A she-wolf. Priscilla hadn’t expected the carnage to be perpetrated by a she-wolf. Jacques said the male wolves were the hunters, and the carnage that had happened in Ashburnham must have been done by a male loup-garou.
The female looked so much smaller in her human form. Priscilla felt the need to look away from her nakedness. It was shameful. But to do so would have been the height of foolishness. Only minutes ago, the woman had been trying to rip out Jacques’s throat.
“End it,” she hissed, glaring at Jacques with hate burning in her eyes. Her mouth was covered in blood, probably the same stuff that had smeared her snout when she’d been in her wolf form.
“No. You will face punishment at the hands of Parliament for the families you slaughtered,” Jacques said. In his hand, he held a rock. Priscilla turned away before he could bring it down on the she-wolf’s head and knock her unconscious.
“You’re going to miss the end,” Arthur said, nudging her in the ribs with his elbow. Priscilla let out a soft gasp. Her mind had been so far away that it was dizzying to come back to the present. “What do you keep spacing out for?”
“Nothing,” she muttered, and returned her gaze back to the game.
There were only two players left. When had that happened? Anna faced off against Raoul the Kinslayer while every other player watched from the sidelines. Even the members of the fallen wolf pack seemed to be enjoying themselves, and a few even cheered for Anna.
Raoul looked spitting mad. A second blue patch had been snatched from him and tossed away. But it wasn’t time to celebrate just yet. Anna’s second patch was also missing.
“She’ll never make it,” the spotty boy said, hands pressed over his mouth in apparent horror. “He’s going to kill our new baroness!”
The girl beside him shrugged. “At least this game was interesting. I was getting tired of being curb-stomped every time we met up.”
“Come at me, Baroness, if you think you can,” Raoul sneered.
Anna squinted at him. To everyone on the field, it probably looked like an expression of dislike. But Priscilla knew better. She’d been working with Anna for years and knew what she looked like when she was deep in thought.
Then Anna began to run full-tilt at the big man.
The spotty boy groaned. “She’s doomed. Raoul is the best at melee combat. He’s going to slaughter her. What is she thinking, just charging him like that?”
Apparently Raoul had the same line of thought, because he grinned wickedly and turned, spreading his legs wide in a fighting stance, sword raised at the ready. When Anna was only feet away, and almost within reach of his sword’s swing, she did the unthinkable.
Anna’s foam sword hit the ground with a dull thunk, and Raoul blinked in confusion. At the same time, Anna let her legs go out from under her in a move that Priscilla had seen a million times at her childhood softball games. She slid across the ground, kicking up dirt and sliding between her enemy’s legs like she was aiming for a base.
And she snatched the last blue patch from his thigh.
She came to a stop a foot behind Raoul. He spun, blinking at her in confusion before he recognized the patch in her hand. She waggled it at him with a smile.
“Got you,” she said smugly. “And I believe that’s the game.”
The assembled crowd erupted into cheers.
“That’s my girl,” Arthur said with a warmly paternal smile as he joined the applause.
The next few minutes were a blur of frantic activity as people rushed onto the field to congratulate Anna on her victory. Priscilla thought it was a bit fickle that people who’d been doubting her assistant’s ability only minutes before were now patting her on the back and congratulating her on a job well done.
In all the commotion no one seemed to notice Garrett McKnight trying to skulk off. He tossed his weapon to the ground, a fierce scowl on his face. He brushed off the handful of his fellows who tried to talk to him or offer him condolences. He ripped off the wolf skin next and tossed it onto one of the hay bales. He pulled a water bottle from the cooler and chugged the thing in one go.
Rather than try to wade through the crowd to see Anna, Priscilla made her way over to Garrett. She approached him cautiously, not sure what it was about him that set her alarm bells ringing. Maybe it was the disproportional anger he was directing at his surroundings. Yes, he’d lost a game, but that didn’t mean he had to act like a jerk about it.
Garrett barely glanced up at her as she approached.
