by Logan Jacobs
“No,” I commanded as she pushed her heads up into my shirt.
I felt the puppy’s cold nose moving up my body, and I let out a giggle through my exhausted haze. One of Storm’s heads popped out of my shirt collar, and suddenly, I was nose to nose with her as she wiped her bright pink tongue over my face and mouth.
I used my free hand to wipe the gooey slobber off my face and then stared down at the puppy intensely.
“We are going to need to set some serious boundary training, aren’t we?” I asked the visible head. Storm just yipped in response, and I couldn’t help but chuckle as I disentangled her from the fabric of my shirt.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” I said, then pushed her over to the other side of the bed. I kept one hand firmly on her tiny torso as I laid back down and closed my eyes.
Instantly, I realized it was no use. No matter how many times I tried to settle her down or keep her away from my face, the little ball of energy kept me far, far away from sleep. Finally, I gave up all together, and then I ran around my room for the next hour so she could chase me and hopefully dispel some of her energy.
“Hey, Milton,” Maaren’s voice called from the other side of my door as she rapped against it softly. “Are you asleep?”
“That depends,” I called out. “If by ‘asleep’ you mean ‘running around my bedroom like an idiot,’ then yes I’m asleep. Come in.”
I fell back onto my bed in an exhausted pile, and Storm bounded over to greet the hunter as she entered.
“Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” Maaren asked through a giggle as she bent down to let Storm lick her face.
“You’re funny,” I complained, “maybe you should quit your day job and become a comedian.”
“Welcome to puppy parenting one-oh-one,” she said as she plopped down on the mattress beside me. “You sleep when they sleep.”
“That’s going to be fun,” I groaned as I threw an arm across my face dramatically. “But then I looked at this girl’s little face and I realize it’s totally worth it.”
“Eh,” she shrugged, “it’s only until you get her sleep-trained. You’re probably going to want to get some stuff for her, though. Like a bed, and toys, a harness, food--”
“Okay,” I laughed, “So maybe I was a tad impulsive when we agreed to take her in. I’ll put a trip to the pet store into my calendar right after ‘solve the string of robberies targeting baby animals’.”
“You do that!” she exclaimed as she swatted my arm playfully. “Now come on, Danira wants us all back in the control room. We’ve got a lead.”
“Oooh, a lead,” I replied. “I hope she’s also got some caffeine, or I might just conk out on the way there. Come on, Storm!” ”
The puppy bounded down the hallway in front of us, and I was pretty impressed at how close she stayed by my side. She never got more than five feet ahead before she’d stop and swing one head around to make sure I was still right behind her. We’d only been together for a night, but she already knew that I was her master, and that I was going to take care of her.
Right when we got to the entrance of the control room, I saw Ariette and Kalista came down the hallway toward us.. The four of us entered together with Storm just ahead. Once inside, I had to admit that I was satisfied to see Elvira’s expression of terror when she spied Storm.
“It’s back!” she gasped, and then she fled the room dramatically.
“Oh yeah,” Kalista drawled next to me, “this is going to be fun.”
The dwarf’s violet eyes danced with laughter as she watched the pink nymph’s form retreat from the control room, and I knew she had already dreamed up at least three different ways to mess with Elvira courtesy of our newest team member.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a lead!” Danira announced excitedly as we sat at the round table.
Storm turned in circles three times before she plopped down on the ground and promptly fell asleep. It may have been two hours later than I would have preferred, but I’d take it.
“Is it the Katevs?” Ariette asked hopefully. “I’ve always wanted to fight a Katev.”
“No,” Danira replied, “but it is something almost as good. The Professor of Herbology at Jefferson University has reported that his Moly Flower has been stolen!”
There was dead silence as four pairs of eyes stared at the commander. The excitement on her face quickly faded as she waited for us to catch up with what she had said, but it didn’t happen. I didn’t understand the importance of a stolen flower to a case about stolen baby animals and a suicidal thief.
