by Faith Hunter
A second update had been posted while I was facing off with the churchmen. When Cale Nowell’s trunk was opened, it revealed a pile of junk two feet deep. Among it, the CSI hazmat team discovered duct tape, a shovel, heavy-duty plastic bags, lye, and rope.
That was all stuff used by serial killers to kidnap, transport, and bury bodies. Or maybe to cart graveyard dirt for making a death and decay working. It wasn’t likely happenstance. Once is chance, twice is coincidence, third time is enemy action. That was military canon.
JoJo had been tracking the car and the team had pulled an address out of the car’s GPS system. Cale Nowell had spent a lot of time in a trailer at the back of a farm halfway between Knoxville and Cookeville. Cale could be a suspect, or he could be a victim. Or both, if he’d messed up and magicked himself in some way, especially if my thoughts about a necromancer had any merit. My cell dinged with a GPS location and address. They wanted me there. ASAP.
I sat, staring at the request, the address, and the small map that popped up beside it. I was so tired I could hardly move. I wouldn’t be safe on the road.
The door to my side opened and Esther exited, backing onto the porch. She was dressed like a proper churchwoman, in a calf-length blue gingham dress with a white apron, her hair bunned up. She was wearing a pretty, purple scarf around her crown, adornment approved by the church, but I knew it was really worn to hide leaves. She was also wearing bright purple sneakers with lime green ties, which was not church approved, though I had seen other Nicholson women wearing brightly colored shoes and I approved. Esther turned around, revealing a wood tray with two coffee cups, a white porcelain coffee carafe, and an entire breakfast on a heavy white plate. She placed the tray in front of me, across the arms of the rocking chair. The smell of morning-fresh eggs and bacon and coffee woke me up fast.
“Holy moly, that smells good,” I breathed.
Esther smacked me on the shoulder. “You’un don’t be cussing at my house, and you’un best say a proper thanks.”
“Ow.” I rubbed my shoulder, saying, “Lord, I thank you for this amazing meal and my wonderful sister. And brother,” I amended. “Amen.” I dove in.
“Good enough,” Esther said and returned to her house. For all her recalcitrant ways, my sister could cook a mean breakfast and her coffee was strong enough to stand a fork up in it. I wolfed the meal down as I reread the reports and studied the map. The street view I wanted was nonexistent, the road too unimportant for Google to have driven down it, but from the satellite view, I spotted the address. It was an old farmhouse surrounded by oak trees, with a dirt drive and two trucks parked out front. Behind the house a good ways, maybe half a mile along that same dirt drive, was a trailer, and around a curving hill, an outbuilding smothered in kudzu. Back on the road in front of the address, I finger-leaped along the road back to Highway 62, spotting cleared fields, a postharvest view of farmland, farmland, and more farmland, with houses perched here and there, silos, barns, mobile homes. Near 62 I saw what looked like long, narrow foundation systems, probably the remains of an old chicken farm, with ancient farm vehicles and a house that was caving in. I knew where to turn in now, and I plugged the route into my phone system, wondering how I’d stay awake to reach the address.
As I was reading, a third update appeared on-screen with a soft notification ding. Sam looked over his shoulder at me. “Everything okay, Nellie?”
I grinned tiredly at him. “Except for exhaustion, I’m good. I got me a job, brother mine. The dings are case stuff.”
Sam shook his head and stretched out his legs, crossing his feet at the ankles. “That incessant dinging would drive me right into the loony bin.”
“Roosters crowing all night would drive me there.”
My brother grinned. “Different strokes.”
“For different folks,” I finished. And opened the new report.
As the wrecked vehicle was leaving under the auspices of the military, FBI Senior Special Agent Macauley Smythe and his partner Gerry Stapp had shown up and Smythe had demanded to know why FBI wasn’t called to the scene. FireWind and Smythe had words, most of them not particularly polite, but I managed not to laugh out loud at the record of FireWind’s formal and heavily applied politeness. Especially when he noticed that Macauley Smythe’s fingertips were green. The FBI chief had somehow come into contact with death and decay. The hazmat team had immediately placed him in quarantine, suited him up, and taken him with them when they left, transporting him to a null room. He’d been screaming about witches and evil magic users being burned at the stake as he was driven away in the back of the military van.
