I was proud that my brother had taken him a wife of legal age, according to the law of the land. Something inside me relaxed, what the churchwomen called “heart ease.” “Mama told me. Good for SaraBell. And good for you.”
“That ain’t all, and Mama and Daddy don’t know this part, so keep your mouth shut. I had to promise SaraBell, no other wives and no concubines.”
I kept the shock off my face with an effort, and my voice neutral, though that was even harder. “How do you feel about that?”
“I’m a man of my word. I love SaraBell to the ends of the earth and back. So it ain’t no hardship. Mama won’t be happy about not having a passel of grandkids to raise, though. ’Specially with you’un leaving the church, childless and without a husband. And you’un widdered so young.” He glanced at me and away. “She wants you to find a good man. She’s of a mind to introduce you to one or another fella in the church. Casual-like. As if by accident.” A small smile touched his face, telling me he knew how easy that would be to see through.
I put a hand on his arm and tugged his jacket until he looked me in the eye. “I done been married, and for all the wrong reasons. I ain’t gonna get married again. Probably not never. The Nicholsons all need to know that. I ain’t a churchwoman no more, Sam.”
“That right pains my heart, Nell, knowing you done slipped so far from the Lord.”
“I never said I slipped from the Lord. I just don’t worship him like you’uns do. Not no more.”
Sam frowned but nodded and opened the driver door. “I’ll think on what you said, Nellie.”
“Good. Tell Mama about dinner.”
“Will do.”
I slid across to the driver’s side and heard softly, from the front porch, “I love you, sister mine. I ain’t always showed it, but I love you.”
“I love you too, Sam. Always have.” I closed the Chevy’s driver door and pulled away. It was early, but I needed to make some calls, even if it meant waking up some people. I dialed and drove from the church compound as the sun broke through the clouds, and the phone was answered on the other end by a voice that sounded wide-awake.
“Nell! You sleep less than I do!”
“Hey, Jane. I slept, but got up about three. I’m guessing you’re still up from last night, what with your vampire job and all.”
“Sleep? What’s sleep?” We both laughed and she said, “What do you need?”
As if she knew that I’d never call just to chat. Like Jane, who worked 24/7, most everything in my life was about work. Jane Yellowrock was the only rogue-vampire hunter turned Enforcer for a Master of the City in existence. She was also a paranormal creature, and the person who had confirmed for me that I wasn’t human, and then told me it wasn’t a mortal sin to be what I was born being, that mortal sins were a matter of how we lived, not how we were born. She worked in New Orleans, and kept vampire hours. She was a Cherokee, and she had lived in the Appalachian Mountains for years. If I had a semifriend outside of family and work, Jane would be it. I admired the woman, and while part of me feared her, another part of me aspired to be as strong and self-contained as she was.
Jane knew a lot of things about a lot of paranormal creatures and paranormal events, and she didn’t mind being asked questions, as long as she wasn’t in the middle of killing something. If she didn’t know the answers to my questions, she would find them and call me back.
“You’un heard about the strange things going on up here? People sick? Having psychotic episodes? People drowning? Killing each other?”
“We heard. Sounds like magic.”
“You’un ever hear anything like it before?”
“No. But I have people I can talk to, if you want.”
She meant vampires. Witches. Maybe even were-creatures, though I had plenty around me who didn’t know diddly-squat about this situation, not any more than I did. But I had placed this call and I wasn’t one to avoid or waste a potential source. More important, I trusted Jane. So I broke the cardinal rule and said, “Yes. If you would be so kind.” With very few misgivings, I told an outsider who had no security clearance what was going on. And asked all my questions. There were a lot of them. Jane hung up and made some calls, asked those questions for me, and called me back far faster than I expected. I was still driving through rush-hour traffic when my cell dinged again. She had indeed found me answers, some in known fact, some in mythos, some in what Jane called “experiential evidence and testimony.” Some that were mighty strange.
By the time I got to HQ, the snow had melted and the weather had warmed. And I was worried. Jane Yellowrock had that effect on people.
* * *
I brought nothing in with me—no donuts, no coffeehouse coffee, no lunch. But I carried a lot of things that were worrying me, both personally and professionally, things that weighed on me, plucking at my mind and spirit like crows on a dead body. I pushed the personal stuff—the trees and Daddy looking so poorly—to the back of my mind, and mentally ordered and arranged the professional things so I could talk about them. Last, as I swiped my card at the top of the stairs, I pasted a business smile on my face. LaLa had told me it was patently false, but it was the only fake smile I had except a churchwoman smile, and I knew I had never been sweet enough to successfully fake that one.
I might have been up and about for hours, but it was still early and the lights were on energy-saving mode, so I went through and turned them on bright, before taking my one-day gobag to the shower. I dried my hair, gooped it up again, and changed clothes, happy about the mix-and-match possibilities of mostly black with touches of greens and pinks. I hung my wet clothing up to drip-dry in front of the heating vent, hoping the draft would take out the skirt’s wrinkles.
