The room telescoped down. I tried to warn Occam, but no words came. I dropped the pot.
I fell forward.
* * *
* * *
In the dark of semiconsciousness, I knew I had been placed on the grass out front. Oddly enough I was close to the place where Occam had laid FireWind. I slid my hand across the lawn to the warmth of the happy grass. My fingers ached and I was cold all over, but the ground where FireWind had shifted eased some of that.
Occam dropped to his knees beside me.
“Good, you’re awake,” he said. “That dang blasted tree put in roots through the floor. I yanked it up by the roots and it stuck me,” he said, irritation in his voice. I smiled. It stuck me too sometimes, when I did stuff it didn’t like. “T. Laine says that in the short time it was rooted in the house, it already sucked up and digested some of the death and decay. Did you know it could do that?”
No, I mouthed, but no sound came out. I had a feeling that the vampire tree would be happy to clean the earth of the death and decay, but it would claim a patch of land in return. A big patch. And probably the house and all the horses and any people nearby. And it would fight to keep control of the land it had claimed.
I was managing to plant vampire tree forests all over and that would never do. Eventually the tree would be seen killing a human and humans would try again to kill it. I would have to use Soulwood to destroy the tree, just as I had threatened. And if I was unsuccessful, the military or combined law enforcement would bomb it, burn it, and destroy it. Eventually the military and the government would figure out the tree was connected to me and they might kill me too, and probably Soulwood and my sisters. The tree might be sentient, but it wasn’t mature nor did it understand human problems or human judgments. It killed things and people for nourishment. I couldn’t let it be free.
“Is it back in the pot?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Occam groused. “Looking no worse for being dropped, rooted, uprooted, shaken, and replanted. But it probably ain’t happy.”
“It ain’t never happy,” I said.
Occam made a cat sound. “FireWind wants us in the barn manager’s office. I’m figuring the manager is dead. T. Laine’s pulling the trailer around and backing it in close. And I have a feeling this case is never gonna end.” He stood and held down a hand. “Nell, sugar, I’d offer my hand to any linebacker who got tackled. And you got tackled by a tree and a death and decay working.”
I managed a smile and looked at my white, waxy fingers in the meager darkness. They ached. The damage looked similar to frostbite. “Where’d you put the tree?”
“In your car.”
I wanted to smile at his tone, but I thought he might think I was laughing at him instead of commiserating. “It’s jist a tree, cat-man.” I put my hand into his and he clasped it gently, pulling me to my feet.
When I wavered, he put an arm around me and steadied me. “It ain’t jist a tree, Nell, sugar, and you and me both know it.”
I sighed and stood on my own. He was right. I did know it. “Come on. Let’s check out the barn.”
“Don’t get in FireWind’s way. He’s back to being a dog and he’s in nose-suck.”
“Squirrelly and all over the place? Tail wagging?”
Occam snorted. “More like a two-hundred-pound wrecking ball. On a mission to knock down all his coworkers.”
I leaned into Occam again. Pressed into his warmth. Knew I was safe, just for this moment. His longer-than-normal hair was soft under my cheek and he rubbed his jaw into my hair, cat-scent-marking me. I rubbed a fist along his jaw the way his cat liked and gave him a final hug, pushed away, and walked to the barn door under my own power. The stench hit me before I opened the door, the foul, sweet-sick reek of the death working. The lights were on and, though it wasn’t glaring, it was bright enough to see that the stalls were all empty, the tack room door was open, and so was the manager’s office door. The body was lying in the wide central area between stalls.
I had expected to see Credence Pacillo, the breeder and trainer, or