Vampires had crossed my land before, and I remembered the feeling that had crawled over my flesh of death, death everywhere, but that was on my land, my wood, where every sensation was intense, dazzling to my senses, and I hadn’t been prepared for that. Here, I had been prepared, but the vampire didn’t spend time in the yard. The house would be a different matter, but—I took a stabilizing breath—I was ready.
Rick flashed his badge and ID and said, “Mrs. Clayton, I’m Senior Special Agent Rick LaFleur. These are my team members. I called earlier about your daughter’s disappearance. Do you mind if we come in?” It was all official-like, until he added, “I’m a wereleopard, as are two others of my team. Will our scent be a problem for you, ma’am?”
I didn’t hear what the woman said, but saw her step back and gesture us in. I was still carrying my shoes when I stepped into the foyer. Onto the wood flooring.
The moment my soles touched the wood, the feeling of death hit me, stronger than at home, that last time. Maggots and slime and rot beneath my feet, remembered by the wood of the floors. Absorbed by the floor. And given back to me tenfold. Rot, decay, putrefaction, corruption. The stench and texture of the air and of the floor were as real to me as if I had fallen into a pool of rotted flesh and the things that fed on it.
I sucked in a breath, and it froze my lungs. Before the door closed, I whipped around and back outside. Into the night. Running. Running for the largest copse of trees at the boundary of this lawn and the neighbors, running from the dead that crawled all over me like maggots and worms and filth. Vampires.
I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t. The wood of the floor had given a best-forgotten memory back to me.
Retching, I crawled under the protection of the trees on the neighbor’s side of the boundary, and I scrubbed my feet into the bark mulch. It was commercial stuff, dyed black, horrible for the plants both from the chemicals and the heat the black retained. But better on my feet than nasty vampires. I twisted my feet until I worked them through the mulch and into the soil, rubbing them into the dirt, cleaning off the death that clung to them. Only then did my gagging cease. Then I sat and pulled on my socks. Shivering so much my teeth chattered.
I should have been wearing my shoes. This was nobody’s fault but mine.
I had the left shoe on when I heard my name called. It was T. Laine, the earth witch, and she could see me in the landscaping lights. I had her pegged as a no-nonsense woman, and her words didn’t surprise. “Honey, you gotta quit running away when you’re scared.”
“I don’t have my shotgun. I couldn’t shoot her.”
She came to an abrupt stop in the night. “Come again?”
“I’ve never been in a vampire house. The wood floor.” I gagged again and thought I’d lose my supper, but I kept it down. “The floor absorbed the undeath. And I was barefoot. I felt them through my feet on the wood floors. It’s . . .” I picked a word I had heard them use. “It’s gross.”
T. Laine breathed out a soft “Ohhh. Really?” She crossed the mulch to me and asked, “What do they feel like?”
“Like I’m walking on maggots and worms and rotten ’possum. I stepped in one once when I was a little ’un. Barefoot. It was horrible. I gagged for a week.” I pressed a hand to my stomach. “Until I could get that rotten feeling off my feet.”
“Ick. Sounds gross. So that was what you felt when . . . ?”
“When I put my foot on the wood floor. Maggots. Dead things. Vampires.”
“But you didn’t feel any of that when you walked in the yard?”
“No. She’s an inside vampire.” I pulled on my right shoe, still thinking. “But maybe I can go inside if I keep my shoes on.” And with a nice thin layer of dirt on the soles of my feet, I thought, standing.
T. Laine said, “I could . . . well, I mean.” She stopped, perplexed.
“You could what?” I asked.
“I could put a temporary ward around your feet so you don’t feel the floor as much.” Before I could ask she said, “A ward is like a fence or a wall, but made of magic. I know your church believes that all magic is Satan worship or something, but it’s not. Really.” When I didn’t reply, she added, her tone growing acerbic, “I don’t need to sacrifice a goat or a chicken or call on the Lord of Darkness. You don’t have to drink warm blood right out of a dying animal. Magic isn’t evil, it just is. It’s everywhere around us, in everything, everyone, every rock and blade of grass. It’s mathematics and atoms and electrons and protons. It’s dark matter and light matter, time and space. Not evil.”
I couldn’t hide my amusement when I said, “I agree.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I should be fine with shoes on.” I hope.
T. Laine backed away as I scrambled to my feet. T. Laine was medium height, nearly black hair, eyes the same color, a round face but with an aggressive jaw. Pretty. Stubborn. Honest to a fault. Despite Occam’s admonishment to not touch me, she grabbed my hand and headed to the house at speed. I’d have had to hit her to get free, which I had no desire to do, so instead, I ran to keep up as she towed me up the drive, up the steps, and into the front of the house.
When my feet touched down it wasn’t nearly as bad as before. I made a face to show her it was still ick but not unbearable, and she pulled me into the front room and through it, closer to where I could hear Rick talking. I didn’t get a good look at the house except for the orchids. Orchids everywhere, all kinds of varieties. And all in bloom. That wasn’t right. I yanked my arm free, breaking T. Laine’s hold on me long enough to stick my fingers into the coarse wood chips of the orchids nearest.
