TWELVE

Still feeling much better, I touched the oak tree in thanks as I left the library. Pages in hand, I drove to the hotel. With some trepidation, I parked the van in the hotel parking lot and headed to the entrance. Night had fallen and a chill wind blew straight through my clothes, giving me the shivers. Tomorrow, if the weather hadn’t changed back to summer, as it did with great regularity this time of year, I’d get out my winter coat. I smelled Italian herbs as I traipsed up the hall, and though I had overeaten on the fried chicken liver dinner, my mouth watered at the aroma. I knocked and used my card key at the same time. The door opened.

Tandy leaped at me and hugged me. With both arms. I froze. But it wasn’t sexual. It was . . . nice. Rick had told them not to touch me, but Tandy was an empath and he had emotional needs that were different from most humans’. Uncertainly, I patted his back. Tandy was skinny to the point of emaciation, his shoulder blades sharp beneath my palm, his spine a line of acorns. I wondered how he ate, being so attuned to the emotions of others. When others were hungry, was he? When they were overfull, was he? I had some herbal mixtures that might help him eat more. Relax more. Surely there was a legal herb somewhere that helped empaths tune out the rest of the world. Marijuana would probably work perfectly, but Rick had said something about a drug test and I figured that particular illegal herb would be tested for. I needed to do some research.

Tandy stepped back without releasing me, his hands holding my upper arms. He studied my face, but I had a feeling that he was really studying my emotions, feeling his way through them the same way I felt my way through the soil when I needed to plant something new into an existing bed, trying to see if the plants nearby were willing to accept a newcomer, trying to see if the nutrients were the right ones to succor the new rootlet or seed. Leaning in, he softly said, “No one worries about me.”

“Oh. No, Tandy. I do worry about you. We all do.”

I didn’t know how to categorize his expression; calling it a smile was to trivialize it, to make it less significant. The light of it brightened his face and made the Lichtenberg figures more pronounced, the flesh between more pale. And his eyes seemed to glow with happiness. It was an overreaction to my words.

“Really,” he said, his voice holding some emotion that might have fallen under the category of wonder. “No one.”

I patted his forearm and backed out of his embrace. It was just too bizarre. And unfamiliar. And awkward. Though in some odd way, the embrace reminded me of the way I had hugged the tree earlier. He stepped back and I entered the suite. Occam’s eyes found me instantly, his expression hooded.

JoJo stepped between Tandy and me and closed the door, offering a flat box centered with three-fourths of an oozing, cheesy, vegetable-laden, sausage-covered pie. Tentatively, I took a slice, the crust crispy and doughy all at the same time.

Tandy murmured softly under his breath. “She’s never eaten pizza before,” he said. That stopped the chatter in the room as every eye turned to me. Not meeting anyone’s gaze, I bit into the pizza. And I nearly swooned at the taste as it practically exploded in my mouth. It was fabulous. Spicy. Greasy. Fantastic. Wonderful.

Pizza was . . . delicious. Almost as good—in a totally different way—as the Krispy Kreme donuts.

I instantly began thinking of how to make bread that would rise like the pizza dough and which herbs to add to my homemade canned tomato paste to make it taste like this. Then whose cheese might make it even better. Maybe goat cheese and dried tomatoes. Basil, which I could easily coax to sprout. I took another slice and chewed, differentiating the flavors into the base herbs and spices. There was a lot of oregano on it, and I grew the best oregano in the county. My pizza would be even better than this one.

I was halfway through the second slice when Rick cleared his throat and the half-heard babble of the team ceased. I opened my eyes, took a quick glance around the room, and sat in the empty seat—the same one as before.

“First,” Rick said, “I’m sorry.”

I realized he was looking at me, talking to me, and I didn’t know what to do. So far as I could remember at the moment, no man had ever apologized to me. I held up a finger, asking for a minute, using the excuse of chewing to find some equilibrium, swallowed, and said, “Ummm. Okay. I accept your apology.” I thought a moment more and added, “But, I have to warn you, you ever bend over me and trap me again, I’m probably gonna kick you again.”

“It’s a push-button reflex,” T. Laine said. “He pushed your buttons, you kicked. You both need to think before you act.”

That sounded like sensible advice, something Leah would have said, and I nodded. One of the others poured Coke into a cup and passed it to me. I drank cola and continued eating pizza. It was a small slice of heaven.

Rick said, “We have nonfamily abductions of four females. The family of Girl One was contacted with ransom demands and proof of life of the abductee. Then the family of Girl Two was contacted via an MO that falls within acceptable parameters used by HST in the past, with exactly the same ransom demands and delivery account numbers. Yet we have the body of Girl One, in a ditch near Dead Horse Lake Golf Course.”

The room went silent. Tandy went pale and gripped the arms of his chair.

The photo of a girl lying on the ground, on the crime board I’d seen in the conference room at FBI headquarters, leaped into my mind. She had been dead. Thrown away. Like garbage.

“That’s near Wyatt School,” T. Laine said, putting a hand on Tandy’s knee. I couldn’t tell that she did anything, but he drew a breath and relaxed, and T. Laine patted his knee before removing her hand. It was the sort of gesture a mother did for a child, but it felt like more. I wondered if she had used a spell to help him stay calm when the emotions of everyone in the room were spiking.

Rick had continued, using acronyms I didn’t understand. “Prelim PM indicates several things pertinent to the case. Liver temp suggests TOD was around the time of ransom delivery. External physical assessment also indicates that except for the COD, she was not abused or mistreated. COD is a blow to the back of the head, showing significant bruising, indicating it might have occurred at the time of the kidnap, and might have resulted in her later death. The word might was emphasized by the forensic pathologist. She’ll know more about the blow in a few hours, after they open her up.”

I had a short list of acronyms to look up. PM, TOD, COD, and open her up, though I sorta understood them from the context.

“HST does not kill or abuse kidnap victims, which is why they have been so successful,” Rick said. “However, the forensic pathologist suggests that the girl fought her attackers and was injured early on, perhaps with a wound that didn’t look immediately life-threatening. Bruising on the brain, called”—he looked at his tablet—“a secondary hematoma or secondary hemorrhage, can happen much later.

