“Why do you ask this?” Ming asked. “How do you know this attack has occurred more than the once of which we speak?”
“Because I have been called to my leopard and once ended up on a riverbank in cat form, near a witch’s circle. A circle of cursing and summoning, one that showed evidence of the presence of Mithrans. I was called last night, and resisted the spell.”
“A witch curses both were-creatures and Mithrans?” Ming said, her eyes flashing. “What do the local spell casters say to this? We have tried to contact them to negotiate that they cease such attacks. They do not reply to us.”
Softly, Heyda said, “Ming is ready to go to war with the spell casters. She has called for the assistance of Lincoln Shaddock. He and his people will travel here during the night.”
Shaddock was the new MOC of Asheville. That meant a lot more vampires in Knoxville than normal and tensions might flare. A war between the paranormal creatures was a very bad thing and to be avoided at all costs.
Rick held up a hand in a gesture for peace. “The witches are not your enemies. One of the city’s PsyLED special agents is a witch and she is as baffled and concerned as we are. She spoke with the local coven leader. They don’t know anything about the circles and they’re …” He paused. “Not fearful, but wary. Worried. They say the witch circles are a dangerous and forbidden magic and they refuse to help us apprehend the witch who is casting this curse. They say it’s an outside witch, not one of their own.”
“And you believe them?” Heyda asked, skeptical.
“Yes. Both as a law enforcement officer and as a wereleopard.”
“Are the witches also under the summoning?”
Rick shook his head. “I don’t think so. But they’re casting auguries for the future and reading the cards. They told our agent that all the readings so far point to ‘grave danger.’”
“How many circles?”
“Twelve,” Rick said, “over the three moon cycles.”
Ming’s lips tilted slightly down and she said, “Maggot. You have read the land at the circles of summoning?”
“I have. Mithrans were there, either before or after the summonings were cast.”
Ming’s eyes tightened, her white-powdered face giving little away. “My clan is spread about the city. Only a few lair here. None have reported such a summoning. Heyda, you will contact the ones who lair otherwhere to see if they have been called and did not report it.”
Heyda murmured, “Yes, my mistress.”
Rick asked, “Why wouldn’t they have already contacted the Master of the City if they’ve had problems?”
I was looking at Heyda when he spoke and I caught the barest flinch in the skin around her eyes. I knew that look. Fear. Ming’s people were afraid of her, and Heyda couldn’t say that. But I could. “You rule your people with an iron hand, don’tcha?” I felt the brush of Ming’s magic. I dug my fingernails into the wood before it got too strong and I forgot what I wanted to say. “People, even blood-sucking people, don’t look for help to the ones who show no mercy.”
Ming speared me with a look and I almost reared back, losing face, in vampire terms. Almost. Instead, I pressed my nails into her chair arm so hard that I damaged the shiny finish, the bare wood beneath soothing. After a space of time, Ming’s eyes narrowed. Stiffly she said, “Will you read my property to see if the summoning is in the land?”
And now we knew the real reason we had been commanded to visit the clan home of the Master of the City of Knoxville. Ming wanted another favor, without us understanding that it was a favor. I had been setting and keeping careful boundaries in this meeting, boundaries that established who was head honcho, who was alpha. That alpha person was my boss. Pointedly, I looked at Rick. I was being deliberately heavy-handed enough that Ming was certain to pick up on all my clues. “I have my blanket in the truck. I can do that favor for Ming of Glass now, if you like.” I put careful emphasis on the word you.
“Yes,” Ming said, answering for him.
“Special Agent Ingram, you have my permission,” Rick said at the same time.
I replied to Rick in the vernacular of Unit Eighteen. “Boss, it’s unlikely that I’ll note anything except the sensation of Mithrans on this land.”
“You will sense maggots,” Ming said. This time there was no playfulness in her tone.
I took my badge and closed my fist around it, keeping it out of sight so Ming would know that I was speaking as Nell, not a cop. “Ming of Glass did not kill her guests when we placed ourselves at her mercy by answering her invitation. I will read her land for her as a favor and a kindness.” I left the room for the front of the house and the door, hearing the softly indrawn breath of Heyda. Yes, I thought. Think on that. You don’t want to make it official? Then it’s tit-for-tat and quid pro quo. Now Ming owed me a boon and a favor.
• • •
On first read, I got nothing on the land except the crawly sensation I associated with vampires and dead things. Then I pushed into the earth with my consciousness, calling on Soulwood, and the earth opened up around me, colors sparking and tumbling and full of power. Ming’s land was more active than my own, the energy lively and youthful. I realized that, in some way, Ming had sealed this land to herself and fed it for decades. She called it her hunting grounds. I wondered briefly if she had spilled human blood on it in sacrifice to claim it, but I was pretty sure that spilling blood for the land was an ancient European custom, not Asian. If Ming spilled blood it was her dinner, not a sacrifice, though the land might not know the difference.