T. Laine got her fingers back around my arm again and dragged me into what had to be the great room. It was huge, with vaulted space and skylights and a fireplace big enough to roast a whole hog in. The room was decorated in greens. All kinds of greens. And here too were orchids, hundreds of them, lining the shelves of every wall. All blooming. All. Not possible. It simply wasn’t possible to get every variety of orchid to bloom at once. Not possible. Not even for me, and I was real good with plants. I rubbed my fingers and thumb together, evaluating what I had felt when I touched the orchid bark mix.
The vampire woman, Mrs. Clayton, looked up when I entered the living room and now stopped talking. Her head tilted weirdly, and she seemed to be sniffing the air, her nostrils fluttering like a horse’s did when it sniffed new people, when it was deciding if it was gonna let them close or kick them. Or, in this case, bite them.
“And what is she?” Mrs. Clayton asked, tilting her head to me. “She isn’t human.”
My head shot up. “At least I’m not rude enough to ask,” I said, stung by the question. “Kinda like I wasn’t rude enough to say that your floors feel like dead ’possum.”
“Nell!” Rick said.
He sounded shocked, but I didn’t look his way, keeping my eyes on the dead thing, who seemed, oddly enough, to be holding in a small smile now, buried beneath heaps of worry and fear, but there. “What do you think I am?” I asked the vampire.
“I have no idea.” Her head tilted again, this time too far, the not-human too far I’d heard vampires could do, which was creepy. “I haven’t smelled a creature like you before. I’d be honored to taste your blood someday”—she smiled at last—“despite your appalling lack of manners.”
I let my scowl deepen, let her read on my face that drinking my blood was not gonna happen. “Who tends your garden?”
“Nell!” Rick said, a hint of anger in his tone this time.
Again I ignored him. Mrs. Clayton said, “My daughter does.” Her smile disappeared, replaced by the weight of her fear. “My daughter is wonderful with plants. She can grow anything, anywhere, anytime. She is in great demand even now, still in high school, with her university degree not yet acquired, to design and work with landscaping.”
“And the orchids? She tend them too?”
“Yes. She is—”
“Not a human. You’re hiding whatever she is. Maybe to protect her. Maybe for some other reason. And I’m betting she isn’t even your daughter, at least not biologically.”
Mrs. Clayton’s shoulders hunched up and her pupils went black and wide in scarlet sclera. “Hoooow do you know thisss?” she hissed. A real hiss, like a snake. And she leaned forward in the wood chair she was sitting in, her neck stretched out like a lizard’s. Her fangs slowly snapped down on their little hinges, and fell into place with a soft schnick.
I felt the weight of Mrs. Clayton’s whole attention on me, and I nearly flinched, but something told me that if I did, I’d be perceived as breakfast. The chill bumps that been left from the cold tightened again, this time from fear. “The orchids told me. You told me when you said she’s the gardener. Because no gardener ever can make this many orchids bloom at once.”
The vampire blinked. Blinked again. And went back to aping human, just that fast. She looked to her left, from orchid to orchid, and her brow crinkled. “I . . .” She twisted her head the other way, taking in the dozens and dozens of plants. “I never thought . . .”
Rick nodded to T. Laine, who put her fingers into the orchid pot nearest. The earth witch jerked her hands away and stumbled back, almost as if she had been shocked by electricity. She flung her hands back and forth, as if shaking water from her fingers, and nodded to Rick, then shrugged, her gestures saying that it was magic, but not something she recognized.
“Mrs. Clayton,” Rick said, speaking gently. “If your daughter isn’t Mithran or human, we need to know what she is. That might be important to the investigation and to locating her. To getting her back to you.” He didn’t add the word alive at the end of the sentence, but it hung in the air, unspoken but powerful.
From the hallway a woman entered. No. Not a woman. Another vampire. Blond and limber looking, as if she did yoga every day, but with the broad shoulders of a plowman or a boxer. She was pretty in a deadly-looking way. She looked vaguely familiar, which meant I had probably seen her back when Jane Yellowrock had come through my land, but I didn’t remember her name, and no one introduced her. Or the vampire behind her, a slender male with long red hair. It was no wonder the floors felt maggoty.
The head vampire’s lips pressed together, and she shook her head, but it wasn’t in refusal, more as though she was conflicted. “She is gone. In danger.” Mrs. Clayton shook her head again, and seemed to decide what she wanted to say. “Mira was a foundling.” Her gaze met Rick’s, and she added, “Most literally. Clan Blood Master Ming found her on her doorstep sixteen years past. I . . .” The vampire was wringing her hands, and I was certain I had never seen anyone do that. She seemed to notice, and she placed both hands on the arms of her chair, over the knobs, which were carved like African lion heads.