“Hmmm. Unless Devin accidentally set off the fire. Or unless Sonya was a problem and she had to die for some reason, say, to protect them, or Sonya was like them and it was time to replace Sonya’s pyro identity?”
Soul gave me a head-shaking shrug that suggested I was guessing and my guesses were getting too complicated to make sense, and she was right. I sent my lists off to JoJo and went back to work. But something kept nagging at me. Something about the timeline and the sequence of the deaths through three generations.
Rick put a cup of coffee at my elbow, the steam curling up. Hot enough to burn my mouth.
I stopped, my fingers motionless above the tablet. I remembered the burned and dead plants at the senator’s house, and the cooked fish in the water below. My mouth came slowly open. “Ohhh,” I said. “I need to go to the senator’s at dawn.”
“Why?” Rick asked, the question low and concerned. I’d heard my cats use that specific interrogative tone.
“Something I saw. It was dark. It might be nothing so I’d rather not say. But I want to see it again, in the daylight.”
“Fine. Work on the timelines and try to narrow down the species of pyro. Take off near the end of your shift. I’ll send Occam with you.” I wasn’t sure that I wanted Occam with me, not with so many things unknown and undecided between us, but I shrugged. There wasn’t anything I could do about my wants.
I spent the night in the conference room, the Christmas tree and a sleepy grindylow keeping me company. Just before dawn, I heard Occam come in and I left the conference room to pick up my gear bag. We headed out, Occam behind me, his gait limber, supple, and flowing, more so than other days, as his cat rose with the lunar cycle. Small hairs lifted on the back of my neck, the way they might if I was being pursued, tracked by an apex predator. Which, of course, I was. But I didn’t give in to that awareness, instead carrying my gear down the stairs to my truck. Standing out in the warm air—winter in the South was changeable at best—I said smartly, “You got Pea with you?”
“Yep. In my shoulder bag. Why you asking, Nell, sugar?”
“I’d rathershekill you if you go off leash. The paperwork for shooting a teammate has gotta be a pain in the backside.”
Occam started laughing, a purring chuff of sound that brought a smile to my face and made me tease further. “You cat-boys are hard to get along with in your time of the month.”
“Time of the— Nell, sugar, that is an appalling insult.” Occam was still laughing as he got in the truck beside me and we drove off together.
•••
“You didn’t tell me we’d be climbing down a couple thousand slippery, slimy, and stinking stairs to the river,” Occam said to me.
I’d known about the stairs but not their condition. They were vile, sticky beneath my field boots. Even the handrail was sticky and slimy and I couldn’t make myself touch it. It was no wonder my cousin’s clothes had been so filthy when he came back up. In the dark, Chadworth Hamilton had to have touched everything. I bet he had to throw his expensive suit away. “Didn’t think I needed to. What do you smell?” I figured his senses would be heightened in the moon-time.
“Dead fish. Some cooked, some raw. All of it rotting.”
“Mm-hm.” We reached the bottom and I looked back up. The stairs were the only way down or up without some kind of parachute or a rappelling rope. The vegetation at the top was brown, desiccated, dead. Below the deck, there was greenery in spots, rooted in the rocks.
On the beach, the sun was warm, casting short shadows on twisted, broken driftwood. The water was placid, reflecting back the sun. There were fewer dead fish and a lot of animal tracks from raccoon to ’possum, to bird tracks. There were crows perched nearby on the rocks and the scant vegetation. Seagulls calling, flying overhead, watching. There were also a lot of flies on the rotting fish, all of them showing the effects of scavenger predation. The sand was a dun color here, the bank narrow, the gray rocks in small piles, each rock ovoid, about the size of a basketball, but... cracked, and broken. I walked to the water’s edge, bent, and picked up a broken piece. It was pale gray with small white and brown specks, lightweight, thin, and hollow. The insidewas white, with a dried film stretched around the concave curves. “Shell,” I said softly. I looked out over the water. “Salamander eggs.”
“What’s that?” Occam asked.
“One of the potential pyro paras was a salamander. According to mythology, salamanders were created in volcanoes but live in freshwater environments.” I looked around. “We got freshwater. Water that was heated somehow, enough to parboil the fish swimming in it. We got eggs. Someone—something—hatched babies here.” I looked up at the cliff face and the slimy steps. Slimy from salamanders coming and going? “The entire yard above is dead, burned at the roots, though still greenish in places. The trail of dead vegetation leading to the river is a lot more dead, as if it was injured more often, for a longer time, as something went back and forth to the river.” Still holding the shell, I bent and placed my fingertips in the water. “The river water’s heated. Warmer than good dishwater.” I shook my head as disparate and formerly unrelated bits of evidence began to settle in place. “Perfect for keeping eggs warm to hatch? Or maybe the eggs hatch on the shore and the warm water is just a result of their physiology? Pyros who live in water at least part of the time. Pyros who are attacking the Tollivers. Maybe trying to take their places. Maybe already took their places, long ago.”
I walked up the beach. On the sand, I found a matching part to the shell in my hand and pieced them together. The creature that had been contained in it, assuming it was boneless like a tadpole, shaped like one, and could curl up tight, might be a slender five feet long with a small, narrow head, or three feet long with a wider head and body. I could imagine it weighed anywhere from ten to twenty pounds, but if it wasn’t an Earth creature, then weight-to-mass ratio might be different. If the substance from which its body was composed was more dense than an Earth organism, then gravity, while still a constant, might make it heavier than similar-appearing material.
Weight-to-mass ratio.I was surprised I remembered that. I had tried to educate myself on mathematics while Leahwas dying, but a lot of it was hard to understand without a teacher. I had given up on lots of learning for just that reason.
Out in the water, about two feet deep, I spotted something pale. Ovoid. Solid. An unhatched egg? I handed Occam the broken shells and my jacket, then pulled off my field boots and socks, tossing them to the beach. Rolled up my sleeves. Pea leaped from Occam’s gobag and raced up and down the beach, chittering at me as if she found me amusing or alarming.
“Nell, sugar, what the Sam Hill you doin’?”
I rolled up my pants legs above the knee, conscious that no one had seen my knees since I was twelve. Even John hadn’t seen my naked legs. I felt embarrassed, shy, and daring all at once. “Getting that.” I pointed at the shell. “It might be whole. And what’s inside would tell us everything we need to know.” I stepped into the water. Warm, bathwater warm.
“Nellie, stop,” Occam said. No. Demanded.
I flashed him a look. Pretty sure it was Mama’s look when one of her young’uns got uppity. I took a deeper step, the water to midcalf, then deeper to my knees as I walked out.
“Nell, let me do this.”
I ignored him. This little woman did not need protection from a little water. The river temperature rose to uncomfortable as I stepped deeper. Then one more step, the water just above my knee. The egg was only about a foot away. With the toes of one foot, I scooted the egg closer to me, the warm water wetting my pants where they were rolled. Pea chittered again, sounding less amused now.
“Nell!”
