Flame in the Dark Read online

  Rick caught my eye across the lawn and I nodded slowly, hoping he understood what I was saying, that it was the same attacker. He nodded back curtly and gestured me over. I made my way along the edge of the property back to the small group. “So,” I asked, “gas?”

  “Yes and no,” said a man in a fire department uniform and a winter coat. “Gasoline was recovered from the gas can under the porch, but the can was below the worst of the heat and didn’t explode. Didn’t contribute to the fire at all. From the way the fire started—on both stories at the same time—and the way it spread—inward from both levels and fast—I’d say the structure was targeted with a flamethrower, but we didn’t get a hit on known accelerants except the gasoline. If the sprinkler system hadn’t come on, some of the family, particularly the kids, might not have gotten out alive. The fire ate right through their rooms.”

  Sonya Tolliver sobbed, gathered her children close, and herded them toward a big SUV. She opened the door with the keypad and climbed in with the children, shutting the door on the fire and the unwelcome information. Her husband looked us over and then fled after his family.

  When the vehicle door closed, Rick asked me, “Ingram, what did you determine?”

  “It’s the same attacker,” I said. “Or the same species as the previous attacker, a paranormal.”

  “You can’t know that,” Schultz said.

  “In a couple of days, the plants in a specific trail are going to start to die. If you want, I can mark it off for you once the fire department is finished. At the Holloways’ house, I detected the same kind of trail. There should be dead plants along it now. Go look.”

  “And how do we know you didn’t create this ‘trail’?” Hamilton asked, his eyes hard, piercing me through the smoke-filled air that swirled our way. This man, like other law enforcement officials, knew that Unit Eighteen was composed of mostly paranormals. Although he probably didn’t know what I was, it was a good guess that I wasn’t human. My cuz didn’t like paranormals. Which just ticked me off something terrible.

  I narrowed my eyes at him and drew on my churchwoman accent. I had learned that deliberately using it seemed to throw people off their game, as if they didn’t quite know how to relate to me. Oddly enough, it had become part of my arsenal. “Are you’un asking me if I am the unknown suspect who shot the people at the Holloways’ fund-raiser party?” I asked, squaring my shoulders and advancing on him. “Are you’un asking me if I have a flamethrower? Are you’un jist trying to cause trouble, or are you’un trying to make me, specifically, mad? I’m jist curious, since you’un’s bein’ an ass an’ all.”

  Rick coughed, but I had a feeling the choked sound was laughter stuck in his throat. It also let me know that Hamilton was being difficult to all the paranormals, and not just me.

  Schultz said, “Hamilton, do you have a problem with Special Agent Ingram? If not, back off, probie.”

  Hamilton shoved his fists into his suit coat pockets and took a step back, but he was staring back and forth at Rick and me. Hamilton was looking more and more like a paranormal hater and had decided to dump me in with the weres and witches on PsyLED Unit Eighteen. Or maybe he was another one who hated me for exposing his former boss as a shape-shifter and cannibal, when they’d had no idea. That seemed to have left a bad taste in a lot of FBI agents’ mouths.

  Schultz went on as if nothing rude had been said on either side. “So either Justin Tolliver was the primary target all along, or the entire family is under attack.”

  “Politics or money?” Rick asked.

  “Both?” She looked at the house. “First I’ll get Hamilton to pull records: financials, political contributions, life insurance, marital problems.” She glanced at the SUV where the Tollivers had taken refuge. “Follow the money.”

  “I agree,” Rick said. “This means we’ll have to guard the senator and his entire family at work, home, governmental buildings, travel, and school.”

  Schultz made a rude sound and said, “I’ll call it in. We need more people until we stop this guy.” She studied Rick. “Can you, you know, smell anything?”

  “You mean like smoke?” Rick asked, an amused glint in his eyes.

  “Something humans can’t pick up?” E. M. Schultz shrugged, her gaze taking in the lean wereleopard. “House is damaged, too hot to work up right now, but U-18’s investigatory technique goes about things a bit differently, I’ve heard.”

