Yummy was testing the waters, seeing how far she could go. I had learned quickly that no reaction was the best reaction when dealing with paranormal creatures, especially the predatory kind. I didn’t react, just eased through a green light and up behind an early school bus.
Yummy went on. “Sadly, when I woke up dead in 1960—early by Mithran standards—Grégoire had moved on emotionally and sexually and was sleeping with young men and the Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, a former and once-again lover. In the intervening years my brothers went to war and never came back, my father died of a heart attack working in a paper mill, and Mama remarried and moved away.” Yummy’s accent had changed as she spoke, taking on a twang I didn’t really recognize, maybe Frenchy Southern. An accent that was biscuits and gravy with hot sauce and alligator sausage or something. It was slightly like Rick’s when he was tired or angry, but softer, more melodious. She went on, now sounding a little sad, and I had to wonder if she knew she was giving so much away, or if she just needed to talk and didn’t care what she exposed about herself. “Instead of being head-over-heels in love, I was part of the Clan Arceneau blood family. But I was alone, a blood-sucker of little consequence, living with fangheads I didn’t much like and what amounted to human slaves. I was a small fish in a large fishbowl full of predators, all with bigger teeth than I had.”
She looked my way again and I pretended to be wholly focused on the street and the lights ahead. “I wasn’t interested in group sex, in making new slaves, or in helping to run a vamp’s household. So I learned to fight and went to war, as much as women were allowed to in Uncle Sam’s army back then. When I got back, I took on all comers until I killed one of Grégoire’s favorites and he sent me to Ming of Glass. I’ve been here ever since.”
That was a lot more than I expected her to tell me. I made a soft noise as I digested her story.
“Your turn, Maggot.”
I grinned at the windshield and quoted her. “I’m sure you have a dossier on me. Read it.”
When she stopped chuckling, Yummy said, “I like you more and more, Nell Nicholson Ingram. Okay. How’s this? You were raised in God’s Cloud of Glory Church, became a common-law wife to John Ingram at age twelve, and nursed his wife Leah until she died. Then you married him legally and nursed him until he died. You inherited all his land, which shared a boundary with the church, against which you led a war of ignoring and attrition for years. During that time, you educated yourself at the local library and recently got a GED. You joined PsyLED this year. You graduated in the middle third of your class at PsyLED training school and would have graduated higher had you received a traditional education. As it was, you classified as an expert marksman with two weapons, when you finally took the weapons qualification course, top of your class in poly sci, and bottom of your class in interpersonal interactions.”
“Not bad,” I said. Every special agent had to qualify for weapons, and requalify at regular intervals. It wasn’t as rigorous as the military’s qualification, but it was thorough and I hadn’t been certain where I had positioned in the class or what my final ranking would be. My certificates had come in the mail less than a week ago, and I was proud of them. That Yummy knew all that meant the vampires were capable of doing, or buying, deep background research on federal agents. That was something I’d have to think about later. “I’m not good at flirting or making small talk, but I bake good bread and make excellent soup and have even better survival skills.”
“Now that we’re done showing off,” Yummy said, “and since you aren’t about to let me feed on your soft, beautiful neck, how about pulling over and let’s get breakfast.” She pointed to an IHOP. “I’m paying.”
“Deal,” I said, swinging the wheel and popping into the parking spot. “It’s nearly dawn and it’s your skin that’ll be burned crispy, but I’m hungry enough to risk you dying again.”
“Ain’t you just the sweetest li’l thang.”
I grinned at her as I slid from the warmth into the cold and slammed the door. “I may not have fangs, but I can still bite.”
Yummy on my heels, I thought that my mama would have a conniption fit if I was ever dumb enough to tell her I’d had breakfast with a fanghead. Especially since I wasn’t hungry. But making friends with a paranormal creature who could fight might be smart. If friendship was actually happening here. I wasn’t yet sure.
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It was after dawn when I used the inconspicuous keypad to enter the unmarked door between Yoshi’s Deli and Coffee’s On and into the field office of PsyLED Unit Eighteen. As I entered, I gave a halfhearted wave at the very conspicuous roving surveillance camera over the door, and waited until it closed behind me before I slogged up the stairs into the PsyLED offices. I was so exhausted my knees wanted to buckle.
I dropped my gear on the desk in my cubicle and stuck my fingers into the soil of the plants lining the window. A feeling of completeness rushed over me, feeling much like waves rolling over a beach, not that I had ever seen such a thing in person. I’d been close to the ocean when I went to Spook School, but it wasn’t someplace I wanted to go alone. The videos I had seen of the Atlantic made me think of isolation and aloneness and abandonment.
The soil and the mulch and the compost in my plants had the power of the ocean, but without the loneliness and isolation. They were all from Soulwood and connected me to my land instantly. The soil felt a little too dry and I made a mental note to water the plants. As I withdrew my fingers, I brushed them over the herbs, and the mixed scents of three kinds of basil, lemony thyme, and oniony chives filled my nostrils. I locked away my gun and found the coffee machine with my eyes closed.
I pretty much slept through writing my report and the debriefing that followed. And later I could never have explained how I drove all the way to my house and crawled into my bed.
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