by Molly Harper
She hated the way she startled when she heard another vehicle pull into the driveway. Was this the way it was going to be every time a vehicle approached for the rest of her life? Or was “finding a dead body” PTSD a two- or three-week thing?
She bolted through the house to where they were standing, near Ted’s covered body. “Did you two call someone else? A car just came up the driveway.”
“I asked my maman to come take you home,” Zed told her. “I can load my bike in her truck and drive it home.”
“I think I can drive myself. I managed to find my way here. After a while,” she said.
“After we told you not to.” Bael called from across the dock.
“I don’t like the idea of you stayin’ out at Miss Lottie’s by yourself,” Zed told her.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. I don’t think whoever did this to Ted is going to go to Lottie’s house just because I happened to find him,” she insisted.
“It’s actually not a terrible idea,” Bael added. “We haven’t had a murder in decades. You come to town and we have a murder? It tracks that they could be connected.”
“Are you saying this is my fault?”
Before Bael could respond, Zed jerked those broad shoulders of his. “You can stay at my place if you want. It’s probably the safest den in the parish.”
“No,” Bael barked sharply.
Jillian and Zed whipped their heads toward Bael, whose cheeks went pink. “Because uh, you just turned your guest room into a sports cave.”
“I could sleep on the couch,” Zed said, shrugging.
Bael’s scowl was a thing of thunderous beauty.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll lock my doors. I’ll take your Taser with me if it will make you feel better.”
Bael shook his head. “I don’t think it would.”
8
Bael
In the south, the local breakfast place was the hub of all morning conversation and gossip. It was the grease-soaked equivalent of the watering hole on a nature special.
The pie shop was a pre-Civil War wood structure with a pressed tin roof and walls painted white and emerald green. All of the art on the walls featured gold foil in some capacity, whether it was a landscape, a painting of the kitten, an old icon of an orthodox saint. The mismatched paintings added a sort of quirky whimsy to the old-fashioned diner set up, with the long-polished wood lunch counter and weathered booths. True to its name, at least a dozen clear glass pie stands stood on the counter displaying different types of pie.
Normally, Bael found comfort in this community and familiarity, in enjoying his morning pie with his neighbors. But this morning, he could find no crust-based solace.
It had been a very long week for Bael: informing Ted’s family of his death, helping them arrange the funeral, containing the details of the case like a virus, as not to inspire panic. Fortunately, the Beveuxs had agreed that it was better to let people think Ted had an accident that required a close-casket service. They knew that it wouldn’t benefit the community to be afraid.
The only contact Bael’d had with Jillian was when she’d helped him send photos and evidence to the League’s forensics department, who didn’t want to give a full analysis just yet, but were willing to say, “Yeah, an animal didn’t do that.” He was paraphrasing, of course, but hoped to get a little more information out of Jillian’s coworkers that might actually help him figure out what had befallen poor Ted.
How had something like this happened in his town? They hadn’t had a murder in years, decades even, and that had been some old country feud between two recently transplanted Romanian werewolves. Who would want to kill Ted Beveux in such a bloody, vicious manner?
Bael scanned the room, full of people he’d known since he was a boy, and he couldn’t imagine a single one of them hurting someone that badly. The idea that someone he knew could have done this, left him…disappointed. He thought he knew these people. The previous week, he would have told Jillian that this was one of the safest places in the world for magique and humans alike. And now, they had a murderer in their midst.
It had to be a local. Ted rarely had contact with anyone outside of Mystic Bayou, and he doubted an outsider could have found Ted’s house. Jillian only found it because she was one of the most disturbingly tenacious people he’d ever met.
Jillian. It surprised him that he felt oddly bereft without seeing her all week. He missed her constant curiosity and her scent and the way she was sickeningly sweet to everybody but him. He wondered why she seemed to be hiding out in Miss Lottie’s house. Surely, she had to have run through the groceries they’d left for her. But Zed had assured Bael that Jillian was fine, she was just busy working. And then Zed gave him shit for asking about her.
She was a human. She was a nosy human whom he wanted to vacate from Mystic Bayou as soon as possible. She checked off every single box on his list labeled, “DO NOT WANT.” And yet, it was taking all of his will power to stay in his seat and not drive out to Miss Lottie’s to check on her. He could get past this, he told himself. He could ignore Jillian Ramsay.
Now, Jillian Ramsay was walking through the pie shop’s door.
Dammit.
As she closed the door behind her, the drone of conversation faded to silence. Bael glanced around. That wasn’t good. For that many people to stop talking all at once, meant that most of them had been talking about her. And not in a “she’s such a lovely girl who was raised right” sort of way. From his corner booth where no one dared join him, Balfour smirked and it was all Bael could do not to throw a cake stand across the room at him.
For her part, Jillian simply smiled and walked across the room as casually as she could. She took a seat next to Bael at the counter. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” he muttered, lifting his coffee cup to his lips.
“So, that was awkward.”
“Yes, it was.”
“So that was the international signal for ‘We’re talking about you right before you walked in.’ What gives? Do they think I had something to do with hurting Ted?”
