Yummy laughed again and dropped her head against the back window with a soft thud. Her very pale blond hair swung and fell still. “I was born the first time in 1932 in a little town in South Louisiana. I was turned in 1953 by a vamp named Grégoire, who said he loved me and that we should be together forever. He looked fifteen but in the sack he was truly immortal.” Yummy glanced my way. “He could do things with his mouth...”
Yummy was testing the waters, seeing how far she could go. I had learned quickly that no reaction was the best reaction when dealing with paranormal creatures, especially the predatory kind. I didn’t react, just eased through a green light and up behind an early school bus.
Yummy went on. “Sadly, when I woke up dead in 1960—early by Mithran standards—Grégoire had moved on emotionally and sexually and was sleeping with young men and the Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, a former and once-again lover. In the intervening years my brothers went to war and never came back, my father died of a heart attack working in a paper mill, and Mama remarried and moved away.” Yummy’s accent had changed as she spoke, taking on a twang I didn’t really recognize, maybe Frenchy Southern. An accent that was biscuits and gravy with hot sauce and alligator sausage or something. It was slightly like Rick’swhen he was tired or angry, but softer, more melodious. She went on, now sounding a little sad, and I had to wonder if she knew she was giving so much away, or if she just needed to talk and didn’t care what she exposed about herself. “Instead of being head-over-heels in love, I was part of the Clan Arceneau blood family. But I was alone, a blood-sucker of little consequence, living with fangheads I didn’t much like and what amounted to human slaves. I was a small fish in a large fishbowl full of predators, all with bigger teeth than I had.”
She looked my way again and I pretended to be wholly focused on the street and the lights ahead. “I wasn’t interested in group sex, in making new slaves, or in helping to run a vamp’s household. So I learned to fight and went to war, as much as women were allowed to in Uncle Sam’s army back then. When I got back, I took on all comers until I killed one of Grégoire’s favorites and he sent me to Ming of Glass. I’ve been here ever since.”
That was a lot more than I expected her to tell me. I made a soft noise as I digested her story.
“Your turn, Maggot.”
I grinned at the windshield and quoted her. “I’m sure you have a dossier on me. Read it.”
When she stopped chuckling, Yummy said, “I like you more and more, Nell Nicholson Ingram. Okay. How’s this? You were raised in God’s Cloud of Glory Church, became a common-law wife to John Ingram at age twelve, and nursed his wife Leah until she died. Then you married him legally and nursed him until he died. You inherited all his land, which shared a boundary with the church, against which you led a war of ignoring and attrition for years. During that time, you educated yourself at the local library and recently got a GED. You joined PsyLED this year. You graduated in the middle third of your class at PsyLED training school and would have graduated higher had you received a traditional education. As it was, you classified as an expert marksman with two weapons, when you finally took the weapons qualification course, top of your class in poly sci, and bottom of your class in interpersonal interactions.”
“Not bad,” I said. Every special agent had to qualify for weapons, and requalify at regular intervals. It wasn’t as rigorous as the military’s qualification, but it was thorough and I hadn’t been certain where I had positioned in the class or what my final ranking would be. My certificates had come in the mail less than a week ago, and I was proud of them. That Yummy knew all that meant the vampires were capable of doing, or buying, deep background research on federal agents. That was something I’d have to think about later. “I’m not good at flirting or making small talk, but I bake good bread and make excellent soup and have even better survival skills.”
“Now that we’re done showing off,” Yummy said, “and since you aren’t about to let me feed on your soft, beautiful neck, how about pulling over and let’s get breakfast.” She pointed to an IHOP. “I’m paying.”
“Deal,” I said, swinging the wheel and popping into the parking spot. “It’s nearly dawn and it’s your skin that’ll be burned crispy, but I’m hungry enough to risk you dying again.”
“Ain’t you just the sweetest li’l thang.”
I grinned at her as I slid from the warmth into the cold and slammed the door. “I may not have fangs, but I can still bite.”
Yummy on my heels, I thought that my mama would have a conniption fit if I was ever dumb enough to tell her I’d had breakfast with a fanghead. Especially since I wasn’t hungry. But making friends with a paranormal creature who could fight might be smart. If friendship was actually happening here. I wasn’t yet sure.
•••
It was after dawn when I used the inconspicuous keypad to enter the unmarked door between Yoshi’s Deli and Coffee’s On and into the field office of PsyLED Unit Eighteen. As I entered, I gave a halfhearted wave at the very conspicuous roving surveillance camera over the door, and waited until it closed behind me before I slogged up the stairs into thePsyLED offices. I was so exhausted my knees wanted to buckle.
