“And Devin?”
“He’s a pyro of some kind. A firestarter. There’s a couple dozen different kinds of firestarter species in mythology. We think the assassin is a pyro too. So our entire investigation is . . . officially, let’s call it askew. It’s either closer to being solved, because we stand a better chance now of figuring out what the assassin is and the Tollivers are, or it’s really totally bollixed up.”
I frowned. I had heard the word bollocks in a film or two and had looked it up. It was from a German word for testicles, though I had no idea what they might have to do with this investigation. “Bollixed up?”
T. Laine rubbed her forehead with a hand. A slash of blood was dried across it. Blood Spatter 101 class at Spook School had taught me that the droplet had been moving laterally at speed when it hit her. Her hand fell to her lap. Fortunately my bloodlust didn’t rise. She said, “I was trying to find a word that was acceptable to you. I was trying to say the investigation probably just took a major wrong turn and dumped all our potential conclusions into a ditch.”
“Fubared?” Fubar was Rick’s term. I was used to hearing it.
“That works better than bollixed up, I guess. Though I’m surprised to hear you say it.” Her expression was sly.
My face relaxed at the teasing. “Yeah. Well. Bollixed up is fine. We routinely castrated animals in the compound.” I leaned to her and said with a straight face, “That means cutting off their bollocks. Want to know how it’s done?”
T. Laine made a face. “Remind me not to try and shock you.”
“Okay,” I said.
She shook her head as if I had misunderstood her request.
“And the situation with the case isn’t really that bad,” I said. “We knew all along that it was either homegrown terrorism, familial infighting, or business. So now we’ve narrowed it down to family. Pyro against pyro. We just need to figure out how many of the Tollivers are pyros, what kind of pyros, and then which pyros have done the attacking and why. And if the attacking is a para-war.”
“Right. That’s all. And then we have to decide what to do about the pyros. The current legal system can’t deal with a pyro. If the senator or a member of his family is a pyro, what happens to his career? What will the public think about it? What happens in Congress and to the bills the senator has in place when it all comes to light?”
Lainie was right. A pyro wasn’t a witch, to be jailed by her own kind in a null room. Not a vampire to be chained in his sire’s basement or destroyed by a vampire killer. Not an insane werewolf or a gwyllgi to be killed on sight or sent to the Montana Bighorn Pack for training. A pyro was a totally new paranormal creature that could set a courtroom on fire. Explode a courtroom. That could use fire to kill. “Oh,” I said, sounding lame.
“Until today there were three kinds of paras.” She lifted a finger with each class: “A mutation of basic human stock like you, the Welsh gwyllgi devil dogs, and witches; vampires and were-creatures who start human and are infected and then can pass along the trait to their offspring; and arcenciels and whatever the fangheads’ Misericords are.” She dropped her hand. “And now we have this thing. It doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. We don’t know what it is. And Soul’s really worried. She hasn’t said a word since Devin shot fire at you.”
Lainie extended a hand again and I took it, letting her pull me to my feet. I said, “I have to go to the locker room and shower and . . . ummm . . . clip my leaves.”
“Good plan. I have kiddie guard duty. See you in a bit.”
She left me alone and I went in search of my gear bags. I hid in the locker room, shaving my legs and clipping my leaves and studying my face in the mirror. My eyes were greener, a leafy spring green with flecks of evergreen. My pupils were larger, or maybe that was just a temporary adaptation to the low light. I hadn’t turned on all the switches when I entered. My hair was longer. Brighter. A richer nut-brown with reddish tresses. Was I becoming a plant? I smiled at my reflection and it smiled back, so that part was still good. It was long after two a.m. and I should have been exhausted, but I felt pretty decent considering my several days with poor sleep and nearly getting burned to death. I repacked my gear bags and went in search of information. First up, and most important, were my plants. Someone had placed the live ones on my desk. Ten dead, two sick, eight still thriving. I placed all ten in my window box and bolstered them with a little love. Once they were okay, I headed for the conference and break rooms.
? ? ?
Devin was on the couch in the break room, sleeping the sleep of the spelled. Someone had pried up the blistered flooring and pulled the table over the bare underflooring. A chair had been removed. I could still smell the stink of fire over the fumes of vinegar that had been used to clean up the mess. I was glad I had been out for that one.
Soul tapped on the wall at the door behind me. “Are you well, Ingram?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned to her. “Well enough.”
“This child’s nanny and child protective services just drove up. I had Jones set all internal cameras to record every moment.” Jones was JoJo. I tilted my head to show I understood. “I want you watching the transfer with Jones and Dyson.” Dyson was Tandy. Soul was doing everything by the book, her face utterly expressionless. I figured Clementine was active.
“Are the cats still catty?”
“Yes, though they have calmed down greatly and seem to have sorted out their burgeoning dominance issues.”
I didn’t ask how that had turned out. “You know Jo has to be going on twenty-plus hours with no sleep.”
Soul narrowed her eyes at me and let a silence build between us, probably at my temerity to speak to the assistant director in such a manner. I might have sounded just a bit judgmental. I probably should have apologized, but I didn’t. I had been stared down by a group of shotgun-armed churchmen in a righteous religious fury. A peeved light dragon was nothing by comparison. “I do,” she said at last. “I’ll see she gets a full twenty-four off starting in the morning.”
“Thank you.”