“Assuming the ransom demands were made according to a sequence, the Clayton family should have received a call hours ago. It didn’t come. However, the death of the victim may have complicated the situation for the unsubs.”

“Oh!” I said, jumping up and handing Rick the papers I had somehow ended up sitting on. “Dawson, the man who used to be addicted to vampire blood, had a connection to the church way back when. If someone in the church wanted to do harm to vampires, they might have called him. I need to talk to Sister Erasmus to verify that he’s one of the backsliders she mentioned.

“I couldn’t find any connection between Dawson and the HST, but I don’t have access to all the databases you do, and I don’t know how to dig deep electronically. He would have known the ins and out of vampire households because of being their dinner.”

I ate more pizza as Rick went through the poor-quality copies. “Huh,” he muttered. “I tend to forget about microfiche. I bet there’s not a lot about vampires in the old papers.”

“If you know their names at the time and what to look for,” JoJo said. “The way they changed names to protect their lifestyles—”

“Lives of the rich and fangy,” T. Laine interrupted. “Or maybe, not lives. Undead. So, undeaths of the rich and fangy.”

“Okay. Back to what we were doing before Nell arrived. JoJo, see what you can find that might link Simon Dawson with HST. Nell, we might need you to ask your Sister Erasmus if the men have been back on church grounds and if they have any current church contacts.” He tapped the photocopies and changed the subject. “Debrief on the trailer park canvass,” Rick said. “T. Laine’s pair first.” Which reminded me about that part of the day’s planned activities, events that had taken place without me.

T. Laine was chewing and waved at Tandy, saying what might have been, “Him first.”

I started to tell Tandy to keep eating and let the others talk, but stopped myself. It really wasn’t my place. But his wrists were more scrawny than mine, and I was far too skinny.

“Three who didn’t want to discuss anything,” Tandy said. “Emanations of guilt, anger, and fear. Probably hiding weed or other small-time crimes. Honest confusion about the missing girls. Two occupants who didn’t come to the door, though I could feel people inside. And one very chatty type.”

“She asked Tandy to take off his clothes so she could see more of his ‘tattoos,’” T. Laine supplied, making little quotation marks in the air with one hand. “Said if she liked what she saw he could come inside for beer and fun and games.”

Tandy blushed. The others laughed. Scowling, I shoved a piece of pizza at Tandy and said, “Eat.” Tandy looked at me in surprise. “You haven’t eaten anything since I got here.” Tandy took the piece and nibbled on the point. “Eat!” I said, putting a faint command into my voice. Tandy took a big bite and chewed. Swallowed. He ate two more bites.

And I had my first taste of understanding the life of an empath. Because Tandy picked up the emotions of the people around him, it was easy to make him do most anything. This was not good. Very, very not good. But I kept my opinions and my thoughts to myself until he finished the pizza slice. “Okay,” I said then. “That’s good. You can stop unless you’re still hungry.”

He looked at me and smiled uncertainly. “I’m . . . hungry.” He took another piece and ate it too, with most of a beer as chaser.

Occam smiled at me with an expression I couldn’t read. T. Laine watched the exchange with a dawning comprehension and glanced at me, her expression appraising and calculating and seeming surprised. As Tandy ate, T. Laine took up the narrative, and I listened for anything that sounded promising about the missing girls and the trailer park, but didn’t hear anything interesting, except that when T. Laine cast what she called a “searching working,” she picked up traces of magic, old and worn. They were probably spells from a water witch who had moved out long ago. And she remembered hearing sirens from off in the distance as they worked the trailer park.

The second pair of canvassers agreed that, on the surface, there was nothing about Mira at the trailers. Or there wasn’t until Occam had shifted and sniffed around. He had some pithy Texan slang for a leopard having to wear a collar and leash, but he’d picked up the scent of wet dog. The scent pattern was similar to the dog they had smelled at Mira’s, but he admitted that, “All dogs smell the same to me. Rank and doggy.” Coincidence. But we weren’t ignoring coincidence now. We were reporting everything, even seemingly unimportant things, in case they became important later.

Unfortunately, the mobile home where Occam had acquired the scent had been vacated recently, and the tenants had left no forwarding address. They had paid in cash and had been asked to provide neither identification nor references, had lived there for two months, and had disappeared three nights past. They rented week to week under the names Perry Mason and Paul Drake. Occam found that highly amusing and told us that the names were characters from an old detective TV show. Apparently Occam lived and breathed old black-and-white shows—cartoons and films, with a preference for Popeye, who I had never heard of.

I decided that most of an investigator’s job was boring. I’d rather be working in the garden, getting caught up with my fall-weather work, not that I’d tell them that. Tandy stood up like someone had stabbed him, his eyes wide. He said, “Run!” sounding panicked and strangled all at once.

The others all dove for weapons. Rick shoved Tandy and me to the floor behind the sofa and rolled to one side.

Bullets rained into the room at waist height. I covered my head with my arms and curled into a tight ball. Splinters, debris shrapnel, and glass from the curtained window went everywhere, cutting into my skin. The noise was horrific. No one in the room returned fire.

Tandy’s mouth was open; I thought he might be screaming. I reached out with both hands and pulled him into my arms, wrapping myself around him. I shoved emotion into him the same way I might shove purpose into a seed—grow, be content, all is well. Tandy shuddered and I felt him take a breath. I tightened my arms around him and wrapped my legs around him too, keeping him safe. Claiming him.

Over the roaring deafness in my ears, I heard Rick shouting orders. He and two others raced from the room. I didn’t look up. I didn’t move until Tandy tapped my forearm and wriggled free. He gestured me and Paka—who I hadn’t even noticed—into the next room, which he locked behind us. This room had two beds, no seating area, no kitchen. The bed linens were made, though the room was lived-in and smelled musky with male sweat. Tandy and Occam’s room. This one had no bullet holes, and Tandy pushed Paka and me to the floor between the two beds. He pulled pillows and a blanket off one bed and over us. Then he pulled a mattress over us too, like a fort the young’uns might make on rainy days. I didn’t think it would be much protection but I didn’t object. It was better than the nothing we’d had. Pea chittered and inspected the mattress fort with the playful energy of kitten.

