by Faith Hunter
To me she said, “Next time you go hunting dogs of darkness or other things that go bump in the night, invite me. This was fun. And I simply adore my new car.” With that, Yummy turned and walked away.
* * *
The metallic clank of the stove’s wood box closing woke me. The smell of fresh wood and fresh fire, old ash, and coffee beans spoke of home. I was in my cot, which someone had placed in the downstairs bedroom. I vaguely remembered being bathed, my hair washed free of blood. Remembered JoJo and T. Laine arguing about how best to get me clean and clip off the last of the rootlets sticking out of me. Remembered hands drying me with towels and smoothing my skin with cream before laying me down in my narrow bed and pulling the covers over me as I shivered with cold.
I remembered a voice complaining that I had no electric blankets to heat me. “. . . dangerously hypothermic. She needs a hospital,” T. Laine had said.
“Or a gardener,” JoJo had said.
I had laughed. And JoJo had tucked a heated cast-iron frying pan wrapped in towels into the covers at my feet like an old-timey bed warmer. It was still there, still radiating a bit of warmth.
I rolled out of bed and to my feet. I felt . . . marvelous. Thirsty, but really, really good. Someone had placed three bottles of water at my side. I opened and drained all three and raced to the bathroom. Like someone had said recently, I needed to pee like a racehorse, though why a racehorse I didn’t know. All horses had to pee.
But, once I was awake enough to dress, I discovered that I had a problem. I was out of clothes. I had torn or ripped or bloodied every decent garment I owned. That left . . . I looked around the bedroom. That left Leah’s clothes. In Leah’s closet.
Leah had been one of the church’s best seamstresses. She had given me her clothes when she died, but I had never been able to make myself wear them. I turned on the electric lights and opened the closet. The scent of her lemon verbena sachet flowed into the room. I replaced the sachets every fall. It was time again.
I had never touched Leah’s clothes. Wonderful clothing. Something that might have been envy coiled through me as the lights fell on the clothes in the closet. Anxiety growing along with the envy, I pulled out a pale mint green skirt made of a silky material that caught the light.
My heart beat a funny rhythm as delight rose in me and I pulled out some shirts, pretty blouses, and a shawl I had always loved. Not Leah’s anymore. Mine. Did I dare? I held the skirt up to me, studying my reflection in the long cheval mirror in the corner.
None of my underclothing was good enough to wear with such beautiful clothes. Unless . . . I stepped to my trousseau chest. Long ago I had placed it at the foot of John’s bed, as a good wife should, though I had never used the things within it. I had never even opened it. The chest was handmade of cedar-heart wood, the colors rosy and cream, with my initials carved in the top, NN, with lots of swirls and curlicues. Daddy had carved the initials in the cap piece the day I was named, and had built the box before I was seven, as he did for all his daughters. I hadn’t looked inside since I’d come to this house.
Girls in the church usually marry young, and when they leave their parents’ home, they are still growing in height and girth. The things that a girl’s mother, and sister-mothers, and elder sisters, and even aunts and friends, place in the chest for her wedding day have to be size adjustable, useful for many different occasions and activities. There are the practical things that are intended to help a girl set up housekeeping. There are other things intended for a girl’s wedding night and that special first year of married life when everything is new and the falling-in-love part of marriage is still taking place. Hopefully. There would be useful things in it, like underwear. They might even be pretty.
Hesitantly, I lifted the lid and the old scent of red cedar rushed out onto the air and mixed with the lemon verbena. The scents should have clashed. They didn’t. They mixed perfectly.
* * *
Excitement swept through me like a hot wind when I saw myself in the mirror, dressed in such wonderful clothes. I almost looked . . . pretty. And that vision of myself warmed my cheeks. I was no longer a churchwoman. I was just me.
I was wearing the silky mint green skirt and a soft floral blouse with pearl buttons that ran the collar high up my throat, with pretty, store-bought green slippers I had found in the trousseau chest. They were lined with something like sheep’s wool, but didn’t smell like sheep and they were warm. I was also wearing new underwear from a store, with lace on the bra, which itched, and on the top of the panties. They were pink and glossy and might have been a smidge too loose, but they both stayed up when I moved.
