Book One: A Storm of Glass and Ashes

Chapter Three: The Old Woman

"Ant Food" meant pre-killed, chopped mealworms. Hawk kept hers in the ant-room, which was set aside specifically for her harmless little hobby. The mealworms grew in large, shoe-box shaped bins of bran meal and were, as usual, a bit unpleasant to look at. All the worm-writhing, she supposed. Dubia roaches were another favorite feeder insect, but Hawk sincerely did not like roaches, even the non-pest kind. The worms? She could live with the worms.

The ants got their own room, because when you actually wanted the ants to survive indoors, they tended to die. Mary Mary Quite Contrary was probably some form of ant. The room was kept warmer than the rest of the house, with heat cords and other toys that made adults (sane adults, Hawk's mother would joke) roll their eyes. But if other people could cook their dogs' raw food from scratch daily, Hawk could baby an ant with a heating cord.

Hawk's successful colonies were housed in elaborate, planted terrariums. They even had their own feeding dishes. She topped off their nectar and water dispensers, though they weren't quite "due" yet. Her colony of Campos (Camponautus Pensylvannus, the presumed largest carpenter ant in North America) were especially ravenous. Some of their scouts were already hanging out at the feeding spot. She did her best to put eyes on the Queens in her visible nests—she kept most of her colonies in either test tubes or artificial formicariums, so she had visuals on nearly all of nesting chambers—and then locked up the ant room. Other ant keepers weren't quite as insistent on eyes-on-Queen as Hawk was, but she'd lost more than one promising colony because she wasn't paying close enough attention to them. Her last colony of honeypots was a case in point. Mites. Why did it have to be mites?

Having cared for her pets, Hawk joined Alex for the drive to his new client's house. They lived in Sedona, as did the client; it was the setting for every western that ever imagined it was in Texas. The drive to the client's home was short. Elizabeth Cummings owned a small ranch style with a very dead lawn. It made an interesting picture. Here was the house, built of brick and painted blue. With latex paint. Multiple layers, even. She wasn't even sure why this horrified her more than the dead lawn. The house now looked like some sort of lozenge. But no one was responsible for the grass. It had at some point been a beautifully tended lawn, because the dead plants had a dense look to them, the product of tending, fertilizer and effort. But it was dead, along with every single plant around this house, and...

"Did they mention anything about her neighbor's garden being poisoned?" Hawk said. Because the line of dying plants terminated about six feet into one neighbor's yard, and a little bit more into the other's. It wholly occupied the fenced in yard around the house.

"No. They didn't mention anything about the lawn, either. Just the back garden." He frowned. Looked at one neighbor, with their half-dead lawn patch, and then the other with the same. He harrumphed, which meant he was admitting his initial idea was wrong. That was one of the things about Alex that Hawk liked the most: he was so easy to read once you got used to the man. She'd never had a problem reading his face once she'd worked out his tells. She didn't know what his initial assessment had been. She was willing to bet it was now "get the old woman out of this house," because god only knew what the risks were, here.

They got out of the car together, Hawk carrying her Anting bag, though she would never have admitted that it was, indeed, her kit for queen ant hunting. People tended to look at her oddly when she said that out in public. But it held all the things she'd vaguely supposed she needed: test tubes, a stack of deli cups and lids, cotton balls, bottled water, feather-touch forceps and a set of very soft paintbrushes. Looking at the lawn, she was very glad she brought it. The things used to collect ants as pets would be just as useful collecting evidence for testing.

...just...testing evidence of what?

"This is pretty impressive," she said, and bent down to poke at the grass. It was very fragile and nearly translucent, but it crumbled to the touch in an odd way that put Hawk's teeth on edge.