“Copy.”
A fourth vine wrapped around the prisoner’s mouth. His scream cut off. He went silent, gasping. The vines pulled his hoodie over his face, cutting off his vision.
The Green Knight looked back at me.
I nodded. “Take him to the road.”
The vines began to pull him back to the main street.
The knight gave me that single nod, stiff in his helmet. The warhorse turned in a tight circle and disappeared.
I pulled my hand from the earth and opened my eyes to a dark, cloudy sky. I was shaking. My stomach churned, as if I’d eaten Scotch bonnet peppers on a dare. I pressed my dirty hand to my middle and said, “Tandy, the guy’s going back to the main road. The officer and I need to meet him there in about twenty minutes.”
I heard the click again. “Willingly?” Tandy asked me on the private connection.
“More or less.” That was all I could offer to explain the unexplainable.
I felt the deputy’s unit turn around and move back down the street toward the main road.
“Ingram out,” I said to Tandy. The connection ended.
I tried to catch my breath, tremors all through me. My sister called, and it took two tries to answer. “You’un wanna explain what jist happened?”
“A hunter came onto the land. He was…scared off.” Another lie at my feet.
She ended the call without reply because my sister was fearful of the land and what it could do and what it meant about her power. Power that the church would label as witchcraft, making her a creature who should be burned at the stake.
Shaking, I went back inside. As I shut the door, a wind blewthrough my land carrying leaves and twigs and the first raindrops. I had fifteen minutes before I needed to head down the hill to interrogate the man who had come onto my land. I washed the dirt from my hands and went to the fridge, opening a jar of peaches Mama had put up this past summer. I ate three slices with my fingers for the sugar rush. Outside, the skies opened up, and rain, in a driving sheet, traveled across the cleared acres, the heavy drops hitting my metal roof as if dozens of drummers sat up there, banging.
I turned to the table. My lunch plate was empty. I remembered dropping my sandwich. I looked under the table. Not even a crumb.
Cherry was draped across the couch, her eyes guilty.
I shook my head. Why fuss at a dog for eating my meal when I had just lied to everyone and had a man—possibly an innocent man—wrapped in vines, a prisoner, just down the hill? I ate peaches standing at the sink until I stopped shaking. Got my work gear and headed to the door.
My cell rang. FireWind’s picture was on the front for a FaceTime call. I locked the house and tapped the screen. “Hey, FireWind.”
“Ingram. Are you all right?”
It hit me that everyone who claimed a place on my land might have felt traces of my feelings, of the land’s reactions—tension, fear, guilt,hunger—and that Tandy had to have informed them all what was happening. It was his job. Occam was probably having kittens in worry.
“I’m good. I’d rather be making tea than going down the hill to interrogate a trespasser.”
“Margot is near your place on an unrelated case. I’m sending her to take this, instead of you.” FireWind’s tone made that an order, but a kind one. His face, from the angle I could see on the small phone screen, was intent on driving.
“And if he’s a foreign blood-servant for attacking vampires?”
“If he doesn’t speak English, Margot will have to call in a translator. And then Margot, with her truth sense, will ferret out the truth beneath whatever story he comes up with. If he tells a cockamamie story about being attacked by trees, he may end up in lockdown.”
My boss-boss meant in a psych ward. Seventy-two hours of evaluation and meds strong enough to bring a patient out of a psychotic episode.
I dropped my gear and turned back to my kitchen. Added water to my kettle.
On his side, the ambient noises suggested heavy traffic. “Nell?”
First names. Yeah. He was being kind. “Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I was going over your report about Ming having the Blood Tarot. Were there any indications about how she got it? Or where?”