I dropped my gear on the desk in my cubicle and stuck my fingers into the soil of the plants lining the window. A feeling of completeness rushed over me, feeling much like waves rolling over a beach, not that I had ever seen such a thing in person. I’d been close to the ocean when I went to Spook School, but it wasn’t someplace I wanted to go alone. The videos I had seen of the Atlantic made me think of isolation and aloneness and abandonment.
The soil and the mulch and the compost in my plants had the power of the ocean, but without the loneliness and isolation. They were all from Soulwood and connected me to my land instantly. The soil felt a little too dry and I made a mental note to water the plants. As I withdrew my fingers, I brushed them over the herbs, and the mixed scents of three kinds of basil, lemony thyme, and oniony chives filled my nostrils. I locked away my gun and found the coffee machine with my eyes closed.
I pretty much slept through writing my report and the debriefing that followed. And later I could never have explained how I drove all the way to my house and crawled into my bed.
•••
I woke when one cat leaped to my outside bedroom windowsill, yowling that it was time to come back inside. I stumbled out of bed, let the cats in, and fed the mousers dry kibble. Still half-asleep, I added scrap paper to coax the coals alive in the skin-temp firebox of the Waterford Stanley wood-burning cookstove. Living off the grid was time-consuming, never-ending, hard work. Fortunately, thanks to muscle memory and repetition, I could do most of it in my sleep. When I had some flames, I added kindling, hot-burning cedar, and slow-burning oak to the firebox and adjusted the dampers. Topped up the water heater on the back of the stove, testing the warmth with my hand. It was still warm, but not hot. I fumbled around and made a whole pot of coffee in theBunn and scrambled some eggs while bread toasted and water heated. I did not want a tepid shower.
I ate standing in front of the stove, my wool socks doing nothing to keep my feet warm. The house was frigid, another one of the drawbacks of living mostly off the grid. I had been thinking about buying a small electric space heater, but the watt-hours usage might not be worth the speed of the warmth. The stove would eventually heat the house to bearable without depleting the solar panels. At least that was what I told myself today.
Carrying a second cup of coffee to the bathroom, I showered. It wasn’t a long luxurious shower, not with the size of the hot water tank, but it was at least hot. I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t a church day, as I had promised Mama I’d come to services on Sunday, and dressed in work clothes. Still caffeinating my body, I repacked my gobag, put a load of clothes on to wash, and drank a third, and then a fourth cup of coffee, while I rubbed down a few venison loins with oil and my own spicy recipe meat rub before I put them in a Dutch oven on the hottest part of the stovetop. Awake enough to slice veggies without carving off a finger, I added veggies and diced potatoes. Satisfied that I’d have food to eat and a warm house when I got home, I finished a few housekeeping chores, made more coffee and poured it into a thirty-ounce travel mug, put the cats on the back porch for the night, and locked the door.
I was halfway to PsyLED when my cell jangled and JoJo’s voice said, “Justin Tolliver’s house is burning. Sending address to your cell. Lights and siren. LaFleur wants you there ASAP.”
I pulled off the road, slapped the lights in place, turned on the siren, and set the cell to give me directions to Tolliver’s house. I drank coffee all the way there, knowing for sure that caffeine was a gateway drug to crack. Had to be. Mama would be horrified if I ever let that slip.
•••
The sun was setting over the bend of the Tennessee River when I pulled up to the mansion, parked, and slid to theground. The rear of the place was engulfed, flames flinging themselves out the windows and doors and the holes in the roof created by the firefighters. The roar and crackle of the fire, the rushing of water through the fire hose, the thrum of diesel generators, all created a rush of heat and noise unlike any other.
I had never seen such a huge inferno and found myself struck still and speechless as the fire’s heat and might reached out and gripped me in its raging fingers, scorching my face even out in the street. Glowing embers and stinking ash fell from the sky, burning. I tossed my good coat back in the truck and pulled a hand-me-down on instead. The heavy coat had belonged to John, my husband, and it hung on my too-slender form, but it was something I didn’t mind getting burned, and it had a hood, which I raised over my hair as I watched the scene. I reseated my weapon in the holster, made sure my badge was in view before I locked up the C10.
Three fire trucks were on-site, pulled up in the grass, two pumping water in through the roof holes, one watering down trees nearby to keep the fire from spreading. Firefighters strode through the ruined lawn, each wearing heavy gear and oxygen tanks and fire-blackened yellow coats.
Feds were on-site too, as was P. Simon—the former Green Beret ALT Security guy, from the Holloways’ party—and Rick, his silver-laced black hair sparkling. A group had gathered beneath the protection of the wide arms of a fir tree. I looked around and saw a small sign that readALT SECURITY. It was interesting that a man with so many personal problems was at the site of another situation involving the Tollivers. I sent that info to headquarters and heard back instantly that ALT was the highest rated private security firm in Eastern Tennessee. All the rich and famous used them for protection and security. Before I left the truck I sent back a two-word text.Still strange.
