Logan's smile faded a little, but didn't disappear. "Hey, you kept my best knife. Consider it a gift. Something for your trouble. And you're lucky I didn't stab you in the heart, after what you did to my brother."

  "Your brother was dealing in black market drugs specifically designed to harm shapeshifters. How can you defend him when he knew what you are? You're a fool, Mackenzie. You always were a fool."

  Logan shrugged, but I saw the flash of pain in his eyes. "Yeah, well, being the only shifter in a family of Normals always was a b—"

  "Don't swear in front of Tess," Jack growled, and the eagle shifter's eyes widened.

  "Oh, I didn't make the connection. So she's the Tess?" Logan said, turning to me. "The famous Tess Callahan. We've all heard of you. Delighted to meet you, lass."

  I blinked. "You're all heard of me? How? When? Who is 'we all'? And why have you heard of me?"

  He laughed. "The woman who has kept our Jack in one place for an entire year? Not even Quinn could do that, and I thought he'd never leave her side."

  Jack opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly a spike of icy pain drove into my skull and I cried out, stumbling toward him and clutching my head.

  "Tess! What is it?" He put an arm around me, concern for me replacing annoyance in his expression. "Tess? Tell me."

  "My…head," I gasped. "Sudden pain…I don't understand…"

  As suddenly as the sharp pain had started, it vanished, leaving only a dull ache behind. I shakily rubbed my temples with my fingertips, trying to breathe in and out; long, slow breaths.

  "What happened? Are you okay?"

  "I think so. It was the oddest thing, really. I—"

  "Mackenzie," Jack growled. His arm tightened around me, and he raised his head to stare at Logan. "Did you do this? Playing with one of your black magic toys?"

  I blinked, still taking deep breaths, and glanced up, but the eagle shifter looked bewildered.

  "No, Shepherd. I don't carry black magic around when I fly," he snapped. "And I certainly wouldn't do anything to harm this lovely lady."

  "Jack," I said, putting a hand on his arm. "Sometimes a headache is just a headache. I was hanging upside down in a well, after all. Maybe it's a little delayed vertigo. Or low blood sugar. Let it go."

  Mackenzie's blue eyes warmed, and he smiled at me before a flash of puzzlement crossed his face and the smile changed from something sincere to an obviously practiced smarmy leer. "Yes. Well. Just a headache. My granny says the best cure for a headache is a steaming hot shower. I can help you with that and even wash your back, if you like."

  I could feel the muscles in Jack's arm tighten, but then relax when he started laughing. "Oh, Mackenzie. You'd better watch your mouth, or you might get shot."

  "I'm not afraid of you," Logan scoffed, but I noticed he glanced around as if looking for a gun.

  "I'm not the one you need to worry about," Jack said. "Tess is an excellent shot."

  "And that's really saying something, considering I couldn't hit the side of a barn when Jack met me," I said, feeling like I needed to take control of the conversation, or at least take part, before the two of them starting beating each other up right there in the yard. I blew out a breath and looked at the eagle guy. Mackenzie.

  "Yes, I'm Tess. And we're late for lunch with my family. Do you—are you—" I bit my lip, realizing the conundrum I'd put myself in at the same time the words came out of my mouth. My Aunt Ruby would absolutely say I had to invite a person to lunch who was there when I mentioned said lunch. But Aunt Ruby's guidelines to proper Southern living had never had to consider offering invitations to a man who'd just admitted stabbing my boyfriend.

  On the one hand, imminent bloodshed.

  On the other hand, I was dying to know more.

  On the third hand, Uncle Mike would be there, and I had complete faith in his ability to keep any guests in line, shapeshifters or not.

  Okay, sure, that's a lot of hands. Still…

  Jack's eyes narrowed, because he was clearly getting too good at reading my mind or my "I should never play poker" face. "Tess, no—"

  "Mr. Mackenzie, you're welcome to come to lunch with us, but only if you're on your best behavior," I said in a rush, before Jack could stop me. "Absolutely no stabbing."

  "I'd be delighted, and I promise," he said, all but purring, which was strange for an eagle shifter. "And, please, call me Logan."

