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  “Really, well!” she said, brightly, just to torture him. “I persuaded the editor of the Mystic Messenger to let me put a survey insert into Wednesday’s paper. And I have ten interviews scheduled in the next week. I’ll give you a copy of my schedule so you can babysit me. I have a few interviews scheduled under Zed’s supervision at City Hall on Monday morning. And then I’m supposed to visit Ted Beveux’s place on Tuesday afternoon.”

  While she’d made the baby-sitting comment to needle at him, she didn’t expect his face to darken the way it did. He insisted, “You don’t want to interview him.”

  “Why not? He’s an alligator shifter, which is really rare. And he’s not a pervert, which means he’s a safer choice than the Beasleys.”

  “What about Stu Moffatt? He’s a pooka,” Bael said. “They’re a dying breed. Or Dickon Macey? He seems a little hurt you haven’t asked him yet. He said y’all had a real nice conversation at the gas station the other day. Or Theresa?”

  “I’ve already scheduled an interview with Theresa. Why don’t you want me to interview Ted?” she asked.

  Bael refused to meet her eyes, staring over the top of her head. But his voice, it wasn’t the usual forthright timbre she’d become accustomed to, but the reedy, higher notes of a lie. “I just think you’d be better off devoting your time to other people.”

  Jillian frowned. “Well, maybe it’s none of your business who I interview.”

  “Is every conversation we have going to end up like this?” he demanded, finally looking at her again.

  “Probably.”

  He huffed and puffed, but pinched the bridge of his thin nose and laughed.

  “I noticed that your accent’s not as thick as some of your neighbors. And you don’t use as many of the idioms. The interesting little Cajun sayings, which is a shame because I actually find them pretty charming.”

  Bael shrugged, the motion carrying the hand at her back to mess up her hair. He smoothed it against her back, and slipped his hand down her spine, ever so slightly below her waistline and then right back up to respectable territory. “My family has always held themselves apart from the rest of the creatures here. We don’t trust or make friends easily. So, we held on to our natural accent longer.”

  “And where did the natural accent come from?”

  “The North,” he said.

  Jillian lowered her voice. “You may not have heard this before, but a lot of places have a north.”

  Now it was his turn to smirk. “Yes, you’re right.”

  “You’re going to be very difficult to interview,” she said, squinting at him.

  “I don’t plan on letting you interview me.”

  “Fine, I’ll just distill what I can from your scintillating conversational skills,” she muttered.

  Bael nodded at the people around them, enjoying themselves so thoroughly. “This was a warm reception for you.”

  “Yes, it’s nice to be welcomed like this into the community,” she conceded. “I know that’s not always the case with League representatives.”

  “Just keep in mind that Zed was careful to only invite people who were happy you’re here. This isn’t a fair representation of local opinion.”

  “Why do you always have to do that?” she hissed, pulling out of his arms. “Why do you always have to remind me that I’m not wanted here, even if it’s just by you? That you don’t support what I’m doing? Why can’t you just let it rest for a night?”

  “Because I don’t want you to drop your guard. I want you to stay safe,” he insisted.

  “You want me to stay uncomfortable,” she told him.

  “If that’s what keeps you safe, then yes.”

  She stepped away from him, keeping her voice low to avoid making a scene at Clarissa’s party. “Every time I think I’m on the verge of understanding you or at least being able to work with you, you do…this. Do me a favor. Forget about my guard. Just stay away from me. And keep your opinions to yourself.”

  With that, she disappeared into the crowd to find Zed and get a ride home.

  7

  Jillian

  Jillian climbed out of the van and checked her bag to make sure she had the right pens to color code her notes—because that was her level of compulsion.

  “How is a fun-loving girl like you single?” she muttered.

  This was her ninth interview of the week, including the local postmaster (a touch-know psychic), the school principal (a werewolf), the local funeral director (a human), the proprietor of a catfish farm (a river nymph) and Zed’s mother, Clarissa. Zed’s presence during her interviews was about as helpful as a paper oven mitt, but it seemed to make the subjects feel comfortable to have him there.