  “Sometimes,” Rick acknowledged. “And underneath the stench of burning wood, brick, synthetic fibers, wallboard, shingles, stone, and a dozen other household stinks, I do smell something odd. Not magical, not were, not anything I can put my finger on. But if it comes to me, I’ll call.”

  Schultz tilted two fingers into a chest pocket and removed a card. “Business and personal numbers. Anytime.”

  I watched Rick take the card, his eyes alight, but when Schultz glanced back at the house, the flirty glow in his gaze faded fast, into something bitter and grieving. Weres can’t have sexual relations with humans without passing along to them the were-taint, which was an automatic death sentence carried out by grindylows—the cute but deadly judge, jury, and executioner of the were community. Not that many humans knew all that, likely Schultz included. Which meant that if I was interpreting the little scene correctly, Schultz wanted to date Rick and he couldn’t date her, but wanted to, and maybe flirted by instinct. Even outside of a polygamous church, romantic and physical relationships weren’t easy.

  I scowled, my mind envisioning Occam, the way he had looked last time I saw him, blond hair floating, scruffy beard. And for some reason that image hurt me on a level that made no sense, except that Occam couldn’t have anyone either. Unless he and Rick wanted to get together . . . And I didn’t see either of them wanting the other.

  Unless . . . My body and mind stilled. I wasn’t human. That meant that Occam and I could—

  “Nell?”

  I flinched, looked up into Rick’s black eyes, and realized he had been talking to me for a while. The other agents were gone and it was just Rick and me under the trees. “Ummm. Yeah?”

  “The feds will be providing protection for the senator and his family, and Justin and his family, and they have requested a paranormal LEO on-site. That means that our unit will be doing double duty, tracking the assassin and providing body detail.”

  I tilted out my thumb in a gesture that meant, Please continue.

  “The senator’s house is a huge chunk of real estate, with a six-thousand-square-foot main house, a guesthouse, three pools, and tennis courts, in Sequoyah Hills, on Cherokee Boulevard. It backs up to the Tennessee River and is well protected from all sides. The feds intend to move all the extended family onto the property.”

  I tapped my cell and checked the time. It was a little after four a.m. The night had flown by as I read and communed with the grounds. “You want me there?”

  “You can go home. I want you to sleep today if you can and take the night shift tonight, nine to nine a.m.”

  “Good, I’d like to sleep me some sleep.”

  “Go. I’ll send Senator Tolliver’s address to your cell. Be on time.”

  “Copy,” I said and made my way to my truck. I could barely keep my eyes open on the drive back home. But I didn’t make it home before my cell rang and I knew instantly that my morning nap was about to be tampered with. “Good morning, Mama,” I said, tiredly.

  “Nellie girl, I’d be most appreciative if’n you’un would drop by for a bit. Breakfast in half an hour?”

  “Mama, I—”

  “We’uns having French toast and waffles and eggs and bacon. Thank you’un, pum’kin. See you in a bit.”

  The connection ended. I didn’t know what Mama wanted or what she had up her sleeve, but I knew it was likely something sneaky. Probably several somethings sneaky. Manipulation was an art form among the women in the church. Knowing I sho
uld go straight home to my bed, I put on the blinker and turned toward the church lands.

  FIVE

  My ID was sufficient to get me onto the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church and I turned off the C10’s lights as the truck crawled forward. Holding my flash out the driver’s window I searched into the shadows on either side of the road, looking for fresh shoots of the vampire tree. It was too dark to make out anything in the gloom of a cloudy dawn, in the darkness beneath the scrub pressing up against the twelve-foot-tall fence that surrounded the church grounds.

  Dissatisfied with my perusal, but unwilling to abandon the heated air and search on foot, I rolled the window back up, put the lights back on, and took the most direct route to the Nicholson house. The fact that the most direct route bypassed the vampire tree was just happenstance. Mostly. It was still there. Still creepy.