  "You're not coming," Jack told him, the tone of his voice so implacable I began to have doubts about my rash invitation.

  Logan took a deep breath, dropped the flirtatious act and looked Jack in the eye. "I'm not here to cause you any trouble, Shepherd. I need your help."

  "I don't care—"

  "The Fae have Iona."

  Jack froze for a long moment and then blew out a breath. "You should have led with that," he said quietly. "What happened? When did they take her?"

  I studied the pain carved into Logan's face and then glanced up at Jack, to see the concern on his. "Who's Iona?"

  "My baby sister," Logan said. "She's twenty-two."

  "You said you were the only shifter in your family, so she's, um, just a plain-vanilla human?"

  "Like you?" His lips quirked at the edges. "No. She's a dream walker. She can—"

  "Travel into a person's dreams when they're sleeping," I said. "I know. I've never met one, though. And I'm not plain vanilla, either, which is why I won't shake your hand."

  I needed to get over the urge to apologize for or explain not shaking hands, but it was on my list somewhere after "learn to park properly" and before "take singing lessons."

  "The Fae prize that talent," Jack said. "But how did they know?"

  Logan had been studying me since my "not plain vanilla" comment, but now he looked at Jack, his blue eyes darkening nearly to black with pain. "She offered herself to them. To serve them for a year and a day, to get me out of debt to the High Court."

  Jack whistled. "That's a Bargain. She can't get out of that, even if they wanted to release her, and they never would. Both sides are held to the terms of a Bargain. You know that."

  I could hear the capital "B" when Jack said Bargain. I had an enchanted music box I'd gotten through a Bargain I never should have made. It showed up in inconvenient places—all on its own—and played inappropriate music, and I had no idea how I'd ever get rid of it. My friend Molly was keeping it for me now—she was a musician, and the box and Molly seemed to entertain each other.

  "The year and a day ended last week, but Iona never came home. Our mum is beside herself with worry. And everyone I've asked has found someplace else they needed to be, fast. I don't know what's going on, Jack, and I don't know anybody else I can ask." Logan's hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Look. I know you have no reason to help me, and every reason to throw me out. But please. For my sister."

  Jack closed his eyes for a few seconds and then, shoulders slumping, blew out a breath. "Yeah. For Iona. I'll make some calls. Where are you staying?"

  Logan held his arms out, palms up. "Is there a hotel?"

  Lunch was one thing. Manners or no manners, I wasn't inviting a strange man with stabbing history to stay in my spare room, so I decided I didn't need to be in this conversation anymore.

  I was also uncomfortably aware that a tiny part of me was wondering who Iona had been to Jack, that he was so willing to overlook his obvious antagonism toward Logan, but I didn't have time for jealousy.

  "Okay, well, it has been interesting to meet you, Mr. Mac, um, Logan. I need to go home and pick up my pies on the way to Aunt Ruby's, so I'll leave you two to discuss…whatever you need to discuss. Bye."

  Jack followed me to my car and opened the door for me. "Are you okay to drive? That looked like a serious headache starting up, Tess."

  I touched his cheek and smiled, although the pain hadn't gone away. It wasn't sharp anymore, but a dull, thudding ache was still making itself at home in my skull. I didn't like it one bit. "I'll find some Tylenol or something at home and get some water. I'm probably just dehydrated and hungry. See you at Aunt Ruby's. And you know you're welcome to bring Logan, if you need to talk about this more at lunch."

  Jack was shaking his head before I even finished my sentence. "Definitely not. I'll get rid of him and be on my way. Drive safely."

  He bent to kiss me, but I inadvertently flinched away, a spike of pain striking as he came close.

  "Sorry. My head isn't happy at all. I'd better get going."

  "Are you sure you don't need me to drive you?"

  I started to shake my head, but stopped, wincing. Bad idea. "Nope. I'll be fine. See you soon."

  Logan waved to me, his cocky grin back in place, but now I knew it was a cover for his genuine concern over his sister, so I waved back.

  "I'll see you soon, Tess Callahan," he called out.

  "Don't bet on it," Jack growled.

  I pulled out of the driveway, blowing out a huge breath of my own when the pain in my head dissipated. Maybe it had just been the stress of the confrontation that had given me a headache?

