Blood of the Earth (15 page)

“The Hamiltons. They was downhill, city people, townies, the Hamiltons was. I reckon you got cousins and second cousins in town. Not that they ever tried to speak to Maude once she married into the church. Disowned her right fast-like. Anyways your maw-maw was wanting to get you declared a witch so she could get you away, but the townie witch said you wasn’t. Then you made a mess a things, calling the colonel a horse’s ass in front of the whole church. Maude had to act fast-like to get you safe. Her and your mama hatched that plan with John and Leah, and the rest is history.”

I felt something slow and glacial flow through me and settle in my belly and limbs, heavy and poignant. Sister Erasmus
sounded so normal. So ordinary. As if she were speaking commonly known information. As if she hadn’t just turned my world upside down. The women in my family had been working to keep me free of the colonel? The women had set up my proposal from John and Leah?

Disbelief raced through me and tightened my flesh. My breath expelled in a rush and then came too fast. I blinked my eyes as hot tears gathered and dissipated, dried out by shock. The women of the church had always seemed so weak. But maybe there was more to them than I had seen. “You know, well, you
should
know, that I never heard that tale till now.”

Seen from the corner of my eye, Sister Erasmus scowled. “John told you. Him and Leah.”

I felt light, as if a cavern had just opened up beneath me and I was falling into the dark. “No. No, I never heard this. Never.”

Sister Erasmus slanted another look my way, surprise in her quick glance, the expression scarcely caught from the corner of my eye. “That ain’t right. He said he
told you
.” The last two words were inflexible, laced with underlying anger and disbelief.

I shook my head, the motions jerky. My eyes hot and dry. My world falling away from beneath me. My hands and feet tingling, my breath too fast.

Erasmus stared out at the traffic, her lips working as if her front teeth hurt. A chewing motion. “Your maw-maw . . . She would a told you when you married John in the church, proper-like, with your family all around and your daddy to give you away. But you and the Ingrams did it so fast-like, standing up in church and stating your intentions and then just leaving.

“You kept to yourselves, kept private-like, even after you come of age and he took you to wife according to church law. John said you didn’t want your family around, ’cause you was still scared of the colonel.” The flow of words stopped abruptly. Out on the road, the traffic increased. The light of morning began to reveal the day.

I blinked, and my eyes felt hot. I’d been staring straight ahead, focused on nothing for too long. When I tried to speak, my throat felt hot and dry, and it ached as I forced words out. “I never spoke to my family after John and I married, except
at market. He said you’uns wanted me back, to sell to the colonel. He kept me safe from my family. That what he said.
Safe
.”

“And John never said nothing about your family and your womenfolk suggesting you marry him?” There was heat in Sister Erasmus’ voice. Anger.

“No,” I whispered.

“
Men
. Sometimes they got nothing between their ears and too much between their legs.”

The sound I made was more sob than laughter, but it eased the terrible pressure that had been building inside me. I curled both lips into my mouth and bit down on them with my front teeth to keep from making the sound again.

“You need to talk to Maude and Cora,” Sister Erasmus said. “We can make that happen at market next week. But iffen you want to come on church grounds and bring some a your friends to hear a sermon, you let me know. I’ll tell your people, and my husband will arrange it.”

I caught my breath. “Thank you, Sister Erasmus.” A sense of relief spread through me. “You are warrior for God, Sister, equally proficient with Bible quotes and a shotgun, and full of wisdom and grace.”

The sister made a sound like “Pashaw,” but I could tell she was pleased.

I held out the note. Sister Erasmus took it and opened it. Read it. I said, “I think Jackie left it for me. To threaten my sisters.”

She nodded stiffly and said, “I done heard he was after Esther in particular. I’ll see your daddy knows. He’ll handle that little whippersnapper. I can keep this?” I nodded. She stuffed it in her skirt pocket, and changed the subject. “Mrs. Stevens has twenty-seven dollars for you from sales last week. She’ll be bringing it today.”

“That’s right fine,” I said. “I need some gas for the truck and a few groceries.”

My heart felt inexplicably lighter when the next car pulled up, and two other women, including Old Lady Stevens, climbed out with loads of stuff to display. I helped set up extra tables, and it was only when I drove away in my truck, much later in the day, that it all came back to me. My family hadn’t abandoned me. And—John had known, had
always
known.
And he hadn’t told me. He had lied to me directly and for years. Suddenly I realized that my safety from the colonel had come at a much higher price than I had ever realized. And that John had spent our entire lives hiding the truth from me. Using lies to control me.

