“Yup. I love you, Nell, sugar.”
“I love you, cat-man.”
I rolled over and he pulled me close, nuzzling against my bare back. It was the way we slept together, and it was comforting in a way I had never experienced before, certainly not with John, my first husband. With him, after relations, I’d roll out ofbed and climb the stairs to my private cot to sleep, relieved it was over. With Occam, it was all different. Funny, romantic, silly, intense, full of feelings I’d never had before, and a sense of wonderment. I snuggled against him, into the quilts, and closed my eyes.
In my dreams came a memory-dream of the bones of the pregnant woman who had been buried on witch land, with a tree planted over her. The roots had curled down and found her skeleton, growing into her bones and taking on the shape of her body. We’d found her at a crime scene. I had known she was like me. A plant-woman. I didn’t know her history, and I wanted to know it. In my spare time I was researching her and any connection to the church.
Since I’d found her, I’d had dreams of her, and of people like us, climbing into the earth, beneath the roots of a tree, to die, to be buried and be claimed by a tree. People of the Trees, maybe. People who could hear the trees talking, the old, old,oldtrees, which were no more, except here on my land, and in a very few places in the mountains, the trees calling, calling, calling us to save them. To protect them from the farmers, the lumbermen, to save the soul of the land.
I woke in the midst of the dream, an ancient tree screaming out its pain as it was harvested to build a rich man’s home. Occam stroked my side, calming me. Sleepily he murmured, “It’s okay, Nell, suga’. I gotcha.”
It took a long time to find sleep again after that, my thoughts restless.
Occam rose before dawn, let Cherry out to do her business, ate himself some leftovers, moving quietly about the house, before he let himself outside. Outside, he shifted and went loping across Soulwood, sniffing for Yummy, following her. Checking up on her.
I drowsed, feeling all this, knowing when he shifted to human and put on his sweatpants from the gobag he wore when he thought he might need to shift again. He’d found Yummy, standing beyond Esther’s house, uphill from the new chicken coop.
They talked, but I couldn’t hear words, just the vibrations of their bodies and their emotional intent. Yummy guarded and reserved, maybe a little afraid. Occam forceful, as if he was ina battle, but a mental one. An argument. It drew me out of what was left of sleep and I got up, added some slow-burning wood to the stove, started water for tea, turned on the Bunn coffee maker, and got dressed. It was still dark.
I carried Yummy’s things up the stairs and stood at the top, considering, finally putting Yummy in Esther’s old bedroom, the one my sister stayed in before she had her own home, the one with the L-shaped closet. If a quilt hung over the doorway, and she piled lots of quilts to cover her while she slept, Yummy should be safe.
I was back downstairs and dressed in jeans and layers, whisking eggs and crisping bacon, when the phone rang. It was Esther.
“Morning, sister mine,” I said.
“I done saw that cat-man outside. He took off his clothes and was naked and he turned into a cat. He wasnaked!”
People who thought that religious polygamists were sexually promiscuous or okay with casual nudity didn’t know much about them. With the exception of her husband, Esther had probably never seen a naked man. “Naked, huh? Did you watch with your binoculars while he took off his clothes?”
“I did no such thing!”
But she had. I could hear the false indignation in her tone, and I knew the moment Occam had shifted to human, well beyond the easily observable vision of Esther’s windows. He had been standing in a patch of moonlight partway up the hill to my house.
“Uh-huh. Listen to me, Esther. There’s a rumor that some new vampires are in the area and they might…” I stopped. Considered. And chose a partial truth. “They might want plant-people and our land. So one of the local vampires will be patrolling the property by night, along with Occam and some of the people from work, trying to keep us all safe.”
“They want plant-people? This is all you’uns fault, ain’t it? You bein’ with the po-lice.”
Esther was fast at pointing fingers, usually at me.
“No. They can feel the power of the land and the power in us. And you should know that the vampires got their souls back.”
“Well, that’s good they got souls. Now when they die they can go to hell like proper evil beings.”
I sighed softly, so my sister couldn’t hear it. “An angel gave them back their souls. Seems like God has given them a second chance. If so, that means we have to give them a second chance too. And the angel broke the curse on were-creatures, whatever that curse is.”
The silence over the phone was electric and fraught with more indignation. “Thatstinks.”
I’d boxed her in with words and religion, but I didn’t gloat. “Ummm.” I sliced into a fresh loaf of homemade bread and put three slices on the oven top to toast and removed the jar of Mama Grace’s homemade jam from the fridge.
“Fine. I’ll play nice with the blood-sucker and your cat. Mama’s coming over for coffee and devotionals sometime this morning, and she wants you here. I’ll text you when she drives up.” The call ended.
I sighed again. Mama bringing devotionals to my sister’s, and me having to be there, meant the conversation would turn to my wedding and finding Esther a husband. We’d end up at odds. And I’d leave feeling mad and stubborn.
I checked my work messages. The PM on the dead body from Ming’s was still scheduled for eight a.m., hours away. There was still no assigned lead on the case. Nothing new.
The door opened. Yummy stood there, the faintest light of dawn behind her as she stepped in. Closed the door. She was looking around my house, likely for her things.
“I put them upstairs. All my rooms have windows, even the shed, but the closet in the first bedroom to the left has a little L shape to the side and plenty of quilts.”