“Oh!” Kalista gasped suddenly. “That could get us somewhere! How much? When? Is there any security footage we could look at?”
Danira opened her mouth to answer Kalista’s string of questions, but Maaren interrupted.
“I hate to sound ignorant?” the hunter said as she raised her hand. “But what does this have to do with our case?”
“Okay, let me put on my professor hat,” Kalista prompted. “Phoenixes are birds, right?”
“The last time I checked” Ariette said tiredly.
“Well, a lot of birds are herbivores,” the dwarf continued, “but Phoenixes are like toddlers. They’re very picky, and they’ll only eat one particular plant.”
“Let me guess,” I said and then paused for dramatic effect. “The Moly Flower?”
“Correct!” the dwarf said like a proud teacher. “The thing is, the Moly Flower is extremely rare. As in, there are only three places in Jefferson City where it can be found. The botanical gardens, some little farm out in the middle of nowhere, and--”
“And the university,” Ariette finished for her.
“Well, you guys,” I said with a smile, “This could blow the whole case wide open. If we can plan ahead--”
Maaren clapped her hands together triumphantly. “Then we can catch our perps in the act!” she finished.
“Hold your horses there, cow-Fae,” Kal interrupted. “We should probably go investigate the actual crime that was committed first and then worry about preventing the next one.”
“‘Cow-Fae?’” Maaren asked curiously. “Is that supposed to be some sort of insult?”
“Of course not,” Kalista replied, somewhat offended. “It’s like ‘Cowboy’ or ‘Cowgirl,’ but you’re a Fae, so I figured it would be more appropriate.”
“Well, whatever type of Cowperson you are,” I chuckled, “it’s time to saddle up and go check out our crime scene.”
Maaren, Ariette, Kal, the dog, and I quickly dashed out to the van, hopped in, and were on our way to Jefferson University. It only took us twenty minutes or so to arrive, and we instantly marveled at the sights that greeted us.
The Jefferson University campus was a strange mix of the old and the new. The buildings themselves were huge and castle-like, built out of slabs of grey stone and steel bars. It felt like we had walked into France during the Renaissance. But the waves of students with their heads buried in electronic devices, or with headphones in their ears, was a jarring reminder that we were still in the present day and age. The buildings surrounded a beautiful courtyard area, with green grass and shady trees, where students lounged about, probably studying or talking with friends. For a college campus filled with fae and humans, it all seemed surprisingly mundane.
We made our way through the crowd of exhausted college students with their nearly identical black backpacks, over to a tiny row of classrooms and offices packed all the way at the back of the campus. The Herbology office was on the far end of these rooms, and we would have missed it completely save for the tiny, beat-up black plaque that read Professor Limmer, Herbology.
“This is it,” Ariette muttered as we stopped outside of the heavy metal door. She knocked sharply three times and awaited for an answer.
Storm yipped loudly with excitement behind us, and I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit comforted that she was there. I’d tried to leave her in my room when we left the Guild, but she had cried and barked her little hi
gh-pitched bark so pitifully that I couldn’t bear to let her sit there all alone for hours on end. So, I caved, and, I let Storm come along for the ride. There was plenty of time to train her later on, and who knows? A three-headed cerberus puppy might come in handy on a mission like this.
Storm spun around on a little patch of concrete just behind us, and I didn’t realize that her squat meant she had to pee until it was too late.
“No, Storm, don’t!” I cried out as a stream of yellow liquid spread out onto the pale stonework outside of the office.
“Better here than in the classroom.” Kalista shrugged nonchalantly. “When nature calls, you have to answer.”
“Are we even going to get in the classroom?” Maaren asked. “This is taking forever.”
Ariette knocked again.
“Yes, we are,” Kalista asserted when there was still no answer. She stomped up to the door and tried the rusty tin handle. It turned easily, and the door swung inward. “See? When all else fails, just break and enter!”
