Kidnapmaniacs. I had the feeling that Tandy was using the jargon to help me relax. The terminology sounded like made-up words or street slang, not cop lingo, unlike RVAC, which sounded all law enforcement with the initials instead of words. “RVAC. Is that like a drone?” I asked.
Rick lifted his hand and dropped it fast, hesitating, as if he wished those words hadn’t been spoken. Almost unwillingly, he said, “RVACS are remote-viewing aircraft. Smaller, quieter, easier to control than a drone.”
I let a tiny smile soften my face at the hesitant and complicated body language in the small room. Rick was against letting me know things about their practices and technology, but Tandy’s complacent expression said that it was too late now, and had been done deliberately.
Tandy placed photos on the tabletop, saying, “Each one shows the cult compound from different vantage points. Note the vans parked here”—he pointed with his strangely marked hand, one finger tapping pictures that had been printed out on plain paper—“and here, all pale-colored, gray, blue, or white.”
I said, “If I remember, that’s where the church’s passenger vans have always been kept. God’s Cloud buys old vans and paints them white.”
Rick raised his eyebrows at me. “And you didn’t think to tell us that until now?”
I realized that with the church and the kidnapmaniacs using white panel vans, I probably should have mentioned that. “Sorry,” I said softly. “Not used to thinking about everyone and everything being some kinda clue.”
“Where do visitors park?” Rick asked.
“Beside the chapel building,” I said, pointing.
“No vehicles there at the time this was taken,” Tandy said.
“We also have good visual intel on the building that Nell said was the old punishment house and is now the guest quarters. There is no sign of anyone using it. Our contact on the FBI will do an infrared and low-light cam flyover tonight to verify.” He tapped again. Four pictures, this time each one from a different side of the building, but all from above. RVAC height. The churchmen had been right about the government invading privacy and keeping watch. Their conspiracy theories had been confirmed.
Part of me wanted to make a scene about privacy. Another part was in fear for the missing girls and my own sisters. And yet another part was wondering why the outsiders were so important, why missing nonchurch girls were worth a hunt, but the evils taking place against children within the church had deserved a blind eye for so many decades. Social services had returned so many children after their raid that it seemed the atrocities committed by some of the churchmen had been swept under the rug and the children there again forgotten.
T. Laine took up the narrative, saying, “County and state canine units have spent the last twenty-four hours on the first two scenes, in the order the girls were taken. They got a hit on the ballet school site, though the feds can’t tell us what it means. Or won’t. What I was told was that the dogs went, and I quote, ‘Squirrelly.’” She made finger quotes in the air. “Frankly, we were there, so we might be to blame. They now want to keep the dogs separated, not mixing up dogs and scents on the nonhuman case, so we have a new team coming in from Nashville. This team has worked paranormal cases before and will be here by one p.m.”
“Specifics on the K-nines?” Rick asked.
“One tracking dog, one air dog. We haven’t had rain, so we might get a scent,” Tandy said.
I knew a lot about hunting dogs. A tracking/trailing dog followed a scent on the ground. An air-scenting dog followed it through the air. Some dogs did both tracking and air scenting. If there was little wind and no rain, air dogs with really good noses had been known to follow scents for miles. The official record was twenty-four miles to rescue a kidnapped girl. But I remembered the wind yesterday and had serious concerns about that possibility.
Rick said, “When JoJo gets here, we’ll get a quick debrief, and then I want her and you two”—he pointed to T. Laine and Tandy—“to have five hours of downtime before joining the canine unit, to keep the dogs from wigging out at our cat smell. The dogs will start at Wyatt School and move into the woods nearby,” Rick said. “And before you say anything, yes, we should have stayed out of the woods until the dogs had a chance on-site, but we have better noses than humans, even in human form, and I had hoped we might find something. I’ve requested a dedicated dog team. We might get one, making it easier to track with dogs accustomed to our scents, but I’m not holding my breath. And even if we got a team, we’d have to share them with all PsyLED units nationally.”
“Brute?” Tandy asked and then yawned hugely.
Rick looked at me. “Brute is a werewolf stuck in his beast form. He’s usually part of this team, but he’s . . .” Rick paused as if trying to figure out how to say the unexplainable. “. . . not someone we can compel. He’s in New Orleans, spying on, or maybe working for, the Master of the City there. Unless he asks to join us, that’s a no.
“The rest of us smell like nonhumans, and that’s why I’m pulling JoJo off the FBI and back to us for the day. We might confuse the dogs’ noses, so she can take point. The all-nighter means we’ll have three team members out for the morning. While JoJo, T. Laine, and Tandy are getting shut-eye, we’ll divvy up the teams differently today. Occam will still handle the trailer park door-to-door, but, Nell, can you go with Occam today, once the canine units are done? See if you feel anything about our girl?”
