“Whatever he’ll let me have. I usually go through four cords each winter. Sometimes five. If the wood is too green, it’ll have to dry this winter and I can use it next. I’ll see if Sam will handle the delivery.”
“I’ll help Sam, if he wants,” Occam said, casually.
I hesitated, feeling that there was something more than general kindness and neighborliness in his tone, but since I couldn’t decipher what it might be I let it go. “You know Sam will likely have a brotherly talk with you, now that you talked with my daddy. It might contain threats of bodily harm should you beat me.”
“I would certainly hope so, Nell, sugar.”
I wasn’t completely sure what he meant by that, but it didn’t sound as if he intended to fight Sam. “Okay. Long as you’re prepared for whatever Sam throws your way,” I said.
“I give you my word of honor,” Occam said, his face grave but his eyes alight with mischief, “that I will not eat your brother.”
I burst out laughing, which he surely intended. I sobered quickly and said, “Sam knows you’re a wereleopard. That means others in the church might. And some a them—some ofthose—others might want to hurt you.”
“I’ll be careful on all fronts.”
Before I could figure out what to say next, our cells dinged with texts from JoJo. “This is getting to be a bad habit,” Occam muttered, reading his aloud. “‘Highway Patrol found Rick’s car. Crashed. Rick not there. Get there ASAP.’ There’s a GPS and a map. It’s close to Rick’s house.”
I read mine aloud, “‘Get to Rick’s house and see if he’s there.’ Ditto on the GPS and map.” It was the first time ever that I had used the wordditto. It felt all modern and townie coming out of my mouth, but there wasn’t time to enjoy it. It was still light out and too early for a summoning, but this accident of Rick’s felt bad on multiple levels.
We dropped the dishes in the sink and raced outside, me grabbing my gear on the way. “Do you know if Rick was wearing the antimagic amulet made by the Knoxville coven?” I asked as we bounded down the steps.
“I never saw him put it on. Doesn’t mean he didn’t.”
We roared out of the driveway, Occam in his fancy car and me a lot slower in my Chevy C10 truck.
It took more than half an hour to get there, and as I drove, I got word that Tandy would be joining me at Rick’s place. Rick had moved recently to a rental house on Hunter’s Trail, near a swatch of wooded land and a low ridge of hill marked by one of Knoxville’s ubiquitous and overbuilt power lines. There were black walnut trees growing in the area, and I remembered the black walnut branch at the witch circle. I’d never been to Rick’s and was surprised as I drove up the short drive. I had expected a bachelor pad and found instead a comfortable-looking family home with shutters and a small, covered front stoop. Tandy pulled in behind me and I followed him up the walkway to the porch. “Can you tell if he’s here?” I asked.
Tandy stopped and looked around, or would have if his eyes were open. He turned in a circle with his eyes closed, as if seeing things I couldn’t. “No,” he said. “I don’t sense his emotions in either form.”
“His emotions are different in cat form?” I asked, surprised.
“Very. Rick is primitive, hungry, and violent when he’s a cat. There’s less disunion in Occam’s human and cat sides, but he’s been a cat for a long time and has managed to put himself back together emotionally.”
“How?” I asked.
Tandy hesitated. “He hasn’t told me, but I think Soul knows. IthinkSoul helped. Occam’s emotions are very restrained, well-ordered, and structured. He’s reserved and deliberate, and when he does lose control of his cat, he gets it back quickly. There are times when he has more difficulty than others, of course, but for the most part, Occam owns his emotions even when in leopard form. Rick loses command when he’s a cat and has to fight to dominate his were-self. Sometimes he doesn’t manage that.”
“Oh.” I didn’t ask what areas Occam’s cat had trouble with. That seemed too intrusive.
Tandy gave me a small smile. “You have no idea how important it was for Rick to fight off giving in to his cat last night. He’s come a long way.”
Our cells dinged and we had both received text photos ofRick’s car from Occam. The car had skidded off the road into the scrub and was wrapped around a small tree, the side bashed in where the tree had stopped its momentum and spin. At a glance I’d say the car was totaled. Flipping through the pictures, I noted that the interior was shredded by claws and his sliced and tattered clothes were in a heap. There was blood on the steering wheel and puddled in the seat. Occam’s caption to the photos was a simple,Be careful. He’s cat.
Both of our cells dinged again with,No tracking dogs. Rick will kill anything that hunts him.
“That would be bad,” I said in response to the text. “Do we wait here?” I asked my partner.
“JoJo wants us to open the back door in case he comes home and needs to get in. Then she wants us to wait half an hour since the crash was so close by. I have the security code to the back door. Come on.”
Inside, the kitchen was scrupulously clean, not a dirty dish anywhere. The main living space was dusty, but not terribly so. The house was modern and sleek, with a wood dining table and chairs in the dinette, an oak kitchen with stone cabinet tops, and comfortable, squishy furniture and a big-screen TV in the living area. The house was cold, the air-conditioning set at sixty-five. It was empty and had the feeling of having been empty for hours.
I couldn’t help being snoopy. There was nothing in the small pantry except a half-empty box of rice, a bag of flour in a plastic ziplock bag, four extra-large cereal boxes, three cans of crushed tomatoes, and a bread bag with moldy bread heels in it. What Rick’s house lost in the bachelor pad department, the refrigerator made up for in guy supplies. There was a carton of milk, take-out containers, and a pizza box with half a pie in it, the pizza dried out, wrinkled, and growing a spot of green fur. And beer. Four twelve-packs of local microbrewery beer. Beer had no effect on werecats unless they drank a gosh-awful lot of it. Rick had a gosh-awful lot of it.
I looked in the garbage and the recycling. There were a gosh-awful lot of empties too, and not much of anything else. Rick used to like to cook, but there was no indication that he had ever used the pots and pans. The dishes in the cupboard had a layer of pollen and dust on them.
The laundry nook had a basket that contained boxers and socks, another holding a set of sheets, and still another with outerwear clothes in it, some from the previous night. Everything stank of man and sweat except the outer clothes, which also stank of horse. I lifted the pair of jeans on top and studied the creases. Jeans creased according to the way they were worn, and dirty denim, especiallyverydirty denim, could tell a trained investigator how they were most commonly used. These had been worn sitting, straddling, the creases stretching from crotch to knees, and were worn on the bottom from sitting on a saddle. I was sorta surprised that horses didn’t bolt when they smelled Rick. Mouser cats lived in barns, but werecats had to smell dangerous on an instinctive level. More bloody. I dropped the jeans and spotted a pair of low-heeled Frye western boots. They smelled of horse and hay and manure. I put the boots back, frowning. I hadn’t known Rick rode, but clearly he did. I closed the laundry door, ignored Tandy’s censoring stare as I snooped.
I found the stairs up and glanced into each of the two bedrooms up there. The one on the left was empty except for a sheetless air mattress. The one on the right was just empty. The bathroom was scrupulously clean, or maybe never-used clean.