Paka repositioned the pillows, patting them like a cat might, until the shape pleased her, then pulled me against her body and curled around me, sliding the blanket over us. It was dark in the cavern of pillows and blankets. It felt safe though we clearly weren’t. Tandy spooned into me from my other side, pulling Paka’s arms and mine around him. His skin was cold and his flesh beneath flaccid. Belatedly terrified, feeling all our fear.

Something dampened my clothes at my waist. Carefully I said, “Paka, you’uns bleeding.”

“It is nothing. I will shift and heal.”

“The others?”

“I smell blood. But not death.”

“Okay. That’s good, I reckon. Tandy?” I asked. He made a mewling sound of terror, his breath panting, heart racing, pounding against his rib cage. I forced myself to think. To figure out what needed to be done. “I’m okay. Paka says the others are going to be fine.” I crossed my fingers at the interpretive lie. “I want you to become calm.” I pushed a feeling of tranquility into him. The mewling sound stopped. After a few breaths, Tandy’s skin grew marginally warmer.

He said, “Thank you.”

I nodded, knowing he could feel my movement in the dark. “I thank you for getting us in here and safe. You done goo—did well.” My ears were coming back on because over the ringing in them, I heard sirens in the distance. Later, I heard Rick and police officers. Tandy eased us out of the little mattress fort he had made and pushed the mattress back into place. He gave us each a bottle of water, and I realized that Tandy might have some type of compulsion ability himself, because I was suddenly thirsty. I drank the whole bottle and followed him back into the main room, while Paka shifted and healed herself.

It was a mess, covered in Paka’s blood and debris from the shooting. I stood in the doorway with Tandy observing as Rick talked to the local police and to the hotel manager while being bandaged by a paramedic. I understood that the rooms were a crime scene and the unit would have to vacate the premises. PsyLED was no longer welcome in the hotel. The police said that we might not be safe anywhere in the city and should consider moving to a safe house, which they could arrange by tomorrow night. That was going to mean twenty-four hours living and sleeping in the van.

I heard myself say, “You can sleep at my place. You can’t use your cells or the Internet, but I’ll know if anyone comes onto the property.” Instantly I wished I hadn’t spoken, but it was too late. Just that fast, I had houseguests.

*   *   *

I stopped on the way home to pick up money from Old Lady Stevens, trading most of it for a slab of bacon, two dozen eggs, a chicken ready for the pot, and a small beef roast. I would have hours alone at the house before they came. The three mouser cats met me on the porch, mewling and unhappy at having been left outside all day. I opened the door and they raced inside, one of them leaving behind a dead vole on the threshold. I made a face, said, “Thank you,” and kicked it off the porch into the yard. Reaching inside, I turned on a light and closed the door behind me.

In the kitchen, I put two small pieces of dry firewood into the stove, winter wood to heat the oven fast, but not enough to make it too hot for baking and cooking, and started a double batch of bread. The stove would warm the main rooms well—the distant rooms, not so much, but I had lots of quilts and blankets. I took a quick shower with the leftover tepid water, pulled out a couple dozen splinters I hadn’t noticed until now from my upper arm and applied a salve and thin bandages, filled the water tank, pulled on winter thermal underwear and a pair of overalls for modesty, and put out washcloths and towels. I started coffee, tea, and then put a load of bloody and damaged clothes into the washing machine on the back porch and refilled the water tank again.

I was still moving fast, as if some part of me didn’t want to slow down, because the PsyLED unit was coming, once they finished with the crime scene experts, filed reports with local police, the FBI, maybe ATF, and the director at PsyLED central. They also had packing to do and showers to take before coming here. It would take them hours.

I was still in shock at the gunfire attack. And at having invited the team to stay here. And even more shocked that Rick had said yes to a place with no Internet or cell service. But he’d said that no one would expect them to be here, and they could get caught up on paperwork and such. And, though he hadn’t mentioned it, Occam and Paka could race over the mountain ridge in cat form and spy on the church compound. I wasn’t stupid. The location of my property was valuable to them. And they had to wonder if I’d missed something about the church’s involvement.

Rather than think about my former church affiliation being the main—only?—reason that they had asked me to join the team, I sliced the bacon and placed a dozen slices in a cast-iron frying pan to sizzle slowly, along with peppers and my bean-herb mix. While it cooked, I put clean sheets on all the mattresses, wondering if they’d mind sharing beds. They were all queen-sized beds, so there was plenty of room, but to people who likely grew up with their own rooms and beds, it might smack of an invasion of privacy. To be on the safe side, I rolled up blankets and lay one up the middle of each of the two upstairs beds. Rick and Paka would be downstairs in John’s and Leah’s old room, and I left their bed undivided. I brought my cot downstairs and set it up in the storage nook behind the kitchen, where I could add wood through the night to keep the house warm.

I filled lanterns and set them in every room, and cleaned and lit the lantern hanging at the landing in the bend in the stairs, to brighten their way. The lanterns were attached to the walls with screws and bolts so they couldn’t be accidentally kicked over in the night. Modern people—nonchurch people—weren’t used to doing without electric lights and if they needed to get up in the night, in an unfamiliar place, the access to more primitive lights would help.

I had no illusions about how long the stored power would last with so many people here; it wouldn’t be long. A few hours at most. Bigger solar arrays and a battery system hadn’t been something John bothered with, not once he knew that he’d never have children running up and down the stairs and his other wives had left. And I didn’t have the money for an upgrade I would seldom use.

When the bacon was done I poured the spicy drippings into the beans that had slow-cooked all day, tasted them, chopped the bacon, adding that to the beans too, and placed the pot to the side to keep warm. I liked my beans spicy.

