by Molly Harper
She parked the cursed van in an empty spot, near the fountain that stood across from Mystic Bayou City Hall’s door. She glanced down the street at the sweet shop and wondered if she could duck in unnoticed and change clothes in the restroom. It would probably cause a bit of a stir. She couldn’t imagine a town like this got a lot of tourists hauling luggage into public restrooms with them. But it would be better than—
Jillian shrieked. “What the hell!”
A huge man in an extremely tight black t-shirt and even tighter jeans was staring at her through her driver side window. He stood several inches taller than the van, and his hands were the size of picnic hams. He had thick, wildly curling black hair tied back in a ponytail and a matching beard that spread across his barrel chest. His smoke gray eyes seemed to penetrate through the window glass, making her shiver despite the muggy heat.
He raised a hand, and it was all she could do not to flinch. “Hi, there.”
A friendly grin spread across his face, warming his features as he waggled a massive hand.
Should she roll down the window? Was it safe? At this point, it would be rude not to, but she’d always read that a woman traveling alone should ignore their instincts to be polite and err on the side of not letting an enormous man pull her through a van window and onto the human trafficking market.
OK, yes, this was becoming terribly awkward. She rolled down the window. “Can I help you?”
“Dr. Ramsay?” his voice boomed, practically shaking her van windows. “I saw you from the sweet shop window, thought I should come over and introduce myself proper.”
Jillian sagged against her seat in relief. “Oh, thank you, but I’m just here to meet the mayor. Mayor Zed Berend?”
“Yeah, you right!” The man grinned again, showing perfectly white, razor-sharp canines. “You must be the League doctor. Bienvenue!”
Without an invitation, he yanked the van door open and pulled Jillian to her feet. He gripped her much smaller fingers in his very warm, very rough hand. Jillian stared up at him, mouth slightly agape. This was the mayor of Mystic Bayou? He looked more likely to be driving a long-haul truck route or forging lightning bolts on Mount Olympus. Who had dared challenge him for the position? Did he chew all of the ballots in half to remove his opponent from the election?
“Everybody’s been waitin’ for you to show up,” he told her. “Well, they were waitin’ for Dr. Montes, but they’ll be just as happy with you. I can’t say the whole town is gonna be thrilled that you’re here, but like my maman always said, learnin’ never hurt nobody. The guy at the League office said I have to sign a buncha papers before you can get started? Didn’t I already sign enough? Y’all tryin’ to steal my house and my firstborn?”
Jillian laughed at the rapid-fire questions. “No, but with Dr. Montes being replaced so quickly, the League just wanted to make sure the paperwork reflected the appropriate names, in case issues came up later.”
Like the “issues” that came up with the cave troll study in the Reykjavik sewers. No one liked to talk about the incident that led to a League scientist being mailed back to headquarters in a shoebox, not even for training purposes. Jillian shuddered.
“What happened to Dr. Montes anyway?” Zed asked. “He was plenty keen to hit the ground runnin’ and then he just stopped callin.’”
Jillian chewed her lip and tried to compose an appropriate answer. Currently Dr. Montes was in a League-funded ICU, ten stories below the surface of London, recovering from a unicorn impalement to the gut. Jillian couldn’t imagine what he could have done to provoke that response from a unicorn. Hector Montes was a senior member of the paranormal anthropological staff. He wrote an actual book on approaching and interacting with sapient creatures. How had Dr. Montes underestimated the will (or the ticklishness) of a creature as old as a unicorn? Had he become too arrogant to consider his subject’s feelings? Or had his clammy hands, combined with breath that smelled of old coffee and gingivitis, pushed the unicorn into a panic?
Zed was staring at her, waiting for an answer.
“Oh, um, he ran into some medical problems and couldn’t travel,” Jillian said, smiling through the awkward lie. “It happens sometimes. But I assure you, Dr. Montes trained me in field work. I’m fully qualified to handle this.”