Gerry Stapp was currently on the way to FBI headquarters to begin paperwork to set Catriona free and to dismiss all the trumped-up charges his senior agent had brought against her.
I was sorry I had missed out on that confrontation. It sounded like fun, way more fun than an armed showdown with churchmen. Or maybe not. I had won, with a little help from my brother and his friend. And I hadn’t developed bloodlust. That was . . . that was pretty wonderful.
The caffeine was waking me up. The food was filling me with fats and protein and carbs. The flapjacks were fluffy bites of heaven. When I was done, I looked from the plate and the reports to see Sam grinning at me. “What?” I asked, suspicious. It was the same look he had given me when I was a kid and he was planning something mean, like putting a frog down my dress or a blacksnake in my bed.
“I like you, Nellie. I mean, I love you like a brother, but I like you too.”
I picked up the last scrap of honeyed pancake, wiped it across the greasy, eggy plate, and popped it into my mouth. Chewed and swallowed, grinning at him the whole time.
“Your manners need some working on, but other than that I like you,” he said.
I chuckled. “I like you too, Sammie.” I hadn’t called him that in years and a peculiar warmth filled his eyes. Brother-love. All in all, it was a great way to end breakfast. “I gotta go.” I set the tray on the rocker, called out my thanks to Esther, and went to my car. I popped the portable beacon light on the roof and pulled out of the church grounds before I turned on the lights and siren. I drove with the windows down to decrease the stench clinging to me.
The drive to the address was fast. T. Laine would have said I was jacked up on caffeine. She would have been right.
THIRTEEN
I took 62, the old Nashville highway, through Wartburg and Lancing, through rolling hills, farmland, and woods, thinking about Cale Nowell and whether he was a victim or a murderer or both. My gut insisted he was innocent, but my gut was mostly emotion and no evidence.
My cell told me to slow when I passed a turnoff tertiary road I had marked as a landmark. I spotted the remains of the dilapidated chicken farm. A couple miles later, my cell told me I had arrived. I was the first member of Unit Eighteen on-site, but two Morgan County deputy cars were parked in the dirt drive out front and two uniformed officers were talking to a man in his thirties, all three standing at the side of the farmhouse I had noted on the satellite map. The man was wearing beat-up jeans, rubber farm boots, and a stained T-shirt, his arms bare to the growing chill. Three hunting dogs were sitting at his feet, tongues lolling, tails thumping with excitement.
I turned off the siren, popped the beacon back inside, raised the windows, and walked to the deputies, flipping open my ID and badge. “Special Agent Ingram, PsyLED,” I said. Two of the dogs leaped to their feet, but the civilian snapped his fingers and they both stayed.
“Sergeant Gunter,” the woman said and pointed at the other deputy. “Prince.” Both officers had the well-trained, fit, muscular look of young law enforcement, both were African-American, and both were clearly curious.
I put away my ID and nodded to the civilian. “Special Agent Ingram,” I repeated. “Your name, sir?”
“Holcomb Beresford. This is my land. I need to know what’s happening. Where’s Cale?
Is he in more trouble?”
“Nothing I can say right now, sir. Can you tell me how long Cale Nowell has been living here?”
“I rented to him the day he got out of prison. Where is he? Is he in trouble again for the singer woman?”
Singer. Stella Mae . . . “Why would you think that, sir?”
He spat a stream of tobacco juice to the side. “She ain’t been nothing but trouble all his life.”
“Can you tell me if he has family?” I asked.
“He has a mama. I got her number, but I ain’t tellin’ you nothing until I know where Cale is.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
I tilted my head to my vehicle, silently asking the two deputies to meet me there. They followed and we formed a tight group at my driver’s door. I said, softly, “Sorry to not divulge more, but Nowell was involved in a single-vehicle accident last night. That’s all I can say. The county sheriff has been contacted by my up-line boss and I imagine we’ll be inundated with the brass any moment now.”
