Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(94)
Possibilities of pyro types: phoenix (would fit flight), hellhound (a fire-based type of gwyllgi?), dragon (different from arcenciels?), efreet (multiple spellings; can be caught or killed with magic), cherufe (reptile humanoid; may not be true shape-shifter), salamander (born in volcanoes).
As I pulled together the timeline and possibilities, I found something that T. Laine had entered into the files just before she went to Texas. Soon after the birth of Devin, there was a huge fire at then-state-senator Tolliver’s mansion and two bodies were found in the building, an adult female and a child. Fire investigators determined that a servant and her child died, and death certificates were issued in the names of Monica Smith and Marcus Smith. Which was interesting, but not particularly useful information. Unless . . . I sat back in my chair, watching Soul, who was standing still as a glass statue, both of us thinking.
“Soul?”
She turned from the window and the brightening sky, which had held her unfocused attention. She raised her brows in a gesture that said I could continue.
“What if someone killed the real-life real wife Clarisse and the real Devin, and replaced them with shape-shifting pyros?”
“If so, then why burn up Sonya in the limo?”
“Hmmm. Unless Devin accidentally set off the fire. Or unless Sonya was a problem and she had to die for some reason, say, to protect them, or Sonya was like them and it was time to replace Sonya’s pyro identity?”
Soul gave me a head-shaking shrug that suggested I was guessing and my guesses were getting too complicated to make sense, and she was right. I sent my lists off to JoJo and went back to work. But something kept nagging at me. Something about the timeline and the sequence of the deaths through three generations.
Rick put a cup of coffee at my elbow, the steam curling up. Hot enough to burn my mouth.
I stopped, my fingers motionless above the tablet. I remembered the burned and dead plants at the senator’s house, and the cooked fish in the water below. My mouth came slowly open. “Ohhh,” I said. “I need to go to the senator’s at dawn.”
“Why?” Rick asked, the question low and concerned. I’d heard my cats use that specific interrogative tone.
“Something I saw. It was dark. It might be nothing so I’d rather not say. But I want to see it again, in the daylight.”
“Fine. Work on the timelines and try to narrow down the species of pyro. Take off near the end of your shift. I’ll send Occam with you.” I wasn’t sure that I wanted Occam with me, not with so many things unknown and undecided between us, but I shrugged. There wasn’t anything I could do about my wants.
I spent the night in the conference room, the Christmas tree and a sleepy grindylow keeping me company. Just before dawn, I heard Occam come in and I left the conference room to pick up my gear bag. We headed out, Occam behind me, his gait limber, supple, and flowing, more so than other days, as his cat rose with the lunar cycle. Small hairs lifted on the back of my neck, the way they might if I was being pursued, tracked by an apex predator. Which, of course, I was. But I didn’t give in to that awareness, instead carrying my gear down the stairs to my truck. Standing out in the warm air—winter in the South was changeable at best—I said smartly, “You got Pea with you?”
“Yep. In my shoulder bag. Why you asking, Nell, sugar?”
“I’d rather she kill you if you go off leash. The paperwork for shooting a teammate has gotta be a pain in the backside.”
Occam started laughing, a purring chuff of sound that brought a smile to my face and made me tease further. “You cat-boys are hard to get along with in your time of the month.”
“Time of the— Nell, sugar, that is an appalling insult.” Occam was still laughing as he got in the truck beside me and we drove off together.
? ? ?
“You didn’t tell me we’d be climbing down a couple thousand slippery, slimy, and stinking stairs to the river,” Occam said to me.
I’d known about the stairs but not their condition. They were vile, sticky beneath my field boots. Even the handrail was sticky and slimy and I couldn’t make myself touch it. It was no wonder my cousin’s clothes had been so filthy when he came back up. In the dark, Chadworth Hamilton had to have touched everything. I bet he had to throw his expensive suit away. “Didn’t think I needed to. What do you smell?” I figured his senses would be heightened in the moon-time.
“Dead fish. Some cooked, some raw. All of it rotting.”
“Mm-hm.” We reached the bottom and I looked back up. The stairs were the only way down or up without some kind of parachute or a rappelling rope. The vegetation at the top was brown, desiccated, dead. Below the deck, there was greenery in spots, rooted in the rocks.
On the beach, the sun was warm, casting short shadows on twisted, broken driftwood. The water was placid, reflecting back the sun. There were fewer dead fish and a lot of animal tracks from raccoon to ’possum, to bird tracks. There were crows perched nearby on the rocks and the scant vegetation. Seagulls calling, flying overhead, watching. There were also a lot of flies on the rotting fish, all of them showing the effects of scavenger predation. The sand was a dun color here, the bank narrow, the gray rocks in small piles, each rock ovoid, about the size of a basketball, but . . . cracked, and broken. I walked to the water’s edge, bent, and picked up a broken piece. It was pale gray with small white and brown specks, lightweight, thin, and hollow. The inside was white, with a dried film stretched around the concave curves. “Shell,” I said softly. I looked out over the water. “Salamander eggs.”