The Green Knight rode up to the standing bones, a banner on a tall stick secured behind his thigh, a mace across his spine. A sword was sheathed at one hip. He carried his lance and a shield. With no guidance I could see, his warhorse turned to face me. Snorted. Blowing green smoke.
Impaled on the lance was the body of a black wolf. Dead.
I sat straight up in bed. Awake. Bones gone. Trying to catch a breath. Gasping. Heart pounding as if I had sprinted a mile at a dead all-out run.
Torquil made an unhappy sound and shook herself. I was alone except for the one cat, the other two upstairs with Occam. Cherry was with Mud.
Torquil crawled onto my lap, only her white body and legs discernible in the dark, her black head invisible, like a headless cat. The house was cold and so were my feet. I scratched Torquil, and then pushed her from me, into the warm spot my body left behind as I slid from the bed and into my slippers. Themain room was warmer, the fan returning the warmer air in the rafters down the walls.
Quietly, I added a log to the coals in the firebox. Checked the bread on the hob. The loaves were perfect. With one bare foot, I searched the land. Yummy patrolled. So did FireWind in his more usual jaguar form.
Taking one of the frying pans I kept on the cooktop in the winter, I wrapped it in an old towel, carried it back to bed with me, and slid it where my feet went. I picked up the once-feral cat and put her on my chest so her purrs could soothe me. But I didn’t sleep.
* * *
We stopped at the bottom of the hill, sliding for a few feet before the brakes caught. We were in my car, not the truck, because the main roads would be completely clear of ice in an hour or two, and the truck’s chains would just slow me down then.
School was on a two-hour delay, but even with the postponed opening, it was too slippery for Mud to walk to the bus stop at the bottom and cross the street to the other side, to the edge of land that was now growing a forest of vampire trees, maples and chestnuts. Oddly, not a single car slowed down to gawk at the new trees, probably concentrating on the icy roads and their own concerns. Everything seemed normal, except that Tuesday felt like Monday, and the roads were slick with black ice and the populace seemed to have forgotten their winter driving skills.
“So not fair,” Mud grumbled. “I could still be in bed.” She was yawning, bored, sleepy eyed, and fell back to sleep in the backseat as I drove. She didn’t even bother to wave before she joined the line of wilted-looking kids at the school entrance, dropped off by family for early arrival, probably for the same reasons I dropped Mud off.
* * *
At HQ, Occam’s fancy car was parked, no dents, no signs he’d run into a tree or a snowbound car. I checked in, admiring the bank-vault-style doors that now protected us, and planned tospend the day following up on every missing person report and any reports of a small pack of large feral dogs.
Close to ten, FireWind stopped in the opening of my cubicle, his fingers on the low walls to his sides like supports. When I looked up, a question in my eyes, I caught his gaze tracking the abundance of growth in the window. He had kindly given me a cubby with a south-facing window and, on the ledge, I was growing three lettuces, two spinach plants, basil, a small rosemary, two kinds of thyme, two mints, and, in its own pot, the new vampire tree sprout.
“It looks like a forest in here.”
“It looks like a farm in here,” I corrected. Inside something twinged, and the woody roots in my middle and along the bones in my hands quivered, as if in pain. Surprised at my body’s reaction, and not willing to let the boss-boss see that, I asked, “Can I help you?”
“You are a strange and difficult woman,” he said. “And I fear your sister will be worse.”
I frowned. “You turn into any animal you want. Rick and Margot and Rettell and Occam turn into werecats. Soul turns into a dragon made of pure energy or a Bengal tiger. I grow leaves. Honest to God, boss-boss,” I swore, “why are plant-people any weirder?”
A smile ghosted across his face and was gone. FireWind said, “I am sorry I upset your sister with thoughtless remarks about your brother’s scent.”
“Half brother,” I murmured, squinting down at my keyboard. “Zebulun.”
“I visited Soul’s apartment last night before I went home,” FireWind said.
He hadn’t asked a question or given me important information, so I waited.
“Zebulun’s scent was in Soul’s apartment.”
My mouth opened to reply, but all the potential words stopped. Possibilities flashed through me. “He musta disappeared ’bout the same time Soul did.” My face squashed up in thought. “How’d Zebulun’s scent get to Soul’s? How did he even know about Soul?”
“I was hoping you might tell me.”
If Zeb had been working with the bad guys, he mighta beenwith them when Soul was kidnapped. If Zeb had been kidnappedwithSoul, then he mighta been there as a prod for Soul to cooperate. If Zeb had been following the bad guys, then he mighta entered Soul’s place after they took her. Or…if he knew of Soul through my family, then he mighta been there on his own, looking for help. He mighta followed her scent to her apartment. FireWind had to know all those possibilities.
When I said nothing, and didn’t look up from my fingers on the keyboard, FireWind walked away, his strides silent on the flooring. Opal and Pearl were searching for Soul. Rettell had been looking for the two arcenciels in the area. So were Torquemada and his heinous band of men. And they were drinking from devil dogs. And looking for the Blood Tarot.
Good Lord a Mercy. Arcenciels were made of light. I remembered wondering aloud if creatures made of light could travel through fiber-optic cables in their pure energy form and get into information systems.
I saved my work and walked to the conference room, where Tandy was manning comms. “Tandy.”
He looked up from his keyboards, his odd reddish pupils widening as he focused on me.