The church compound had electricity, but most households didn’t use it often, as it tied them to the grid, made them dependent on systems that they believed would eventually disappear. Not the zombie apocalypse, as all the zombie films suggested, but the “illegal and immoral government closing down the electrical grid to punish and control its own citizens.” Stupid thinking, because the best way to control humans has always been to give them the things that they want, not deprive them.

I cleaned my tiny bathroom and moved my few toiletries into the storage nook off the kitchen. I took a look at the cistern up the hill. It was fine, as was the windmill at the back of the property, the sound a soft, accustomed creak in the night wind. I dust mopped the floors and took the rugs outside to shake before deciding that the rooms looked nice enough for company.

Back inside, I worked the dough again and put it in trays, leaving it to second rise. With the bread from earlier in the week, I’d have six loaves. Beans, rice, bread, and a salad was a full meal for a large number of people. I started the rice cooking and realized that my hands were shaking and I was jittery and uneasy.

Guns shooting in a hotel.

People in my house. Overnight.

Men and women. Guests.

People. In my house.

I had made a dreadful mistake.

And in the middle of what might, just maybe, be a full-blown panic attack, I wondered who had been shooting in the hotel. Shooting at the suite. Had they followed me there? “Ohhh . . . ,” I breathed, “nooo . . .” What if someone—Jackie?—had been watching the library, a place I was known to frequent, and had followed me from the library to the hotel? I hadn’t noticed anyone behind me, but I wasn’t used to the van and had been less observant than usual. Was it possible that I was the target? But then, it didn’t seem like something even Jackie would do. He would much more likely have lain in wait in the hotel parking lot and killed me there, or here at the house. The hotel had security cameras inside and out, and the PsyLED team had been studying them before I left.

Rick had said he would bring photos of anyone suspicious for me to look at. Did he think I was the target? Or did he think I had led the shooters to the hotel to kill them? If I was the target, then it had to be churchmen who fired the shots, churchmen who chose to kill me and take out the PsyLED police at the same time. Jackie and Joshua might think they had such a reason. Vengeance.

Even more rattled, I turned off the electric lights, pulled off my shoes, grabbed a quilt, and raced out back and into the shadows beneath the trees. I sat with my back against the big sycamore tree, my bare feet on the roots that entangled with the poplar tree nearby, and pulled the quilt over me. The tree bark was mostly smooth, the tree itself humming with power and life. I started shaking, quaking like a leaf in the wind. I turned and laid my cheek on the sycamore, my left palm on the trunk. Tears gathered in my eyes. This was all wrong.

People were coming to stay in my house.

Overhead the leaves stirred in the night wind, dry, desiccated, shifting together, a murmuring, whispering sound, vaguely soothing. A rain of leaves fell around me, shushing, landing on my head and shoulders and the blanket over me like a blessing, a benediction. In the distance, a barred owl called, the who-cooks-who-cooks-for-you notes carrying on the cold wind. I shivered and pressed almost violently into the tree. Far away, a second owl answered the six-note cry. Territory marking, maybe. Or family talking, taking note of who was where in the dark.

People. Coming to my house. Onto my land. My territory. To stay here.

But . . . it wasn’t the church people. These people weren’t going to hurt me, shoot me, burn my home. These people were going to simply sleep here. Paka. Occam. Tandy. T. Laine. JoJo. Rick.

When I managed a breath, it shuddered in my throat and I wiped my nose on the back of my hand, dried my tears on my long john shirt. It wasn’t church people. These people wouldn’t hurt me. “Okay,” I breathed to the tree. “I can do this.”

I gulped breaths, calming my heart, and shifted position until I could place both hands on the dirt, both soles on the roots, my spine and the back of my head against the tree, looking up into the limbs. It was miserable cold, but I could feel the ground beneath me, solid and sandy, rock and stone and fill dirt, clay and layers of long-rotten leaves, water rising through the ground, under pressure, surface water falling down the hills, under gravity. Water spreading out, feeding rootlets and moistening seeds and dancing through the air as it splashed over rocks. My breath came easier, and the panic began to slide away. With the sun gone, the earth was at rest and yet never resting. Always alive and breathing and moving and pumping nutrients. Animals slept in the nooks of trees and rocks, in nests, in dens, and curled in tall grasses. Others hunted. I reached out with my senses, into the ground, and felt of the earth, the contentment that was life, and the health of the trees.

But . . . something was different. I repositioned my palms and my feet, pressing down on the ground into full contact, fingers and toes reaching and pushing.

There was still something wrong. Something dark that had been there ever since Brother Ephraim’s life was taken by the land. I had expected that the disturbance would settle, would integrate with the land quickly. But the new life force was still a darkness that raced away from me, to cower at the far boundaries of the property, like shadows deep in the ground, like death in the deeps. It was strongest at the edge of my property and the Stubbins’ property, right at the place where the church boys had crossed over to get onto my land, and . . . something was different there too, above- and belowground. New roots and new growth. Thick and far too mature to have not been there only days ago, yet clearly it was new growth. I couldn’t tell what the plants were at first. They weren’t trees. Not shrubs. Not grasses. More like . . . vines, several species and varieties all growing together, tangling as they rose.

One was catbrier, a local weed that had hooked claws on it, like a cat’s. One was silver leaf nightshade, a deadly plant if eaten. And the third was poison oak. A wild rose threaded itself through the thorny mess. All of them were growing out of season. They hadn’t been there before. And now they were. They were creating a wall.

When the boys ran back over the crest of the hill, I remembered wishing that I was a witch. That I could snap my fingers and create a magical ward there to stop people from crossing over to my land. Like a protective wall.

The wood was building one for me.

Surprise, and something darker, like primitive joy, flashed through me. And a breath of fear about what such an act on the part of the woods might mean. I curled my fingers into the dirt beside the sycamore roots, digging in with my fingernails. Trying to see what else was different.