The grindylow appeared in the locker room, though the door didn’t open. I preferred to think she had found a way in through the ductwork rather than assume she could magically translocate. She sat on the counter at the sink and chittered at me, looking for all the world like a neon green kitten, but one with thumbs, retractable steel claws used to kill were-creatures, and eyes that saw too much. She ducked her head into my gobag like a ferret might, and pulled out my extra bra, holding it up to me. She chittered several times, repeating the sound, a sibilant followed by cracking noises, a bit like, “Shhhhh t-t-t-t-t. Meeoooooee.”
“I have no idea what you might be saying, you cute lil’ killing machine, other than talking about cow patties.”
She said, “Ssssssst-t-t-t-t,” followed by a sound like laughter before she dropped my bra onto the bench nearby and went back to trundling through my things. She held up a black tube, waving it in the air.
“Gimme that,” I said, snatching my lipstick away. “Mine,” I said, shaking it at her.
“Mmmmmmmeeeeeoooooo,” she said back, sounding like my cats last night, yodeling to get inside.
I put on lipstick and a bit of blush while Pea studied the buttons on the hair dryer, touching a heated piece of metal on the blower end and looking at her fingertip. “Come on. We’uns got work to do and reports to write.” Unexpectedly the grindy leaped from the counter to my shoulder. I froze for half a second and said, “You try to cut my throat and I’ll be mighty unhappy with you.” Pea made the strange laughter sound again and I opened the door.
I dropped my gobag off in my office cubicle and strapped on my service weapon’s shoulder harness, dropping Pea to the desk three times as I worked. I hadn’t gotten used to the feel of the harness straps on my back or the rigidity of the Kydex holster beneath my arm. I preferred a spine holster, but the shoulder holster was more regulation. I removed the mag, did a chamber check, and slid the loaded mag back into the weapon. Set the safety. Holstered it. I didn’t pull on a jacket, still feeling the hair dryer heat and wanting coffee. Pea leaped back to my shoulder.
Occam was in the break room when I entered, and the grindy pushed off, leaping from my shoulder all the way across the room to land on Occam’s. The force of the push shoved me back two steps. The leap was easily twelve feet. It wasn’t the first time the grindy had made me think that the laws of physics worked differently for her than for the rest of us.
“Morning, Pea. Nell,” Occam said. He handed me a travel mug of coffee and poured another for himself. He looked tired and disheveled, and when he yawned, his jaw cracked. He hadn’t shaved today, and the two-day beard looked good on him. I blinked at the thought, as he reached across for sugar packets, his shoulders stretching the plaid shirt and pulling it from his jeans to reveal a slice of flesh, tanned and golden. He tossed the packets on the table between us.
I sweetened my coffee and sipped, my attention now firmly on my mug. I wondered why I felt so out of sorts all of a sudden.
“Nell, sugar, I hope one of us got a good night’s sleep.”
“Not really. Why didn’t you—? Oh. The full moon’s close.” That explained a lot, including my sudden fascination with an inch of skin. I shook that thought from my head. “Weres don’t sleep well before the three days of full moon, do you?” I glanced at Pea. Had she been trying to say moon?
Occam drank down half of the coffee in a single gulp and chuffed, a sound more catlike than human. He slid a hand through his hair, pulling it behind his ears, and drawled, “A lot of creatures are moon called, but we weres are the most affected by its phases.” His words, the shape of the syllables, were more Texan today, and the lower pitch of his voice sounded more cat than usual. I struggled to remember everything I had studied about weres in the full moon, but all I could think of was the glimpse of golden skin. I clamped down on the thoughts. Were-magics were well documented, even the unintended ones, like sexual allure.
Pea snuggled up under Occam’s jaw as if scent-marking him. Occam stroked down her back, the way one might a friendly house cat. “The urge to shift and to hunt waxes strong three days out, abides the three days of, and wanes three days after. Nine nights of pleasure and nine days of hell.” It sounded like a quote.
“Are you safe to be around?” I asked, making the words casual, but knowing it might be taken as an insult. I’d had a class in were-manners, but they differed by species, and cats were among the most prickly of them all.
“Not sure that I’m ever safe, Nell, sugar.” He sipped, his brownish eyes gripping me with the intensity of a cat watching a mouse, and taking on a glow, faint flecks of gold shining in his irises. “’Specially ’round the full moon.”
I looked away from his eyes. The color change there was dangerous. Occam had been raised in captivity in his cat shape, from the time he was ten years old, and he had less control than some. I’d learned that a color change or a glow meant that a were-creature was closer to shifting than might be healthy for bystanders.
Few other PsyLED units had were-creatures as members, and in private mentoring sessions, LaLa had warned me that I might have to defend myself on a full moon. LaLa had actually suggested that I keep one weapon loaded with silver, but silver could kill a werecat, and I wasn’t interested in that, no matter what happened. Pulling out and sliding into a chair at an angle, the table between us, I asked, “So you’re dangerous. Do I need to keep my weapon handy, Occam?”