“Are you Garrett McKnight?” she asked, rather necessarily. He matched the picture in Aaron’s photo album exactly.
“Who wants to know?” he grunted.
“I’m Priscilla Pratt. I run the local bakery. I was watching your game and—”
“Look, lady, I haven’t got a lot of time tonight. I’ve got places to be. Why don’t you ask what you want to ask and let me get on with my night, okay?”
Priscilla was taken aback by his abrupt approach. “All right, then. Were you aware that Aaron Burke was murdered in my shop?”
“I think everyone’s aware of Aaron’s murder by now,” he said dryly. “I heard someone slit his throat. That’s rough. Not the way I’d choose to go if I had the choice.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Funny, most people don’t want to die at all, Mr. McKnight.”
“Not saying I’d want to go. But if I had to …” Garrett put two fingers to his temple and mimed pulling a trigger. “Short and sweet. You’re dead before you even know what happened.”
Priscilla had actually seen the damage bullets could do up close and personal while tracking murderers before. She didn’t really agree that it would be a good way to die.
“Mr. Burke had photos of you in his albums. Did you know that?”
Garrett shrugged. “It doesn’t surprise me. This LARP was a big part of his life. I blame that shrew Holly for keeping him away from it for so long.”
Priscilla raised an eyebrow. “Holly Burke? I wasn’t aware she’d kept her husband from any games.”
Holly had seemed to disapprove of the games in principle, a feeling that Priscilla couldn’t entirely fault her for. To Priscilla it seemed tactless and cheesy in the extreme. She supposed it would have annoyed Holly to have her already limited time with her husband infringed upon by something as silly as Fangs, Fur, and Fury.
“Yeah. For the last three months his appearances have been spotty at best. How do you think I got so many zombie vampires on my side?”
Priscilla refrained from commenting. “Do you know where he was?”
“Looking to adopt a kid, I think. You have to go through all kinds of parenting classes and whatnot just to qualify. Holly wanted the babies, you know, but Aaron convinced her to give an older kid a chance if he could find an arrangement they could afford. He was just talking about how he thought he’d found a solution they could both agree on.”
“You sound like you knew him well. I thought you two weren’t friendly.”
Garrett’s bushy eyebrows shot up an inch. “Why? Because of this?”
He gestured toward the field and the dispersing vampires and werewolves. From the sound of it, several of them were planning to go to dinner to celebrate.
“He broke your arm a few months ago, didn’t he?”
Garrett’s expression darkened. “Yeah, so?”
“So you were off of work for six weeks and Aaron’s insurance wasn’t going to cover it. That had to make you mad.”
“Not at him,” Garrett said, drawing himself up to his full height. It was an impressive display, and despite herself Priscilla did find him a bit intimidating. There was something about his demeanor that was just … off. The smell that clung to his clothing was awful. She wondered if he smoked and was trying to hide the bad habit from a girlfriend.
“If not at him, then who?”
“At the insurance company,” Garrett said hotly. “You know, for an old vampire you’re not that smart, Pratt. I know what you’re insinuating, a
nd I’m not going to stand for it. I didn’t touch Aaron Burke. I don’t care how pissed I was about the insurance company; I didn’t kill him.”
“Then can you tell me where you were at 5:00 p.m. on the fourteenth?”
Before she could quite track what had happened, Garret seized her shoulders in his big hands and stuck his face close to hers. The smell that had been setting her teeth on edge for the last few minutes was suddenly cloying and close. She stopped breathing rather than inhaling the stuff.
“Are you accusing me of something, Pratt?” he said. She was so close she could count his eyelashes. It meant she could very clearly see the dislike burning in his eyes. “’Cause you’re gonna regret it if you are.”
“Hey!” Arthur shouted. “Get your hands off of her.”
Garrett released his grip on her quickly and pushed her into the rapidly-approaching Arthur. He barely managed to get his arms in the right position to catch her in time and when he did, Garrett strode away.
“What did he do to you?” Arthur demanded. “Did he hurt you? You can press charges, you know.”