After the morning in the vegetable stand, I drove into town and went to the library. It wasn’t my regular day, but everything was different and off schedule this week, and I had books to turn in, even the nonfiction books that I wouldn’t have time to read, not now that I had a temporary job. Kristy was off and so I made it quick, answering e-mails from some repeat customers, including a spa in town that purchased my cucumber cream for facials, took some new orders for herbs, vinegars, and infused oils, and had the payment money sent to the group PayPal account owned by Old Lady Stevens, who used to be in the church but had broken away some years before John and I did. She handled all the churchwomen’s (and my) noncash Internet financial transactions. She gave us cash when we sold something online, and when we needed to buy something, we gave her cash and she did the paying. It was handy for us “off the griders.” I did some more research on PsyLED, but didn’t learn much more than I had already.

I sent Rick LaFleur an e-mail, telling him that I had information, possibly pertaining to the case. He sent one right back, asking for a meeting out on I-75 outside of Knoxville. In a hotel. A business meeting. In a hotel! I’d never been in a hotel.

Excitement fluttered under my breastbone, displacing the disquiet that had settled there from the conversation with Sister Erasmus. I checked out and drove sedately to the hotel. It was called the Hampton Inn and Suites, Knoxville North. And it was amazing. There was shiny stone on the floor and carpet all over—and not handmade rag rugs, but big carpets made on commercial looms. It wound through the lobby and down the halls, perfectly woven. When I finished goggling, I asked for directions to the room and gave my name. I was given a little plastic card, like a credit card. I had no idea what to do with it, but I accepted it and the directions that came with it. I had ridden in elevators before, at the hospital where Priss went when she had trouble birthing her baby. I went to see her baby boy, looking through the windows into the nursery. After
hours. When no one from the church might catch me there. So I knew how to get to the fourth floor, and followed directions to the suite at the end, where I knocked to be let in.

Tandy opened the door, his reddish eyes perplexed, until he looked down, to see the plastic card in my hand. Smiling, he left the room, closing the door behind him. “The room key works like this,” he said softly, taking the card in his red-lined hand and demonstrating the way it fit into the slot and the little green light that said go.

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. They must think I was a little country bumpkin. Which I was, I realized. Face burning, I said, “My thanks for demonstrating the proper methodology.”

He pulled the door back closed. “‘How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?’” he quoted. “‘And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?’ Or a teacher.”

“You quoting Acts to me, Tandy?” I said with a small smile, feeling better, which had to be what the empath had intended. “You don’t look much like any preacher I ever saw.”

“The church where you grew up would burn me at the stake should I presume to preach to them,” he said, showing a disturbing knowledge of God’s Cloud’s politics and reaction to outsiders. Especially outsiders who looked so different.

I nodded slowly. “Maybe so.” I inserted the key card and pulled it back out, the little green light showing. I entered the suite, Tandy behind me, and heard the door close. The others were engaged in heated discussion, which I ignored as I surveyed the suite. It was wonderful, like a tiny little house but all modern and electronically up-to-date. Beyond the entrance door was a seating area with a sofa, too many chairs for the small space, a coffee table, desk, a huge TV, a small refrigerator, and microwave. A curtained window opened out onto the hallway beside the door.

Occam was seated on the sofa, his ankles crossed, feet on the coffee table, encased in thick socks. Paka was curled on the sofa’s other end, one hand holding the toe of Rick’s boot possessively. Rick sat in a cloth-upholstered chair with one ankle folded on the other knee, where Paka gripped his boot. T. Laine, the witch, was curled up in a chair beneath a blanket. JoJo, with her multiple piercings and tattooed dark skin
shining in the lamplight, sat on the floor with her legs crossed like a guru, barefooted and slouched, wearing multiple T-shirts and a patterned skirt. There were two vacant chairs, one for Tandy and one, I guessed, for me.

A hallway opened into a bathroom, with a stone cabinet top and tub big enough to lie down in. Through the opening I saw a bed that could only be a California king; I’d never seen one that big, but I’d read about them in my novels. Doors hung open to other rooms, and I wanted to wander through and look in, but such nosiness was rude in the homes of the church, where a man and his several wives and children all lived under one roof. I guessed it might be rude here too.