He jerked his shoulders. “Oh, I’m sure y’are, cher. No worries. You’ve probably taken dozens of these research trips, right?”
Jillian cleared her throat. “Well, not exactly.”
Zed paused and tilted his enormous head toward her. “How many have you taken?”
Jillian pursed her lips and admitted, “One.”
Zed asked, “One before Mystic Bayou?”
Jillian shook her head. “No, just this one.”
Zed’s cheerful demeanor faded. “You’ve never done this before?
“I was heading out on my first assignment in South America before the League called me back in and redirected me here,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve studied the process over and over. I’ve collected and interpreted other researchers’ data… This is just the first time I’ve done it on my own.”
Zed practically deflated, leaning against her van with a dumbfounded expression. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I just don’t know about this, Doc. It was hard enough to talk my neighbors into participatin’ when they knew that they were gonna be dealing with an expert. I just don’t know how people are gonna react to someone your age, without any real experience.”
“Well, we don’t exactly have to include that information when I introduce myself. I’m not planning on handing out copies of my CV to random citizens,” she protested.
Zed’s cheerful demeanor returned full force. “Good point, smart lady. If I’ve learned anything since takin’ office, it’s that less is more when it comes to information and your public image. It’s why I deleted my Facebook. Nothin’ good can come from your constituents knowin’ you unfriended them.”
The radiating heat of his hand on her elbow as he led her into the building had her sweating even more. She cast a mournful look over her shoulder, to the van, where fresh clothes and her trusty dry shampoo were waiting in her bag.
Zed shrugged. “We’ll just have to see how things play out. I’magine you’re pretty tired after all that flyin’. The sheriff says there’s nothing like it, but I never took to it. Prefer to keep my paws on the ground, if ya know what I mean.”
Zed flung the heavy wooden door open so fast Jillian didn’t get a chance to study its carved details. He led her into an open office, divided into sections with lines on the floor. One corner was marked “Revenue” with gold lines. Another was marked “Public Works” with green lines. “Schools and Social Services” was marked in red and “Everything Else” was marked with blue.
“The whole parish government operates from this one room?” she marveled.
Zed seemed very pleased with himself as he pointed to the various departments. “Well, I get my own office over there and the sheriff gets his own office on the opposite side. But it works just fine. We don’t have much room here and it keeps things simple if we can just holler at each other from across a room instead of callin’ and leavin’ messages and cursin’ the voicemail and gettin’ so stirred up you can’t remember why you called in the first place. End-of-work was a little while ago, but usually this place is a beehive. Theresa Anastas keeps us all lined up and running without smacking into each other. She runs the Everything Else department. Gigi Grandent—she’s a seventy-seven-year-old human and more terrifying than I could ever be—runs Public Works with an iron fist. Mr. Chiron retired as superintendent, but he’s good at keepin’ the schools running. And Betchel Boone may be a bit of couillon but no one can keep the books balanced like he can.”
“Boone? As in the family that seems to own all of the businesses in town?” She gestured toward the street.
Zed grinned. “Caught that, did ya? Nice enough folks, the Boones, I suppose. They’re used to gettin’
their way and get plenty fired up if they don’t. We let ‘em throw their money around because it makes them happy and keeps the town in clover. And then we mostly get things done when they’re not around.”
A sharp voice interrupted him, “Not all of us are like that, Zed.”
Zed’s cheeks went a little pink under his beard, when another man, lean and tall with almost preternaturally sharp cheek bones appeared in the doorway marked, “Sheriff’s Department. Check all firearms with the mayor before knocking.” The man’s light hair was shorn close, which only emphasized his large, amber-colored eyes and sharp features. He was wearing a tan police uniform and a gun belt that seemed to have a lot of “extras,” but Jillian wasn’t super-familiar with law enforcement gear… And she was staring at his narrow waist, which he had noticed. Awkward.
Zed shook off his embarrassment by flashing that winsome grin again.
“’Course not. Sheriff, you are the exception to all the rules,” he said in a condescending, teasing tone. “Dr. Ramsay, this is Sheriff Boone. Sheriff, this is Dr. Jillian Ramsay.”