  I shrugged and turned on the radio, adjusting the volume to low, and only realized after I'd been on the road for five minutes that Jack had never once mentioned the missing statue to Logan Mackenzie.

  Could it be a coincidence that the eagle shifter had arrived in town the morning of the disappearance? One of the biggest things I'd learned over the past year is that there seemed to be rarely any genuine coincidences in life. At least with crime and criminals.

  I shrugged again. I was perfectly happy to help figure out what had happened to the statue, or even what was going on with Logan's sister, so long as there were no threats to our lives this time.

  I really, really should have known better.

  4

  Tess

  By the time I parked the Mustang that my newly discovered banshee grandmother had given me next to Uncle Mike's F-150 at his and Aunt Ruby's farm, my headache had calmed down to a mild pain in my temples and a bit of an ache at the back of my skull. Not anything even worth taking medicine for, but still unusual for me. I'd never been prone to headaches and couldn't remember having one in years.

  I grabbed the two pies I'd stopped off to get and held the door open for my cat Lou to follow me out. Lou was mostly a homebody, but she loved Uncle Mike with a serious passion and always enjoyed a visit to the farm. I had a feeling secret tuna snacks were involved, but I'd never called him on it. Uncle Mike liked to pretend that cats were only good for living in the barn, but I always caught him with Lou in his lap getting pets and ear scratches.

  My sister Shelley came racing out of the house and shouted "LOU!" when she saw us, and Lou gave me a glance filled with feline resignation.

  "No more painting her toenails," I reminded Shelley when she scooped my cat up into her arms. "She wasn't a fan."

  Shelley, nine going on sixteen, rolled her eyes at me. Every time she did that, I had a guilt flash over my own eye-rolling phase and what I'd put Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike through when I was her age.

  "I know, I know, Tess. Can I take her to the barn? Uncle Mike is working on his SECRET PROJECT!"

  Shelley spoke mostly in capital letters and exclamation points these days, but we were all so happy that she was healing from the trauma of her mom and grandparents' deaths that we weren't even going to try to curb her enthusiasm anytime soon.

  I smiled at her excitement. "Did you ever find out what the secret project is?"

  It could be anything. Uncle Mike was a farmer, handyman, and retired engineer who could fix the irrigation system or build a rocket to Mars on any given day. And you could be darn sure his projects would all work perfectly.

  I could never have afforded to buy, renovate, and maintain my house if I hadn't had him to help and to teach me how to do things myself, which he'd done my whole life. Aunt Ruby has pictures of five-year-old me carrying a wrench almost as big as I was, following him off to the barn to work on the tractor, and I could change a tire on Aunt Ruby's car by the time I was ten. (Aunt Ruby had a steel-trap mind in a sweet, Southern princess body, and it was a given that nobody would ever expect her to change a tire.)

  Shelley starting jumping up and down, her pigtails bouncing. "It's a PUPPY!"

  I blinked. "Uncle Mike is building a puppy?"

  Another eye roll. Okay, I deserved that one.

  "No, silly. He's building a PUG PALACE because I'm getting a PUG PUPPY FOR CHRISTMAS!" She started dancing and singing, swinging Lou around, and I put the pies on the hood of my car and rescued my cat after she shot me a narrow-eyed, feline glare.

  Lou would put up with a lot, including making friends with a five-hundred-pound tiger, but being swung around would never be acceptable.

  "Okay, bye Tess, bye Lou," Shelley sang out, kissing my cheek and the top of Lou's head. "Uncle Mike says I have to help build. I learned to hammer NAILS!"

  With that, she ran off, leaving me grinning at the continuation of the Uncle Mike legacy. There would be no helpless females raised in his house, as he liked to say.

  I thought about following them, but Aunt Ruby opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. "Hey, sweetheart. Come on in. You can help me with lunch."

  I put Lou down on the ground, so she could go sniff around the flowerbed, and retrieved my pies. "Is that girl ever going to calm down, do you think?"

  Aunt Ruby laughed and took the pie carrier out of my hands. "Well, if we go by you, it will be when she's thirteen, or when she discovers boys don't have cooties, whichever comes first."

