"Yep," Jack said. "Talk."

  "I would if I knew anything else." Logan sighed and looked longingly at the empty lemon pie dish. "Also, I take exception to the word 'smarmy.'"

  I narrowed my eyes, and he rushed to continue. "I heard rumors about this place—Dead End—and you, Jack. About the prince. Just the shadowy gossip and rumor that runs rampant through the Fae community. They live for intrigue, palace and otherwise. I was focused on learning what I could about Iona, so I didn't pay enough attention to the details, I admit."

  I wanted to punch him, but Jack just nodded. "That's understandable, with your sister at risk."

  "No, it isn't," I said, indignant.

  Jack grinned. "Thanks for standing up for me."

  "Always."

  Jack reached over to take my hand, and his warm smile derailed my train of thought for a moment, until the sound of Logan's throat-clearing snapped me out of it, and I shook my head to clear it.

  Ouch.

  Note to self: Don't shake my head until the headache is gone.

  "Okay, here's the plan. First, I raid Aunt Ruby's medicine cabinet for some headache stuff, and then we drive downtown to the square where the statue is. Was."

  Logan raised a hand. "Um, Tess? Lass? I also grew up on a farm, and we call that shutting the barn door after the horse runs out. What good will it do to look at where the statue used to be?"

  I didn't believe that he grew up on a farm, and suddenly that felt like an important point to make.

  I leaned toward him. "Really? How often did you rasp your horses' teeth?"

  "Never," he said, also leaning forward.

  "Aha! So you didn't grow up on a farm!"

  "We had sheep. A lamb rasp is considerably smaller than a horse rasp, by the way. And no, my vet wasn't Dr. Herriot from All Creatures Great and Small, before you ask."

  "That's too bad," I said. "I love those books. But of course he was before your time."

  "And in the wrong country," Jack pointed out, a disgruntled expression on his face. "If we're done playing the barnyard version of Twenty Questions, let's go."

  "To the town square?" Logan's eyes widened. "Why would we do that?"

  "Because we've gotten a lot of practice at solving mysteries this past year, and if Tess thinks we should go to the town square—"

  "To look for clues," I put in.

  "—to look for clues, then we're going to the town square to look for clues."

  Logan shrugged. "Sure. Why not? Maybe Sherlock Holmes will show up," he said, heavy on the sarcasm.

  "I doubt it. Come on. Lou can stay here for the afternoon," I said, stopping for a couple of pain meds and then leading the way out of the house, while silently apologizing to Aunt Ruby for not staying to help clean up. "But Sherlock Ermintrude might. He usually goes for a walk about this time on Sundays with the orangutan he rescued, unless he's already flown Lucille Ball back to Borneo."

  Logan said nothing until we were outside and walking toward Jack's truck, but then he heaved a sigh. "I know I shouldn't ask, but why does Sherlock Evinrude—"

  "Ermintrude."

  "Why does Sherlock Ermintrude have a pet orangutan? Let alone take it for walks?"

  I whipped my head to the side to pin him with a disgusted look. "He most certainly does not have a pet orangutan. Not only is keeping orangutans as pets illegal in most places, but it would be terrible for Lucille. He rescued her from an animal trafficker who'd sold her to a rich, stupid guy who hadn't yet taken possession. Sherlock was only waiting for the paperwork to come through to take her home to Borneo to the animal reserve there that will teach her to live in the wild again."

  "Sorry, sorry. He sounds like a genuine hero," Logan said, with only a hint of sarcasm this time. "Why is she called Lucille Ball?"

  "That's her name." I raised an eyebrow at Jack, wondering if Logan might not be very smart.

  "I realize that's her name," Logan gritted out. "But why is it her name?"

  "Ohhhh. It's the red hair."

  Logan blinked.

  Jack gave him a bland look. "What else would she be called?"

  Then Jack opened his truck's passenger door. "Why don't you ride with me since your head's still hurting, Tess? Mike said he'd bring your car over later."

  I hesitated, because I needed to be at work bright and early in the morning, but another pulse of pain in my head decided me.

  "Okay. Yes. But after we look for clues, I need to go home and take a nap."