“I’m fine,” she mumbled. Her head felt a little foggy and she couldn’t seem to scrape the unpleasant smell out of her nose, no matter how much of the crisp February air she inhaled. She had the distinct impression she’d smelled it before, but couldn’t recall where.
Arthur checked her over for injuries anyway, pushing her an arm’s length away so he could study her clinically. “… all right, you don’t look hurt. What was that about, anyway?”
“I went to question Mr. McKnight. He didn’t like it.”
“I still say we should bring him in,” Arthur muttered.
“On what?” she said wearily, sinking down onto one of the hay bales. “Circumstantial evidence and the fact that he grabbed me once? It makes him a jerk, not a murderer.”
“I don’t like him,” Arthur said. “And I don’t see why Jack does either.”
“Guess we’ll never know.”
“Well, that was a bust.” Arthur sat down next to her. “I didn’t learn anything new. You really should have waited until I came over to talk to him.”
“And what good would that have done, Arthur? I’m pretty sure you’d have gotten the same answers.”
“I could have at least stopped him from grabbing you,” he grumbled. They trudged back to the car after that and sat in an irritable silence while they waited for Anna to return from the field of battle.
When Arthur’s phone rang a few minutes later, it was loud enough to startle them both. He fumbled to pull it out of the pocket of his uniform. “Yes?” he finally said.
He listened hard. “… what do you mean, Grant’s gone missing?”
Priscilla shifted in her seat to look at him. Simon Grant was missing? Her theory about the dentist was beginning to sound more plausible with every new thing she learned about him.
“What? Why did you bring Ava in?”
“Avalon?” Priscilla hissed. Arthur shushed her.
“No, not you, Jack. I was just telling Priscilla to—She did what?” Arthur’s voice shot up an octave in surprise. He continued to listen, and as he did, his expression morphed from one of surprise to outright consternation. “Son of a—”
“What’s going on?” Priscilla hissed.
Arthur ignored her again. “I’ll be there soon. Don’t let either of them out of your sight until we get there.”
He hung up.
“What’s going on?” she repeated. “Why did Avalon get arrested?”
“As much as I’d like to say it was for harassing me, it’s for suspected kidnapping.”
“What?” she asked. “Kidnapping? Seriously? I know she’s a faerie, Arthur, but she’s barely over four feet tall. She’d need a crane to lift Grant off the ground.”
“I know. But that’s not the problem. And even if what happened counts as kidnapping, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it stick in a court of law.”
“What happened?”
“Someone wanted to file a missing person’s report on Simon Grant this morning,” Arthur said moodily. “He didn’t show up to any of his appointments. So Jack sent Jamie into check on him. He found Avalon playing solitaire on the computer and …” he took a deep breath and blew it out.
Priscilla’s heart sank. “No. Please tell me she didn’t.”
“Simon Grant is currently being held by Avalon in the department’s interrogation room. She turned him into a guinea pig.”
Chapter Thirteen
According to Avalon, who claimed she could understand mammals much better than amphibians, Simon Grant had squeakily invoked his right to an attorney an hour before they’d arrived.
As Grant’s usual lawyer had staunchly refused to represent a guinea pig, and had inferred they were all crazy for implying it was his client at all, they’d been forced to make an emergency phone call to the offices of Scott Allen.
Despite having supernatural clients, Allen also seemed to believe it was a joke. When Priscilla asked why he’d decided to take the case anyway, he merely shrugged and said he’d be paid either way, so it was no skin off of his nose if they wanted to waste his time.
Avalon shifted in her chair uncomfortably across the table from them. She’d been handcuffed to a chair. Unlike with Maddison, they would actually be enough to stop Avalon from escaping. Fae were only marginally stronger than humans, and the steel handcuffs would contain a certain amount of iron, effectively stopping her from using her powers.
Sitting next to her was Scott Allen, who alternately looked at her and then down at the guinea pig, scuttling around on the top of the table.