“I went to school with Cale. Holcomb Beresford too,” Gunter said, nodding her head toward the farmer. She smiled and there was an edge to it I didn’t understand. “Holy Bear ain’t bad, but he’s not exactly an evolved thinking man either.”
“Holy Bear?” I asked, thinking of a stuffed bear with a halo.
“Holy’s mama called him that in kiddy-garden and it stuck. Anyway, I knew Cale’s mama’s address from ten years ago, but I don’t know where she lives now. He was all-star in double A basketball the year we nearly won the state. Cale was a hero in high school.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Prince stated, watching my face.
I looked at him, giving him the law enforcement stare that told him all he needed to know about the condition of Cale Nowell.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, the tone grieving.
“You got a reason we were told to secure the drive but not let anyone down to the trailer?” Gunter asked.
“I got lots of ideas,” I said. “None of them good.”
“Cale didn’t do whatever he’s been accused of doing,” Prince said. “He’s a good guy. One of the truly good guys I know. He was railroaded and did time he didn’t deserve. Everyone around here knows it. If anything, he’s a victim, not murderer.”
“I read the accident report,” I said.
“Then you know he took the rap for his girlfriend.”
My mouth tightened and I tried to find the right words. “That’s . . . not an unexpected conclusion.”
Sirens approached, soft on the morning air, the sound rising over the low hill to the west, growing louder, preceding the appearance of law enforcement. We three leaned against my car, the deputies at either side of me, and watched the excitement begin to build. The sun was fall-cool, the breeze soft, carrying the smells of manure, freshly turned earth, dog poo, man-sweat, and exhaust. Black flies swarmed, buzzing around our heads, the deputies and I waving them away. I hated those flies. They bit and hurt.
The cars appeared over the rolling hilly horizon. FireWind’s vehicle was in front, with Occam’s car just behind, and they were all but flying down the country road. They braked, turned in, came to a stop, and thankfully turned off lights and sirens. The sheriff pulled in just behind them. More cars and trucks from multiple law enforcement agencies came from both directions. The noise was incredible.
FireWind gave Occam orders I couldn’t hear, one arm making a circle that seemed to encompass the entire property. The PsyCSI van appeared on the horizon and followed them in, the techs sitting in their vehicle, drinking from metal travel mugs, looking as tired as I felt. More official vehicles pulled in and parked on Holcomb Beresford’s land. The landowner spat tobacco juice, took pics of the excitement on his cell phone, cussed a lot, shook hands, and stuck his nose into everything he could. In the distance, Occam was stringing crime scene tape, wrapping it around trees, an old tractor with flat tires, and blocking off the dirt drive. I just waited. I figured I would need to read the land and I was saving my meager strength.
FireWind spoke privately to the local sheriff and Sergeant Gunter for several minutes before he waved me over. Occam jogged to us, breathing steadily, his eyes glowing a gold so pale and dim no one else would notice. He glanced at me, his gaze far warmer than the autumn sun.
FireWind said, “I’d like you”—he indicated the sheriff and Gunter—“to keep everyone back except PsyLED and our CSI team until we ascertain the hazard level. The three of us will proceed to the trailer and read the land with our instruments.” FireWind glanced at me and his look said clearly that I was to read the earth with my hands.
I gave him a truncated nod of understanding and got my blanket and my potted vampire tree out of the car. The sheriff did a double take, but no one asked why I had a tree. I really needed to come up with a good story for it, one that didn’t include a people-eating tree or me being part plant. I wasn’t good at lies, so maybe I’d ask JoJo and T. Laine to craft one worthy of an undercover alias.