  She was gathering great information, and an outline was already forming in her head in terms of how she was going to organize it.

  This afternoon, she’d defied logic and Bael’s instructions, using her GPS and a map to find a route to Ted Beveux’s house. It only took her an hour and a half to complete what should have been a fifteen-mile trip.

  She would never tell a soul.

  She hadn’t spoken to Bael since the ill-fated crawfish boil dance. Whenever their paths crossed at City Hall, she managed to avoid eye contact and dash into Zed’s office. She was more hurt by Bael’s behavior than she expected. She didn’t know why it mattered so much that he didn’t support her efforts in Mystic Bayou. She only knew that even four days later, it still made her stomach turn to hear his voice. Zed seemed confused by her refusal to talk to Bael, but was smart enough not to talk about it or try to force a reconciliation.

  But now, she branched out to interviewing subjects in their homes without supervision. Ted said that he couldn’t make it into town because he was preparing for a big annual fishing trip. Ted’s house was a bit more in line with what she’d expected. While the boat tied off to Ted’s backyard dock, the St. Marie, was in excellent condition, the house had seen better days. It desperately needed a new coat of yellow paint and the stilts seemed to be crumbling beneath it. She could smell the rot of damp wood and mildew from the driveway. And something else, maybe old fish? Crab pots and netting hung neatly arranged on a fence just beside the house. She’d read somewhere that gator hunters sometimes used rotten meat for bait because the alligators like it better. Maybe Ted was curing some bait?

  The smell grew stronger as she got closer to the house. From inside the screen door, she could hear an intense buzzing, as if Ted was using an electric shaver. Jillian appreciated that he wanted to get cleaned up for her, but clearing the house of rotted meat was probably a better first step.

  She’s knocked gingerly on the rusty screen door. “Mr. Beveux? It’s Jillian Ramsay. We have an appointment today? Hello?”

  Silence. Well, not silence. She could still hear the buzzing of the electric shaver.

  “Mr. Beveux?”

  When no one answered, she walked along the wraparound porch connected to the dock, circling toward the back of the house. At first, all her brain processed was the pretty set-up, a wide porch swing and a dock that dropped straight into the water without the obstruction of a railing. Then her eyes landed on a crumpled red heap near the back door, a shiny wet mess covered in writhing black.

  Then she realized, the buzzing wasn’t a razor. It was flies.

  “What?” she gasped, pressing her hand to her mouth and turning away from the sight of the carcass. And that’s when she remembered, Ted was a gator shifter. He wouldn’t be curing gator bait because he wouldn’t hunt gators. Had Ted butchered an animal back here? He didn’t seem like the type to just leave a carcass on his own back porch. Especially not when he was expecting company.

  “Ted!” she yelled, barely holding down the breakfast she’d eaten that morning.

  She pulled out her phone, her sweaty fingers slipping over the glass surface as she tried to enter her security code. She stepped a little closer to the mess of torn flesh and recognized Ted’s boots with the orange laces. The mess was wearin
g Ted’s boots. And what used to be blue jeans.

  The mess was Ted.

  Jillian ran to the edge of the porch, dropped to her knees and threw up into the water. Her world was reduced to the blood roaring through her ears and the panic purging from her stomach. She collapsed against the rough wood, barely escaping a face-first tumble into the water. She rolled onto her back, breathing heavily and praying she wouldn’t throw up again. She took a few deep gasping breaths and then remembered the gators who occupied the swamp, gators that had probably killed Ted. She scooted a little farther away from the edge of the dock.

  She finally managed to unlock her phone, only to find that she didn’t have any bars. She walked into Ted’s open kitchen door, careful to keep her eyes off of the body, and found his landline phone. She dialed City Hall’s number, wondering why she bothered carrying her cell phone at all, beyond a sense of “security.”