I was also wearing a tiny smear of lipstick, pale pink. It hadn’t smelled real good and the taste suggested that lipstick could go bad, but the color had been so pretty with the green clothes and pink underwear that I had added a dab to my cheeks and smeared it in.
When I left the room, my heart was pounding and it was hard to breathe, as I stopped in the doorway observing the others. Listening.
Rick was standing, his back to me, debriefing, “There was nothing left of them but piles of ash. We know for a fact that Jackson Jr. is dead. Only one adult gwyllgi survived at Benton’s mountain lodge, the one the captive vampire nearly drunk down. There were half a dozen in the house, all juveniles. We got three adults from the farm where Mira was kept, including Joshua, who survived the drinking down at the initial attack. This means that there are probably more gwyllgi around, people. Maybe lots more, as vampire blood makes the trait breed true.”
“The scent is subtle,” Occam said, “and so close to a dog’s that it’s difficult to differentiate, but we have it now. So does Sam Nicholson’s tracker dog.”
“Good. All of Benton’s gwyllgi sons were secured by the state child services until they changed shape and attacked them. Paka and Occam had to change shape and teach them some manners.” I could hear the amusement in his voice as he wrapped things up for his unit.
“After that,” Rick continued, “they were turned over to a handler from PsyLED. They’ll be taken to the werewolves of Montana to be trained in proper behavior. They aren’t weres, but they’re close, and sturdy enough to stand up to being taught proper manners, and the right way to hunt by werewolves. What happens after that will be up to the wolves.”
“I get why the gwyllgi were tied in with the HST, but how did Benton manage to hide his condition from the entire FBI?” T. Laine asked. Beside her, Pea jumped from the couch to the window, to peer into the pale dawn light. I had slept clear through to morning.
“They aren’t moon-called,” Rick said, massaging one arm as if it pained him, “so they weren’t conspicuously absent on full moons. They can work regular hours and regular jobs.
“Case summation,” Rick said, changing the subject. “From what PsyLED Central in Virginia has put together, we were right when we postulated that Colonel Ernest Jackson Sr. had begun to breed for the gwyllgi trait, which proved easier when drinking vampire blood.
“Benton’s family were formerly members of God’s Cloud of Glory Church and, when Dawson ran into Benton during his trek through the juvenile system, that connection was reestablished. Dawson also brought HST, and information about their list of paranormals, to the church through an accomplice named Oliver Smithy, met in rehab. Smithy has been identified by dental records among the deceased at the warehouse.
“The Stubbinses were located and rejoined the group when Jael began exhibiting some dog traits.
“From the HST, the factional churchmen learned how to structure their finances and how to add to cash flow through kidnapping humans and blackmail of paranormals who weren’t yet out of the closet. HST had no idea they were in bed with their worst nightmare, and had no idea the dogs were drinking vampire blood. At about this point, we became involved.
“We think the schismatic churchmen planned to kidnap a new vampire from Mira Clayton’
s home, one to drink from, but they got a whiff of Mira. They took her instead, and the abduction was attributed to HST. By acting on their own, they caused a rift among the members of HST, who were camping at the Stubbins farm, and when HST resisted, the dogs took over HST and made the men their dinners and the women their prisoners.”
I must had made a sound, or my scent reached the werecats, because Occam turned to me. His eyes lit from within, a glowing gold, holding my own as if he had taken me in his claws. My breath went tight. “Well, Nell, sugar,” he said, standing and walking toward me. “You look right nice.” He pulled one of my own chairs out for me and took my teakettle off the stove. Poured me a mug of my own spice tea. And held it out to me. “Come on, sugar.” He smiled and that dimple I had almost seen a time or two went deep into his cheek. Something strange in my middle tumbled over. “Join us.” There was distinctly odd tone in his words, as if I was being offered something more than a place at my own table. I was pretty sure I blushed.