  I parked the old Chevy beneath the trees in front of the three-story structure that was home to my extended family: my father, my mama, her two sister-wives, and all the assorted sibs and half sibs. Before I could get out of the truck, the door was yanked open and Mud, or Mindy as the rest of the family called her, threw herself inside and hugged me so hard I thought I might break in two. “I missed you’un,” she mumbled into my coat. Before I could respond, she reared back and said, “You’un stink like fire. Not like a campfire, but like garbage burning.”

  I dropped off the seat, to the ground, and said, “I was at a house fire. Part of my job.”

  She narrowed her eyes and studied me like she might an unfamiliar beetle she found eating basil in the greenhouse. “Did somebody try to burn a family out? Was they witches?” Her voice dropped. “Did they burn her at the stake?”

  “No one got burned. No stake. All house fires stink really bad. And in the real human world, witches don’t get burned at the stake.”

  Mud made a sound of disagreement that was remarkably like Mama’s and took my hand, pulling me up the steps to the porch. “Breakfast is on. You’un comin’ to church with us this morning?”

  “No. Just breakfast and then home.”

  “You’un fallin’ away? The mamas say you’un’s fallin’ away and driftin’ into sin.”

  “I have a job. And no, I’m not falling into sin. But I don’t worship at God’s Cloud anymore.”

  “You’un going to church somewheres else? ’Cause if’n you ain’t going to church then you’un’s falling into sin. Sam said so.”

  “Did he now?” Sam was my older full sib and a bit of a worrywart. He also didn’t always know when to keep his big mouth shut. “I’ll speak to Sam. Let him know I’m not falling into evil and damnation.” Except I’d killed two men . . . so maybe I was.

  Mud shoved open the door to the house and dragged me inside. The roar of voices hit me in the face like a huge fluffy pillow, warm and soft and smothering. I hung my winter coat on the wall tree, smelling bacon and waffles and French toast and coffee as I followed Mud into the kitchen, where she pushed me onto a bench and brought me a cup of steaming tea. “Mama, Nell worked all night putting out a fire and she needs to sleep so don’t nobody be giving her no coffee. It’ll keep her awake.”

  Instantly I was bombarded with questions from the young’uns about fires and the exciting life of a firefighter and when did they start letting some puny woman fight fires. And then I had to explain about not being a firefighter, but that women could do any job a man could except produce sperm to father children.

  At that point I was called down by Mama Grace, Daddy’s third and youngest wife, who said, “Nell Nicholson Ingram, I know you’un ain’t been gone so long as to have forgotten what conversation is and is not appropriate for the breakfast table. Hush you’un’s mouth.”

  Mawmaw was coming in the front door and heard the final part of the conversation. “Let the girl talk,” she said. “That’s biology, and biology is schoolin’.”

  “Thanks, Mawmaw,” I said.

  “Though at this age,” she added, as she fell on the bench beside me, “I’m of a mind to say something more. Coffee, please, Cora,” she said, interrupting herself. Staring around the table at the females present, she continued, “While menfolk are handy to have around to do the heavy lifting, any smart woman can figure out how to do things on her own if necessary. And Nell has a point about the role of fathering children.”

  I sat still and listened as the young teenagers at the table dove into an argument about women’s rights and women’s role in the family, politics, business, and the world in general. The boys started demonstrating muscles and their sisters told them to act like adults and then suddenly Mawmaw was quoting Archimedes about using a lever to move the world. Which digressed to Archimedes running around naked in public when he discovered new mathematic principles. And then the young’uns in the main room started singing the alphabet song, followed by a song about Moses in the Nile, followed by a song about numbers that I had never heard before. I didn’t even bother asking Mawmaw about her great nephew, Hamilton the FBI jerk.

  I let it all wash through me, absorbing it and remembering the good things that came from growing up in God’s Cloud. As awful as some parts had been, growing up a Nicholson had not all been bad.

  Mama plunked a plate in front of me stacked with French toast and a half dozen strips of maple-cured bacon. Melted butter ran down the yeasty, egg-soaked and drenched, French-style bread, mixing with blueberry honey. My mouth watered and my throat made some sound of amazement and Mama said, “Eat. We’ll bless it when your’n daddy gets here.” Then she upended a cup of her homemade whipped cream on top of the fried toast and I dug in. Oh yeah. Being a Nicholson was some kind of wonderful when it came to eating.