I studied the earth all around and decided that no witch magic had penetrated the ground itself. Nothing in the trees. Whatever the attack had been, it left no trace. Withdrawing, I stood and carried my blanket to the truck.
Rick was leaning against his vehicle, sunglasses over his eyes, his silvered hair swept back, ankles crossed, one hand dangling from his pocket, the other rubbing his mangled tattoo. “Ingram.”
I gave him a nod and opened the truck door. Heat billowed out. I had forgotten to leave the windows open an inch. I tossed the blanket inside to the passenger seat.
“You did good catching the thing about tea. I’ve visited at the Glass Clan Home before and been offered tea, always iced.”
“It might notta been an insult. What’s polite in one culture—Southerners drink a lot of iced tea in summer—is an insult in another. Ming’s an old vampire. She’s adapted, but I bet not enough to offer a respected guest tea from commercially packaged tea bags. When someone she respects is a guest, they probably get the good tea, something loose leaf from a single estate.”
He gave a faint smile. “I’m guessing she’s starting to respect you.” He shifted slightly and changed the subject. “What did you find in the earth?”
I leaned into the heated cab and found a water bottle. It was an old one I had filled with Soulwood water and, though it was disgustingly warm, I opened it and drank it anyway. The taste of Soulwood was a refreshment I couldn’t explain to anyone. I capped the empty and tossed it back in the truck to refill later. “Nothing useful. The witch magic didn’t soak into the land. The property itself wasn’t compromised. I’m guessing it was a calling, just like what you’re getting. I also have a feeling that when she talks to the vampires who lair off-site, she’ll find they’ve had issues that they didn’t report.”
Rick nodded slowly. “You did good, Ingram. Go home. Get some sleep.”
I was exhausted. I waved to the humans guarding the grounds, climbed into the heated cab, and drove home. With Mud at Mama’s I didn’t have to be alert. I slept like a log, which was still funny in all sorts of ways.
NINE
I woke to the sound of someone knocking on my door and the sensation of my land in happy welcome. Occam is here. I crawled out of bed, sweaty, sticky, and summer-miserable, and checked the time to discover that I’d slept a whole four hours. I shoved my arms into a robe and passed the cheval mirror to see a leafy woman with green eyes and very bad bed-head. I tried to tame the crazy, damp ringlets, but it was like yanking on kudzu vine—a study in wasted effort. I twisted the tangled mess up in a bun, stuck a long bobby pin in it, and went to the door.
Occam stood on the other side, leaning a shoulder on one of the porch posts. His face was in shadow, arms crossed, muscles bulging at the T-shirt sleeves. The scars on the side of his head appeared less rough and his ear actually had a curve of cartilage, a bit more healed than when I’d looked last. There was even a fresh spot of hair sprouting on his scalp where there had been only white scars before. Shifting was speeding his healing. Shifting on Soulwood was maybe speeding it even more. There were two brown paper grocery store bags at his flip-flop-clad feet, which were scar free, with rounded nails. Surprised to see him, I opened the door and stared at my—the—cat-man.
I said, “You’re supposed to be working, twelve on, twelve off, day shift.”
“Afternoon, Nell, sugar,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “You look pretty as a picture.”
A before picture in one of those beauty magazines, I thought, but since Occam looked a lot like the boogeyman in an old Grimm fairy tale, I didn’t say it.
“Rick gave me the afternoon off, putting me on split shift today. He wants me there at moonrise, which will be close to two a.m.”
To keep Rick safe, to help him not shift and race off to be slaughtered by a blood witch. I held the door wide. “Come on in. Hospitality and safety,” I said, paraphrasing from my church days. “I need to clean up, but I’ll be with you in a bit.”
“I’ll make us breakfast,” he said. “Eggs and ham in the microwave, some juice. I’d do banana pancakes except for the fact that you don’t use your stove in summer and it’s too hot to use the brazier in back.”
It was afternoon and it wasn’t too hot for the brazier, or not too hot for a churchwoman, but I wasn’t going to argue with a man who was gonna fix me a late breakfast. I dragged myself to the shower and cleaned up fast in the cool-to-tepid water from the cistern. As I showered, I mentally went over my long-term and short-term to-do list and added to it. The windmill that pumped my water into the cistern needed its semiannual mechanical inspection and maintenance. The old pump needed lubricating on a regular basis and that had been ignored while I was a tree. I also needed to figure out what to do about providing hot water to the upstairs bathroom. The little hot water heater on the back of the wood-burning stove was fine for the small downstairs bath but was insufficient for adding an upstairs shower. That meant buying a hot water heater and more energy usage. Coming into the twenty-first century and letting Mud be a townie girl was going to be expensive.
I dressed in the jeans and tee from Ming’s and twisted my freshly washed, overly curly hair into clips off my face. I opened the door and the smell of sizzling ham in the main room whooshed into the bedroom and woke up my hungries. It was only microwave ham and eggs, but any pig-based meat was good meat. I stopped in the doorway to catch a view of Occam bent over my sofa, tucking something up under the cloth bottom. “Got a mouse?” I asked.