  I kissed her cheek and followed her in, comforted by the familiar scent of her floral perfume. My Aunt Ruby was five-three in heels, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed, and "If God wanted me to go gray, he wouldn't have given me such a great hairdresser" blonde.

  She'd also taught me everything I knew about cooking and baking, and I appreciated that every time I took a pie out of the oven. Speaking of which…

  "Apple and pecan, as promised, and half a lemon meringue I hid from Jack."

  She shook her head, but she was smiling. "That boy loves his pie."

  "That boy loves anything food," I grumbled. "He ate twenty-one donuts for breakfast!"

  "Tess!" She rounded on me, looking concerned. "You ate three donuts?"

  I sucked in my tummy and gave her a wounded look. "Hey! I think you're missing the point, here. You're supposed to be on my side!"

  "I am always on your side, dear. But we know which one of us has a tiger's metabolism, and it isn't you or your uncle, no matter how hard he tries to keep up with Jack at the dinner table."

  I had to laugh. Uncle Mike fighting with Jack over who got the last piece of pie, strictly for the sake of "manly competition," had put a few extra pounds on my uncle over the summer. Aunt Ruby had put her foot down with not-so-subtle hints about health and heart disease, and Uncle Mike had grumbled a bit but gone along, and he was back to what he called his fighting weight.

  Aunt Ruby put the pies on the table and turned to face me, crossing her arms and putting on her deceptively sweet, "I will have my way on this no matter what," expression.

  "Okay, honey. Let's talk about your birthday."

  "Nope." I am at least as stubborn as she is and have had many years to perfect my strategy for dealing with Aunt Ruby on a mission. The least said the better, because that way there's less for her to argue with.

  "What do you mean, nope? We can at least talk about it," she said, in her best "I'm your aunt, and I know what's best for you" voice.

  Lucky for me, I caught on to that when I was a teenager.

  "Nope. No talk, no party, no birthday." I started pulling dishes out of the fridge. "Are we making potato salad? Jack's on his way, bringing the steaks, so—"

  "Don't avoid me with potato salad, young lady."

  Oh, boy. She pulled out the "young lady." If she three-names me, I'm in real trouble. I, like millions of others, learned at a young age to fear my own middle name. Not my actual middle name, which is Lenore and a little scary all on its own. No, the "Tess Lenore Callahan" of it all, which only got pulled out when I was really in trouble.

  "I don't want a party. I'm probably going out of town with Molly for a few days for my birthday."

  "Won't you have plans with Jack?"

  "It's not a big deal. I just think I'm going out of town, so—"

  "What?" The question, filled with indignation and maybe a little hurt, entered the house before the questioner. "What do you mean, it's not a big deal? It's your first birthday since I met you."

  I sighed and turned to watch Jack enter through the back door holding a small cooler, which was probably filled with twenty pounds of meat.

  The hurt—and it was definitely hurt—disappeared from his expression when he grinned at Aunt Ruby. "Brought enough steaks for even Mike to enjoy. I know how much he eats."

  Uncle Mike walked in from the living room just then, as tall and strong as ever and looking just the same to me as he had when I was a child, despite his now-white hair. "I think we know who eats all the steaks around here."

  Aunt Ruby laughed. "Steaks, phooey. I roasted a chicken, and I've already made potato salad and three-bean salad and—"

  "Please don't say Jell-O salad," I muttered.

  "—Jell-O salad."

  I sighed. My childhood described in three salads. She'd be pulling out the green bean casserole any minute.

  "But no green bean casserole, since Thanksgiving is coming up fast, and we know how much Tess loves those French onions and green beans with her turkey," she said.

  I swear the woman was psychic.

  "What's green bean casserole?" Jack looked back and forth between us. "I like green beans."'

  "Since when? Green beans are vegetables," I pointed out.

  "You like everything," Uncle Mike said. "Honestly, is there a kind of food you've ever met that you didn't like?"

  "You don't meet food, Uncle Mike," Shelley said, giggling as she bounced into the room. "You eat it!"

  "I've had many times where I've had to eat whatever was available," Jack said quietly.

  Uncle Mike glanced sharply up at him and then nodded. "I bet you have, son."