“Afore we do that,” I said, my voice still soft, my feet standing above the bones wrapped in old roots, “I got things to tell you’uns. And you might need to arrest me.”
“Nell, sugar?”
He reached for me, but I sidestepped away and took the blanket, unfolding it to its full size. No way could I let him be loving to me when I had a confession to make. I sat.
Occam’s eyes were on me, his body still as a hunting cat, focused with his whole being. Moving like a cat, he folded down, a nearly boneless motion, and sat beside me. T. Laine scooted closer, until she was on the blanket too, the three of us all but touching, in our own small, paranormal, three-person circle. This grouping, the three of us, together—witch, were, and yinehi—felt important, like a pact, a promise of some kind. Though I knew it meant nothing. Not really.
“The death and decay,” I said. “I thought early on that it was familiar somehow. And now I know why.” I leaned out and touched the ground, both palms flat. “Under the earth, exactly here, are the bones of a plant-woman. She was part tree when she was murdered. Or sacrificed. Or maybe when she killed herself.”
I looked at my friends. They were silent. Watching me.
“A plant-woman,” I said again. “A yinehi. Like me.” Still they said nothing. “I have killed two men in my life. The first . . .” I touched the ground again, aware of the bones below me. Had she been attacked? Was she pregnant from the attack? “I never saw his face. I have no idea who he was. He attacked me on my farm. In our struggle, I scratched him. His blood landed on the dirt. It was unknowing instinct. Self-defense. I fed him to the land.”
“Where’s the body?” T. Laine asked.
“There is no body. When I feed the land, there’s nothing left. Not a hair, not a fingernail, not a leg bone. Not a sole from a shoe. Not a belt buckle. The land dissolves and absorbs it all. Soulwood even takes the soul. That life energy makes the trees grow. And it gives me my power.”
“I see,” T. Laine said, no emotion in her voice, none in her eyes.
“The second man I fed to the earth was Brother Ephraim, not long after I met Rick and Paka.” Paka had been Rick’s wereleopard mate before she tried to kill him. “Ephraim and two other churchmen attacked me and my home. Paka, in werecat form, defended me and nearly killed Ephraim. He was dying.”
“She bit him?” Occam asked. Biting a human was an automatic death sentence. “And the grindylow didn’t kill her?” His tone was confused, disbelieving.
“Before the grindylows got to him, I fed him to the land. And though Paka had bitten him, and may have deserved to die according to were-creature law, she didn’t. The grindy let her go free.”
“No grindylow woulda let a were-creature go free after biting a human,” Occam said.
“Rick knew about this?” T. Laine asked.
“Yes.”
“And there are no bodies?”
“When I feed the land,” I repeated, “there’s nothing left. Nothing at all.”
“No evidence,” she persisted.
“Not a lick. Except my word.”
Occam got a strange look in his eyes. Softly, as if turning the thoughts over in his mind even as he spoke the words, he said, “If Ephraim was human, then you, a para, killing him, a human,” he emphasized, “might be a crime, especially if it could be argued that it wasn’t self-defense. But the grindylow didn’t kill Paka, therefore Ephraim was not a human being. He couldn’t get or spread were-taint. What if he was a gwyllgi? Gwyllgi, attacking you? It’s a clear self-defense, para on para.”
I nodded. It was possible. And if Ephraim was a gwyllgi, then I had killed a violent nonhuman. And human law didn’t apply to me. It was an out, a paranormal defense, a justification I had never thought others might consider. Fresh tears gathered in my eyes. My breath came in jerks and heaves. Ephraim had raped my mother. My half brother Zebulun was his son. Was Zeb a gwyllgi too?
T. Laine nodded deliberately, still not meeting my eyes. “You just now figured out this stuff about a yinehi?” She tapped the ground beside the blanket.
I wiped my eyes, the sudden relief that I, maybe, hadn’t killed a human, at least the second time, filling me the way wind filled a grassland. “Most