I let the land heal the last of my headache, ease the ache in my joints, and finish the healing of my lacerations. I would need to remove the stitches this morning or the flesh would start growing over them.
When I pulled myself up from the deep of the land, I was chilled, as inflexible as my maw-maw, and she was in her eighties. The sky was pink, and I knew Occam would be here soon. I raced inside and hurried through a hot shower, dressing in the pants that had dried in front of the woodstove overnight, layering on a T-shirt and a clean plaid flannel shirt under a jacket. The lowering clouds said it was going to get cold tonight, so I put warm boots at the door and wore wool socks around the house.
I put on the scant amount of makeup I allowed myself to wear. You can take the churchwoman out of the church but can’t take the church out of the churchwoman, at least not overnight. I dried my bobbed hair and gooped it up again. Not churchwoman-ish at all. I liked the look. It was funky. That’s what LaLa, my mentor at Spook School, had called it. Funky. Once I figured out it wasn’t a bad word, I went with it too. Mama was likely to have a hissy fit when she saw it. But that was a battle for another day.
Once I was presentable, breakfast fixings were out and warming, and the skillet had been moved to the hottest part of the stove, I got a pair of sharp scissors from my sewing kit and started removing the stitches from my arm and hand. As each one popped, a sensation of electric comfort zipped through me, and I caught myself sighing with pleasure by the time I finished. I stretched my fingers and relaxed fully for the first time in nearly two days.
The moment I felt a car on my road, I added oil to the heated fry pan and whisked the pancake batter. By the time Occam knocked on the door, I was dishing up the first stack of pancakes, and I shouted, “The door’s open!”
“Nell,” he said as he entered, censure in his tone, “I coulda been anybody. One’a your churchmen here to rape and kill. Most anything!”
“Nope,” I said, not letting him see my face as I poured more batter into the hot skillet. “I knew when your cute car started up the mountain. If you hadn’ta been you when you stepped ontothe ground out front, I had plenty of time to get my gun and shoot you.” I put down the spatula and picked up the handgun on the cabinet, set it down again, and carried a pancake-laden plate to the table with a cup of strong coffee.
His eyebrows went up, his lips tightened, and he closed the door behind him. “You really know when someone drives onto your road?”
“Pretty much. Drives, walks, or slithers.” Ever since I fed Brother Ephraim to the wood, I had known with a far greater certainty. A small silver lining to the big black cloud of Ephraim.
“What’s that?” He nodded to the plate I had set on the table.
“Pancakes,” I said, as if he was stupid. “Have a seat.”
“You made me pancakes for my breakfast,” he said, his voice oddly toneless.
“Seemed a mite unhospitable to feed myself while you watched.” I flipped the second batch of pancakes over, and brought butter and syrup to the table.
Occam grabbed my hand, turning it over. His flesh was warm, like a fire burned directly beneath the surface. “You healed up right fast, Nell, sugar. Who took out your stitches?”
“I did,” I said, surprised. “Who else?”
“A doctor?” He said it like it should have been obvious.
I pulled my hand away and placed the syrup on the table. “Now, that would be a waste of time. Try the syrup.” I went back to the stove. “It’s real maple. I traded for it. Been thinking I could make my maple trees sap up on really cold winters. I’m kinda hoping we’ll have a cold one so’s I can try.”
Occam scowled at me. “You’re gonna makesyrup? I hate to remind you, Nell, sugar, but you got yourself a job now. You have to work for a living, and time off is precious and scant.”
“I aim to try,” I said over my shoulder. “Old Man Hodgins on the church compound makes syrup after really cold winters. I thought I might apprentice out to him. The time is less than you might think. Mostly tapping the trees, then cooking the syrup, and both activities are done on Saturdays.” I flipped the pancakes out onto my plate and added more batter to the hot skillet.
I joined Occam at the long table. “You like?” Not that I really needed to ask the question. Occam’s plate was half-empty.
“I love.”
“Good.” I flashed him a smile and was startled to see his eyes on me, golden hints of his cat in them. I returned my gaze to myplate, suddenly uncomfortable at the presence of a man in my widder-woman house. It wasn’t appropriate or proper.
But Occam was a coworker and a friend. And I’d offered him hospitality.
I shut off the judgmental, condemning part of me, and continued. “You can’t tap a tree until it’s twelve inches in diameter, and you need in the neighborhood of thirty to fifty gallons of sap to evaporate down to one gallon of syrup. That’s why the real stuff is so expensive. I have plenty of maple trees bigger in diameter than twelve inches, and they could take a number of taps. Old Man Hodgins has a large-sized evaporator. The weather isn’t cold enough here to get really good sap, but this winter might be cold enough. It happens from time to time.” I stopped. I was babbling. Suddenly not wanting to look up into Occam’s eyes. So I ate.
When Occam’s plate was empty, I got up and brought the last batch of pancakes to him and finished off my own. Then I washed the dishes, cleaned the fry pan, and coated it with a layer of oil so it wouldn’t rust. I set the stove to cool burn with summer wood, refilled the water heater—a never-ending process—let the cats into the garden, and gathered my gear.
I felt Occam watching me with every move, and without knowing why, I never let myself look his way even after I gathered up my keys. Not knowing why I was so uncomfortable, I followed Occam to his car. I sat silent all the way into Knoxville, to PsyLED HQ.
When we got to HQ, we were met with an uproar. Our investigation into psysitopes had morphed overnight into something new. As of dawn, humans were now involved.
SIX
“We have three families, two on one street, one on the street just behind them,” Rick said. “Their houses form a triangle.” He pulled a street map up on the big screen, the three houses marked in red. The triangle was equilateral, all three sides equal.
“That,” T. Laine said, pointing, “fits into a witch working. All three internal angles are congruent to one another and are each sixty degrees. Simple, familiar Euclidean geometry, the first maths taught to witches to bind and control the power of the universe. Now we know for sure we’re dealing with witches.”