On the far side of the wall of thorns, a creature paced, back and forth, back and forth. It wasn’t human. It walked on four legs and through its feet came curious vibrations, deep and menacing, like the sound of growls carried through the creature’s body and into the ground, to me. The darkling shadow that I felt on and in my land, the shadow that raced through the deeps, wanted the creature, was reaching toward it. But the being that inspected the thicket of thorns wasn’t aware of the darkness, separated from it by the new wall and by the power that marked the boundaries of Soulwood. I felt frustration from the one beneath the ground and fury from the one pacing aboveground. Three new things on and in my wood, a wall, a creature, and a . . . a thing that shouldn’t be there, that should have been soothed and absorbed, but was still independent, dark, and frantic-seeming. The darkness of shadows was agitated, spinning and rootling through the earth, reaching out, trying to get free. But the borders of my woods stopped it, a boundary in the soil. It was trapped. Inside Soulwood. With me.

That was disquieting. I reached out, trying to soothe the shadow as I might soothe a rootlet or encourage a seed. Rather than lean in, as plants did to receive the soothing, or race away to avoid my touch, it broke apart and fled in streamers deep into the ground. In an instant, it was gone. On the other side of the spreading wall of thorns, the four-legged creature was moving away as well.

I pulled my thoughts out of the ground and back into myself; I opened my eyes. The night had grown darker and deeper, and the moon hung as if trapped in the grasping limbs of distant trees. Despite the darkness of shadows in the ground, and the wall of thorny vines that hadn’t been there before, and the four-legged creature on the Stubbins side of the property boundary, I felt much better: calmer, settled, if far colder. I breathed the icy air, tasting snow on it, feeling the sting of fog freezing. The house windows glimmered with lantern light. The smell of burning wood danced on the night breeze. I hugged myself, thinking.

Despite the edicts of the church, I had never had to be hospitable to guests. I had few social skills to draw upon. I would likely be considered taciturn and remote and uncommunicative. A prickly stick-in-the-mud. I also wasn’t human. But tonight I’d try to act against my nature and be gracious, courteous, and genial. I didn’t expect to be successful at any of it.

I went inside, standing near the stove so I might warm up. I turned up a lantern, added a bit more wood to the fire, and tested the dough, which wasn’t quite ready to go into the oven. My toes were frigid but felt good pressed into the wood flooring, connected to the forest outside.

I wasn’t afraid—not exactly—of anything I had sensed in the land, but it was . . . disturbing. I splattered water droplets on the stovetop in various places to test the temperature. Moved the rice off the hottest part of the hob.

People in my house.

I wondered if I would be able to sleep in a houseful of people. I hadn’t done that since I was twelve. The panicky feeling welling up in me again, I pulled on boots and went to the garden. In the dark, by touch and feel, I harvested the last of the salad greens, hoping there would be no frost and the plants might yield some more, and raked the mulch up higher over the plants as protection. I pulled up a mess of turnips. I gathered the clean clothes out of the washer and into a plastic basket. Back inside, I hung the clothes up to dry on wood racks placed behind the cookstove to humidify the house as they dried, and turned on the overhead fans for a bit to move the warm air around. I cut up a fresh salad, put the greens to cook, and the turnips themselves to the side for later. I got out jars of preserves in case someone had a sweet tooth. Busy. I needed to stay busy.

I began pulling dried herbs off the shelf to make a tea to stimulate Tandy’s appetite. The boy needed to eat.

*   *   *

The beans and rice were done and the bread was just coming out of the oven when I felt Paka racing across the land. Another cat ran beside her, through the dark and up the hill, toward the church’s compound. I felt them startle a deer and, in the way of cats, they changed direction midstride, leaping to the side, almost choreographed. Together they took down the deer and started eating even as the buck struggled and kicked.

City folk would have been horrified—the ones who didn’t hunt or fish. For me, it was simply part of the wood. Part of the land. Part of the cycle of life and death and rebirth.

The van’s lights cut through the trees in strips of light and shadow as it pulled up the hill and into the drive. The PsyLED team—the ones still in human shape—piled out of the van. I had company. And just in time. Tandy’s first appetite tea was freshly brewed.

*   *   *

Rick had brought groceries. As if he’d lived here all his life, he put things into the refrigerator and freezer, while my mouser cats trailed around behind him, mewling as if he carried raw fish. I sat in my chair at the table and watched as he lifted the top off the bean pot and tasted the beans with a spoon. He pronounced them perfect. “As good as my mama’s. And you made rice. Even more perfect. Red beans and rice. It must be Monday.” Which made me blink because I didn’t make beans and rice only on Mondays, and it wasn’t Monday anyway. Maybe it was a New Orleans thing. Without a change in expression, he asked, “Where are Occam and Paka?”

It was a trap. I knew that even as I answered. “Eating a deer. They’ll be a while before they get to the compound. And then they’ll stop to eat again on the way home.”

“How do you know what’s happening with them?”

I shrugged. I knew. I wasn’t sure how I knew, as this knowing was different and unexpected. It had started when Brother Ephraim fed my woods. How it worked was something I was still figuring out.

T. Laine and JoJo started setting the table, asking me which stoneware to use, and hunting through the drawers for flatware, in the cabinets for glasses and paper napkins. They were stunned that I didn’t have paper anything in the kitchen, washing cloth ones as needed instead. “Paper’s wasteful,” I said, pointing to where the cloth napkins were stored.

Sounding horrified, JoJo asked, “Toilet paper?”

I let a tiny smile claim my mouth. “I do use toilet paper,” I said primly, knowing my mama would be horrified if she heard me talking about such personal subjects with a guest at the kitchen table. “But I don’t have much on hand. Be sparing.”

“Good God in heaven,” T. Laine muttered. “How do people live like this?”

“Efficiently,” I said sharply. “Cheaply. Off the grid as much as possible.”

T. Laine’s face tightened, an expression like a mask, covering up whatever she was really feeling, holding the world at bay. “Don’t get your panties in a wad. I get the theory. I just don’t get the practice. Is that why you only have lights lit in the rooms where we are?”

“Mostly,” I said. “With this many people, we’ll run out of stored power and be forced to use lanterns early, so the lanterns are in place, some already lit.”

“So the night we visited . . . ?”

“I ran out of power shortly after you left.”

“No cable? No network news? No TV at all?”

