Abruptly, Soul said, “The flames at the home of Senator Tolliver were abnormally hot. Yet they went out all by themselves after you dropped into the earth. The fire department did its job, but the houses and the fir trees were mostly smoking ruins by the time they got there. Smoking. Not flaming.”
I continued to stare at her. She had the most amazing eyes, black with faint tints of purple and green and blue that caught the light at odd moments.
T. Laine said, “The body in the limo, the one that should have been Sonya? You remember?”
I nodded once, remembering.
“It hadn’t been cremated. The FBI held it at the morgue pending further testing. It was fully human and turned out to be the body of a missing local woman. Mother of three. PhD in nursing. She had been drugged and placed in the limo to burn to death in Sonya’s place. They murdered her to carry on their bloodlines and the transfer of real property.”
JoJo said, “We captured four salamanders: the female who had played the part of Sonya, the nanny, and two other females who were hiding inside the smoking walls of the house. We also caught four baby salamanders who had stayed in the pool and not attacked you. The others disappeared, presumed burned in the fire.”
I tilted my head, not disagreeing. I had killed all the ones I could find.
Soul said, “We put them in the null room. Then we transported them to PsyLED, where they died. The null room stripped them of their magic. It was . . . tragic.” Her tone said otherwise.
I frowned. Or thought I did. I wasn’t sure. Soul had wanted all the salamanders dead. So had I, and I had finished the battle for her. I had fed dozens to the land. I had murdered even those not yet guilty of a crime. Even so, the human law would call it self-defense if they ever thought to try me for a crime. But . . . all the salamanders were killers. They poisoned the earth and the trees and the land. They killed the plants that I loved, that I was here to protect. PsyLED’s job was to police paranormals who couldn’t be kept in check by any other means. And that too, I had done. And perhaps Soul had done by placing the salamanders in a null room. Again ending her war.
Tandy said, “Once we knew what to look for, the explanation was all there in the family’s financial papers. Jefferson/Healy/Devin wanted the family money back in his hands and under the control of him and his bloodline—his mates and progeny. All the shootings and fires were about money and the transfer of property out of the hands of humans and into the hands of the salamanders. They had been living below the human law enforcement radar for decades. They took each other’s places as needed for the last two centuries.”
Rick said, “We still don’t know if the nanny was actually trying to kill Abrams.”
“Worst shot in the history of serial killers,” JoJo said. They made a noise. It was laughter.
My eyes tracked the speakers, but I still had no desire to say anything. I just listened and thought. Mud poured me a cup of super-sweet lemon ginger tea, which I had developed a deep desire for, though it didn’t taste exactly the way it had before. I accepted the cup and sipped, instantly soothed by the tart sweetness. No one spoke. I realized that I really needed to say something; most anything would do. I thought back over the days of the case, and one thing seemed important. Occam hadn’t come. Occam wasn’t here. But I couldn’t say that. I said instead, “Did you bring Krispy Kremes?”
Tandy laughed, his odd reddish brown eyes on me, the sound of his laughter relieved and excited and joyful. JoJo put a hand on his arm and he quieted. None of that made sense to me.
Rick looked down and I realized he might be upset. Part of me wanted to water his roots and I smiled at the urge. Tandy smiled with me.
JoJo took up the narrative again. “The raid on the DNAKeys compound didn’t reveal what we thought or feared. There were vamps and witches and weres there, just like we thought, living and working on the campus. That’s what they called it. The campus.”
Rick glowered and said, “They were on-site by choice. The were-creatures were hoping that someone at DNAKeys would find a cure for were-taint, and the researchers claim to have been making some progress on it.”
“Prions cause were-taint. Prions can’t be killed,” I said at last. “Not by fire, heat, radiation, freezing. They never, ever die.”
Bitterly, Rick said, “No, they can’t be killed. The claims were false.”
JoJo pulled at her earrings, a nervous tic, one I remembered. She said, “The witches were on contract. The vamps were there on contract too, to provide blood as needed for experiments on diseases that cause bleeding—coagulation diseases, from the new form of Ebola to platelet problems to one called DIC. Don’t ask me what it stands for. It’s a bunch of syllables.”
“Disseminated intravascular coagulation,” T. Laine added. “And that part of the claims was true. They found some new treatments that are amazing.” I remembered that Lainie had a lot of degrees and partial degrees and her breadth of knowledge had made her attractive to PsyLED.
With that thought, all sorts of memories, full and partials, came back to me, piles of images and smells and sounds, landing on me like a kaleidoscopic avalanche. My lips stretched into a smile and Tandy rose, crossed the room, and sat beside me on the couch. He put his head on my shoulder, which felt peculiar and comfortable all at once. “She’s remembering,” he said. I was pretty sure Tandy was watering me. Like Mud had watered me in the woods. No. He was crying on my shoulder. That was it.
I lifted a hand and patted his shoulder. I said, “You stopped eating. You lost weight.”
“I’ve been worried about you turning into a cord of firewood,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’ve been worried that Occam wouldn’t heal from his scars. It’s hard to eat when I’m worried.”
That was interesting. “Mud, make Tandy some of this tea”—I lifted the mug—“and fix him a jelly sandwich.”
Mud stood, heading for the kitchen, saying, “Okay. Can I hold a gun on him if he tells me he ain’t hungry?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” Rick said to Mud. “You are way too much like your sister for my comfort level.”
“Thank you,” Mud said.
“Occam?” I asked. “He’s . . .”
“Scarred,” Rick said, something odd in his voice. “PsyLED sent him to Gabon, twice now, to a colony of were-leopards to heal.” I said nothing and Rick added, so very gently, “He came back from the first visit to make sure we moved you safely from your . . . your rooted state to Soulwood. Then he had to go back.”
“Oh,” I said, my fingers picking at my skirt. I wondered if he’d ever come back here. To have dinner with me. But I didn’t ask.