* * *
“I’ve decided to cut my hair,” I said to JoJo, hours later. “Twice now it’s gotten caught under me and it hurts.”
“You never cut it before?”
“No. Churchwomen don’t cut their hair except for a trim or so every year. Mine’s never been shorter than my waist.” With a toe, I pushed off and the swing moved. We were alone on the porch, JoJo working on reports that would be filed later, me just thinking, and feeling the way the skirt brushed my bare legs. Nice. The day had grown warm, almost Indian summer, and the others were inside, or out back.
“But you do?”
“Now I do. Soon as I get paid by PsyLED. I’m gonna get a pedicure too, so my toenails are pretty. Maybe pink, like bubblegum pink. I used to like bubblegum. My sister Priss and Mary and me? We used to steal us each a piece from Sam’s stash and chew it in the woods. It was a pretty color. I might even buy me a pink dress.”
JoJo finished her report and pushed her laptop to the side. “Rick and I’ve been talking,”
I didn’t think I liked the sound of that, and when I scowled at her she laughed, her black eyes sparkling.
“He has a few contacts with cell companies. What with Secret City and the TVA owning so many of the hills around Knoxville, you could rent space to a cell tower company on the crest of the hill”—she pointed toward the church lands—“so you can enter the twenty-first century and get cell signals and TV, despite the magic that keeps this place so isolated.”
“I beg your bless-ed pardon,” I said, sounding entirely too much like a Nicholson, entertained and yet a tad affronted at the high-handedness.
JoJo shrugged. “You might have to run a cable or put an antenna or something, to get past the magic of the land, but T. Laine’s been testing, and she thinks it extends only a few feet over the tops of the trees, like a bowl. She thinks you can get some signals in here, one way or another.”
“Why would I want to do all that?”
Rick stepped into the doorway. Clearly he had been listening at the open window. “More paranormal species are being discovered every day, and PsyLED needs some of each on the payroll.”
“So? I may be a backcountry hillbilly, but I read the newspapers,” I said. “And if it’s one thing all people brought up in the church know, it’s how the government wants to control its citizens.”
Rick lifted his fingers in a little wave, telling me he wasn’t finished. At a glance from him, JoJo gathered up her laptop and went inside. He walked the rest of the way out the door and sat in a rocker. “How do you apply a sentence to a paranormal creature? A life sentence for a human is generally expected to be twenty to thirty years. That’s nothing for a vampire or a were. A jail cell would have to be constructed out of sterling silver to hold a vamp. And how would you feed them? Turn them loose on the prison population?” Rick gave me a wry smile, maybe the one he had before he was bitten by a wereleopard, and all the joy was bled out of him. “How would you deal with the were-creatures during the full moon? And if you got a death penalty against one, would beheading be considered cruel and unusual punishment, if that was the only way to carry out the death sentence? Law enforcement is in a bad place. So PsyLED was created with special powers under the law. We police paranormals.”
I crossed my arms over me, tipped my weight to one buttock in the swing, and gave him a look that came right off Mama’s face, all irritation and feigned patience. “I know all that. What’s that got to do with cell towers on my land?”
“PsyLED’s made an official offer for you to go to Spook School.”
A strange heat raced through me at the words, that elusive excitement I had been ignoring, pushing away as impossible. I said, “I killed some gwyllgi in North Carolina. Hurt two humans. You’re saying PsyLED would still want me?”
“Yes. The offer is on your desk in the great room. But you have to be reachable, Nell. Hence the cell tower.”
My crossed arms fell to my sides, and I sat back in the swing, its motion going stationary as I thought through what he had just said. “But I like living off the grid.”
From the yard, Occam called, “Nell, sugar, you can still live partly off the grid. You’ve got solar and wind and a septic system and a deep well, so you don’t need city or county services, except the dump, and it ain’t that far away. Just a cell system and maybe a little tie to the Knoxville electric grid.”
I looked down at my green skirt as excitement zinged through me like a ricochet shot. I said, “I’ll think about it.” But I already knew my answer. I wasn’t a churchwoman anymore. I might as well go all the way to hell.