“Movies on DVD,” I said. “If you go into withdrawal, there’s a battery-powered radio with a good antenna.”

T. Laine said, “Son of a witch on a switch,” which was cussing for witches, or so I’d heard.

There was a lot more grumbling, mostly under their breath, but with so many people working, dinner was served within half an hour after they arrived, Rick ladling up beans and rice, T. Laine cutting a loaf of bread, JoJo passing out beer and pouring well water into glasses, and Tandy sipping his tea while trying to hide a look of distaste. I watched and let people serve me in my own house, knowing that these activities—things they could control—were helping to calm and settle them.

Three of the team had new wounds and bandages. Rick’s was the worst, with blood seeping through his dress shirt. When he came near, I said, “Paka said she would shift into her cat and heal. She and Occam shifted and they’re feeling fine.” Rick’s face went stony hard. “You’re still wounded from the catnip sex. You can’t shift into your cat, can you?” He didn’t reply, and I said, “You mentioned a werewolf called Brute who’s stuck in wolf form. You’re stuck in human form, aren’t you?”

JoJo said, “It isn’t something he talks about.” I turned to the pierced and tattooed woman. Her hair had been fluffed out in tiny ringlets, her skin oiled and shining. She had slashing cuts on her cheeks, the result of flying glass from the shooting, but in the shadows of the lanterns she was all angles and sharp planes, shadow and light, like an African priestess. “It hurts, not being able to shift. Hurts like hell. He’s learned to live with pain for most of the lunar cycle, but it nearly drives him crazy during the full moon. He has a music spell he plays those three days.”

T. Laine said, “I’m working on a backup spell to help him deal, but he needs the services of a full moon witch coven, and those are harder to find.”

“I wasn’t supposed to know?” I asked.

“It was Rick’s place to tell,” Tandy said.

“I was going to tell you before the full moon,” he said, grudging and resentful.

“Okay,” I said. He had a timetable. I understood that. It was a way of maintaining control in a life that had little. “I got a healing salve that will help your cuts.” I brought out a jar of salve and set it on the table. “Arnica, gotu kola, calendula, yarrow, and aloe. I got one without aloe, if anyone is allergic.”

As if it was an invitation, they gathered and sat around my large kitchen table and JoJo applied some of the gel to her facial wounds. “My gramma would like this,” she said, which sounded like high praise. And the mood seemed to lighten, which was a good thing. It had gotten tense in the house.

My guests served dinner, and we ate. No one talked business or the cases at dinner, focusing on downtime, as they called it, telling jokes and picking at each other just like families did. Pea jumped onto the table, and Rick fed her small chunks of bacon from the beans, which she seemed to love. The mousers took up places on the couch and on the open shelves, bored. I sat quietly, taking it all in, and it was . . . nice. Pleasant.

I feared it might take a long time to find pleasure in the silence of my empty home once they were gone again. Perhaps a very long time. Perhaps never. So I savored the moments, paying attention to every small detail, watching Tandy eat every morsel and complain about being too full, as if that was uncommon, letting my emotions take a respite in the presence of so much activity and chatter. It was like my childhood all over again—the good parts of it, the parts I hadn’t realized that I missed. It left me with an impression of melancholy and nostalgia and a peculiar sense of regret that I couldn’t put my finger on and tried to banish, to no avail.

*   *   *

After dinner, T. Laine and JoJo washed dishes, saying it was their turn, and Tandy sat on the sofa with his tablet, tapping keys, occasionally rubbing his stomach and hiding tiny burps.

Rick and I went over the hotel security camera footage of the shooting, which required the constant moving of the mouser cats from the desk and his laptop to the floor and to Rick’s lap. The cats were drawn to him like a magnet, and I pretended not to feel jealousy at their affection for him. They never chased me like that, but then I wasn’t a werecat, I just fed and provided for them, which should have earned me some loyalty but didn’t.

In the first footage taken from an outside camera, an older-model, dark-colored SUV, with a big, roomy cab, raced into the hotel parking lot. Two figures in the front seats stayed in the SUV, barely visible through the tinted windows. Two others leaped from the passenger side and raced through the outer doors into the hotel. All I could tell about the fuzzy images was that the men wore toboggans, the kind that covers the face except for eyeholes. And they carried what might be fancy assault rifles.

A second camera picked up the men as they raced in from the parking lot and through the lobby, a big man in front, a smaller just behind, as if being protected. There were three seconds of visual as the hotel clerk dropped behind the front desk.

A third camera showed the men racing through the hallway and up the fire stairs. This video camera was crisp, and I could make out more details. The man in front was heavy but fast. The man in back was lithe and wiry, probably average height. Both men wore jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots. There wasn’t audio, but I could tell that the heavier man was stomping with each step. Both were in good shape, running without stopping to the fourth floor, and when they paused at the fourth-floor landing to confer, neither appeared winded. Some kind of discussion took place at the landing. Maybe directions, orders, last-minute reminders of a plan.

The big man tore open the fire door, and they raced into the hallway and directly to the suite. They positioned themselves to either side of the door, the bigger man nodded, and they began to fire. The wood of the door and the glass of the window exploded outward and inward, shrapnel flying. The men fired, changed magazines, and continued firing until the second magazines were empty. Then they turned and raced back the way they had come, down the stairs, through the lobby, and back into the SUV, still idling at the front door. The vehicle gunned away, leaving a cloud of black smoke. The license plate was missing. I thought the SUV was dark green. Or maybe dark gray.

Rick said, “The others have seen this. What do you think?”

I shook my head, uncertain. “The little guy moves like one of the kidnappers, jerky, quick-like. There was a big man there too. Their toboggans match, both with a stripe and diamonds on the forehead. Their clothes could come from anywhere. Play it again, please?” I watched, shaking my head, trying to force it all to make sense as the shootings took place again, and then a third time.

Rick asked, “Could they be churchmen?” When I didn’t reply, he said, “Nell?” His voice was nudging, pushing me to make a claim one way or the other.

