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The meeting lasted too long. When it was over, the Secret Service agent left and the others went home or to their office cubicles. I printed out a dozen files and spread the pages over the conference room table, to put together a timeline and a possible family tree. I worked for hours, as the moon passed by outside the windows, marking the night’s progression. I drank eggnog right out of the carton. It wasn’t near as good as Mama Grace’s nog. I ate cookies. Also not as good. When I was done, I organized it into a new file with bullet points.
Wilder Thomas Jefferson, infant, taken to orphanage—1950.
Burns it down at age 15 (entering puberty, which is when many paranormals come into their powers).
Numbers of potential paranormals in Jefferson/Tolliver family: Wilder Thomas Jefferson? Jefferson’s wife? (Note: No details on her. Determine status.) Justin’s mother Miriam Tolliver (actually sister to Senator T) missing? Sonya Tolliver, deceased? Clarisse Jefferson Tolliver, missing presumed deceased? Charles Healy (Jail 1973. Missing 11 years). Nanny. Devin. Unknown which family line trait descended. Both? Unlikely.
Theory: Long-lived pyro shape-shifters, able to assume human form. No kidneys. Nonhuman digestive tract. Gray skin. Dark blood postmortem.
Possibility: Flight?
Possibility: Ability to hide/camouflage scent patterns? Males only?
Need/want way to reproduce safely.
Need/want way to transfer holdings.
I did a little more research and added to the list:
Note: Wilder Thomas Jefferson never married, but starting 30 years ago, he was photographed often with his young daughter, Clarisse. Went into business with Tolliver upon three things: marriage of Sonya to Justin, Clarisse marriage to Abrams, and birth of Devin.
Possibilities of pyro types: phoenix (would fit flight), hellhound (a fire-based type of gwyllgi?), dragon (different from arcenciels?), efreet (multiple spellings; can be caught or killed with magic), cherufe (reptile humanoid; may not be true shape-shifter), salamander (born in volcanoes).
As I pulled together the timeline and possibilities, I found something that T. Laine had entered into the files just before she went to Texas. Soon after the birth of Devin, there was a huge fire at then-state-senator Tolliver’s mansion and two bodies were found in the building, an adult female and a child. Fire investigators determined that a servant and her child died, and death certificates were issued in the names of Monica Smith and Marcus Smith. Which was interesting, but not particularly useful information. Unless . . . I sat back in my chair, watching Soul, who was standing still as a glass statue, both of us thinking.
“Soul?”
She turned from the window and the brightening sky, which had held her unfocused attention. She raised her brows in a gesture that said I could continue.
“What if someone killed the real-life real wife Clarisse and the real Devin, and replaced them with shape-shifting pyros?”
“If so, then why burn up Sonya in the limo?”
“Hmmm. Unless Devin accidentally set off the fire. Or unless Sonya was a problem and she had to die for some reason, say, to protect them, or Sonya was like them and it was time to replace Sonya’s pyro identity?”
Soul gave me a head-shaking shrug that suggested I was guessing and my guesses were getting too complicated to make sense, and she was right. I sent my lists off to JoJo and went back to work. But something kept nagging at me. Something about the timeline and the sequence of the deaths through three generations.
Rick put a cup of coffee at my elbow, the steam curling up. Hot enough to burn my mouth.
I stopped, my fingers motionless above the tablet. I remembered the burned and dead plants at the senator’s house, and the cooked fish in the water below. My mouth came slowly open. “Ohhh,” I said. “I need to go to the senator’s at dawn.”
“Why?” Rick asked, the question low and concerned. I’d heard my cats use that specific interrogative tone.
“Something I saw. It was dark. It might be nothing so I’d rather not say. But I want to see it again, in the daylight.”
“Fine. Work on the timelines and try to narrow down the species of pyro. Take off near the end of your shift. I’ll send Occam with you.” I wasn’t sure that I wanted Occam with me, not with so many things unknown and undecided between us, but I shrugged. There wasn’t anything I could do about my wants.
I spent the night in the conference room, the Christmas tree and a sleepy grindylow keeping me company. Just before dawn, I heard Occam come in and I left the conference room to pick up my gear bag. We headed out, Occam behind me, his gait limber, supple, and flowing, more so than other days, as his cat rose with the lunar cycle. Small hairs lifted on the back of my neck, the way they might if I was being pursued, tracked by an apex predator. Which, of course, I was. But I didn’t give in to that awareness, instead carrying my gear down the stairs to my truck. Standing out in the warm air—winter in the South was changeable at best—I said smartly, “You got Pea with you?”
“Yep. In my shoulder bag. Why you asking, Nell, sugar?”
“I’d rather she kill you if you go off leash. The paperwork for shooting a teammate has gotta be a pain in the backside.”
Occam started laughing, a purring chuff of sound that brought a smile to my face and made me tease further. “You cat-boys are hard to get along with in your time of the month.”
“Time of the— Nell, sugar, that is an appalling insult.” Occam was still laughing as he got in the truck beside me and we drove off together.
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“You didn’t tell me we’d be climbing down a couple thousand slippery, slimy, and stinking stairs to the river,” Occam said to me.
I’d known about the stairs but not their condition. They were vile, sticky beneath my field boots. Even the handrail was sticky and slimy and I couldn’t make myself touch it. It was no wonder my cousin’s clothes had been so filthy when he came back up. In the dark, Chadworth Hamilton had to have touched everything. I bet he had to throw his expensive suit away. “Didn’t think I needed to. What do you smell?” I figured his senses would be heightened in the moon-time.
“Dead fish. Some cooked, some raw. All of it rotting.”