  Jack put an arm around me and guided me into the truck, and I was too worn out from the constant head pain to argue with him about being able to climb in on my own. I think that worried him, but I couldn't summon the energy to reassure him.

  Logan walked up to the truck and acted like he was going to climb into the cab after me, but Jack blocked him.

  "You stole my bike and rode it over here. Why don't you take it back to my house?"

  Logan's blue eyes flashed yellow, and a shiver worked its way down my spine. I was well aware of a shifter's warning signals after almost a year with Jack. But curiosity won out over nerves, or nerves made me chatty, one or the other, and I suddenly had a burning question.

  "So. Logan. Do you have nictitating membranes when you're in human form too?"

  He tilted his head in a chillingly birdlike way, and those bright yellow eyes focused on me for a moment like I was prey.

  Jack ended that with a hand to the middle of Logan's chest, shoving him.

  Hard.

  "You forget your manners, Mackenzie," Jack growled, and suddenly I was way too close to two alpha predators, and there was not enough Extra-Strength Tylenol in the world for this.

  "Stop it, both of you," I snapped, pressing on my temples with my fingertips. "Don't we have enough to worry about with Fae problems, missing sisters, and disappearing statues? Do we really need a Shapeshifter Testosterone-Off on top of all that?"

  The next few seconds still held the tension of imminent confrontation, but then Logan's eyes flashed back to blue, and he threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, Shepherd. I envy you. I truly do."

  Then he walked toward Jack's bike. "I'll follow you to the town square. We can look for clues. Or orangutans. Or what the … heck ever. We can all be detectives together."

  But when we reached the square in front of City Hall, nobody had to be a detective.

  Because the statue was back.

  7

  Tess

  We worked our way through the small crowd of onlookers and stared at the statue for a while, like everybody else, waiting for something to happen.

  Nothing happened.

  Someone had slightly crookedly replaced the oversized stone Jedediah Shepherd, as we could see from the lines carved in the concrete from where it had previously stood. There were no drag marks or other scrapes; it was more like a giant hand had lifted the statue and then carelessly dropped it in approximately the same place.

  I said as much to Jack, who was standing on my right.

  He gave me a thoughtful look. "Do we have giants in Dead End?"

  I laughed. "There's no such thing as—"

  "Really? Do you really want to go there?"

  I thought about life in Dead End and shrugged. "Okay. There are no giants that I know of here. And even if we had giants, why would they want to make a statue disappear and then re-appear?"

  "Who knows why giants do anything? They're all mean buggers," Logan said darkly. He'd followed us and now stood on my left. Apparently I was the shifter buffer.

  Yay, me.

  "You know giants?"

  "I met a couple of them once. It was not a pleasant experience," Logan muttered.

  "You probably tried to swindle them," Jack said. "Or stab them. Puts pretty much everybody in a bad mood."

  "But it's a good question," the eagle shifter mused, ignoring Jack. "What would giants—or anybody—want with a stone statue? It's not even a good statue."

  "Hey," Jack said mildly.

  "He's not wrong, though. I always thought it was kind of ugly, Jack, no offense," I said apologetically. "If he's really your great-great whatever, it's strange that he doesn't look much like you."

  "Or else the sculptor was just that bad," Logan said, snickering. "On the other hand, Jack and the statue are both tall, ugly, and stone-faced."

  I restrained the urge to elbow him in the side and just sighed. Then I saw Susan arrive, wearing civilian clothes of jeans and a red sweater instead of her sheriff's uniform—well, it was Sunday—and left the two shifters to trade insults on their own and zigzagged my way through the growing crowd toward her.

  "Everybody in town has walked and driven past this statue a thousand times without ever really seeing it, but now suddenly it's the most exciting thing in Dead End," she said dryly.

  Former-deputy-now-sheriff Susan Gonzalez was the best sheriff we'd had in Dead End in my lifetime. Admittedly, it was a low bar, especially coming right after Sheriff Bertram Lawless, criminal and co-conspirator with blood-magic witches. He was currently in a cell somewhere awaiting trial, as far as I knew. But Susan was good at her job. Fantastic at her job. Smart, perceptive, and totally a law-and-order kind of person. No corners would be cut or rules bent on her watch.

