Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(40)

Culpepper seemed to think so too, but he pulled on the hem of his jacket and tilted his head until his skinny neck popped. “On it.” He looked at me, waiting.

I indicated the driveway with my head and said, “Let’s start at the drive and work counterclockwise around the perimeter. Then we’ll decide where to go next.”

Culpepper nodded and I tossed my pink blanket over my shoulder, made sure my weapon was secured. Then I led him back to the front of the property. I was making decisions, setting up game plans, and that was wrong. I was a probie. I got the scut work. The jobs no one else wanted. In dangerous situations I wasn’t supposed to be senior agent on-site. But here I was, senior PsyLED agent where evidence suggested that a bad guy might be. I had learned that the things I was taught in Spook School weren’t always practiced in the real world.

Back at the street I checked the machine against Culpepper, who was purely human. Then I started walking, watching the readings, waiting for a spike.

Culpepper asked, “Why counterclockwise?”

Not taking my eyes off the levels, I said, “If there’s a witch working on-site, walking clockwise, also called sunwise, might activate it.” From the corner of my eye I saw him flinch. The rookie had no idea he could set off a witch working. I held in a sigh, still talking, taking a chance to educate the kid. Who couldn’t be more than twenty—only three years younger than me, but oceans apart from me in experience. “Widdershins, or counterclockwise, also called lefthandwise, is less likely to blow up in our faces. Keep an eye out.”

His hand on his weapon—as if that would help against a spell—Culpepper followed in my footsteps. He moved in jerky uncoordinated jolts and lurches, as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. He was especially twitchy beneath the fir trees and in the tall grasses, so at least he knew where physical attacks were likely to originate.

I didn’t get a single spike on the psy-meter 2.0. As the minutes passed, I began to wonder if the machine was broken. I checked it against myself and got a low level four reading, so that part was working. I needed to run full quality control on it by testing it against weres and witches. Maybe a vampire, if I could get one to come by.

But since there was only one vampire I might feel halfway willing to call, and Yummy would probably scare the human cops, I decided against calling anyone. When I finished the perimeter search, I said to Culpepper, “I need to read the land while sitting on the ground.”

He looked at me quizzically and said, “Okay by me. I’ll wait over there.” He pointed to a nearby tree and moved to it, light-footed as a hunter after deer, now that the threat of a spell attack had been ruled out. A lot of local boys hunted. I’d bet my pink blanket that Culpepper had been born into a hunting family.

I found a comfy spot, out of the way of the security lights, and began to check the ground, my way, by reading the land. Sitting on the blanket, the psy-meter open in front of me as if I were still using it, my hands in the soil, I found nothing dead or dying. No indication that one of the creatures had been on the property at all. Not anywhere. I sighed and sat back on my blanket.

“Hi.”

I nearly flew off the ground. Spun around, going for my weapon. The form of a woman was limned by the security lights.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” It was Sonya Tolliver, in her robe and house shoes. Culpepper was still in place, his back to me, checking his phone. Idiot.

I let go of my service weapon, remembered how to breathe, and caught the strong smell of perfume that the cats had mentioned. It wasn’t unpleasant, but there was a lot of it. I said, “Nell Ingram, PsyLED, ma’am.”

She didn’t introduce herself, but she probably knew that no one on the grounds needed her to. She said, “I can’t sleep.”

“I can see how sleep would be difficult. You’ve had a bad few days.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice growing sad. “It’s been difficult. I suppose it always is when someone loses everything they hold dear.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I stayed silent.

“I saw you. At the fire. You told Justin I needed him.”

“Ummm. I’ve been known to have a big mouth, ma’am.”

Sonya Tolliver laughed, a despondent sound. “But in this case, accurate.” She reached up and pulled her hair around, tugging it out of the collar of her robe. It was long with reddish tints. “He used to be there for me. We used to be there for each other. Now he’s . . . distant. My husband is involved with work and . . .” She looked into the night. “I hope it’s only with work.”

I remembered the questions about the stability of the Tolliver marriage and what a burned house might mean to the finances of a distressed relationship on the verge of divorce.

Sonya looked out over the property toward the river at the back. “We used to go fly-fishing together. Camping. We’d pitch our tent on the bank of a stream, light a campfire, fish, and eat the catch if the season was right. And s’mores. We used to love s’mores. S’mores by moonlight.” She walked a few paces past me, staring at the back of the property and the river. I could hear it, lapping softly, a faint splash of fish or muskrat jumping. “Then the children came. Camping became a lot more difficult. And now we seem to have grown apart. We haven’t been camping in years.”

She fell silent, and I tried to figure out how to keep her talking. “I was married. John died a few years back.” I went to stand near her. “No children.” She didn’t reply. “John was older than me. There wasn’t much leaning on each other at all until he got sick. Then I was his nurse. And he passed.”