Page 46 of Flames and Blood

“The engine died. All of it just stopped—lights, radio, the man’s phone in his hand. The truck rolled back out on its own weight, and the gate man came out, not even in a hurry, and told him to reverse down to the junction. The driver was crying. Grown man. He didn’t know why, and neither did I, and I never asked. For that kind of money, I kept my mouth shut a lot.”

There it is.

Wards. Runes. Magic of some kind. It’s walled in a way that will keep out everything that’s not on that access list.

“How far past the gate did you go?”

“To the yard in front of the big house. Never inside. I hand the case to whoever comes out, they sign my sheet, I turn the truck around.” He rubs his mouth. “You don’t linger up there. Nobody has to tell you. Your own body tells you.”

Then it hits.

Heat.

Her mouth at my throat. Her teeth against the skin. The weight of her, and heat coming off her bare skin onto mine—

Her face comes with it. Clear now.

The kitchen comes back.

Reyes has stopped talking. He’s staring at me, and his glass is halfway to his mouth and not moving, and Kent has come off the counter behind him without a sound.

I lost time. A second. Maybe two.

Years of sitting across tables from men like this, and I have never once gone somewhere else in the middle of it. The subject watches your eyes the whole time. It’s the one thing they all do. And this one just watched my eyes leave the room.

“You all right?” Reyes asks. He asks it very carefully. He’s stopped moving, and his heart has picked up speed again.

“Keep talking.”

“You went—”

“Keep talking.”

He does, because he’s sensible. But he pulls his chair back an inch first, and Kent stays off the counter, and I put my hands flat on the table and keep them there.

“The vials,” I say. “Who took them from you at the house?”

“Staff. Different ones. A woman mostly, older, capable-looking. Once or twice a man in a good coat.” He shrugs. “They signed, I left.”

“Ever see anyone else?”

“Groundsmen. A cook once, having a smoke by the kitchen door.” He turns the glass again, and then he says it, easy, with no idea what it’s worth to me. “And the woman at the window, but that was months back. Last spring, maybe.”

“What woman?”

“Up on the second floor of the house. I was turning the truck, and I caught her in the mirror, watching me. Young. Dark hair.” He shrugs again. “I figured family, or a guest. But I never saw her before that, and I never saw her after, and I remember thinking she watched me the whole way down the drive. The whole way. Until the trees cut her off.”

“When last spring?”

“Mud season. I remember because I nearly lost the truck on the second switchback, and when I got up there late, nobody said a word about it. That’s the day I saw her.”

Last spring.

Kalli was in a cell in the quarry compound last spring. I was reading her blood draws off a sheet from that same compound yesterday. So this was somebody else. A young woman, behind that gate, at a window, long before they ever brought Kalli up that road.

I don’t know what that means. I write it down anyway, because I write everything down, and things that mean nothing now sometimes mean something later.

“Did you ever carry anything up?” I ask. “Besides yourself and the empty truck.”