  Susan was a couple of years older than me and had left Dead End for a few years after high school, but then she'd returned to help take care of her grandma. She was a few inches shorter than my five-eight and had a delicate beauty, which often caused people to underestimate her intelligence, strength, and iron backbone. The bad guys saw dark golden skin and silky black hair, and they thought she was too pretty to be tough.

  Nobody ever thought that twice.

  "Love the new hair," I said, because first things first.

  She tossed her head and the sleek, short bob fluttered around her face and then settled perfectly back into place. "Yes, I got tired of putting it up in a bun all the time. Gave me headaches."

  Speaking of headaches, mine pounded back as if on cue, and I winced. "Yeah, I have one today, and I never get headaches. It's really annoying."

  "Have you tried weed? Or CBD oil? They were the only things that helped mine," she told me, using her cop gaze to scan the crowd as we talked.

  "Susan!" I was shocked. "You're the sheriff! You're not supposed to tell me to take drugs."

  She laughed. "Tess, marijuana has been legal in Dead End since 1965, when we had that influx of hippie goblins. You know we have the charter."

  Everybody in Dead End knew about the charter. Dead End was fully contained in Black Cypress County, and the county had a sovereign charter that predated the founding of the U.S. as a country. No federal or state laws applied in Dead End. We'd always had our own laws and our own form of justice.

  Let's just say that when bad guys had tried to come in and conquer in the old days, the alligators had eaten really, really well.

  "I know. They run the Dead End Plant Nursery and sing in a folk band." Because of course they did. What else would hippie goblins do? "They're fantastic, too. Uncle Mike, Aunt Ruby, and I went to a concert a couple of years back."

  Susan nodded. "I had a date with the guitarist once, but I couldn't get past the hippie vibe. We're still friends, though."

  "Anyway, thanks. I'm sticking with over-the-counter stuff right now, but I'll keep it in mind. About the mystery of the disappearing statue, though. Any ideas?" I looked around and lowered my voice. "Any clues?"

  Susan sighed. "If only clues would conveniently label themselves Clue and jump up and bite me in the butt. Unfortunately, I usually have to put in the actual work and investigate. Speaking of which, who's the shifty-looking guy with Jack?"

  I followed her gaze to see Jack and Logan, who'd moved closer to the statue, having an intense-looking conversation.

  "It's funny you'd say 'shifty,'" I began…

  Susan groaned. "Not another tiger shifter. I don't think Dead End is big enough for two of them."

  I opened my mouth to say something, though I wasn't sure exactly what, when Jack leaned over and put a hand on the statue.

  Which bonged.

  The statue did, that is. Made a tremendous noise that sounded like the "bong" of a giant cathedral bell. My brain tried to make a joke about weed and the other kind of bongs, but I told it to shut up, especially since the sound was still reverberating in my newly sensitive skull. I clutched my head and closed my eyes for a moment, wondering if I should get Jack to take me out to find the hippie goblins for some weed after all. But then Susan said a very bad word beneath her breath.

  My eyes flew open, and I gasped.

  The statue was glowing. No. It was sparkling. Sparkling like the vampires in that teen movie Molly and I had loved so much back in the day.

  "That's not normal," I said.

  "Definitely not normal," Susan said. Then she started shouting. "Everybody back! Get back! This could be dangerous!"

  Everyone was already running away from the statue, though. We were Dead Enders, which meant this was not our first rodeo. Crazy happenings were an almost-weekly occurrence here.

  Jack and Logan stepped away from the statue, too, and Jack turned to find me in the crowd and made his way toward me. Logan trailed behind him, but he kept glancing back over his shoulder. I had to squint and shield my eyes, not sure how far was the minimum assured safe distance to be from disappearing-reappearing-sparkly-possibly-combustible statues.

  "Tess!" Jack put an arm around me and herded me even farther away. "I don't know what that is, but it can't be good."

  But I was still watching the statue, though with one hand shielding my eyes from the brightness, and I stopped walking and tugged at his hand. "Jack. Jack! Something's happening!"

