Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(26)
That was a lot more than I expected her to tell me. I made a soft noise as I digested her story.
“Your turn, Maggot.”
I grinned at the windshield and quoted her. “I’m sure you have a dossier on me. Read it.”
When she stopped chuckling, Yummy said, “I like you more and more, Nell Nicholson Ingram. Okay. How’s this? You were raised in God’s Cloud of Glory Church, became a common-law wife to John Ingram at age twelve, and nursed his wife Leah until she died. Then you married him legally and nursed him until he died. You inherited all his land, which shared a boundary with the church, against which you led a war of ignoring and attrition for years. During that time, you educated yourself at the local library and recently got a GED. You joined PsyLED this year. You graduated in the middle third of your class at PsyLED training school and would have graduated higher had you received a traditional education. As it was, you classified as an expert marksman with two weapons, when you finally took the weapons qualification course, top of your class in poly sci, and bottom of your class in interpersonal interactions.”
“Not bad,” I said. Every special agent had to qualify for weapons, and requalify at regular intervals. It wasn’t as rigorous as the military’s qualification, but it was thorough and I hadn’t been certain where I had positioned in the class or what my final ranking would be. My certificates had come in the mail less than a week ago, and I was proud of them. That Yummy knew all that meant the vampires were capable of doing, or buying, deep background research on federal agents. That was something I’d have to think about later. “I’m not good at flirting or making small talk, but I bake good bread and make excellent soup and have even better survival skills.”
“Now that we’re done showing off,” Yummy said, “and since you aren’t about to let me feed on your soft, beautiful neck, how about pulling over and let’s get breakfast.” She pointed to an IHOP. “I’m paying.”
“Deal,” I said, swinging the wheel and popping into the parking spot. “It’s nearly dawn and it’s your skin that’ll be burned crispy, but I’m hungry enough to risk you dying again.”
“Ain’t you just the sweetest li’l thang.”
I grinned at her as I slid from the warmth into the cold and slammed the door. “I may not have fangs, but I can still bite.”
Yummy on my heels, I thought that my mama would have a conniption fit if I was ever dumb enough to tell her I’d had breakfast with a fanghead. Especially since I wasn’t hungry. But making friends with a paranormal creature who could fight might be smart. If friendship was actually happening here. I wasn’t yet sure.
? ? ?
It was after dawn when I used the inconspicuous keypad to enter the unmarked door between Yoshi’s Deli and Coffee’s On and into the field office of PsyLED Unit Eighteen. As I entered, I gave a halfhearted wave at the very conspicuous roving surveillance camera over the door, and waited until it closed behind me before I slogged up the stairs into the PsyLED offices. I was so exhausted my knees wanted to buckle.
I dropped my gear on the desk in my cubicle and stuck my fingers into the soil of the plants lining the window. A feeling of completeness rushed over me, feeling much like waves rolling over a beach, not that I had ever seen such a thing in person. I’d been close to the ocean when I went to Spook School, but it wasn’t someplace I wanted to go alone. The videos I had seen of the Atlantic made me think of isolation and aloneness and abandonment.
The soil and the mulch and the compost in my plants had the power of the ocean, but without the loneliness and isolation. They were all from Soulwood and connected me to my land instantly. The soil felt a little too dry and I made a mental note to water the plants. As I withdrew my fingers, I brushed them over the herbs, and the mixed scents of three kinds of basil, lemony thyme, and oniony chives filled my nostrils. I locked away my gun and found the coffee machine with my eyes closed.
I pretty much slept through writing my report and the debriefing that followed. And later I could never have explained how I drove all the way to my house and crawled into my bed.
? ? ?
I woke when one cat leaped to my outside bedroom windowsill, yowling that it was time to come back inside. I stumbled out of bed, let the cats in, and fed the mousers dry kibble. Still half-asleep, I added scrap paper to coax the coals alive in the skin-temp firebox of the Waterford Stanley wood-burning cookstove. Living off the grid was time-consuming, never-ending, hard work. Fortunately, thanks to muscle memory and repetition, I could do most of it in my sleep. When I had some flames, I added kindling, hot-burning cedar, and slow-burning oak to the firebox and adjusted the dampers. Topped up the water heater on the back of the stove, testing the warmth with my hand. It was still warm, but not hot. I fumbled around and made a whole pot of coffee in the Bunn and scrambled some eggs while bread toasted and water heated. I did not want a tepid shower.
I ate standing in front of the stove, my wool socks doing nothing to keep my feet warm. The house was frigid, another one of the drawbacks of living mostly off the grid. I had been thinking about buying a small electric space heater, but the watt-hours usage might not be worth the speed of the warmth. The stove would eventually heat the house to bearable without depleting the solar panels. At least that was what I told myself today.
Carrying a second cup of coffee to the bathroom, I showered. It wasn’t a long luxurious shower, not with the size of the hot water tank, but it was at least hot. I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t a church day, as I had promised Mama I’d come to services on Sunday, and dressed in work clothes. Still caffeinating my body, I repacked my gobag, put a load of clothes on to wash, and drank a third, and then a fourth cup of coffee, while I rubbed down a few venison loins with oil and my own spicy recipe meat rub before I put them in a Dutch oven on the hottest part of the stovetop. Awake enough to slice veggies without carving off a finger, I added veggies and diced potatoes. Satisfied that I’d have food to eat and a warm house when I got home, I finished a few housekeeping chores, made more coffee and poured it into a thirty-ounce travel mug, put the cats on the back porch for the night, and locked the door.