Currently, Occam was supposed to be off shift at eight p.m., working a ten-hour split shift. I was supposed to be off no later than six, but with Ming’s summons, my shift had run way long.
“Naw. I caught a case. Should be a short one. Take a report and head home. FireWind updated me on everything, including you being abducted and Yummy staying on the land. I’m nothappy that I wasn’t at Ming’s when you needed me, you know that, right?”
“I’m a fine agent and I didn’t need help. Andyouknowthat, right?”
“I do. Just had to say it. My case is out in your part of the county, so I’ll take Cherry. When I’m done, I’ll send a prelim from the field, then check on your family, drop off the dog, feed the cats, and stoke the stove so you’ll have some heat.” Mud’s tricolor English springer spaniel had become the HQ office pup, the only PsyLED unit to have a mascot. “And before you ask, she did great today. Tandy took her on walks and a run, and T. Laine fed her.”
“T. Laine feeds her too much,” I said, stuffing my face and sneaking Cherry a tiny pinch of cheese.
“True.” He ignored me doing what I accused T. Laine of doing, glanced down the hallway both ways, and leaned in for a fast kiss. His lips almost moved the way they used to, before he was injured so badly that even shifting into his werecat on the full moon on Soulwood land hadn’t healed him fully. “When I’m done with your critters,” he said, his lips moving on mine, “I’ll go furry, patrolling. Tell your sister not to shoot me.”
Esther didn’t like paras, despite the fact she herself was one, but she was getting used to the possibility that they may not all be devil spawn as the church taught. “I’ll text her. I’ll be back as soon as I can. No humans were killed tonight, so the action paperwork will only be four feet high, not ten.”
He kissed me again and opened the door, coming face-to-face with Yummy. My stomach cramped in what I figured was jealousy. Then I smothered it, because Occam stepped back, gave Yummy room to enter, said, “FireWind,” to the boss-boss, and padded down the stairs without looking at the vampire. It wasn’t rude, but it was catty, and said all I needed him to say about Yummy.
“Are you finished in the locker room, Ingram?” FireWind asked.
“Yes.”
“Yvonne Colstrip, scion of Ming of Glass, the showers are lockable,” he said. “You may enter and shower while I’m in there, or remain bloody. Before you make a suggestive comment, I do not share showers, blood, or sex with Mithrans.
“While you are here, you will not be allowed anywhere in PsyLED premises alone except the null room.”
Yummy laughed quietly. “Once upon a time I would have taken all that as a challenge. Now I just want to get this stinking blood off me.” She followed him into the locker room and the door shut behind them.
FireWind opened the door again quickly. “Ingram, do you want me to take your clothes upstairs when I take mine up to be washed?”
The building was being expanded into the Southeastern Regional Headquarters of PsyLED, run by Rick LaFleur, and that required more IT and office space on the third floor. FireWind was overseeing the project and had installed a small laundry closet in the upstairs bathroom directly above, tying into the plumbing there so we didn’t have to lose a shower stall in the locker room—orhave workmen in a secure building. We had to trek upstairs to wash blood and gore out of our clothes, but at least now it was possible when necessary. Fortunately, today wasn’t that day.
“No, thank you. I’ll wash at home.”
He closed the door again.
Rick buzzed in from the entry and went into the locker room also.
Two men in a locker room with me, with potential accidental nudity, would have given me the heebie-jeebies. Vampires were known to like…things…in numbers. Rick got naked before a shift. And FireWind was a skinwalker who also got naked to shift shape. Casual nudity would be unremarkable for any of the three in the locker room. I was a prude by upbringing and choice.
I took the stairs to the roof to check my rooftop garden and touch Soulwood soil. I paused in the entrance to the third floor. Electrical, electronics, and plumbing were in place, and the new office walls, aluminum struts, and supports were now filled with spray foam insulation and covered by a protective backing wall designed in some military complex to shield electronics from EM pulses and outside interference. The massive IT station would be well protected from outside electronic intrusion.
I opened the rooftop door and the night wind blew through, clear, cold, no river fog reaching this far from the river. Thedoor closed behind me and I removed my shoes and socks, stepping over the low wood barrier into the dirt of my land. I breathed in the night air, let it out, and released all the power I had been holding. It shot out of me, through the soil, down the building into the dirt beneath, where I had mixed in a little Soulwood soil along the foundation. The power of the earth drained out of me and back to the land, my land, where it belonged. I worked my feet down into the dirt and rested into it. My throat relaxed even more, the pain diminishing to nearly nothing. Muscles that had been held tight relaxed. The latenthungereased. As I unwound, two thoughts hit me.
A vampire had tried to kidnap me tonight. Because of the way Ismelled.
And a vampire would be roaming my land at night for God knew how long to come.
I hadn’t yet talked about either with Occam, but he had to know already. He’d turn on that protective mode, the one he had developed because, when he was a child, no one had protected him. I’d have to soothe that out of him, which could be all kinds of fun.
I rubbed my belly, feeling the rooty hardness there, remnants of the time I became a tree and nearly didn’t make it back to human. Digging my toes deeper into the dirt, I raised my arms slightly to the sides and just breathed. I had no idea how much time passed before the door opened, and I couldn’t have said how I knew it was Aya, but I did, and I knew he was standing in the dark, watching me with his peculiar yellow eyes.
“Do you know,” he said softly, his words heavy with an accent from another time, another place, “when you commune with your land, you sometimes stretch out your arms, like a tree, reaching for the sun.”
I dropped my arms to my sides and opened my eyes. “I know. But I also sometimes just curl in a ball on the ground.”
“A root ball.” There was laughter in his tone, but it was the sort of laughter that meant kindness and affection. I wasn’t sure when Ayatas FireWind became my friend as well as my boss-boss, and oftentimes I didn’t much like him being my friend, him being so prickly and all.
“Nell.”
He used my first name.