“In other news,” Rick said, “the head of Knoxville FBI is missing.” He told me what the media, and most of the FBI itself, had been told. The real story was need-to-know and classified under PsyLED’s mandate. As was everything about last night. Partly so the werecats had time to sniff out—literally—any other dark dogs in law enforcement and government positions. It wasn’t illegal for paranormals to be in positions of authority, but it was a requirement to declare such. Which meant I’d have to tell them, tell the world, that I was . . . nonhuman.
“Benton’s legal wife reported him and their sons missing when she came home from out of town. The investigators and special agents who responded to the call discovered a torture room under the house when they got there, and they found signs that a vampire had been kept chained to a wall. They also found a dead dog in the basement, big as a boar, drained of blood, and two old men that claimed they were a Tennessee senator and a preacher who led a megachurch in Nashville, though both were too old to be who they claimed to be. They’re both in isolation for possible contagion while their DNA is compared to known samples.
“The investigators found piles of ash and two greasy smears in the basement that are being tested for genetic origins, because the two old men said they had been people until they crumbled to nothing after the captive vampire attacked. The vampire has not been located and is not expected to be found.” Rick didn’t look at me, but I understood that the ashy, squishy human remains were going to be blamed on a random vampire attack. I didn’t know how to respond to that, but gestured that I understood. He said, “IDs nearby suggest that if the sludge and piles were indeed people, then we know the whereabouts of Boaz Jenkins and two other former churchmen.
“They also discovered that Benton had three other wives, all living in that house in the woods, across the state line into North Carolina.”
Occam’s tone bordered on sarcasm when he said, “Seems he was a polygamist. Shock is spreadin’ everywhere.”
Rick said, “I don’t know what you remember about the old building, but the dogs decimated HST. They infiltrated the organization, took it over, and then used the women as . . .” He shook his head and settled on, “as breeding material. And the men for dinner.”
Occam walked to the porch with the long, slinky gait of a cat in the sun. “You gonna join
Unit Eighteen, Nell, sugar?”
I made a mmm sound, and said again, “I’ll think about it.”
“Let me know,” Rick said. “There’s forms to fill out.”
“Of course there are,” I said, trying on sarcasm. It seemed to fit just fine, proving that I was no longer a churchwoman—who would know better than use such a tone. I let what the unit called snark thread deeper into my tone and added, “There’s always forms.”
EPILOGUE
I wasn’t terrified. I wasn’t. I baked fresh bread, coffee, and tea every day. This was nothing new. I had all the proper serving dishes, and I knew how to use them. I had Leah’s—my, it was mine now—good silverware. The good cloth napkins. Everything was in place, hot, warm, or cold as the foodstuffs demanded. The house was clean. The beds—including the new king-sized bed in my room—all were made and had fresh sheets. Clean towels were freshly folded in the bath. Extra rolls of toilet paper.
The cell tower going up on the hill was finally finished. Thank goodness. The woods had hated the noise and the vehicles rolling all over it.
A fresh dusting of snow was on the ground, and I had burned a lot of wood to heat the lower floor. The overhead fans were turning to redistribute the warm air that rose toward the ceiling.
My hands were sweating, palms itching.
I was having company. For the first time. And Not Mr. Thad and Deus and his big, noisy family, who brought Bojangles’ takeout for dinner last Sunday. And not the PsyLED team. But real company. Family. My mama, maw-maw, Mama Grace, and Mama Carmel. My sisters, Priss, Mud, Esther, and Judith. And four half sisters. Coming to visit. Coming here.
I whirled and caught a view of myself in the mirror on the back of the bedroom door. I should change. I should definitely change. Pink was not a church color. A pale ice pink, to be sure, but pink. Pale pink layered shirts, slightly darker pink skirt. Rose leggings, mostly hidden beneath the skirt hem and the tall boots. My fingernails were painted. Clear, not pink or red, but still. Painted. I curled my fingers under as if to hide them.