“Stop glaring at me,” she whined, giving them wide doe-eyes from across the table.
“You turned one of our key suspects into a guinea pig,” Priscilla said flatly. “You’re lucky I haven’t tried to take a bite out of you yet.”
“And you withheld key details about Mr. Grant in order to try and blackmail me into going on a date with you,” Arthur said. “That’s obstructing justice. I could put you away for that.”
Ava looked just a little too pleased by that idea, so he amended. “One of the other men in the precinct would book you. And you wouldn’t see me until trial.”
The fae’s face fell and she let out a small sigh. “Oh phooey.”
“Talk,” Priscilla said. “What happened? Why did you turn your boss into a guinea pig?”
“I panicked. I was looking for more evidence, just like Priscilla said, and he walked in on me. He wanted to know what I was doing. He was asking so many questions and I kind of lost my head.”
The guinea pig let out an indignant squeak and bit Ava’s finger. “Ouch! That hurt, you foul little rodent!”
“What did he say?” Priscilla asked. She wasn’t entirely sure that Avalon wasn’t making this up to save her own skin. But then again, if she hadn’t been telling the truth, why would she have told Jack Riggs that Grant wanted a lawyer?
“He told me to shut up. Though not as nicely,” Avalon said with a grimace. “He would also like me to turn him back.”
Scott Allen sighed. “Dare I ask why you can’t?”
“It’s complicated,” Avalon said, at the same time Priscilla said,
“She doesn’t know how. Avalon is a complete dunce when it comes to magic.”
Scott Allen looked between them, shook his head, and leaned further back into his hair. He ran his fingers through his hair, which he kept cropped close to his head. “This is ludicrous. How am I supposed to represent my client when I can’t even understand him?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Avalon said. “I’m your interpreter.”
“Forgive me if I don’t trust you,” he said coolly. “If what they’re saying is true, and that’s a big if, then you’re responsible for this whole fiasco. You might lie.”
“She can’t,” Priscilla said. She hated coming to Ava’s defense, but in this case it would be simpler to get it out of the way before Allen decid
ed he couldn’t trust a word that any of them said. “She’s fae. The fae can’t tell an outright lie. You have to be clear and you can’t give her any way to weasel out of telling you something. But she has to tell the truth.”
Allen didn’t look mollified. “I see.”
“Can we get back to the topic at hand?” Arthur said, tapping his pen impatiently on the table. He turned his glare on the guinea pig, trying to employ the usual stare-down to intimidate the perp. It lost its effectiveness when the perp was a small, fluffy animal. Even Priscilla, who didn’t much like pets, thought the thing was cute.
“You’re scamming your customers. Your records show us that much. You were making money hand over fist, and yet you got mad when Aaron Burke asked for a raise or any time off. You even threatened to make him pay for it. It sounds like you have something to hide.”
The guinea pig paced back and forth, its tiny claws skittering on the table as it squeaked furiously.
“He says that Aaron didn’t deserve a raise. And that we can’t prove anything in court,” Avalon supplied.
Allen frowned, then glanced down at the guinea pig. “Mr. … Grant, you’re wrong about that. The records obtained show clear signs of embezzlement. A cover-up at this point isn’t going to win you any favors with a jury. A standard sentence would typically be ten years and a fine.”
Allen fixed Arthur with a look. “I’m sure if you cooperate, the police can negotiate a deal. Say, five years in jail?”
“Eight, and we waive the $2000 fine,” Arthur said. “That is, if he doesn’t turn out to be our murderer. Jack said they’re faxing over the results of the blood test as we speak.”
The guinea pig squeaked.
“He says he’ll take that deal,” Avalon said.
“Explain yourself,” Arthur demanded, sticking a finger in the guinea pig’s face. “And if you bite me, I swear I’m putting you in a hamster wheel and spinning it until you throw up.”
“Is that animal cruelty or police brutality?” Avalon wondered. She glanced at Allen, who shrugged.
The guinea pig began to pace once again, giving its squeaky explanation. Ava began to translate.
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