“You know why?”
“I got no clue, cat-man. But the cats in the barn were fine too, so maybe it’s a species thing? Tell the big boss that this location is part of thedeath and decayrecipe. It’s too strong here to be anything else.”
He touched my shoulder and walked away. I studied the scene before me.
Thedeath and decayand an ax had killed a small vampire tree. I honestly wouldn’t have thought it possible. Did the Green Knight know? Did it know it had lost part of itself? Did it know I had a part in its death? Would it retaliate?
Three witches from the North Nashville coven walked around the side of the shed. They were here to contain and shield thedeath and decayenergies. They had to be getting tired of all this. But they were probably making a huge amount of money each time they had to do magic, so I didn’t worry about them being tired.
I walked after Occam, to the staging area where someone had already set up a field stove and put a metal percolator on for coffee. I took a paper cup and poured a cup of weak coffee.Trudging back to the parking area at Holy Bear’s farmhouse, I sat in my car and drank down the coffee and tried to read updates and reports.
I got as far as reading a report from JoJo stating that the box of sabotaged tour T-shirts had been hand delivered after Stella Mae’s band had left for the tour. They had what they thought was the delivery on security cameras, though the suspect was wearing a hoodie and loose pants and they were speculating it was a man, simply because Cale was so clearly involved in thedeath and decay. Visual inspection and chemical testing showed that the shirts were from the same company, the same dye lots, and the silk screen ink was the same lot number as all the other shirts.
That seemed really important, but my brain had done all it could. I fell asleep with the laptop open on my lap and the empty coffee cup in my hand.
***
“We’ll see that my car is taken back to Knoxville HQ,” FireWind said.
I jerked awake, some inexplicable dream ripping to shreds. The big boss was standing near my car, talking to me; he had been talking for a while, probably, as the dream had been about cars that could fly and FireWind had been flying them. “Huh?”
His face expressionless, he said again, “You are too tired to drive. Move over to the passenger seat. Occam will drive you back to Knoxville HQ in your car while I follow in his car. He’ll see that you get home.” A faint smile lit his face. “I’ve been informed that you haven’t slept sufficiently and that I’m endangering this case by allowing my agents to work forty-eight-hour shifts.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Who told you that?”
“Jones.”
“Mmm.”
“And Kent.”
I squinted at him.
“And Occam.” His smile was wide enough now to be a smile without qualifiers. “You have become an excellent team.”
I made the same noncommittal noise, crawled across the seats, and strapped myself in. And promptly fell asleep. I didn’twake until Occam pulled onto the mountain and Soulwood welcomed me home.
***
Occam had stopped for a few groceries at some point, a stop I had slept through. While Occam unloaded the car, I dragged my body to my new shower and turned on the water as hot as I could stand it, letting it beat the filth of Cale Nowell’s shed off me while the scent of maple-syrup-cured bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, and tea filled the house. Bacon. Occam was fixing maple-syrup-cured bacon on the new hot plate. My mouth watered and my belly clenched at the aroma of heaven in my house.
I pulled on sweatpants and a roomy sweatshirt and tied my hair back in an elastic. It grew so fast, and the curls were like spirals of vines, bushy, heavy, and springy. In the mirror, my eyes looked more emerald than they had a week past, my skin darker bark brown. My fingernails were more woody and leaves curled out here and there. I plucked three, but there were too many and food smelled too good.
I made it to the table and we ate in silence, me picking at leaves in my hairline, snapping off the tiny budding ones from my nail beds.
Occam finished eating faster than I did and started wash water in the sink. I scraped my plate and sopped up the grease and the last of the eggs with toast. I must have dozed off in my chair because Occam was suddenly kneeling at my side. “Here. Lemme.” He wiped my hands with a warm damp cloth to get all the breakfast foods off them. I watched as he cleaned my hands, the towel warm, his nails clean, neatly pared, his hands tanned and strong, yet pale next to my wood-toned skin.
I had a flash memory of John’s hands, calloused and rough from a lifetime of hard work. His nails had always been clipped short but not smoothed, snagging on everything, a line of dirt under the nails that he never got clean. I hadn’t minded then, that John had farmer’s hands. We had worked hard all our lives. It was the church way, and my nails often looked just as grimy. But that was my past and Occam... Occam was my future.
His beautiful hands lifted to my hair and he gently groomed me, finding more leaves deeper in my hairline, breaking the thin petioles, piling the leaves on the table. Tears gathered in myeyes and he placed a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth, gentle and sweet and kind.
This. This right here.This was the romance I had read about in books. This was the beginning of heat and passion and... and it was the foundation of love. Tenderness and kindness that had nothing to do with hot sweaty sheets and the moans of passion and orgasm. Not that I didn’t love that too. But this. Just this. This was love.
I raised my hand and rubbed my fist along his jaw the way he liked, his beard scratchy. I realized he must have used the shower upstairs at some point in his cooking spree. He smelled like my lavender soap. I hoped his cat nose wasn’t offended at the scent. I needed to make him something special that a cat-man would like to shower with. I rubbed harder and twined my fingers into his hair, rubbing his healing ears, his scalp, and the back of his neck in a cat caress. He tilted into my hands, rolling his head.
“I love you, Occam.” Was I saying that too much? Too often?
“I love you, Nell, sugar.” He pulled back slightly, smiling, one hand twisting a curl in my hair around his fingers. Our hands were close, both cradling each other’s faces. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll carry you to bed. I have the late shift at HQ, so if you don’t mind, we’ll get some sleep, curled up like cats. Mud won’t be home from school for a few hours so it won’t be inappropriate.”
