Proper marriage. There was a holdover from the church teachings of my youth. These days people didn’t get married to have sex; they just went ahead and did it. And in the church they married only to have sex, in the past with underage girls. It was evil. If I dated Occam I’d be in the same situation as Tandy and Jo. Now that I was out of Spook School, dating a coworker wasn’t exactly forbidden, but it wasn’t smart either.
Rick said, “Nell, I want you to go back, again, to the Holloway home, to Justin Tolliver’s burned house, and then to the senator’s home. I want you to read the earth for two reasons. One, to specifically search for paranormal energies other than the assassin who burns things. All we have is the anomalous reading on the psy-meter 2.0 and the scorching or chemical burns to the land, and there isn’t anything in the histories or mythos that pinpoints a creature who does that. We need more to go on. Read deeper. Find us something to work with.”
I didn’t sigh, but I wanted to. Being a paranormal investigator might sound exciting on the surface, but it really wasn’t. It was a lot of repetition, of going over the same evidentiary ground (literally, in my case) over and over again. It was paperwork, rereading paperwork, comparing paperwork, and a whole lot of brainstorming and interviews. I was getting tired of going over the same ground, but that gift was why I was part of PsyLED. Rather than share my litany of complaints I repeated, “Other paranormals. Like what? Witches? Vampires? Weres?”
“Anything. Any magical signature that doesn’t belong. And then you pull night shift on the senator’s grounds.”
“Okay. If we’re done, then I’m outta here.” At Rick’s nod I grabbed my bags, taking off for my trusty rusty truck.
? ? ?
I ran a few errands and then started my investigation with Justin and Sonya Tolliver’s burned home, where the security guards and one lone FBI agent—not my cousin—gave me access to the grounds. It was impossible to smell anything other than the ruined house, stale water, and the heavily scorched lawn, but the trail of the assassin was clear and unquestionable, brown and burned trails through the grass. The guards had seen nothing and no one since the fire except for scaring off some kids out exploring, with beer, the night before. They had raced off before the guards could get a vehicle tag. Not that the uniforms had tried very hard to catch a few drunk kids.
I did a quick read on the dead grass and on the living lawn, with the psy-meter 2.0 and with hand-in-dirt, and texted my impressions to JoJo. I found nothing new—no weres, no witches, no vampires, no unexpected paranormal signatures. Feeling the night and the long guard duty ahead, I drove to the Holloways’ house. The ruined windows had been replaced, the crime scene tape was gone, and a neat For Sale sign was out front. Not that I blamed the family for moving.
Even without putting hands to soil, I could tell that the ground around the repaired house was dead along the trail used by the assassin. Dead under the window where he stood to fire the gun. Dead through the path to the road in back. The only advantage to an additional read was the ability and opportunity to pinpoint exactly where the shooter left the land for the road. And where he disappeared. That and the fact that here, where the overriding stench of house fire was not present, the dead grass and plants smelled very slightly scorched, more certainly a chemical burn, rather than a flame burn. The smell was odd but not definitive of species origin, not anything I could pinpoint from Spook School class, Paranormal Physiology 101 or even 202. Nothing recognizable. And the psy-meter read baseline normal. I made a mental note to get a cat nose out here to sniff around.
To avoid comments from the lone guard patrolling the grounds, I went to the edge of the lawn at the back of the property, near the stand of trees, close enough to see the dead sapling in the security lights. I placed my old pink blanket, folded, on the ground, then sat and stuck my fingers directly into the dirt at the base of an undamaged tree. I sank my consciousness lightly into the ground.
Where I found maggots. Instantly they crawled and wiggled up my fingers to my wrists.
I yanked my fingers out, shot to my feet, and danced away. My breath came fast. Tingles ran up and down my whole body. My stomach roiled and I thought I might gag.
My most fearsome maggot memory squelched under my bare foot again, as intense as the day it had happened, when I stepped into that dead possum, covered with maggots. They slimed onto my bare foot and wriggled. I had screamed and screamed.
The only other maggoty memories were vampiric in nature.
Standing a good ten feet away, I forced calm into myself with some deep breathing exercises and then forced myself to pick up my pink blanket and carry it back to the C10. I dropped the blanket into the back and sat in the cab, the heater on high, cleaning my hands with baby wipes, which I had discovered were essential to any investigation. Though the baby-scent fragrance was awful, it did help to clear my head. Rick had sent me here to check for paranormal presences. I had found one. But what if it wasn’t from a bad guy, the shooter?
When I was less panicked, I found Yummy in my contacts and punched call.
She answered with, “Well, if it isn’t Maggoty.”
More than you know, I thought. “I want to know what you or one of your pals has been doing at the Holloway house, hiding in the edge of the woods.”
There was a hard silence and I thought my cell might have dropped the call. I wanted to say, Hello? But I needed to appear strong and that one interrogative might ruin things. After a good few Mississippis, Yummy said, “You are able to detect that a Mithran has been to that house?”
“Yeah. Walking the edge of the property. Standing long enough in one spot for me to sense it. You wanna tell me what you folks have been up to out here?”
Yummy blew out a breath, one I know she didn’t need, and so it was either muscle memory, emotion, or for effect. “I policed the grounds last night, searching for the attacker, trying to sniff out if it was a Mithran.”
“And what did you smell?”
“The attacker smells neither like Mithran nor like cattle,” she said, her words precise.
It took a moment for me to understand that she meant the shooter didn’t smell like a vampire or human. Vampires drank humans, so they ended up thinking of them as food sources and pets, hence the cattle term. It was as insulting as my maggot term. I decided to ignore it. “Why do you keep asking—worrying—if the shooter is a vampire?” I heard a soft uneven tapping on Yummy’s end, like a fingernail or pen against a hard surface, as if she was thinking.
She sighed again. Definitely for effect. “A small group of Europeans carried out an attack against the Master of the City of New Orleans. There’s been a retaliatory challenge to the European emperor, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, a challenge of Sangre Duello.”
That wasn’t news, nor was it surprising that she should know so much. The surprise came because she shared it so freely. “I’m aware of that. Go on. There’s gonna be a fight.”
“We await the schedule. If Leo Pellissier loses, then all the Mithrans within the borders of the United States and Canada are at risk of extermination.”