I said, “I’ll need to go home and eat lunch, since according to the contract I signed, I don’t get paid for three weeks. Which is really not a good way to do business. When I make a deal with someone I get half up front. That way if they stiff me, I’ll at least have something.”
“You’re getting paid by the federal government,” Rick said, closing up his laptop, his smile making him look younger and less harried. “They don’t stiff people.”
“The federal government has been bankrupt since nineteen thirty-three, when they devalued the dollar and got rid of the gold certificate. Look it up. I wouldn’t trust them to pay for a bag of flour.” Which I still needed to pick up at the store. “I prefer to barter when I can. Plants for eggs and meat and chicken. Whatever I have for whatever someone else has. That’s value. And right now, I’m hungry and nearly broke, so I have to go home.”
T. Laine made a pfft noise.
JoJo said, “No way are we letting you drive all that way back out there, girl. Good God, it’s like fifty miles. I’ll feed you.”
“I don’t need to take charity,” I said tartly. “I have food at the house.”
“When we’re doing fieldwork, expenses are covered,” Rick said. “And that includes meals. You can submit an expense report. But for now, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. You’re part of this team.”
“But—”
“What was that you said to us?” Tandy interrupted. “‘Welcome to my home. Hospitality and safety while you’re here’? You’re in our home now.” Which left me totally nonplussed. To the others he said, “Mexican?”
“We did Mexican already this week,” JoJo said, closing her own laptop. “Burgers.” Still bumfuzzled, I followed them out the door.
* * *
Following a fast-food meal that was mostly beef and potatoes, we drove by the school where Girl One was taken, and we all got out to suss around a bit. There was crime scene tape blocking off a large area, all of it concrete or asphalt and no place for me to take off my shoes and feel the ground. The werecats didn’t smell blood or semen or urine, just a lot of humans. Rick used a little device called a psy-meter. It was about the size of JoJo’s playing cards, and it measured what he called psy-energies, the energy left behind by all living things, even more so by magic-using nonhumans and by magical spells or workings. But there had been too many people around for anyone to get a good reading.
At the ballet studio it was pretty much the same, except for a strip of land in the parking area where one tree, a dogwood, had taken root and another had tried to and died. The ground was covered in pine needles, and when I pushed a hand through to the soil, it was to discover that the lone tree was afraid, fearfearfear leaking through every rootlet and stem and reddening leaf. It had been afraid since its partner tree had died, thinking it the last tree on the face of the Earth. I willed it to listen to me, while the others sniffed around and muttered to themselves. I willed it to live and promised it I’d bring another dogwood back to plant in the place of death, and I’d bring fertilizer and water and help them both to survive. When I pulled my hand away, it was . . . not happy. But maybe looking forward to winter rather than fearing death.
* * *
We had done all we could at the old crime scenes, and headed back to the hotel. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and was nodding by the time we were ensconced in the suite of rooms again. I fixed coffee while Rick and the others checked e-mail and made calls. From the few comments they made, I deduced that Girl One was still among the missing, meaning that the Human Speakers of Truth were looking less likely to be culprits, and the girl was more likely to already be dead. The team’s emotions were both excited and fearful, and Tandy looked drawn and worn from trying to ward them off. I made sure he had coffee with plenty of sugar and cream, and I stood over him waiting for him to drink, trying to project happy emotions toward him.
I had just taken my own first sip when Rick stepped in from the back room, ended a call, and said, “Listen up.” His face was empty and cold. “The news media finally caught up with social media about the abductions. An hour after it hit the airwaves, a third girl went missing, a human girl with a strong paranormal association to one of Ming’s scions. Her mother is Claretta Clayton, and so her daughter falls completely under PsyLED jurisdiction.”
The tension in the room ratcheted up so high it took my breath away. T. Laine sat up straight. JoJo grabbed her laptop and started a search for something on the Internet. Tandy’s skin went a bit pale, his Lichtenberg lines going brighter.
“Who’s Claretta Clayton?” I asked.
“A VIV—Very Important Vampire,” T. Laine said, her eyes focused far off.
Occam paraphrased from his tablet, “The Clayton family helped settle Knoxville in the late seventeen hundreds, and Claretta married into the family in the eighteen hundreds. Her husband died in the Civil War, and she was turned by a marauder. She broke with the family. According to our files, Ms. Clayton has a human daughter, age eighteen.”
“How much was released to the public?” T. Laine asked. “The paranormal family, compounded with the time . . . Could this abduction be a copycat?”