  He turned, shielding me with his body, because once an alpha male, fiercely protective tiger shifter, always a … well, you get it, and we both stared at the statue while the sparkling light dimmed and then disappeared altogether.

  And then the statue—now no longer stone, but a very human, very alive, man who was normal-sized, not twelve feet tall like the statue—hopped down off the pedestal, brushed dust off his clothes, and then looked around at everyone staring at him.

  "Well," he finally said, in a rusty and slightly shaky voice. "It's about dang time."

  Then, with emerald green eyes that looked exactly like Jack's, he caught sight of his great-great-whatever grandson and pointed at him.

  "I have a message for you, grandson," the former statue said, his voice deepening and ringing through the square. "You have five days to return what you stole or—on Friday at dusk—this town and everybody in it will be destroyed."

  Then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed.

  8

  Tess

  When I'd planned out my Sunday, which was my one day off from the shop, spending part of my afternoon at the Dead End jail/sheriff's office had been nowhere on the list.

  Susan had insisted, though, that we bring the man to her office, since, as she'd put it, "total town destruction is in my jurisdiction."

  Jedediah, or whoever he was, was sleeping on a cot in a jail cell. His pulse was strong and his breathing steady, but Susan had called a local off-duty EMT to come in and check him out.

  Katelyn, the EMT, examined him and then walked out to join us and shrugged. "He seems perfectly fine. But is he also fine for a statue? Or fine for a man who died in 1732? Who knows?"

  Logan, who was still hanging around, looked up. "He died in 1732? How do you know that?"

  Katelyn perked up at the sound of his Scottish accent and perked up more at the sight of his scoundrelly good looks and smiled. "It was on the statue. Who are you?"

  "Logan Mackenzie at your service, lovely lady. Should we go get a cup of tea or, better yet, a cocktail, and discuss life in your very interesting small town?"

  Katelyn grinned. "I think that's a lovely idea. I like your accent. Pippin was my favorite hobbit!"

  Logan looked confused. "Hobbit?"

  She grinned. "Never mind. Have you had Southern sweet tea?"

  "Keep an eye on your wallet," Jack called out.

  Katelyn gave him a puzzled and somewhat offended look. "I wouldn't steal from your friend, Mr. Shepherd."

  "He's not my friend. And I wasn't talking to him," Jack assured her.

  Then he turned to Logan. "This is my town. You know what that means."

  Logan rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know. No stealing, swindling, scheming, or stabbing. I swear to be good."

  Katelyn froze, but Logan turned on the charm again.

  "We were just joking, lass. Now tell me about this career you have. You're a doctor, are you?"

  She hesitated but then left with him, and I didn't know whether to be worried about her or relieved that Logan was gone, at least for now.

  "I should have asked her about the headache," I said, sighing.

  "I asked her when we were in with Jedediah," Susan said, handing me a water bottle. "She said get some rest and be sure to drink plenty of water. Dehydration is a common headache trigger."

  While I uncapped the water, Susan focused on Jack. "Should I be concerned that your friend has to be told not to steal, swindle, scheme, or—what was it?"

  "Stab," I said, after I swallowed a mouthful of water.

  "Great," she groaned.

  Just then, Deputy Andy Kelly came bursting in through the front door of the station, dressed in an old Evil Dead T-shirt and a pair of truly raggedy, paint-splattered cargo shorts. He was maybe five six and slender, with bright red hair and freckles, so he looked like a high school student. In a fight, though, he was a great man to have on your side. Jack sometimes called him the wolverine, because he was small but mighty.

  "I just heard," Andy said, skidding to a stop in front of Susan. "I was painting my mom's porch, and she couldn't decide between Shamrock Green and Irish Heather Blue, and my phone started ringing off the hook, and—"

  "Which was it?" Jack's lips twitched as he studied Andy's predominantly green-splotched clothes. "I'm guessing the Shamrock."

  Andy blew out a sigh. "Yeah, and it's just as awful on the porch as it is on my favorite shirt. At least it's on the back porch, so nobody has to call and report a public eyesore. Hi, Tess, Jack. Susan, is it true? The statue was back and then disappeared again?"