  Theresa Anastas’s calm, accented voice sounded in her ear and she nearly wept with relief. “Theresa, this is Jillian Ramsay. We met at Clarissa’s crawfish boil the other night? Could you please tell the sheriff to meet me at Ted Beveux’s place? There’s an emergency.”

  “Sure thing, Jillian. Are you OK?” Theresa asked.

  Jillian was shaking her head for several moments before she realized that Theresa couldn’t hear her. “No.”

  Jillian spent the next ten minutes looking out at the water and doing deep breathing exercises, intentionally looking away from poor Ted’s body. She had no idea how to handle this situation. No one had ever explained how to behave when you showed up for an interview and found the subject torn to shreds. What had happened? Shouldn’t gators avoid a gator shifter out of respect? What sort of animal could leave a person in that condition? Was the animal still close by?

  She moved away from the edge of the dock, until her back was resting against the house. She slid up the wall to a standing position. Maybe she should just leave and let Bael take care of this. It was his job, not hers. She was a scientist, not a cop. But then, she glanced at Ted’s blood-soaked boots with their silly orange laces, and she knew she couldn’t leave him alone like this.

  “Jillian?”

  She looked up to see Bael standing at the corner of the porch, gun drawn.

  Bael holstered his gun, his expression grim. She crossed the porch in three steps, and threw her arms around his neck and sobbed into his throat. Bael’s arms slowly circled her body. Tucking her head under his chin, he murmured soft words in a language she didn’t understand. She didn’t realize she was crying until his wet uniform shirt stuck to her cheek. He was so warm and that was a blissful contrast to her cold, clammy skin.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered against her temple. “You’re all right. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

  He rubbed his hands over her hair, down her spine. She let herself bask in his comfort for just a few more seconds, before peeling herself away. He cupped her chin in his hands and then placed a Taser between her shaking palms. “You stay here. You hear anything, call Zed.”

  Bael walked inside the house and was gone for several minutes. She listened carefully, but she couldn’t even hear his footsteps as he moved around on the ancient floorboards. He was holstering his gun again as he walked back out.

  “The house is clear.”

  “I didn’t think to check further in the house,” she admitted.

  “You’re very lucky there was nobody inside. What if whatever did this to Ted came out and hurt you?”

  “Well the next time I find a dead body, I’ll be sure to check the perimeter,” she said, the tiniest bit of sass returning to her voice.

  He glared at her, but there was no real heat in it. “I’ve got to go to my car to radio for Zed. Do you want to sit here or go with me?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think my legs will work just yet. You go on.”

  A few minutes later, Bael returned with a cold bottle of water and a bottle of whiskey. “Which one do you want?”

  She took the bottle of water and gulped down most of it in one go. His eyebrows shot up when she took the whiskey bottle and drank a good portion of it, too.

  Bael blinked rapidly. “Damn.”

  She glared up at him.

  “What time did you get here?” he asked, taking out his notebook.

  “Just a few minutes before I called Theresa,” she said, sipping more water and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We had an appointment today. He didn’t answer my knock at the front door so I came around back and I found him like this.”

  She glanced over to the body, and swallowed heavily as the whiskey threatened to come back up. Bael clasped her shoulder. “Don’t look at him. You’ve done all you can for him. Look at me.”

  She looked up into his face and for the first time, found his expression to be completely free of suspicion or irritation. It was a face she could spend a lot of time admiring, if it could stay that way. “What do you think could’ve done this?”

  “I’m not so sure it’s a what. I’m thinking it’s a who.”

  At her confused expression, he continued. “It’s probably hard to tell from that distance and with this much blood. But Ted wasn’t clawed. He wasn’t bitten. You probably couldn’t see close enough, but those are cuts made with a very sharp knife. See there? Even his jeans have been cut off, with surgical scissors maybe.”

  “I had no interest in getting closer to the body to get a better look.”

  Bael swiped his hand over his head. “I don’t blame you. I’m not real happy about it myself.”

  “So if this wasn’t an animal, who would do this to Ted? Did he have any problems with anyone in town?”