“Sheriff, I’m pleased to meet you.” Jillian did not reach out to shake his hand, another etiquette issue. Some species of the supernatural world, like the Irish spriggans, could lose their glamour when touched by humans, so casual physical touch with strangers was taboo. Also, some species, like the rainforest-dwelling nagual were extremely prone to colds and therefore a little germaphobic.
The Sheriff said nothing. He simply stared at her with those strange eyes of his, as if he was categorizing her every freckle and flaw.
Zed sighed. “I told you all about her, Boone. Twice. This is the doctor that’s gonna be studyin’ how well we run things in our little town, so she can help other little towns do the same,” Zed said, in a tone that was probably meant to evoke some sort of friendly response.
Instead, the sheriff growled, “Seems to me that those towns should figure that out for themselves.”
Jillian scoffed, “Well, that’s an interesting approach to interspecies cooperation.”
The sheriff crossed his rangy arms over his broad chest. “Never said I planned on any approach.”
Zed cleared his throat. “Doc, you got those papers for me to sign? I’ll leave you two to your howd’ya do’s.”
Jillian reached into her enormous canvas shoulder bag, handed him a carefully labeled manila envelope full of reprinted paperwork. Zed opened the sheaf of official documents and beamed at her. “I get to use my official mayor stamp. I love doin’ that.”
Boone muttered, “To a point that might embarrass any other man.”
Ignoring the sheriff, Zed strode into his office. Jillian turned her head toward the sheriff. The hair elastic keeping her thick blond mop off of her neck gave up the fight. It snapped and her hair fell around her face like a slightly damp gold curtain. The sheriff’s eyes flashed and not with annoyance at the mayor. There were actual rays of light shining behind his irises. Which she now realized were longer, and narrower than average, like a cat’s. He had to be a shifter of some sort. The mayor also had “double corporeal forms” written all over him, for that matter. But there were far too many varieties to guess just from eye shape or build. From what Jillian understood of shifter etiquette—or any other sort of etiquette, really—it was rude to ask someone, “so what are you?”
So, she would just have to wait.
“Sheriff Boone. Do you have a first name? Is there a reason the mayor doesn’t seem to use it?”
The sheriff cleared his throat. “’Course I do. I’m Bael Boone. And the mayor doesn’t use it, because he likes to needle my ass at every opportunity.”
“I sure do!” Zed called from the next room.
“I’m sorry. Did you say Bill Boone?” she asked.
“Bael.”
Jillian repeated what she heard, “Bill.”
“Bael.”
Jillian shook her head. “I don't understand. It’s not Bill?”
The sheriff was starting to look annoyed, or, at least, more annoyed. “No. Ba-el.”
“I could swear that’s what I’m saying.”
“No, B-A-E-L. Bael.”
Jillian would admit that, at this point, she was needling him just a little bit. She had an excellent ear for accents, but very little patience or politeness left in her.
“Sorry about that. I guess it will take me some time to adjust to the accents.”
Bael sniffed, “Well, it will take us just as long to get used to yours.”
Jillian watched the sheriff’s angular face carefully. Clearly, he was amongst the people who were “not all that thrilled” with Jillian’s presence in town. And given the Boone family’s apparent stranglehold on the town’s economy, that pricked at Jillian’s distrust.
No, she was a scientist. She wouldn’t let preconceived notions or her discomfort in having someone attempt to stare through her skew her opinions.
“Well, I’m here to stay, Sheriff, at least for a while, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity.” She smirked at him.
Bael jerked his shoulders. “I just don’t see the point in it, is all.”
