trees in irregular rows: Douglas, Fraser, noble, and balsam, some native to Tennessee and some not, but scattered to look like a natural fir forest. The grasses were equally local and imported and of varying heights. It was pretty, but it was the kind of landscaping that made security a nightmare. The firs and grasses gave privacy, but also provided cover for an attacker. Or an attacking army.
“Yes. There’s a big difference. Have the K9 dogs been over the property?”
“Just left. You gonna tell me what we’re looking for?” There was just enough tone to imply that I might be keeping secrets, the kind that could get a fellow officer killed.
No one had said not to talk to cops, but I knew to be circumspect. And cautious. “Our attacker is human-shaped. Impossible to see clearly on security cameras, so some kind of magical shielding might be involved. Or not. He—assuming a male from the way he moves—may or may not be working alone. But there is a possibility that he kills vegetation. Maybe not all the time. Maybe it’s coincidence.”
“But you don’t think so,” he pressed.
I shrugged. I had been by the Holloways’ home before I came here, and also by the burned hulk of the Tollivers’ house. There were trails of dead vegetation in both places, along with crime scene tape and private security guards walking the perimeters, avoiding the dead zones by instinct. They just looked wrong.
On the way to the senator’s home, I had also taken a roundabout way, across the Gay Street Bridge and motoring down West Jackson Avenue and South Central. There were dead plants all up and down the street. I had reported it to Rick, who had fallen silent. We had no idea what we were dealing with, and if we didn’t know, then we didn’t want to scare the public or the local law with guesses or half-baked theories. Yet.
“Did the dogs spot anything?” I asked.
“They acted odd. I don’t know much about dogs, but one, a springer, kept sitting down. That mean anything?”
“Probably,” I said. “Maybe it’ll be in the morning reports.”
“How does he kill plants? Herbicide?”
I stared around at the grasses and the trees. So far as I could tell, nothing was dead here. I sighed and looked at the officer. “I haven’t been told anything about the methodology.” That wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the truth either. I knew the shooter wasn’t using herbicide. “If I learn anything pertinent that’s more than just guesswork, I’ll share if they let me. You’ll look for dead plants and tell me if you see anything odd. Deal?”
The officer mulled that over, while checking the perimeter. His eyes moved back and forth, avoiding the lighted areas that might decrease his night vision. Former military. I could tell without asking. He swiveled back to me. “Deal.”
I extended my hand. “Nell Ingram.” Not Special Agent Ingram. Just my name. That made it personal.
“Phil Joss.” We shook.
“I need to read the property with the psy-meter. Okay by you?”
“Have at it, lady.” He walked away, a heavy man swaddled in a heavy coat, on protection detail on a cold night. I wondered if anyone would bring us coffee.
• • •
Not sure how Phil Joss felt about paranormals, I decided to hide my lack of humanity. I placed my blanket on the brown lawn, opened the psy-meter 2.0, which I had already calibrated, and placed my cell phone beside it, open to take notes. I held the machine’s wand up to the north. And was hit with a spike, strong, potent. Level four shot high, redlining. I leaped to my feet, attracting Phil’s attention. And then the spike of energy was gone.
“Ingram?” he asked as he sprinted over, his weapon in one hand, held down at his side.
I shook my head and held the wand to the north again. Nothing. Not a blessed thing. I checked to the east, south, and west. Nothing. “I don’t know. I got a spike, but it’s gone. I’m going to walk around the property. Take measurements all over.”
“Hang on. I’ll get someone to go with you. He’s a rookie, but he’s better than nothing.” Phil’s tone suggested that the rookie was not much better than nothing, but he was what we had. He removed his radio and said, “Culpepper. To my twenty.”
“Roger that. On my way.”
Less than a minute later, a tall rangy kid with a shock of hair the color of new pennies walked up, covering a lot of ground with each step. “Joss. What’s up?”
“This is Ingram. PsyLED. She needs cover while she takes paranormal readings. You stay with her and keep watch. Try to keep her from getting shot. And yourself too.” The last part sounded like an afterthought.
Culpepper seemed to think so too, but he pulled on the hem of his jacket and tilted his head until his skinny neck popped. “On it.” He looked at me, waiting.
I indicated the driveway with my head and said, “Let’s start at the drive and work counterclockwise around the perimeter. Then we’ll decide where to go next.”
Culpepper nodded and I tossed my pink blanket over my shoulder, made sure my weapon was secured. Then I led him back to the front of the property. I was making decisions, setting up game plans, and that was wrong. I was a probie. I got the scut work. The jobs no one else wanted. In dangerous situations I wasn’t supposed to be senior agent on-site. But here I was, senior PsyLED agent where evidence suggested that a bad guy might be. I had learned that the things I was taught in Spook School weren’t always practiced in the real world.
Back at the street I checked the machine against Culpepper, who was purely human. Then I started walking, watching the readings, waiting for a spike.
Culpepper asked, “Why counterclockwise?”
Not taking my eyes off the levels, I said, “If there’s a witch working on-site, walking clockwise, also called sunwise, might activate it.” From the corner of my eye I saw him flinch. The rookie had no idea he could set off a witch working. I held in a sigh, still talking, taking a chance to educate the kid. Who couldn’t be more than twenty—only three years younger than me, but oceans apart from me in experience. “Widdershins, or counterclockwise, also called lefthandwise, is less likely to blow up in our faces. Keep an eye out.”
His hand on his weapon—as if that would help against a spell—Culpepper followed in my footsteps. He moved in jerky uncoordinated jolts and lurches, as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. He was especially twitchy beneath the fir trees and in the tall grasses, so at least he knew where physical attacks were likely to originate.
I didn’t get a single spike on the psy-meter 2.0. As the minutes passed, I began to wonder if the machine was broken. I checked it against myself and got a low level four reading, so that part was working. I needed to run full quality control on it by testing it against weres and witches. Maybe a vampire, if I could get one to come by.
But since there was only one vampire I might feel halfway willing to call, and Yummy would probably scare the human cops, I decided against calling anyone. When I finished the perimeter search, I said to Culpepper, “I need to read the land while sitting on the ground.”
He looked at me quizzically and said, “Okay by me. I’ll wait over there.” He pointed to a nearby tree and moved to it, light-footed as a hunter after deer, now that the threat of a spell attack had been ruled out. A lot of local boys hunted. I’d bet my pink blanket that Culpepper had been born into a hunting family.