  Bael jerked his shoulders. “Not that I can think of. Ted pretty much got along with everybody. I can name at least ten guys I’d guess would be murdered before Ted.”

  “You keep lists like that in your head?”

  And when Bael didn’t answer, Jillian asked, “Who will you even call about this? You don’t have a town doctor. You can’t exactly call in the medical examiner from the next parish to examine a shifter body.”

  “I really don’t know,” he admitted. “We haven’t had a murder in this town in decades. I’m a one-man department. I don’t have a coroner. We have a funeral home, but poor David Wyatt isn’t prepared to gather evidence for something like this.”

  “I think there’s a forensic science department at the League offices. You can always send pictures to them to see if they can interpret the wounds.”

  He nodded. “We’ll see. For now, why don’t you just head on home? You don’t need to be here for this. I’ll come by your place later to ask some more questions.”

  “I don’t want to leave you alone,” she said. “What if the killer comes back?”

  “You’re gonna protect little ol’ me?” he asked, smirking slightly as he slid his hand through her hair and cupped the back of her head.

  “OK, what if the killer is watching us right now and follows me home?”

  Bael frowned. “Good point. Stay right here.”

  She’d expected Bael to leave her alone on the porch while he went through Ted’s house. But he stood by her side, keeping her distracted with inane questions about how she’d found her way to the house and who else she had scheduled to interview that week. Though she was somewhat calmer with Bael beside her, she still jerked slightly when she heard Zed’s motorcycle roll up. His boots were heavy against the porch as he jogged around the corner. He didn’t even pause as he dropped a large rucksack, sped past Bael and yanked her off of her feet into a bear hug.

  “Are you OK?” he demanded, crushing her against his barrel chest.

  Her hands batted weakly against the ponytail trailing down his back. “Oxygen.”

  “Oh, right, sorry.” Zed placed her back on her feet and put his hand on top of her head while checking her over. “But you’re OK?”

  “I’m fine,” she promised. “But poor Ted.”

  Zed nodded.
“Bael, what can I do?”

  For the next hour, Zed and Jillian helped Bael document the crime scene. Jillian used her camera to take photos of the body and the position of items around him. Zed videotaped the interior of the house and used baggies from Ted’s kitchen to bag evidence. Zed recorded observations on a mini-recorder.

  “Is this really legal? Chain of custody-wise?” she asked.

  Zed pursed his lips and grabbed a nearby book. He placed Jillian’s hand on it and raised his hand. “Jillian Ramsay, I hereby deputize you as a law enforcement official in the Mystic Parish. Do you swear to follow Sheriff Bael Boone’s orders and uphold the law to the best of your ability?”

  “This is a copy of The Da Vinci Code,” she noted.

  “Do you swear?”

  “Define ‘follow orders,’ because I don’t want to accidentally enter into some sort of sex contract with Bael.” She jerked her thumb toward the sheriff, who bobbled the measuring tape he was holding and dropped it on Ted’s chest.

  Zed frowned. “You OK, buddy?”

  Bael waved them off and wandered toward the end of the dock. “Yeah, I’m just going to go measure something…over there.”

  Zed winked at her. “That was kind of mean, but I’m glad your sense of humor is coming back to you.”

  “I swear, I will not contaminate evidence or break the law and will follow orders where I see fit,” she said, then returned the book to its original position.

  Nothing in the house explained why someone would want to hurt Ted, no weird collections of women’s undergarments in marked bags, no hate mail, no piles of drugs or cash marked “ill-gotten gains.” He was just a nice, normal man, living alone in the swamp with an enormous backlog of crushed beer cans—who happened to be able to turn into an alligator but that seemed superfluous to how he died.

  But Jillian finally got it. As Zed took a sheet from his rucksack and gently laid it over Ted’s body, Jillian understood why the people of Mystic Bayou elected Zed to lead them. In a crisis, Zed was the guy to have around, focused and patient and detail-oriented. He didn’t question Bael’s decisions. He made helpful suggestions. He didn’t smirk once.