“We’ll take my vehicle to the tape,” FireWind continued, pointing to Occam’s flimsy barrier, “which is a hundred yards out from the trailer, and work our way in. As soon as we’ve assured safety protocols”—he looked at the sheriff—“you and your sergeant are welcome to join us. We’ll send in CSI at that point and, lastly, allow others in. This working has cost too many people their lives, so we are not taking chances with it.”
Gunter pursed her lips. I could almost see her thinking that there was no way Cale had killed anyone, but she kept her mouth shut on the words. One thing law enforcement taught us early was that people could and would do most anything under the proper—or improper—circumstances. And we had no idea if Cale was victim, perpetrator, partner in crime, or some combination of all three.
I got in FireWind’s car, backseat big enough to stretch out in. At some point he had returned the tiny Fit rental and begun to drive his own, much larger Chevy. Occam took the passenger seat and we waited in the sun-heated car as FireWind and the sheriff talked to the assembled law enforcement officers and personnel. Without turning his head, Occam said, “You okay, Nell?”
“I’m still on a caffeine high so I’m good for now. But I’m’a crash soon, jist so you know.”
“I got your back,” Occam said. “And I picked up a gallon of coffee on the way. It’s in my car.”
“If I didn’t love you before? That right there would make me fall head over heels.”
“Coffee is better than roses?”
“I can’t grow or root coffee, cat-man.”
He was chuckling when FireWind got in, punched the start button, and drove us up to the crime scene tape. Occam got out, held the tape high as we rolled slowly by him, and threaded the tape over the car. I tucked my fingers into the soil of the potted tree and waited as we rolled ahead and around a bushy tree and stopped, mostly out of sight of the gathered cars behind us.
“Ingram?” FireWind said, his yellow-eyed gaze meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. His expression was piercing, and I had a feeling he was trying to tell me something, but I had no idea what it might be. “Do not get lost in the earth.”
“Ummm. Okay?”
He opened his door and I opened mine and placed my field boots onto the ground. Occam and FireWind filled a gobag with equipment, including cameras, the psy-meter 2.0, small pyramid-shaped plastic markers—yellow for mundane evidence, blue for magical—evidence bags, yellow flags on stakes for marking dangerous places, and P3Es. We dressed out.
“Ambient magic background checks,” FireWind said. He pulled a spiral notebook from a pocket and drew a tiny map of the property. Occam began to test the psy-meter, pointing it at the four cardinal points, at the house behind us, at FireWind for skinwalker readings, at himself for were-creature readings, and at me for plant-people readings, though I was officially classified as nonhuman, paranormal
, undifferentiated, plant-people not being a recognized para except among Unit Eighteen and my family.
I reached down and touched a leaf of grass. “Something here,” I whispered. “Something bad.” I stood upright, cradled the potted tree, and put my still-damaged fingers into Soulwood dirt. The tree shivered slightly, its leaves moving. It could have been the wind. But I knew better. The vampire tree was reacting to the strange energies in the land and on my fingertips.
Occam said, “Same odd readings on all four levels of magical energies. I think we got our suspect.”
“If he’s our suspect then why is he dead? He spent years in gen pop in prison,” I said, drawing on the thoughts and deductions I had made while driving. Gen pop referred to general population prisons where humans went, as opposed to being policed by the individual paranormal communities for harming or potentially being harmful to others. Witches policed witches. Vamps policed vamps. And the ones who slipped by were tracked and killed by monster hunters. Few of them ever made it to a human-populated prison system. “They scan everyone for magical energies these days to keep the mundanes safe from the big, bad dangerous paras,” I said, sarcasm in my tone. “If he’s a death-magic user, then how did he get by that?”
FireWind didn’t answer, but pointed to the right. “Widdershins twenty feet and read again.” Widdershins meant keeping the item being circled to the left-hand side, so walking counterclockwise.
Occam and I followed orders, me touching a grass leaf blade while he read with the psy-meter. And then read again in another twenty feet. And so on for a hundred feet in one direction before we retraced our steps and read the land in increments sunwise or clockwise. The earth read the same everywhere. Death energies of some strange kind were in this land. All the trees and the grass were affected, most dying.