He frowned at her. “You didn’t come to the funeral.”
“Of course I didn’t. I barely knew Ted. I didn’t want to intrude or be a distraction.”
“I thought you were supposed to be documenting local traditions. Funerals are a big tradition around here,” he told her.
Jillian shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “I didn’t think it was my place. I didn’t know whether Ted’s family would be uncomfortable with me being there, considering I’m the one who found him. And I thought it might come across as ghoulish. Like I was trying to turn their pain into fodder for my study. I was trying to avoid hurting feelings, not cause them.”
He felt an unexpected rush of warmth toward her. She was trying to do the right thing, and had misstepped, which was easy to do when she was so far outside her comfort zone. And she seemed genuinely upset that she might have hurt the Beveuxs’ feelings.
“It will blow over,” he assured her. “Just take the Beveuxs a casserole and a nice card, let them know you’re thinking of them and explain your reasons for skipping the funeral, just like you explained them to me. It will go a long way.”
She pulled a face. “A casserole? That would require cooking, wouldn’t it?”
“Ask Miss Clarissa for help.”
“Can’t I just take one of these pies?” she asked, jerking in alarm when Siobhan appeared behind the counter from nowhere. And Siobhan was squinting at her again—while pouring Jillian a cup of coffee, which upped the degree of squinting difficulty considerably.
“Is this facial expression because I didn’t let you choose my pie?” Jillian asked.
“It’s better if you let me choose.”
Bael nodded. “It’s better if you let her choose.”
Jillian grumbled, “Fine, fine, choose a pie for me, please.”
Siobhan slipped away to choose from the domes of pie.
Jillian turned to him. “Isn’t it kin
d of early for pie?”
“Don’t ever let Siobhan hear you say that,” Bael told her. “Pie is considered an all-day food around here. Siobhan bakes a little bit of magic into every one of them. Pies to soothe your temper. Pies to settle a troubled soul. Pies to spark your passions.”
Jillian shook her head. “It’s pie.”
“I will take your coffee if you keep talking this way.” He grabbed for her cup, and she was quick enough to snatch it away and cradle it to her chest without spilling a drop. The grin he gave her was downright predatory. Her brows drew down, an open challenge.
Siobhan broke the tension, serving Jillian a slice of a pie with a chocolate filling and what looked like chunks of red fruit.
“Chocolate rhubarb, house specialty.” Siobhan gave her a sharp nod and walked away. Jillian’s mouth turned downward in a pout that made Bael want to bite her lip.
Jillian tried to subtly sniff at the plate. “I’ve never had chocolate rhubarb pie before. I don’t think I’ve even had rhubarb before.”
Bael handed her a fork. “Trust me.”
Jillian took a bite and gave an indecent moan. Bael squirmed on his barstool, strategically dropping a napkin over his lap. She licked her fork, which was not helping Bael’s napkin situation. “This is magic. Sweet and dark with just a little bit of sour. Like a dessert wine in a crust.”
Bael cleared his throat. “See?”
“It’s better if I let her choose,” she said, nodding.
“I told you!” Siobhan called from across the shop.
“I thought Bathtilda Boone owned this shop,” Jillian noted.
“She does. But the woman could burn water. She’s the brains behind the operation, not the cook. She found Siobhan right after my family crossed the ocean. Brownies are rare here, without anyone who knows to leave milk out for them or reward their little courtesies. And Siobhan rewarded Bathtilde for her protection by suggesting they open the shop. So why are you here, intruding on my morning pie?” Bael asked as Jillian dug into her “breakfast.”
“I have questions.”
Bael snorted into his own coffee cup. “What else is new?”
“It’s about the rift.”
Bael set down his coffee cup and frowned at her. “What about it?”
“I was looking at some of the census records Zed gave me, and I’m finding families that don’t make sense. Magique being born in families where there’s never been a magie before. Humans who have no magic or fae in their family line, suddenly developing power over water or weather. I don’t have to tell you, that’s not the way it works. Shifters are born, not bitten.”
“Stop,” he said quietly, glancing around the restaurant to see if anyone was listening.
But Jillian’s stream of consciousness could not be dammed. “And the only thing I can think of that would make the difference is the rift. Does the rift affect people here? The humans? Hell, the magique? Does it change how they transform? That much energy has to have some sort of side effect, right? Like a supernatural cancer cluster?”
“Stop.”
Jillian shrugged. “What? I’m just asking. Surely people around here have to know about it.”
“Stop, now,” he said, taking her arm and pulling her out of her seat. He picked up her hideous bag and slung it over his shoulder, leading her outside of the shop and across the street.
Balfour yelled from the back of the pie shop, “When you get tired of her, Bael, you give me a call!”
Bael ignored his cousin and the ripple of uncomfortable laughter that followed them out the door. He was well-aware that by the end of the day, a story would be circulating on the kitchen circuit that Bael and Jillian had a lovers’ quarrel in the pie shop and he dragged her outside to prevent her from blabbing all of his sex secrets to onlookers. And Zed would be responsible for spreading most of that story, because he was a gossipy dick.
