Free Blood of the Earth by Faith Hunter Page A

all night, and leave me plenty of coals to start a fire in the morning. It would also heat the water. That was the first thing I’d learned when I came here, as John’s affianced wife—how to maintain the stove and its attached water heater, how to do maintenance on the windmill that ran the well pump, how to check the cistern, how to pump water by hand when needed. Chores, arduous work. But worth it for the freedom they had offered me.
    “I never loved John,” I said, “not the way library books say is possible, all that passion and kissing and stuff, but John and me had married in the eyes of the church. I respected him and loved Leah, and nursed her through her dying, and I gifted him with my virtue and my honor when I came of age, according to the church.” I’d not been happy to go to John’s bed, but I had been grateful enough for his protection that I’d gone willingly at age fifteen. “Leah hadn’t been in the grave a good year when John took sick and the men of the church came sniffing around, knowing he was dying, hoping to get his land.” One of whom I hadkilled, my first sacrifice to the earth of Soulwood, but that wasn’t to be shared, ever. And I would never know who had attacked me. Half a dozen backsliders left the church that year. Coulda been any one of ’em. “When I turned eighteen, we married again, this time according to the law of the state of Tennessee.
    “I nursed John as best I could, and kept him alive longer than the doctors said was possible. And when he was gone, I inherited Soulwood.” I rinsed the last of the dishes in tepid water.
    “Why do you stay here?” Rick asked.
    My shoulders went back stiffly. “I stay to honor John and because my sisters are still part of the church.”
    And I also stayed, despite the danger from the churchmen, because the land and I were tangled together. Tighter now than only hours past.
    I turned to my guests. “What do you want with me? Everything, this time, not just the easy stuff, asking questions. What about that consulting you talked about? What’s that really mean?”
    Rick glanced at Paka, who had moved to sit at the kitchen table with my cats, one on her lap and the other sleeping on her shoulders, and back to me. Instead of answering my question, he asked another one himself. “What did you do with the man Paka killed?”
    Pea turned at the question and gathered herself. She leaped all the way from the window to the back of the sofa. With another single leap, she landed on the table, sauntered up to Paka, and butted her in the nose. Paka hissed at her and batted her away, in the manner of cats.
    I said, “Paka didn’t kill him. I never laid a hand or a weapon on him. He died of nature. And he’ll never be found.” If Rick the cop thought I meant natural causes, so be it.
    “You buried him?”
    “Persistent, ain’t ya?”
    He pointed to himself and gave a half smile. “Cop.” It was a charming expression, black eyes flashing with good humor, showing the man he might have been once, before life, before loving Jane Yellowrock, and maybe before being magically tied to Paka, who seemed to be sucking him dry of life and happiness, like some kind of spiritual vampire he couldn’t get away from.
    “There was no chance of Brother Ephraim surviving. He
passed away
but not at Paka’s hands.” I firmed my lips. “No one will ever find a single cell of his body or thread of his clothes.”
    Rick’s smile vanished, leaving the calculating, discerning cop in his stead. He stared at me with the same intensity Jezzie used when she spotted a mouse that she wanted to eat.
    “You’re thinking with a different part of your brain now. Earlier you were thinking like a cat. Now you’re thinking like a cop. You’re thinking you might be forced to arrest me. But if you do, then you have to arrest Paka. Paka was there,” I said. “She hurt him to save me. He was dying.” More slowly, I said, “He was dying
at her teeth
. He was going to