I flinched and whispered, “Traffic.” And then I flushed with anger, cleared my voice, and said, “I was caught in traffic. There was an accident on South Illinois Avenue.” Rick looked at me blankly. “On Sixty-two near Tuskegee Drive,” I clarified. Unit Eighteen was composed of out-of-towners, not local people, and for months now, I’d had to refer to roads by their number instead of the pike name or street name.
Rick said, “Okay, so why aren’t you at the senator’s place, reading the ground?”
“Ummm.” I flicked my eyes around the table, meeting Tandy’s. “Because the senator’s dead?”
Tandy gave me a slight nod telling me that Rick was not himself, but that he was working to share his own calm with the boss. The full moon was close. Rick was antsy. I put a sugar cookie shaped like a gift box tied with a bow onto a paper plate and passed it Rick’s way. He didn’t take it, instead looking even more annoyed.
Calmly, Soul said, “Nell is where she should be. In fact, I think Nell should concentrate on a timeline. We have murders to investigate. This is now our case. The FBI and Secret Service will still be involved but on the periphery.”
“Fine,” Rick said, his voice tight, his green-glowing eyes on me. “Read the file notes, Ingram. T. Laine, continue.”
T. Laine said, “I spent the last half of the day and the flight back working on the legislation angle. The senator had three bills before Congress: one that would make all paranormals born in this country equal citizens with all protections under the law; one that provides regular law enforcement equal power over all paranormals; and the last one unrelated, that requires much deeper background checks on all gun buyers and a three-week waiting period. All this is totally out of character for a Republican senator, especially since several of the Tolliver companies contribute to the production of weapons.”
Tandy said, “I’ve been talking to his aides. They say he’d been acting strange for the last three months, taking breaks and disappearing, missing meetings, postponing trips to DC, abstaining from votes he normally would have strong feelings for or against. It means nothing by itself, but taken together with a possible paranormal turf war, it might eventually make sense.”
“Occam,” Rick snarled. “Update us on the senator’s PM.”
Occam didn’t raise his eyes from his computer screen, eyes that were glowing the golden brown of his cat, but his lips lifted in a snarl of his own. The tension in the room was suddenly too high, the air feeling too hot. The werecats were acting catty, not human. It could be from the stuff I missed before I arrived. Or because when it came to cat shifting, Rick was a brand-new were and had little control over his emotions. Or because the dominance games in the null room had been unsuccessful. Or because, when I helped Rick shift back to human during the last full moon, breaking the wereleopard curse he was under, maybe I didn’t succeed all the way. I had tried not to think too much about that event, but I had never broken a curse, let alone one applied by a cat-woman. Maybe I just partially solved his problem and he was still in trouble. Or maybe the tattoo magic spell on and in his flesh was the problem. Whatever it was, Rick acting hotheaded or out of control would be bad for him and for all of us in Unit Eighteen. Rick tilted his head in a catty, nonhuman manner.
At the gesture, the Secret Service guy slid his hand inside his jacket, moving like former military, instincts on high. I glanced to Tandy, and he looked spooked.
Out of nowhere, Pea landed on the table, chittering madly. She leaped over the little Christmas tree, dropping onto Occam, landing like a cute kitten, a grindylow reacting to the rising violent were-pheromones in the room.
Tandy stood, his Lichtenberg lines too bright, too red on his white, white skin. His face was caught in a rictus of fear, his eyes on Rick, his hands reaching, as if to hold the SAC in place. And failing. Something was about to happen. Something bad.
There was only one grindylow. Where was the other?
The Secret Service guy was drawing his weapon. Occam’s eyes flashed golden fire. Rick reached for his service weapon.
I barked, “Rick!” I pulled on Soulwood. Pulled peace and calm from the sleeping trees and bound them around Rick’s cat. I had claimed Rick soon after I met him, claimed him for the land, to heal him, to heal his were-magics. Now I used that, and reached out to Tandy too, hoping he could help calm the cat. But the empath was panicked himself, picking up the wereleopards’ territorial anger.
I used the tools I had and wrapped Soulwood around all of them: the cats, the grindylow, Tandy, the government warrior. More quietly, I said, “We’re all happy here.”
Rick blinked. His eyes lost the green leopard sheen. Pea looked up from Occam and leaped all the way across the table to land on Rick. Stuck her nose into Rick’s face and chittered. It seemed everyone in the room took a breath. “Everything is okay,” I said. I looked at Tandy and said again, softer, “Everything is okay.” Tandy nodded and closed his eyes, his body language wilting. The empath had learned that in times of extreme stress and fear he had the ability to share his own emotions, to change other people’s reactions, but he hadn’t managed to do that, instead falling back on old patterns of being controlled by the rages and passions around him. Now he too drew on Soulwood, pushing the calm of the land that lived inside me into the room. It was a bizarre sensation, similar to the touch of a slow spring rain pattering down on the earth. I liked it.
The tension in the room went down fast. The Secret Service agent blinked in confusion and replaced his weapon with a soft click of hard plastic holster.
Rick’s weapon disappeared; he took a breath and released it. “Where were we?” he asked.
The glow in Occam’s eyes died and he said, “I’ll skip the weight of the senator’s liver and brain and heart and conditions of his internal organs to give you the English translation of the COD. Cause of death is listed as third-degree burns and inhalation of superheated air, resulting in the shutdown of his respiratory system. It’s transcribed in medicalese, but that’s the gist. They were starting on the security guys when I left, but prelim results were the same.”
“But he was human,” Rick stated.
Occam hesitated, glancing at the Secret Service agent as if weighing what he wanted to say, and it was clear he had held information back. “His organs were . . . off. His digestive system wasn’t normal.” He looked at Soul and she tilted her head, telling him to continue. “He had no kidneys, no gallbladder; his liver was bluish. His blood smelled weird and it was darker than expected. The unburned parts of the senator’s skin turned a deep bluish color that looked nothing like livor mortis after death. The forensic pathologists sent patches off for DNA workup and they’ll be processing it through chemicals and dyes to look at it under a microscope in twenty-four hours. We should have a report in forty-eight hours or so. But no. The senator was not human.”