“They’re dressing to look like churchmen. Flannel shirts. Work boots. But the jeans aren’t hand-stitched. I can see a leather tag on the little one’s belt when they talk at the top of the stairs. The toboggans are store-bought headwear, and no churchman would wear a store-bought toboggan. They don’t work as well or keep people as warm. It almost feels like they’re half churchmen. Play it again, please?”

Silent, Rick pushed buttons on his tablet and repositioned a cat whose brushing tail was in the way. “We’re starting over, looking at everything, beginning with the FBI’s info, which we received before we left town. Some of their analysts are still proposing that the church might have taken them in, might be providing them a safe haven.”

“Why?” When he looked at me blankly, I asked, “Why do the feds think that?”

“Probably because neither the FBI’s nor PsyLED’s analysts can find where they moved on. HST is here in Knoxville. We’re pretty sure of that. So where else would a cult hole up but with another cult?”

That sounded like wishful thinking to me, but I wasn’t experienced enough to feel comfortable voicing that opinion. I didn’t know what to make of it. Not exactly. But one thing was pretty clear. “I had been thinking, but”—I stopped—“they didn’t follow me from the library. They came in fast, and they knew which room we were in. They were after the team, not just me. If the shooters are churchmen, then they’ve been watching long enough to follow someone in and get the room number. Or they got the information from a hotel clerk earlier.”

I sipped my tea, thinking. “Something else about it doesn’t look like churchmen. God’s Cloud of Glory trains hunters, not shoot-’em-up assassins or Old West gunslingers.” Slowly I said, “But the one in front moved like a farmer, not a soldier, not a police officer. He ran with heavy feet, not light feet, but stomping. The smaller man is more light-footed.” I frowned, talking my way through it. “He flowed. He moved like a dancer.”

“Or a predator,” Rick said.

“And there’s an odd back-and-forth movement with their shoulders hunched. It’s strange.” I cocked my head, considering. “Play it again? All the way through?” I watched the entire sequence again from arrival to departure. “The little man,” I said, “he’s in charge. He’s giving orders, except at the end, when it was time to fire. But the bigger man has the experience with the location and maybe the experience with the automatic weapons. There.” I pointed at one short section of the action on the screen. “The way they turn their heads and raise their shoulders. That’s a strange movement. Their heads swivel back and forth the same way, a ducking motion like lowering their heads between their shoulder blades.”

Rick grunted in what sounded like surprise. “I didn’t see that. You’re right. It’s not the same motion a vamp makes, but it’s not . . .” He paused and something like pain crossed his face. “Not normal.”

“I’m guessing you brought all the security footage from the time you checked in, and someone’s been looking through it for the men.”

“Yeah. My copious IT department with their dozens of video-search programs.”

Even I heard the amused sarcasm in the comment.

“Thanks, boss,” JoJo said.

“But it wasn’t as hard to find as expected,” Rick said. “JoJo?”

She typed something on her tablet and new footage appeared on Rick’s laptop. I saw JoJo and Tandy troop into the hotel, carrying gear and a stack of pizza boxes. They were wearing the clothes they had been in before the shooting, and were followed a moment later by a big guy who looked like he knew where he was going. His head was down, so I couldn’t see his face, but his hair was short, dark, and worn in a stubbly brush cut. The cameras followed him as he passed the team, seeming to ignore them as they got on the elevator. When the doors closed, he reversed his course and pressed the UP button, watching the lights as they took the team straight up. He followed and stepped out of the elevator. He went left, then turned around and went to the right. He followed slowly, pausing, then moving on, his head down, but with that odd twisting, ducking motion to the left and the right as he moved. Moments later, he passed the suite, stopped, and went back. He stood in front of the team’s door for a moment before moving at speed back through the hotel to the parking lot. He got into the same SUV with no plates and left, the tailpipe blowing black smoke.

“How did he follow us to the room when we were already inside?” Rick asked.

“Pizza,” I said, giving him a grin. “He followed the pizza smell. Then he stood in the hallway until he heard a voice he recognized.”

Rick asked, “Do you know him?” He punched a button. A photograph of the man appeared on the screen.

I breathed in, a quick intake of air that whistled as my throat tried to close up. This photo might have been pulled off the security video feed, but it had been cleaned up and enhanced. It wasn’t crystal clear, but it was good enough. And it changed everything. I pulled my feet off the floor onto the chair and wrapped my arms around my legs. “Yes. I think so.”

When I didn’t go on, Rick looked at Tandy and back to me, fast, as if he was waiting for cues from the empath. Rick asked, “You want to tell me who?”

“I’m pretty sure his name is Boaz Jenkins,” I said, my words toneless.

“What can you tell us about him?” Rick asked.

“Last I heard, back when I was a girl, he was a churchman with aspirations of becoming an Elder. He’s a paranormal hater from way back. Says all paranormal beings are the devil’s work.”

“Which would make him the perfect person to be brought into the Human Speakers of Truth,” Rick said.

“Satan’s spawn, he called me. He’ s been wanting to burn me at the stake for a decade.” The room was dead quiet, except for the purring of a cat, stretched out on Rick’s feet. “He has two wives, Elizabeth and Mary.” Mary was my friend when I was growing up, but I didn’t say it aloud. It hurt too much.

“Outside of wanting to kill all witches, he’s steady and patient, can sit in a deer stand or a duck blind all day without moving, and he’s a good shot. Brings a lot of game to the compound and gives a portion to the widows and the people too old to hunt or farm. He’s . . .” The words stuck in my throat, and I swallowed to make room for talking. “He’s said to be heavy-fisted with his women and children. Strong. Works hard. Not real bright sometimes. A follower, not a leader. He’d never make it as an elder.”

“You’re upset,” Tandy said.

I scowled at the empath, who was staring at me. “You reading my mind again?”

Tandy shook his head. “You’re sad. Grieving. You loved him?”