“Should we go in?” Maaren asked as she peered in cautiously. “The guy might get really angry if he comes back and--”
“Screw it. I am,” Kalista stated, and then she strode right into the tiny office. “Man, it’s a mess in here! Hello? Professor Limmer?”
She disappeared into the classroom, and the three of us all shrugged before we followed her in. Storm bounded up behind me, and her soft pants filled the silence in the air.
The place was an absolute mess. I’d be the first to admit that I am not the cleanest person, but this office made my own room look like the picture of perfection.
Unstable iron shelves were placed haphazardly throughout the small space, and each one teemed with all kinds of plants, mixed in with dusty old boxes and stacks of yellowed paper.
“Oh, gross,” I breathed as a Ventian Vine reached out and tried to wrap itself around my arm. I hated those things. They used to grow in the weeds in my foster home and always wrapped around my ankles and tripped me on my way home from school. Plus, they felt like big, furry snakes.
The Professor was nowhere to be seen as I waded through the shelves full of plants. I saw some newly potted Mandrake roots as well as a small Nimuohan Tree that would be a pretty cool sight when it was fully grown. I’d heard they bloomed only on the nights of a full moon, and the leaves turned into brilliant blue flowers that had the power to heal any ailment, large or small.
“Excuse me!” someone suddenly shrieked. “What on God’s Green Earth are you doing here?”
“I’m so sorry!” Maaren’s voice came from a few feet and many shelves away. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just--”
“Well, scare me you did, young lady,” the unseen figure admonished. The man’s voice sounded like the crinkle of dry paper when it was balled up in someone’s fist.
“We knocked, but--”
“Oh, you did, did you?” the voice said again. “I wasn’t exactly expecting a visitor.”
I waded through the plants and shelves, Storm close on my heels, until I found Maaren and a tiny form in a corner of the room. The hunter’s hands were up in apology, and she looked around wildly.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, and the tiny figure jumped about two feet in the air before it whirled on me.
“There’s more of you!” he exclaimed.
“Easy there,” I comforted the tiny man. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
“No,” Ariette’s voice confirmed from behind me. “We’re from the Jefferson Guild. You reported that some supplies of your Moly Flower had been stolen.”
“Oh,” the strange man, who I assumed to be the professor, said. “Yes, yes, I did do that, didn’t I?”
“That’d be the reason we’re here, yeah,” I said softly.
Now that I could get a good look at him, it was plain that the professor of Herbology at Jefferson University was an ancient dryad. Very, very ancient, if I had to guess. The man didn’t look or act as if he had ever interacted with humans on a one-on-one basis before. His tiny form was no more than four feet tall, and his wrinkly old skin resembled the bark of an old redwood tree.
Of course, that was probably because it really was bark.
As I looked the dryad up and down, I could see that a few sprouts had grown out of his right elbow, and his eyebrows were made of a dark green moss. His eyes were a dark, coal black, and there was no white in them.
“We knocked,” Maaren said again from behind the professor as she tried to salvage her situation.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, and his mood lightened considerably. “I can’t hear all that well. These don’t work like they did five thousand years ago.” He tapped his ears as he let loose a long, loud sigh. Then, rather abruptly, he turned back to the desk next to him, sat down, pulled out a bright red pen, and began to read one of the papers on his desk. After a moment, he furiously scrawled a sentence over the top of the page, then pushed it to the side in disgust before he grabbed another paper from the stack in front of him.
“The state of high school education has just gone so far downhill,” he muttered to himself. “These idiots don’t even know the difference between they’re, there, and their anymore. What a shame.”
The dryad shook his head slowly in sorrow before his face lit up with excitement.
“Aha!” He grinned as he wrote a giant ‘B’ across the top of that page. “A very strong point, miss Angela. Effort. Honest-to-God effort.” The professor flipped the paper over into the smaller stack to his left, and then Ariette cleared her throat.
“Office hours are Tuesday and Thursdays, my dear,” he said without looking up. “I’m afraid I’m just too swamped with papers to talk right now. You’ll have to come back again tomorrow.”