I nodded slowly. I could work with Occam. That funny feeling I’d felt when I saw the smooth toenails and fingernails on the werecat was gone.
“I want T. Laine in after the canine unit completes its search, to see what she can pick up magic-wise once we have a trail. If we have a trail.”
Tandy said, “While we’ve been talking, I got a text. JoJo has news, and she should be here in—” JoJo shoved open the door and flung herself into the room, dropped two boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts on the table, and raced through the room saying, “I gotta pee like a racehorse!”
I thought about that peculiar statement while Rick opened the top box, took one and passed around the box. Through a mouth full of donut, Tandy murmured, “Dear God in heaven, they are Hot Nows. Thank you, Jesus, for the Krispy Kreme company, and may you bless them and JoJo forever.”
I had a feeling he wasn’t really praying, so it might have been blasphemy. Or I thought that until I bit tentatively into a glazed ring of fried dough. It melted in my mouth. Sugary sweetness flared through me. I wanted to pray thanks too. It was, by far, the best thing I had ever eaten. It beat Leah’s apple uglies by a mile and a half, and her uglies had been declared the best pastries the churchwomen had ever made. It seemed the others in the room agreed, as there was no sound but moans of pleasure, the soft sounds of chewing, licking and the slurping of coffee. I drank my coffee from the Styrofoam cup and ate some more and thought that this donut might really be holy.
I finished my donut and licked my fingers. Into the silence I asked, “How sure are we that all the girls were taken by the same people? I mean, we only have timing and age. What if someone heard about the first kidnappings and used the opportunity to take Mira? If someone had figured out that she had some kind of magic, she might be useful. Or maybe someone wanted control over the vampires.”
Every eye came to me. It was unnerving.
“What did I say?” I asked, taking a second donut.
“Part of the briefing this morning,” Rick said, his face too rigid to be expressionless, “that we have yet to get to. Part of what we discussed last night after you left. In this room.”
“I did a sweep,” T. Laine said, starting on her own second donut. “No electronics.”
“Except we didn’t sweep the electronics themselves,” Occam said.
“And there’s no way to sweep her gift,” JoJo said, coming back into the room, “since we don’t know what it is.”
“And I didn’t set a circle at either meeting,” T. Laine said.
None of which made any sense at all.
They were all staring at me. Evaluating. Calculating. Accusing. I had been looked at this way by the church for years, so it didn’t surprise me. Too much. But, oddly, it hurt. I bit into the second donut and thought about what we had all been saying, trying to figure out what was going on and how to get beyond it. Whatever it was.
“She doesn’t know what we’re talking about,” Tandy said, “except the accusation part. She understands that, as if she expected to be accused of something. Or, rather”—he tilted his head, his eyes half-lidded—“as if she has always been accused, all her life, and why should we be any different?”
And then I did understand. They were accusing me of planting listening devices in their room or listening in some magical way. I stopped chewing and sat there, in the upholstered chair, thinking about the accusation, gooey dough in my mouth. Thinking about the conspiracy theorists in the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church.
I felt something strange bubble in my chest, push its way up and out through me. It was that strange sound again. I was laughing. It was a peculiar noise, sort of giggly and high-pitched, muffled by the donut in my mouth. I chewed and giggled some more, investigating this new feeling inside me. Giddy. Silly. The others looked baffled. I shook my head and managed to get the bite of donut swallowed, without choking, and drank some coffee to make the half-chewed bite go on down.
“She had no idea what we were talking about,” Tandy said, “until she started laughing. And now she’s . . . I don’t know what to call it. Drunk on amusement?”
“Nell?” Rick said.
I sipped more coffee, still giggling. When I could speak, I said, “Conspiracy theorists.” Tandy started laughing too, one hand over his mouth as he chewed. Much more slowly, as they pieced together what I might have meant, the rest of them started laughing.
Rick shook his head. “We are . . . conspiracy theorists? Like your cult is?”
“Not my cult. I told you that.” I licked delicious sugar off my mouth. “And I told you that I’m capable of deductive reasoning. And you told me that you wanted me because I thought on both sides of a box, inside and outside. So either you trust me or you don’t.” My amusement died in an instant, and I glared at him to make my point, my church vernacular hitting its strongest twang in years. “But iffen you accuse me of cheating again, I’m outta here, slicker ’n goose grease. We clear on that?”
Rick’s humor fled as well, and he studied me with steady eyes. “We’re clear. I’m sorry, Nell.”
“Forgiven. Besides, you mentioned that word, copycat, yesterday, and I looked it up. And, logically, I understand why you have to watch me. Now what’s in the other box? ’Cause I want more.”