“Me?” I squeaked on the word. “Love Boaz? No! But . . . his wife was my best friend when I was little. Her, I like a lot. Liked.” Mary had been rebellious, like me, and we had spent one entire summer skipping sewing class, running into the woods after morning devotional, damming up creeks and chewing gum stolen from my brother, Sam. Talking about dolls and toys and books and God. She hadn’t laughed when I told her that God was everywhere, in every rock and tree and bush and blade of grass.

Marriage to Boaz had changed her. The last time I’d seen her, she was pinch-faced and hadn’t made eye contact with me.

“Who do you think the other man was?” Rick asked. “When they came to shoot,” he clarified.

“I don’t know. Joshua Purdy moves fast,” I said. “He’s mean as a snake and he’d do something like this. So, Joshua. Maybe. My second choice would be Jackie Jr., but I think Jackie’s too smart to pull a stunt like that on his own. He’d send his friends.”

I remember that Sister Erasmus had hinted at divisiveness among the men. Divisiveness sometimes created factions. This could be the work of one. “This looks bad for the church.”

Rick said gently, “Yes. It does. Though perhaps not for the reasons we think. They may or may not be working with the Human Speakers of Truth. If they are a paranormal-hating church faction, then they could have discovered independently that a paranormal unit of law enforcement—PsyLED—was in town and decided to make a statement.”

All that was true, but it still came back to a fight too long avoided. To me hiding in the safety of my house in a defensive position instead of taking the fight—my fight—to the churchmen. I was a mouse hiding in the shadows. If I kept on hiding, someone other than me was going to get hurt. Hurt bad. Killed. Or . . . “Wait,” I said. “What about the two in the front of the SUV? Did you get photographs of them in traffic cameras?”

Rick’s eyes crinkled in a smile that didn’t reach his mouth, and tapped a key and touched a spot on the computer screen. A close-up of the men in the front seats appeared. The driver had changed some since the high school yearbook photo I had of him. But I was fairly certain that he was Simon Dawson Jr. “The backslider,” I said. “And I bet you bunches that the older man in the passenger seat is his daddy, Dawson Sr., both seen on church grounds by Sister Erasmus. This faction of men—the Dawsons and Boaz and the little guy—might have gone over to the HST.”

Rick punched a button on the laptop and said, “Meet Oliver Smithy, the fourth man in the SUV and an HST organizer. This puts HST and a church faction in the same place at the same time, attacking federal agents.”

“Ohhh.” A feeling like static electricity stung its way through me, leaving me overheated and breathless. The church I had run from for so long was even more evil than I had expected or believed.

Through the floor, something moved on the land to the southeast, at the Vaughn farm, something motorized, traveling in the dark, toward my land. I leaped to the front window and picked up a shotgun, checked the load. “Company coming,” I said. Rick followed me, a weapon in each hand, and I was reminded of how fast he was the first time I saw him. Behind me, the lanterns went out one by one.

“An all-terrain vehicle,” I said, pointing, “is moving through the night in our general direction. I think it’s on an old farm road.”

Silently Rick slipped outside. T. Laine followed, a gun in her right hand and something in her left. Probably a magical trinket. JoJo took up a place near me. Tandy stood between the open front door and the window, protected by a wall. “Two people,” he said, loud enough for us all to hear. “One is furious. Her energies and emotions boil like water on a hot stove,” he said. “The other is quiet, uncertain, but determined. Male.” Tandy’s face wore something like awe, the expression crinkling over his pale white skin. “I’ve never experienced emotions over so far a distance before. I love your woods.”

The lights of the ATV cut through the trees, creating long lines of shadows and illuminating strips of land in washed-out tones of gray and green. I walked onto the porch, the night air icy as the roar grew in volume and the lights bumped from the old farm road down to the road in front of my house, and across it onto my land. It swerved to miss the dogs’ graves and then swerved to miss the raised beds. The lights brightened the porch for a moment, where we stood with guns, waiting. The vehicle stopped. The motor went silent, leaving the smell of exhaust, the lights still on but directed at the stairs, not up at us.

“Miz Ingram?” a voice called. “It’s Clarence Vaughn. I got your sister Mindy here. She’s mighty upset and desirous of talking to you. Said you’d give me twenty dollars to bring her here and take her home.”

“Mud?” I had expected Jackie, here to cause trouble. Or at best, Priss, coming to me for safety. And I didn’t have twenty dollars.

Rick holstered one of his guns and pulled a twenty from his wallet, holding it in the glaring headlights. “Mindy, come get the money, and take it to the man.”

My little sister appeared in the dark, long gangly limbs and scrawny body beneath the churchgirls’ clothes. She was wearing a dress with no apron and boots with no stockings, no coat or sweater though it was cold out tonight. Mud took the bill and sprinted back to the ATV, then raced to the porch again.

“Daddy said I wasn’t to come,” she said. “But somebody done took Esther. She was standing with her intended, Jedidiah Whisnut, after evening devotionals, and somebody done run up and hit Jed. When he woke up, Esther was gone. Somebody took her. Priss said you would know what to do.”

Shock stole any response from me, and all I could think of was the note. I had known. He had told me what he intended to do. And I hadn’t done anything to stop this from happening. “Jackie,” I whispered.

“We’ll take care of it,” Rick said.

“Promise?” Mud demanded.

Rick smiled slightly, making me think he had sisters. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.”

“That’s yucky,” my full sib said. “But it’ll do.” She raced to the ATV again and climbed aboard. “Hurry. Afore Daddy knows I’m gone,” she demanded. Vaughn started the engine and made a small circle, the tires grinding into my grass. The ATV roared and quickly disappeared back up onto the disused farm road. Rick took my arm and led me back inside, closing the door on the night. The heat was smothering. I could hardly breathe. But someone placed a cup of tea in my hand and forced me to take a sip. Someone else put a blanket around me, though it was too hot. I sat there. Thinking. All I needed was some of Jackie’s blood. A single drop would do.

I pushed the blanket away and set down the tea, which was cold now. Time must have passed.

Surprising even myself with the words, I said, “I’m going to the church tomorrow for dawn devotional. I’m taking bread and some canned goods. And I’m gonna make a ruckus and get back my sister.”

Rick said, “No. That is not going to happen.”