“What was that about?” she grunted, jerking her arm out of his grip.
“You can’t ask those questions in the pie shop where anybody can hear you.” He was leaning too close, he knew, towering over her so their conversation couldn’t be heard by passersby. It was as maddening as it was fascinating that even as he boxed her in, she didn’t back down. She just set her jaw in that mulish, stubborn line and stared him right in the eye.
“This is just great. By the time the rumor mill stops grinding, everybody in town will think I’m knocked up with two or three of your young.”
He sniffed. “Impossible, human women can only carry one of our eggs at a time.”
Her dark blue eyes narrowed at him. “Beg pardon?”
“Look, everything you just mentioned? You can’t bring it up in your report.”
“Why?” she exclaimed. “If it has something to do with how well your town has integrated, it should be in the report. It could help people.”
“It can’t help anyone else,” he insisted. “And it can only hurt us.”
She inhaled deeply through her nose and closed her eyes, which he’d come to understand was her “praying for patience” face. She asked him, “Please explain what you mean.”
He pulled her a bit more gently toward the gazebo in the center of the town square. They passed a plaque commemorating the founding of the town and climbed its worn steps. The large white-washed structure was flanked by benches on all sides and featured a large swing, big enough to seat five or six people.
“Sit,” he told her, scanning the surrounding area for other people. And when he saw the rigid set of her chin, he added, “Please.”
When she sat, with little grace, he said, “Part of the reason we’re drawn here is there’s a concentration of energy out in the center of the swamp. It pulls us, makes us feel safe. It’s why we settled here.”
“Yes, I researched it pretty thoroughly,” she said, her tone dry.
“Well, what you don’t know is that the rift is destabilizing. Over the last few decades, creatures are being born to human families, without any let’s say interference from the supernatural families.”
“Are you sure it’s just not a case of couples not wanting to admit that they messed around?” she asked.
“We’re sure. We had a mohana born to a human family last year. We never had a mohana family here,” he said.
Jillian’s eyes brightened. “Oh! I can help with that. I’ve actually done a lot of research on mohanas. I was called away for a research trip on a group of mohanas in Chile, to come here. If the family has any questions I’d be happy to help.”
“You really know how to find the silver lining in a situation, don’t you?” Bael deadpanned.
“I regret nothing.”
“Well, the family wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as you—” His head cocked to the side as he pulled a confused face. “The League was doing an in-depth study of hyper-sexual dolphin shifters?”
“They’re one of the more obscure shifter cultures, and awfully reclusive when it comes to academia,” she said with a shrug. “It was a bit of a coup to secure an invitation.”
He snorted. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll get you back to your creeper dolphin soon enough.”
“How many of these, let’s call them ‘remade’ magique have been created over the years?” she asked, relaxing a bit into the swing, pushing off with her feet.
“I’d say thirty or so over the years. But the real problem is humans who were born human taking on supernatural qualities in their later years. Ted Beveux only started shifting into an alligator about ten years ago. His entire line is human, as far as we know. Gladys Fider was as human as you get until about two years ago, and now all of a sudden, she sprouts porcupine quills when she gets mad. Teenie Clackston went from a regular empty-nester housewife to a full-on kitchen witch. Best damn blackberry wine I ever tasted. Hell, the Honey Island swamp monster was actually one of our local fishermen, Xavier Ronson. Fifty years ago, he woke up on a camping trip covered in fur. ’Course, he freaked out, running out of his tent and onto a road
where he scared some wildlife photographer and the legend was born. He was our first. But his mother was distantly related to Zed’s family and we thought maybe it was just recessive genes popping up. It started off slowly, so sparse we thought it was a freak occurrence, but now it’s happening every year.”
She frowned as she pushed off the floor of the gazebo to swing. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would that start suddenly after years of living around the rift with no problem?”
“We don’t know, either. And it’s not exactly a problem we want to advertise. Every whacklaloon from here to Canada would be at our doors, wanting to be exposed to the rift so they can become a magie. Not to mention it could expose our secret to the human world at large. This is why I didn’t want you interviewing Ted the other day. I was hoping I could steer you away from the ‘remade’ shifters, to keep you from finding out about the rift’s effects. But clearly, that was a mistake, because you’re like a badger when it comes to information you’re not supposed to have.”
“You may think that’s an insult, but it’s not,” she sniffed.
Bael rolled his eyes.
Jillian asked, “Why didn’t you tell the League about this?”
“We weren’t sure how it would affect us getting the League’s help and we need the money. We didn’t want them deciding that we weren’t fit for the study because we have anomalies.”
Jillian’s mouth dropped open, forming a surprised little “o.”
“What money?”
“In exchange for participating in the study, they’re giving the town money and medical support we need pretty desperately,” he told her. “We haven’t had a town doctor in five years and not all of our citizens can go to the ER when they have medical problems.”
Jillian gasped. “But that’s unethical. It creates pressure on the subjects to comply and could lead to inappropriate or even falsified responses to keep the League happy.”