earlier. I might need to find out why he emptied that particular one.”
I stood on my own. “Good idea.”
“He offered to drive us across the acreage in one of the farm’s golf carts, so you can read the land.”
Sounding mostly normal, I said, “I think that would be lovely. A chauffeured moonlight ride in a golf cart through the countryside with my cat-man.”
He hugged me and his arms betrayed the depth of his relief. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” Occam murmured.
“What’s harder?” I asked.
“Being in love with my partner.” He chuffed in restrained anger. “Watching her get hurt.”
“There’s good and bad in everything,” I said.
Including having a potted tree for a protector. One that did indeed have some kind of paranormal ability to talk to its other part over many miles. I remembered seeing the knight drizzle green stuff from his fingers just before he took my blood. The vampire tree was trying to tell me something important. Had the green stuff been Soulwood soil, a protection as I read the earth?
I needed to figure out what to do about the Green Knight. It protected me, but it wasn’t under my control. The vampire tree had killed before. It could, probably would, kill again.
What if it decided Occam was a danger to me? Or Mud? To keep that from happening, I needed to claim the vampire tree. Or, if that wasn’t possible, I might need to kill it.
SEVEN
Pacillo knew the farm, every nook and cranny, and every horse in every pasture. He would roll us up to a gate that I couldn’t see and Occam would hop out, open the gate, let us roll through, and then close the gate. Even in the pitch-black dark, Pacillo could find every springhead, rocky outcrop, ditch, patch of trees, access trail, horse trail, mud hole, and salt block. At each stop, I got out holding my cell phone as if I was using it to read the land, drizzled a few grains of Soulwood soil onto the ground, and touched the grass with one fingertip, one that hadn’t been harmed. The injured ones were still tender and I hadn’t had the guts to look yet. I wasn’t using enough soil, my power, or any of my blood that might accidentally claim the land. And I was touching only leaves, not dirt. At all.
I found nothing. Not one single trace of a death and decay, or any other kind of working, in the entire back fifty acres, in the orchards, or in the forested area farther back. The front pastures and the ones to the far side of the house were fine. Only the one pasture was affected. Near it, a pea-gravel parking lot was set back from the big RV shed, the lot holding eight vehicles belonging to the security crew, Stella, and some of the victims in the hospital. Or dead. Each vehicle had a small sticker with Stella’s logo in the rear window. The parking lot and the cars and trucks were fine too. I took photos of each tag and sent them to HQ to be run.
I still had to narrow down the trail of death and decay and that meant going back to the grassland that had attacked me. I was tired. I was a little frightened. But I had a job to do. “I need to go back to the pasture where I found the energies.”
I expected Occam to argue with me, but he merely said, “Okay,” and instructed Pacillo back toward the barn and to the area farthest from where I’d been attacked. We were a good two hundred yards from the barn when I got out, Occam at my side. This time I carried my blanket and placed it on the ground. The night had chilled and I shivered. Or maybe that was fear.
Using extra care, as if the land was venomous, I touched the leaves. They were clean and alive and happy, so I risked a bit more and tapped the soil fast, jerking my finger away. The land beneath was fine. I blew out a breath and climbed into the golf cart. “Take me a hundred feet closer to the barn,” I directed. I could feel Occam’s disapproval, but he kept his mouth shut, merely fingering the clasp that secured his steel hunting knife to his thigh.
I was especially careful, reading in increments, going closer until I was near the barn. I didn’t encounter death and decay until I was