Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(126)
He opened the passenger door for the other occupant and a woman stepped out. Petite, with black skin and wildly curly, long black hair. Her clothes billowed in the cool breeze and she put her face into the wind as if sniffing. Like the man, her movements were nimble, like a dancer’s, and somehow feral, as if she had never been tamed, though I couldn’t have said why I got that impression.
Around the house, my woods moaned in the sharp wind, branches clattering like old bones, anxious, but I could see nothing about the couple that would say danger. They looked like any other city folk who might come looking for Soulwood Farm, and yet . . . not. Different. As they approached the house, they passed the tall length of flagpole in the middle of the raised beds of the front yard, and started up the seven steps to the porch. And then I realized why they moved and felt all wrong. There was a weapon bulge at the man’s shoulder, beneath his jacket. In a single smooth motion, I braced the shotgun against my shoulder, rammed open the door, and pointed the business end of the gun at the trespassers.
“Whadda ya want?” I demanded, drawing on my childhood God’s Cloud dialect. They came to a halt at the third step, too close for me to miss, too far away for them to disarm me safely. The man raised his hands like he was asking for peace, but the little woman hissed. She drew back her lips in a snarl and growled at me. I knew cats. This was a cat. A cat in human form—a werecat of some kind. A devil, according to the church. I trained the barrel on her, midcenter, just like John had showed me the first time he put the gun in my hands. As I aimed, I took a single step so my back was against the doorjamb to keep me from getting bowled over or from breaking a shoulder when I fired.
“Paka, no,” the man said. The words were gentle, the touch to her arm tender. I had never seen a man touch a woman like that, and my hands jiggled the shotgun in surprise before I caught myself. The woman’s snarl subsided and she leaned in to the man, just like one of my cats might. His arm went around her, and he smoothed her hair back, watching me as I watched them. Alert, taking in everything about me and my home, the man lifted his nose in the air to sniff the scents of my land, the delicate nasal folds widening and contracting. Alien. So alien, these two.
“What do you want?” I asked again, this time with no church accent, and with the grammar I’d learned from the city folk customers at the vegetable stand and from reading my once-forbidden and much-loved library books.
“I’m Special Agent Rick LaFleur, with PsyLED, and this is Paka. Jane Yellowrock sent us to you, Ms. Ingram,” the man said.
Of course this new problem was related to Jane. Nothing in my whole life had gone right since she’d darkened my door. She might as well have brought a curse on my land and a pox on my home. She had a curious job, wore clothes and guns and knives like a man, and I had known from the beginning that she would bring nothing but strife to me. But in spite of that, I had liked her. So had my woods. She moved like these two, willowy and slinky. Alert.
She had come to my house asking about God’s Cloud of Glory. She had wanted a way onto the church’s property, which bordered mine, to rescue a blood-sucker. Because there was documentation in the probate court, the civil court system, and the local news, that John and I had left the church, Jane had figured that I’d be willing to help her. And God help me, I had. I’d paid the price for helping her and, sometimes, I wished that I’d left well enough alone.
“Prove it,” I said, resettling the gun against my shoulder. The man slowly lowered his hand and removed a wallet from his jacket pocket, displaying an identification card and badge. But I knew that badges can be bought online for pennies and IDs could be made on computers. “Not good enough,” I said. “Tell me something about Jane that no one but her knows.”
“Jane is not human, though she apes it better than some,” Paka said, her words strangely accented, her voice scratchy and hoarse. “She was once mated to my mate.” Paka placed a covetous hand on Rick’s arm, an inexplicable sort of claiming. The man frowned harder, deep grooves in his face. I had a feeling that he didn’t like being owned like a piece of meat. I’d seen that unhappy look on the faces of women before. Seeing the expression on the face of a man was unexpected and, for some reason, unsettling. “He is mine now,” Paka said.
When Jane told me about the man she would send, she said that he would break my heart if I let him, like he’d broken Jane’s. This Rick was what the few romance novels I’d read called tall, dark, and handsome, a grim, distant man with a closed face and too many secrets. A heartbreaker for sure. “That’s a start,” I said. In their car, a small catlike form jumped to the dash, crouched low, and peered out the windshield through the daylight glare. I ignored it, all my attention on the pair on my land, moving slowly. Rick pulled out his cell phone and thumb-punched and swiped it a few times. He paraphrased from whatever was on the screen, “Jane said you told her you’d been in trouble from God’s Cloud of Glory and the man who used to lead it ever since you turned twelve and he tried to marry you. She also said Nell Nicholson Ingram makes the best chicken and dumplings she ever tasted. That about right?”
I scowled. Around me the forest rustled, expectant and uneasy, tied to my magic. Tied to me. “Yeah. That sums it up.” I draped the shotgun over my arm and backed into my home, standing aside as they mounted the last of the steps. Wondering what the church spies in the deer stand on the next property would think about the standoff.