Soul studied me as if I were a specimen under a microscope. Again, no problem. I just stared back. “Hmmm,” she said and went to the stairwell to greet the nanny and the social worker. I slipped into the conference room, which was lightless, the overhead screens dark, and shut the door. I leaned over Jo’s shoulder. Tandy was sitting close to her so they could share screen views. Their positions had nothing to do with the romance between them. Uh-huh.
We watched as the two women followed Soul up the stairs, the social worker in the middle of the short column. She was a frizzy-haired woman wearing a frowzy sweater, a scarf that had to be twenty feet long wrapped around her neck in rolls, and comfortable snow boots. She was easily identified by the official name tag and the overlarge purse she carried. The nanny was an odd duck. She wore an ugly orange-brown pantsuit, a color never intended for her gray hair, which she wore slicked back, to expose a sun-damaged forehead and cheeks marked with light and dark pigmentation, especially dark beneath her eyes and spotted on her cheeks.
“Is it the screen or the lighting or the clothing or is she sick?” Tandy asked softly.
“Maybe the clothing?” I said, doubtfully.
“No. I think she’s . . . gray,” Jo said. “My aunt looked like that when she was about to die from COPD. Just that color gray when her lungs filled up, just before she passed. Black woman with lung troubles wearing orange clothes is not a good look.”
“You think she’s African-American?” I asked.
“She sure ain’t European,” Jo said, exasperated.
On camera, the three women moved from the stairwell camera into the hallway camera. The volume was turned down on the security equipment to keep the visitors from hearing a delayed conversation and know they were being videoed, but we could tell they were introducing themselves to one another. The nanny didn’t shake hands, just nodded to Soul, who said a few words and led the social worker down the hall toward the break room. The nanny followed and then stopped in the hallway. She lifted her head and sniffed, nose in the air, her head bobbing like a ferret’s.
She raced into my office cubicle.
“What the—?” Jo said, changing camera angles quickly. The odd woman was standing, hunched over, in front of my plants and she . . . stuck her hands into the pots.
I whirled to go stop her, but Tandy grabbed my wrist. “No,” he said.
“But she’s touching my plants!”
“Watch. Let’s see what she does.”
It was an invasion. A personal and intimate violation. It was disturbing and I had no idea why it was bothering me so much. Unit Eighteen members used my plants all the time, cutting them, touching them. But this woman was doing something else. Something odd. Something not right.
The strange woman stuck her hands into all ten pots, dipping fast, as if tasting. As if she knew what I was. Or what Soulwood was. Or something worse. It was bizarre.
Seconds later, she whirled and raced after the other two women, arriving at the break room only a moment behind them. She rushed in and knelt, running grayish hands over the sleeping boy. She jerked her head to glare at Soul. She picked up Devin like a baby, though he had to weigh seventy pounds, and carried him down the hallway. The social worker had Soul sign some papers before she followed the nanny and her charge away.
“That was freaky,” Jo said.
“I don’t think that either of the women mentioned the stink of burned hair, flesh, and vinyl tile,” Tandy said, still holding my wrist. “Neither reacted or even seemed to notice it.”
“The nanny was aware of, and angry about, Devin’s deep sleep,” Jo said, “but she didn’t do anything about it. She just got the kid out of the office pronto. They were in the building for four minutes, twenty-seven seconds altogether. Soul’s coming back in.”
The conference room door opened. “They are gone,” Soul said. “Play the video, please, with audio.”
Tandy released my hand and I went to my office to check my plants. The soil felt fine. The plants seemed fine. But . . . the strange gray woman had touched them. I didn’t like that at all but I didn’t know what to do about it. But . . . dang it. She had touched my plants!
I stopped by the null magic room, where the weres had been herded by Pea and Bean, and where they would remain until they were totally calm and ready to shift back to human. T. Laine was sitting in a chair in the hallway, looking sick. Even through the door, the null room affected her magics.
I pointed at the door and lifted my eyebrows, asking for permission. She nodded and I cracked the door and peeked in. The cats were stretched out on the long table and looked bored, a spotted tail tip twitching slightly. The metal chairs had all been tipped over, and one was bent like a pretzel, clearly having suffered from cat ire. Grindys were nowhere to be seen.
I said, “Devin’s gone.” The wereleopards ignored me, as cats are wont to do. I shut the door, catching a glimpse of Soul in Rick’s office, talking on her cell, pacing. I patted T. Laine’s shoulder and left her to her null room misery.
? ? ?
JoJo and Tandy were in the conference room, sharing a quiet moment over coffee, and probably thinking that no one knew they were an item. There was an open tin of Christmas cookies on the table, half-empty. I sat and fingered my longer hair, not willing to start back on the case, not yet. Soul came in again shortly after and started a fresh pot of Rick’s Community Coffee. We had recently discovered that Ingles grocery stores carried the brand, and he no longer had to buy it over the Net. Best coffee ever. By the scent, this was their coffee and chicory mix, which was coffee with a flavor kick I was coming to adore. The quiet moments passed and we each accepted a cup of coffee from the big boss, letting her serve us all. We sipped. Rested.
Before the cups were empty, T. Laine entered and plopped in her chair. “Pea let the cats out and they started changing back. The daytime crew needs sleep so let’s please do a quick debrief and let us get to bed. You can fill in the cats when they get back.”
Soul inclined her head and said, “Summary. We have firestarters. Jones and Dyson have spent the last few hours going over, again, the Tollivers’ past and current financial, political, and familial status. Kent has been looking at firestarter species. Jones?”
Soul was still using a neutral, demanding tone and last names, which seemed to give this case a gravitas it hadn’t had before, again suggesting that this case was no longer an easy-to-solve one but a dangerous one. I tapped my tablet on and opened the files waiting on my screen.
Jo said, “We’ve been searching through birth and death records and fire and arson records to see if Tolliver firestarters are new to this generation or have been around a while.”
New? I asked, “How could they be new?” Was I new? Or had there been leafy people in my past family tree? Family tree. I repressed a grin, turning my lips under and biting them together, tucking my head so no one would ask what was amusing. But Tandy knew and shot me a look full of questions. I ignored him.