“Oh, Mud.” I hugged her for a moment before releasing her. “Well. Okay. What are we gonna do about the rooster?”
“Let it go? Someone’ll claim it and when it wakes them up at three in the morning they’ll get a good meal outta it.”
Together we released the rooster. The mean old bird scratched the earth, giving me the evil eye, as if trying to decide if he was going to attack me, but then he reconsidered and raced away, crowing. I put on my shoes. Tandy in our wake, my true sister and I walked to my Chevy truck and drove back to Soulwood. Back to home.
EPILOGUE
I sat on my porch swing, warm spring breezes dancing across the lawn, brushing newly leafed plants, pale green trees waving in the wind. Birds were singing and squirrels were racing around wide trunks, playing tag and catch-me-if-you-can. A brave lizard raced across the house wall and into a space it believed the cats couldn’t reach. Had they been awake, one of the cats would have caught and eaten him, lizards being a very fine dinner to a mouser. But they were snoozing on the front porch, stretched out in the sun, unmoving, except for Cello’s tail tip twitching every now and then.
Mud was at home, packing for her move here. I didn’t know if it would be a permanent move or not. That would be up to the state’s social services department and a judge.
My cell phone rang. It was on the swing seat beside me. It was Occam’s number. Something leaped in my chest, like a wereleopard into a tree. I answered. “This is Nell.” Nell. Not Ingram. To set the tone.
“Nell, sugar.” His voice sounded rough and coarse, like the voice of a chain-smoking old man. “I didn’t know if you’d answer.”
“I didn’t think you’d call. Seems like we both were wrong.” He didn’t reply, but I could hear the soft purr of his fancy car. “What happened? Why haven’t you—” I stopped, not able to ask why he hadn’t called me.
“I’ve been out of work. Healing.”
“From the fire?”
“You brought me back from death, Nellie. And I thank you for that. But . . . well, the healing wasn’t complete. It’s taken a lot of shifting to heal from the burns.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “I took some time to turn back from being a log.” I risked a small joke. “A truly vegetative state.”
Occam laughed. I laughed with him.
“Nell, sugar, can we have that date?”
“I’d like that.”
Occam said nothing. And I decided to be brave. “How about now?”
Silence stretched between us. “Now is good,” he said after a while, his voice so hoarse it sounded torn.
“You gonna tell me about your life, the things you remember?” He stayed silent. I went on. “From before the cage and the traveling carnival, and the time from your leopard imprisonment?”
“I will. You going to tell me about your family? About John Ingram? About the Nicholsons?”
“I will.”
“Good. ’Cause I got things to say about how I nearly died. And how Soulwood healed me. As well as it could. I been out of work for just as long as you. Burned. Badly burned, with lots of scars that not even shifting to my cat has helped. But healing and still alive because of you and your land. This will be our ‘getting to know one another’ first date.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“And at the end of this date, or maybe at the middle, I promise that I am going to kiss you, Nell, sugar.”
Warmth spiraled through me and settled in my belly. My breath came faster. “A properly improper kiss?”
“The most improper kiss I can think of, Nell, sugar. What do you want me to pick up to eat?”
“You just come. I’ll have a picnic ready when you get here.”
“That sounds right nice, Nell, sugar. I’ll be there in an hour.”
? ? ?
The weather was comfortable enough to allow me to wear a long-sleeved shirt and a silky skirt, my feet bare. At my side was a basket, one with sandwiches, a plastic bowl of fresh fruit, a bottle of Sister Erasmus’ wine. And my pink blanket, clean and neatly folded.
It was early yet, but I felt it the moment the fancy car began the drive up the hill. My fingertips ached, as the small leaves that grew from there tried to quiver in nerves or excitement or both. Occam and I were going to have a picnic on the hill of Soulwood, overlooking the distant skyline of Knoxville and the even more distant mountains. And he was going to kiss me, a very improper kiss. I thought it was time and past time for me to have my first very improper kiss.
The fancy car turned into the drive. I stood and walked down the steps to Occam.
Read on for an excerpt of the first book in Faith Hunter’s New York Times bestselling Jane Yellowrock series,
SKINWALKER
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I wheeled my bike down Decatur Street and eased deeper into the French Quarter, the bike’s engine purring. My shotgun, a Benelli M4 Super 90, was slung over my back and loaded for vamp with hand-packed silver fléchette rounds. I carried a selection of silver crosses in my belt, hidden under my leather jacket, and stakes, secured in loops on my jeans-clad thighs. The saddlebags on my bike were filled with my meager travel belongings—clothes in one side, tools of the trade in the other. As a vamp killer for hire, I travel light.
I’d need to put the vamp-hunting tools out of sight for my interview. My hostess might be offended. Not a good thing when said hostess held my next paycheck in her hands and possessed a set of fangs of her own.
A guy, a good-looking Joe standing in a doorway, turned his head to follow my progress as I motored past. He wore leather boots, a jacket, and jeans, like me, though his dark hair was short and mine was down to my hips when not braided out of the way, tight to my head, for fighting. A Kawasaki motorbike leaned on a stand nearby. I didn’t like his interest, but he didn’t prick my predatory or territorial instincts.
I maneuvered the bike down St. Louis and then onto Dauphine, weaving between nervous-looking shop workers heading home for the evening and a few early revelers out for fun. I spotted the address in the fading light. Katie’s Ladies was the oldest continually operating whorehouse in the Quarter, in business since 1845, though at various locations, depending on hurricane, flood, the price of rent, and the agreeable nature of local law and its enforcement officers. I parked, set the kickstand, and unwound my long legs from the hog.