“Why do you tell our secrets?” Paka asked, not as if in disagreement, but as if she was mildly curious while being bored.
“Because we need her help,” Rick said. “We need to know about the Human Speakers of Truth and any possible connection to the church. Nell’s the only one who might be willing to talk to me. To us,” he added, including his mate.
“Who are the Human Speakers of Truth?” I asked, letting the power and safety of the woods wrap around me like crawling snakes, like vines, growing in place. All I needed was one drop of his blood and I could take his life. It was my best protection; it was my magic and the magic of my land. His blood on my land, on Soulwood, put his life into my hands. “What do you want to know? The federal and state raid on the compound told most folks all there was to know about the church.”
“Do you still have family ties to God’s Cloud?” Rick asked, again not answering my question. It was probably a police tactic, but it set my teeth on edge. “Someone you could go to, or talk to, safely, but not get into more trouble with the people who killed your dogs?”
“I have family there,” I said, using the time to gather as much of the woods’ energy as I could. “We run into one another from time to time. Farmers’ market. Yard sales. Why you asking?” I said, my tone challenging, deliberately accented by years in the church.
“The FBI, state police, and PsyLED have reason to believe that a group calling themselves the Human Speakers of Truth, on the run from the authorities, stopped in Knoxville. But HST disappeared. They don’t have a home base here, so they may have joined forces with a local group. We want to rule out that the HST allied with God’s Cloud of Glory Church.”
“Never heard of HST,” I said.
“They’re a homegrown terrorist, anti anyone nonhuman, militant group,” Rick said, “investigated by PsyLED for years. Our unit’s been tracking their financial trail, but it went cold five days ago here in Knoxville.”
“What kind of reason?” I asked. When he looked confused I said, “You said you had reason to believe that Human Speakers of Truth may have holed up in Knoxville. What kind of reason?”
“HST needed a place to regroup after the arrests of three high-ranking members and the freezing of the group’s financial accounts. We tracked them here and then lost the trail.
“God’s Cloud of Glory Church—your old cult—was in trouble with the Tennessee child services department, after the state arrested some of their leaders and placed the children in foster care. Both groups are ultra–right wing paranormal-haters, and both are in trouble with the law and financially. It makes sense for them to join up, but we can’t find anything electronically that supports that possibility.”
“Guesswork,” I said, but I couldn’t help my small smile. I’d helped damage the church. Me losing my peaceful life had meant getting one hundred thirty-eight children, some of them sexually abused, out of the clutches of God’s Cloud. I had helped, even if only passively, by letting the team have access to the church’s compound through my property. But I knew a fishing expedition when I heard it. There was no evidence in Rick’s statements, just supposition and wishful thinking.
Rick LaFleur acknowledged my smile with a tight one of his own. “HST stopped here, we know that, so it’s possible that they might have joined forces with the church, even if just temporarily. And if that’s true, then HST and God’s Cloud merging was a match made in, well, not heaven. Maybe in the boardroom.”
“Huntin’,” I said. “The menfolk would have made a deal with rifles or shotguns and dead meat for the dinner table.”
Something in my tone made Rick holster his gun. I tapped off the energies from the woods, holding the gathered power under my palms, flat against the table. The wood of the table had been cut from my forest, over a hundred years ago. I could use it. “So, yes. I got family there. Some will still speak to me at market. If I choose to talk to them.”
Watching my posture, Rick said, “Can you ask your family a few questions? For instance, if any new people have been admitted onto the compound?”
“That’s it?” I asked. “Information?”
“That’s one reason why we came up here today,” Rick said.
There was a lot of wiggle room in his answer, but there was also no threat. This was a negotiation.
Realizing that, I started to let the power I had gathered trickle back through the table, into the floor, and into the ground beneath the house. I took a slow breath. “Jane Yellowrock asked for help to save a captured vampire, and in return, she got the children out of there. My life is in danger because of her, but, if I’m honest, I think it was a fair trade. And she paid me. You ask for help with nothing in return. Why would I be so stupid?”
“Because helping us might make the church leave you alone. For good,” Rick said.
“I can’t see how that might even be possible.” But it sounded like heaven. They had done research on me, enough to know what buttons to push to make me do what they wanted.
“You could come to work with PsyLED, on a consultant basis.”
And there it was, the carrot Jane Yellowrock had suggested so long ago. A way to be safe, finally and completely, from the church, because they might walk away if I worked for law enforcement, especially one of the shadow organizations like PsyLED. I would have a different lifestyle, a different place to live . . . assuming I could leave the land, which was in doubt, but wasn’t something I could say to strangers. To anyone, for that matter. I set a thoughtful expression on my face, as if their offer was okay, but not all that great. “I’ll consider talking to my family.” I stood straight and rubbed my palms on my thighs. “I’ll think about consulting. If the money’s good enough. For now, though, you gotta go.”
Without replying, my guests watched as I shook open a used plastic grocery bag, filled it with late fall squash, a small plastic baggie of an herbal air-freshener mixture that contained catnip, and a bottle of local honey. I put it on the table between them. “Twenty-five bucks. Cash. And make sure the bag is visible when you go to your car. The men watching my place need to see you with it. If they stand in the road as you leave, you have two choices: run through them, which I recommend, or stop. If you run through them, be prepared to be shot at and for the local law to do next to nothing. If you stop, don’t let them know you’re a cop. Just act like honeymooners and tell them you bought my Blue Pill Herbal Tea and Aromatherapy.”
“Blue pill?” Rick asked.
“Some men need a little help in the bedroom. They come to me for my herbal Blue Pill Blend.”