  I was mostly done, groaning with the pain of a too-full stomach, yet still scraping my spoon across the plate to get the final dregs of deliciousness off it, when there was the slightest hint of change in the ambient noise. In a flash, the teens scattered, some outside to chores, others up the stairs. Mama Grace, soft and rounded, as if her body had been lined with down-fill, set a pot of stinky herbal tea at the head of the table and herded all the littlest young’uns up the stairs too. My own mama, Mama Cora, dished up a plate of waffles and set them beside the herbal tea. She removed my plate and poured me more China black tea. Her lips were tight. Her face was pinched. Something was up.

  And then I heard the faint thunking. Without even turning around, I knew. I knew why I had been asked to breakfast. I knew why everyone had gone running. They had set me up. I glared over the rim of my cup at Mama and she ducked her head, not meeting my eyes.

  I swiveled on the bench and watched Mama Carmel, daddy’s senior wife, help Daddy from their room behind the kitchen, to the table.

  Daddy looked pale enough to win a contest with a corpse, and sorta yellowed too, what the church midwives called jaundice in babies. He had lost at least another ten pounds, leaving his face saggy and his work clothes hanging on his frame. His hands carried a faint tremor. Daddy still had not been to the surgeon who put him back together after he was shot, when the group of shape-shifting devil dog gwyllgi tried to take over the church. Whatever was wrong inside him was getting worse. “Morning, Nellie,” he said, easing into his chair with a pained sigh. “God’s grace and peace to you today.”

  My eyes flicked back and forth between the mamas again in accusation and then I glared at my father. “I’d say the same thing back to you’un, but you’un don’t deserve it.”

  My father reared back in his chair. “What did you say, young lady?”

  “I said, you’un don’t deserve God’s grace and peace, since you’un clearly been throwing it back into the face of the Almighty for weeks and weeks.” Daddy opened his mouth and I stood up from the table so I could use height for intimidation. Tactics from Interrogation 101 at Spook School. Stuff I’d never expected to have to use on my own father. “You used to tell us to make use of all God’s gifts and not ignore them. Not ev
er. That ignoring gifts was a sin. And yet, God sent you to a surgeon after you got shot, and gave you the gift of life so’s you could continue to love and be loved and do God’s will. That was a gift. And yet you’un throwing that gift back in his face. I’m rightly ashamed of you, Daddy.”

  Daddy opened his mouth, and then closed it. Things were happening deep in his yellowed eyes, too fast to follow. His mouth opened and then closed tight, opened again. He looked like a beached carp, not that I was gonna say that. I had pushed as much as I was likely to get away with. After way too long, Daddy tilted his head to me and looked me over. Me in my work pants and dark suit jacket, bulge of my weapon in the small space between shoulder, armpit, and breast. He looked over at his wives, not a one of them looking at him. He made a disgusted sound, deep in his throat. “So that’s the way of it now? My womenfolk ganging up on me?”

  I thought about telling him I was no one’s “womenfolk,” but Daddy needed to see his surgeon and maybe that was more important than me standing up for myself. At least right now.

  “Coffee, Cora, if you please,” he said. He pushed away the cup of herbal tea and accepted the cup of coffee, taking his gaze back to me, his interest particularly heavy. He sipped, still staring as he set the cup down on the table with a soft tap. “Carmel, if you would be so kind, make an appointment with that doctor.”

  I didn’t dare look away from him, at the faces of the mamas, but I could practically feel the elation in the air. If churchwomen danced, they’d be do-si-do-ing right about now.

  “You, Nellie girl,” Daddy said, “will never speak to me in that tone again.”

  I raised my chin, knowing it was challenging, but I was a churchwoman no more. Not a woman to be cowed by a man, even my father. I had gotten what I wanted. Now to nail it all down. “You’un act you got sense in your’n head and I won’t have to.”