Rick made a noncommittal sound, his face grim. “We can’t rule anything out at this point. But with the FBI already entrenched and because the cases are currently linked, the director decided that the feds will remain in charge. This unit will be offering our expertise and our data on HST. But this has nothing to do with the readiness of this team to take on an assignment, nothing to do with division of responsibilities, and everything to do with needing a bigger team than PsyLED can offer at this time. So we’re working with the feds, and everyone in this unit will accept that. Understood?” There were impassive nods around the room, but Tandy looked distressed, and I knew that not everyone agreed with the decision to work under the FBI. Or maybe some thought that the FBI wouldn’t work with them.
Someone turned on the huge TV, and I saw a gorgeous blond woman talking about three missing girls in Knoxville, believed to all be abductions, but it was quickly clear she knew that and nothing more, because she immediately went to a specialist on nonfamily kidnappings. I downed my coffee, thinking about what I knew and what I didn’t.
“There are other significant differences with the third girl,” Rick said. “She didn’t attend Farrington High. No white panel van was seen. However, she did disappear from school, after being dropped off by a limo driver. He’s at FBI headquarters being questioned now.”
“Which school?” JoJo asked, typing again.
“Private school. Senior at Wyatt,” Rick said. His cell chimed again and he turned back into the bedroom, saying, “LaFleur.”
I didn’t know much about nonchurch schools, but even I had heard of the private Wyatt School of Knoxville, and I pulled a map of it up on my laptop. Wyatt had a soccer field, a baseball field, a lacrosse field, whatever that was, a tennis center, plus two arts buildings and a theater, a sciences building, and a swimming pool. I’d never been in a swimming pool, hadn’t even seen one except on films. There was one teacher or staff member for every ten kids, which, according to the Wyatt Web site, was much lower than in public schools. Wyatt was a day school for rich kids, though financial aid was available. Tuition and food went for nearly twenty thousand dollars per year. Per child. I’d never made that much altogether in a single year. And I’d been homeschooled all my life, until I had taken over my own education at age twelve. Photos of the student body suggested they all were from a financial upper class, all with perfect teeth, athletic bodies, and artistic, scientific, or political leanings. The future artists, doctors, lawyers, and politicians of the state went to school at Wyatt.
“Theodore Roosevelt said,” I quoted, “‘A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.’” Trying not to be sour but not succeeding, I added, “Looks like these kids might be on the way to greatness stealing railroads.”
“Meow,” Occam said. The others laughed, and I realized I was being gently teased, as if they were testing the waters to see if I had a sense of humor or if I was going to be difficult to work with.
Even I knew I’d sounded catty, and fought off a responding blush. I wasn’t accustomed to being sarcastic or snide and it left me feeling itchy and odd in the face of their careful laughter.
Rick walked back in, his face holding an expression I couldn’t identify. JoJo said, “What part of the campus did Girl Three disappear from?”
“We don’t know,” Rick said, studying me for reasons I didn’t understand, that odd look still on his face. “The chauffeur dropped her off at the Upper School Building this morning, but she never showed up for class.”
“Are there security cameras on campus?” JoJo asked, fingers tapping like a snare drummer.
T. Laine whirled her computer so we could see the screen and said, “Two facing the entrance. The chauffeur had to pass them when he dropped her off. Neither one was working that day.”
“Neither camera was working?” I asked, clarifying. “I don’t particularly like happenstance or coincidence,” I said.
“You got a quote for that?” Rick asked.
Tapping the keys of my laptop, studying the map of the grounds before starting a virtual tour, I said, “A paraphrase. Once means happenstance, twice means coincidence, three times means enemy action. Ian Fleming said something like that, I think in one of the James Bond books.” I spotted the cameras on my computer. Both were facing front, both big enough to see at a glance. “If I was planning a kidnapping and I had a way inside, I’d dismantle both of them the night before and then take out my target. A bigger question is how the kidnapper knew she would be let off at that entrance and not one of the others.”
Silence settled around the table, and I looked up. They were all staring at me with looks that ranged from surprise to outright suspicion. I sat back in my chair and folded my arms over my chest, feeling protective and proud, the latter of which was a sin, but not one I could honestly repent of this time, even if I was of the mind to. “What?”
“Trained investigators would know that sort of thing. Not a . . .” Rick bit off his words.
“Not a backcountry hillbilly?” I said stiffly, my church accent creeping back in. “I keep telling you’uns. I was raised by hunters. I snuck around a lot when I was a little’un, listening to the menfolk talk and brag. I also had a husband who intended me to be able to take care of myself when he was gone. I know how to bait a trap, set a snare, shoot a varmint, and skin and dress a deer if I need to. I never have, not since the lessons, but I know how. I also learned how to observe and draw conclusions—that was called deductive reasoning, which linked premises with conclusions or potential conclusions. Or brought up more questions and observation leading to more conclusions.