Occam appeared from the darkness and held out a steel mug. My heart melted. I accepted the cup, finding it contained warm lemon ginger tea. “Thank you,” I whispered to him.
“Anything and everything for you, Nell, sugar.” Occam left me sitting on the ground in the dark, because that was my happy place. Not something any other woman would want or any other man would know. I sipped my tea from the metal mug and letthe night wind and the earth beneath my body ease my discomfort. I also scooped a little soil out of the pot and called on Soulwood to help me heal. Occam hauled Pacillo back to the barn and the remains of horse and human back into the trailer. Again.
I sipped. My innards found their places. My nausea faded. As I sat and drank, the warmth of Melody Horse Farm rose in me, rich and content. Alive. So very alive. I could come to love this land.
Softly, something else rose in me. A yearning. A quiet craving, something like desire. Desire to claim the earth beneath me. All I would need was blood. I opened my eyes, not even aware that I had closed them until now. There was a small vine tendril curled around my ankle. This land wanted to be claimed. Wanted to be fed. A battle had been fought near here in the war, blood spilled in violence and fear and hatred. The bodies had been buried in an unmarked grave. The land had accepted the sacrifice, but no one had claimed it. And that was so long ago. And nowdeaththreatened to wipe the land clean of all life. The landwanted...
I peeled the vine off my ankle. I couldn’t feed this place and clearly thedeath and decaybodies had not been acceptable sacrifices. This wasn’t my land. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t care for it. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
When I could stand, I pulled my PsyLED persona back around me like a cloak, shook my clothes in the faint wind to remove some of the stink trapped in the fibers, yanked five leaves out of my hairline and tucked them into a pocket. Satisfied that I was at least partially presentable, I went looking for Pacillo. The breeder/trainer was awake and drinking coffee from the contaminated coffeemaker. I didn’t bother to tell him he was being stupid. He had removed my note about the contamination and made coffee anyway. Occam often said, “You can’t fix stupid,” and in this case, I figured he was right. Pacillo stank of liquor, sweat, and coffee, and his hair stood up at odd angles like a punk rocker I had seen on TV. I had a feeling he didn’t even remember being in the null room.
I sat across from him and pulled up a pic of Cale on my laptop. I asked, “You know him?”
He blinked several times, as if trying to focus on the screen.“Cale Nowell. One of Stella’s old friends. She made him part of the roadie crew and then a backup guitarist. Haven’t seen him around much.”
“Really? He’s been on the property.”
Pacillo looked at up me, bleary-eyed. “Okay. So?”
I shook my head and left the barn office. Sitting in my car, I left a message for Nowell’s probation officer, A. K. Montgomery, but it was the middle of the night and I didn’t expect him or her to get back to me right away. Shortly after that, FireWind called it a night. I found my car and followed the other cars back to Cookeville and the hotel there. We needed sleep.
As I drove, I kept myself awake thinking about the case. For lots of reasons—mostly because it was likely he had done prison time for Stella—I had a feeling Cale Nowell might be involved, but feelings weren’t evidence and guesswork wasn’t a case. And my feelings didn’t address why a man who had given years of his life to save a lover would hire a witch to make a trigger to kill that same woman.
And then.
A single thought lit up my brain like a torch.
Unless that same man came back from prison expecting that woman to be waiting for him. And she had moved on. Taken other lovers. And left him behind. Killing her by dissolving her entire body was the kind of thing a churchman might do to a wife who strayed.
If, and that was a huge if, that man also had some kind of previously unknown magical power, would he use his power to kill that betraying woman and all her friends and lovers to get back at her?
Oh yes. He surely might.
Except there were two bad guys working together. And I had no idea how that fit into any scenario.
***
The hotel room phone rang at five a.m., waking T. Laine and me.“Gaaah,”she moaned, arms flinging until she woke up enough to answer it. She said, “What. Okay. We’ll be ready in five.” She hung up the phone and said, “Get up, plant-woman, and pluck your leaves. We got a body.”
“Of course we have a body,” I grumbled. “We always have abody.” But I rolled out of my hotel bed and stumbled to the bathroom. It took seven minutes, not five, before we were downstairs and I was still not awake. Because I was so sleepy, I rode with Occam, trying to wake up but not able to get my brain in gear. He pulled through a fast-food drive-through and I frowned at the arches, not sure what was happening until he placed a McDonald’s muffin sandwich and a cup of mocha in my hands. As I stared at the food, a peculiar warmth spread slowly through me and turned into a blush when he took the sandwich back and unwrapped it for me. It wasn’t a cat mating ritual. It wasn’t a churchman act of courting. It was simple kindness, a kindness so foreign to me that tears gathered in my eyes. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Eat. Drink the coffee,” he said as he pulled back onto the street. I ate. I drank the large coffee. By the time we turned off the Nashville highway, I was moderately awake.
“Who’s dead?” I asked as Occam pulled onto a gravel road.
“Cale Nowell’s car was found. FireWind said he’s dead but decomping slowly. Not fast like Stella Mae and the others.”
“He’s male. It seems to be the females who are melting.” I frowned. “Except for the stallion.”
“Gender-specificdeathworking. I read your report. It’s an interesting theory.”
“Except the stallion,” I repeated. “He was decomposing like the females. His feed and water trough were affected bydeath and decay, dropped from the loft. The horse was deliberately killed. Stella and her most expensive horse? Dead by the same means?”
“We got no motive, and a suspect pool that’s going nowhere fast.” A moment later he said, “Up ahead.”
Blue lights were flashing. Lots of blue lights. I counted five sheriff’s deputies’ cars from two counties, two city cop cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance. “Why an ambulance? He’s dead, right?” I asked.
“That’s what I heard.”
