“So twisted isn’t bad, just different?”
Evie slid another platter of egg toast across from Jax just as Roark emerged, not looking any different than when he’d gone in. The bronzed, bald Cajun actually had a full head of extra-thick, curly hair but hated messing with it. He also owned an infinite supply of khakis and denim work shirts instead of a bodybuilder’s usual tight shirts and jeans. He thought they made him look professional.
“Twisted is bad if it’s nottransparent,” Loretta corrected. “But mostly, bad is small and dark.”
Evie shot Jax a look from beneath a fair, upraised eyebrow. “Like a walnut?”
Loretta frowned. “Walnuts in their shells are green. Doesn’t that mean they can open and grow?”
“Not once they reach the shriveled stage. That means they’re dead meat.” Evie grinned and set a platter of toast and fruit on the butcher block near her mother as the super-sized Cajun took a place next to Loretta’s small frame.
“Huh. Dried up sponge maybe? We studied sponges this year. Anyway, lawyers almost always have black pit bubbles but Jax’s is different. It’s soft.”
“Like a prune,” Evie suggested. “Or a raisin.”
“What dahellwe talkin’ ’bout, man?” Roark asked, digging into his breakfast.
“Bubble souls. Yours is fruity and twisted.” Jax informed him, forking his toast.
“I’mfruity and twisted,” Reuben corrected. “Jax here is a shriveled walnut.”
Jax gave up on bubbles and returned to Mavis’s question about school. As long as they were being ridiculous— “Since our Indigo child is saying she reads soul bubbles, does that mean it’s safe to let her go to school because she recognizes bad guys?”
Loretta gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’m right here,man. Ask me.”
“Yayfor the kid,” Evie called softly, scooping up strawberries.
“What does Evie’s soul look like?” Jax asked.
“Big colorful bubble mostly. But it shrinks into a silver dagger sometimes. I don’t know what that means yet. I’ve not seen that before, either.”
* * *
Evie didn’t hangaround for discussions of silver daggers, school, and who washed dishes. She had her dog-walking job to do—and an area she needed to investigate.
Thanks to her vet cousin, Afterthought had some of the best-trained animals in the state, maybe the country. Not that they were show dogs, but Iddy insisted on teaching animals how to take care of themselves.
Evie let the old Basset hound and mutt run loose when she reached her destination. They took off into the shrubbery while she sat on the branch of a low-limbed oak and studied the pond that gave the proposed Lakeland development its name. What did Loretta’s parents want them to know about this mud puddle?
For one, she knew in spring it filled with run-off from thunderstorms. It dried up over summer. The pond had flooded after a hurricane last fall and been full most of the winter, but that wasn’t a given. Since they hadn’t had a big rain in weeks, it was shrinking again. It wasn’t a recreational haven by any means.
There were a couple of rowboats stranded on the sides, so presumably people thought there were fish in it. She didn’t fish but she thought a pond had to be stocked. Had someone stocked it at some point?
The terrain here was basically rolling red clay. It could be farmed, but this was Witch Hill, owned by her family over the centuries. Malcolms didn’t farm, to her knowledge. There was an abandoned Civil War-era farmhouse farther up the hill but no barn—and a twentieth-century cottage on the far side of the hill that got rented out. And Jax thought Loretta owned this?
The dogs barked. Swinging her legs, Evie scanned the path from town. Seeing a familiar muscled figure jogging down the dusty road, she sighed and whistled for the dogs. She swung down and offered them treats when they came running. She hooked up their leashes and debated heading back into town. But just in case... she opened her inner eye and examined his walnut soul.
Still repressed and intense but not as angry as yesterday. Maybe he’d just needed to get away from his office for a few hours.
“How did you know I was up here?” she demanded when he was within range.
“I didn’t. I wanted to take a look at the property.” Jax shoved his hands into his pockets and examined the mud puddle. “Mosquito heaven.”
Evie laughed. “Put that way, yep. Environmentalists say we have rare breeds of frogs and some kind of mice that can’t be found anywhere else. I don’t think they’ve studied the mosquitoes.”
“Rare insects probably need rare mice to breed and are the only food the rare frogs will eat. And agricultural runoff is making them toxic or turning them into super-frogs.” Jax scratched the mutt’s head and regarded the gnarled oak she’d just been inhabiting.
So much for dressing respectably. He didn’t even know she existed this morning. She should ponder her aptitude for dressing for invisibility. “Eye of newt and all that. My ancestors kept this land for a reason. You won’t find much agricultural run-off since they didn’t farm or even rent the land for farming.”