Jillian’s brows drew together. “Your town represents one of the few settlements where supernatural creatures from nearly all cultures live and work together in relative peace, and have for generations. The League expects humanity to stumble on ‘the secret’ of the otherworldly any day now. The Loch Ness monster can’t hide from Google maps forever. And when one domino falls, so will another and then another, until everyone knows that it’s all real. Werewolves, fairies, shifters, spirits, mermaids, witches, all of their fairy tale nightmares come true. Don’t you think it would be better if they had information on how other communities overcame their differences instead of running around in a blind panic and well, act out the whole ‘War of the Worlds’ phenomenon all over again.”
Despite her impassioned speech, Bael was not moved. “I’m just sayin’ that no good has ever come from people havin’ the answers handed to them.”
Zed rushed back out of his office, the papers flapping sloppily as he moved. “All done ‘cept for the last one, which has to be signed in front of a witness. Sheriff?”
Bael sighed, “Hold on.”
The sheriff very carefully reviewed each page…to the point where Jillian became concerned about his reading comprehension.
Zed seemed endlessly amused by Bael’s insolence. “Bael hates it when I boss him around. He’s hated it ever since we were kids. But I just remind him that his job description includes “other duties as assigned” tacked right there at the end, with an asterisk, and then he has to do it. Because the asterisk says, “‘assigned at the Mayor’s discretion.’”
Bael’s eyes flashed angry gold again. “Mighty big words from the guy who needed flash cards to remember his swearin’ in speech.”
Zed’s grin should not have been as proud as it was. “I put the ‘swear’ in ‘swearin’ in.’”
Jillian cleared her throat. “Sheriff, that’s a pretty standard cooperation agreement between the League and the town of Mystic Bayou. Because of your unique population, you are a perfect case study for assimilation tactics. You guarantee me access to any archives or census information I need and attempt to smooth the way for me with the locals. I agree to be as unobtrusive as possible and show you all of my research before I leave town. Mayor Berend was pretty specific about that.”
“Maybe where you’re from, people give their name without a care, but I want to know what I’m signin’,” Bael drawled, placidly flipping through the paperwork.
“He’s got this whole thing about not givin’ his true name,” Zed whispered dramatically. “The whole family’s that way. Their first names are all nicknames. He refuses to tell me and I’m the closest thing he’s got to a best friend!”
“No, you’re not.” Bael shook his head, blithely reading through the contract.
Zed grinned. “I’ve been guessin’ for years though. I’m pretty sure his true name
is somethin’ like Marion. It’s OK, buddy. Marion can be a boys’ name, too.”
Jillian looked to Bael, who silently shook his head.
It took several more minutes, but Bael finally signed the last page of the contract. A quick motion caught Jillian’s eye, and she barely restrained a gasp as Zed sliced his palm open with a wicked sharp claw on his right hand. In a business-like manner, he pressed his mayoral seal onto his palm and then the paper, leaving a livid red crest next to the signature line.
Jillian shook her head. “Oh, that wasn’t…necessary.”
Zed frowned at her as he signed his name with a plain old Bic pen.
“Now, the local ladies’ guild wanted to throw you a proper crawfish boil to welcome you to town,” Zed told her.
Jillian gulped, audibly. “That’s very generous of them.”
Bael rolled his eyes a bit. “Don’t get excited. People around here throw a party every time somebody loses a damn tooth.”
Zed shot Bael a warning look, the first truly dark expression she’d seen on his face. The predator’s threat sent a cold shiver down her spine. If Jillian had those icy eyes glaring at her that way, she might have added soiled pants to her list of hygiene issues. Bael simply jerked his shoulders.
In a pointedly pleasant tone, Zed said, “I thought that might be a little overwhelmin’ for you straight out the gate. I figured you’d rather get settled in and get some sleep, get your legs under you, before you have to make your first impressions. We’ll schedule your official welcome sometime this week.”
“That was very thoughtful of you,” she told him. “Thank you.”
Zed grinned at her, putting his passive (no-longer-bleeding) hand on her shoulder. “You need anything, you just let me know.”
Bael growled ever so slightly. Jillian frowned at him, and turned back to Zed. “Directions to my hotel would be appreciated.”
Zed gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Oh, we’ve got you set up with a real nice place.”