“We have a laptop for you,” Tandy said. When I didn’t turn around, he said, “Nell?” And I realized he was speaking to me.

I shook my head and clasped my hands behind my back. I didn’t have the money for a laptop.

“We each get one. From PsyLED,” he added, still picking up on my emotions, which should have been unnerving, but I seemed to be getting used to it. “It’s part of everyone’s gear,” he added. “They provided one for your use for the duration of the case.”

“Oh,” I said, and I couldn’t help the delight that suffused through me.

Tandy opened a laptop and punched a button, making it come on. I eased between all the knees around the table and took my place on the end of the sofa, beside him, watching.

“This is your log-in and password,” Tandy said, passing me a small folded piece of paper. “Change your password and memorize it.” The small paper contained a user ID and a list of numbers and symbols, nothing easily memorable. “It will get you into the case files, the HST files, the Internet, FBI.gov, and PsyLED intranet, but not much else. Consultants don’t have full access.”

I nodded, following his directions, typing quickly, not caring that I was on the outside. I’d been there all my life. “I’m in,” I said, surprise mixing with the delight.

“Good,” Rick said, all business, in distinct opposition to Tandy’s gentleness. “You said you had an update.”

“An update on the church and on my safety,” I said, “and two men Sister Erasmus saw in the compound.” I started with
what Sister Erasmus had said about the backsliders and the stranger boy with the automatic assault rifle, likely the one who had threatened me. I told them about the secret meetings and conspiracy papers not being shared among the entire congregation. I mentioned the overly wasteful target practice last evening. Told them that I had laid the groundwork to get back inside, if needed, and concluded my report with, “Nothing she noticed is unusual. Backsliders repent and go back to live on the compound all the time. Boys shoot and target practice and hunt all the time, on church lands, even off season and against the law,” I concluded.

“Sugar,” Occam said, “what are the chances that they would make you stay if you went back inside?”

I had never been called
sugar
, and the endearment sounded wrong on my ears, but he had also called my cat
sugar
, so maybe the word was just a Texan thing. I pressed my lips together and dropped my eyes to the laptop screen, thinking about his question. That was actually fairly likely. I didn’t want to go in, no matter what the benefit. Not ever again. Except . . . If I could get my sisters off the compound, I’d go in. I’d risk it.

“They’d make her stay,” JoJo muttered, the rings that pierced her lips moving. “I’d like to kick ’em in the nuts.”

So would I, but I’d never have said so aloud. An unwilling smile tugged at my lips.

Watching me, JoJo said, “Tell you what. We get the chance and no one’s looking, I’ll hold the new preacher down and you can kick him in the nuts.” I laughed, shook my head, and covered my mouth. The others laughed too, mostly at me, not at JoJo, who clearly said such things all the time.

But if I got the chance alone with Jackie Jr., in the proper circumstances, I’d prick his skin until he bled, and give him to the woods. Which would be far more satisfying, and far more permanent, and that thought made my insides quiver with a sense of dismay at my own cruelty. So I didn’t answer, keeping my eyes on the computer screen, where they couldn’t read my intent in my expression, and not meeting Tandy’s gaze, which might indicate a deeper understanding than I wanted. I shook my head and wished I’d left my hair down to cover my face when I tilted my head forward. “Sister Erasmus says the winter
storage cave has been set off-limits to the churchwomen. It isn’t anything to do with the HST or a kidnapping, but it is different. I can show you if you have a map of the compound.”

And boy howdy, did they have maps! Amazing satellite maps, so clear that I could identify every building and pathway, and even people who were walking. There were maps from summer, with a leafy tree canopy, and maps from winter with bare branches revealing the ground. The maps turned the focus of the meeting from me to the compound of the church. I showed the team where the three cave entrances were, all hidden beneath canopies of tall hemlock trees that were still growing when most of the Appalachian Mountains’ hemlocks were dying from the hemlock woolly adelgid. It was an aphid-like insect that fed on hemlock sap. The trees were alive, possibly because of me, though I didn’t tell the team that. It wasn’t any of their business that I’d tended the trees when I was little and willed them to live and be strong, long before I had known I had magic.