The four of us shared a look, and I felt a pit form in my stomach as I watched the dryad gleefully grade his papers. I desperately hoped our lead hadn’t just evaporated. It was almost like he had completely forgotten who we were and what we were there for.
“Professor,” Ariette said soothingly, “I’m not a student. I’m Ariette, agent of the Jefferson Guild, and this is my team. We’re here because you reported your Moly Flower had been stolen.”
Kalista and I looked at each other, and her violet eyes darkened as she mouthed the word ‘crazy’ to me.
I shook my head. I didn’t think he was crazy, just old… extremely old.
Storm whined softly at my feet, and I looked down at her. She had sat herself obediently right in front of me and now had an expectant look on her face.
“The poor girl wants attention.” I laughed softly. “Just wait, we’re doing important things right now.”
I tried to keep my resolve, but her face was too cute. I swept Storm up into my arms and cuddled her as Ariette tried to get Professor Limmer to remember.
“Do you remember that your Moly Flower was stolen?” the elf asked the dryad softly.
“My Moly Flower,” he repeated slowly, and then his black eyes lit up in excitement as he sprung from his chair. “Yes, yes, my Moly Flower!”
The professor rushed around his desk and then blew past me as he ran into the maze of shelves and plants. The four of us rushed to follow him as he made his way to a far corner of the room.
“You see,” he said breathlessly when he finally found what he wanted, “I count these buds every single day.”
He pointed to a wide and deep blue ceramic pot that held long blades of thick green grass and yellow flowers. The color was so bright that it looked unreal, and the petals splayed out in a star pattern. I peered into the pot and saw what must have been over a hundred tiny flowers. Even if a flower or two were missing, it’d be next to impossible to figure out.
“Every day, I count them,” he repeated sadly, “and then suddenly, my flowers started to disappear! It was awful!”
“Uhm, Professor,” Maaren’s green eyes were inquisitive as she looked into the pot, “You reported that they were stolen. How would you know if they were being taken in
stead of, say, falling off?”
“Oh no,” the dryad replied as he knelt next to the pot reverently. “The Moly Flower is special, you see. It doesn’t shed petals or leaves as other plants might. The only way to get a flower off the stem is to pluck it right off.”
As if to demonstrate his point, he plucked a bright yellow flower from the pot and lifted it into his line of sight. He twirled the thin white stem between his pointer finger and thumb and smiled like a child as he watched the petals become a blur.
“You said you count them,” Ariette pointed out, “but how do you, um, well-- Don’t you ever forget how many there were the day before?”
“Of course I do!” he shrieked, and then he stood abruptly. “That’s why I keep a log. Here, my dear.”
The dryad turned to the messy shelf above the Moly Flower pot. He shifted around a stack of papers and a tiny bonsai tree to pull out a small leatherbound notebook. The cover was a deep red color, and the edges of the pages were rough and brown.
“This is my log,” he explained as he opened up the book, “and you can see here that there are fewer flowers over the last few days. I haven’t used them for class, and I know that even in my old, forgetful state I wouldn’t pluck one if it wasn’t for a good purpose!”
He showed us the page where his nice and neat log had been written up. The format of the paper was divided into three columns. One read ‘date,’ one read ‘flower count,’ and one read ‘flower use.’ Five days ago, he had recorded an entry of ninety flowers, and written next to it, ‘Plucked ten buds for level three class.’ It started off fairly standard.
But then, over the next four days, the number of buds had steadily declined by small sums, two, four, one, but there was no note written in the ‘flower use’ column to indicate that Limmer had picked them himself.
“Why do you keep such a careful count of this stuff?” Kalista asked curiously.
“Because the flower is poisonous when consumed,” Limmer said insistently, “and if flowers disappear, that could put someone in grave danger. I know they get sold in the Dark Market all the time, which is why I always make sure to keep them locked away behind my indestructible office door.”