"Not exactly," came a voice from behind Andy, and the statue—Grandpa Jedediah—walked into the room.

  "Whoa," Andy said.

  "You're looking pretty good for a man who's been dead for almost three hundred years," Susan said dryly.

  If nerves of steel plus calm in the face of chaos were the top requirements for police work, Susan was the best of the best. I couldn't decide whether to jump up and down with excitement or ask the man some of the five hundred questions on my mind.

  This is why I own a pawnshop instead of working in law enforcement.

  Still …

  "Are you really Jedediah Shepherd? The Jedediah Shepherd who founded the town?"

  "Call me Jed. And yes, that's me. Or what's left of me after being trapped in that statue for three centuries." He flashed a mischievous smile that was pure Jack, and I blinked.

  "Wow. He really is your relative," Andy said, looking between the two.

  It was hard to miss. Jed was a strikingly handsome man. He looked to be in his sixties, notwithstanding the extra three hundred years, and he had a full head of thick bronze-mixed-with-white hair. His green eyes and that brilliant smile dominated a strong-boned face, and he was only a few inches shorter than Jack. Maybe six feet tall. His clothes were completely of his era—the ones that statue-him had been wearing—and they were amazing.

  His navy blue coat flared out from the waist and stopped at his knees. It had deep cuffs and bronze buttons, and he wore it over a white shirt and fawn-colored vest. His breeches were black and cuffed just below the knee, where a pair of what looked like silk stockings, also fawn, met them. Black shoes with pewter buckles and the elegant tricornered hat he held in one hand completed the look.

  "You look wonderful," I blurted out and then felt my cheeks get hot when everybody looked at me. "Your clothes, I mean. They're so authentic and gorgeous. Well, you're handsome too, but I was talking about the clothes, and oh, boy, I'm babbling. I blame the headache."

  Jed grinned and, again, that grin was so much like Jack's that I felt off balance. It was like looking at future Jack.

  "Thank you, lovely lady. And you are my grandson's wife?"

  "No! I'm his friend. Tess. Tess Callahan," I said, blushing again.

  Jed bowed instead of holding a hand out to shake, which was great since it saved me the onerous explanation of, "I don't shake hands because I will probably see how you're going to die if I touch you."

  "If your head is paining you, we should go down to the creek and find some leeches," he said.

  I suddenly felt both faint and nauseated.

  "My mother and the village healer swore by them. Get the poisoned blood out of your head, and you'll be right as rain."

  My stomach still twisted at the thought of leeches—on my head—but curiosity won out over nausea. "Right as rain? Was that expression around in your time?"

  "Oh, and before, Lady Tess. But my speech has been vastly influenced by your talking air waves, as well."

  "Just Tess, please. And talking air waves?" I felt like an echo, but everybody else was just standing around staring at him.

  "I've been hearing them since the 1920s."

  "I know there are more important things we need to talk about, like the threat of destroying Dead End, but what are talking air waves and how did you know it was 1920?" Susan leaned back against her desk and raised an eyebrow.

  "I first heard it then. WKDE, DEAD END, FLORIDA, BRINGING YOU ALL THE HITS. HERE'S THE GREAT SATCHMO, LOUIS ARMSTRONG, AND WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!"

  The radio-announcer voice was pitch perfect, and suddenly I got it.

  "Radio! You heard radio broadcasts inside your statue? You were awake? And aware?" I felt sick. To be frozen there all that time, aware and unable to move …

  "No," he assured me. "No, I could not have survived that and remained sane. I mostly slept, but occasionally I waked to hear delightful music. Can we listen to Satchmo? Or Leave it to Beaver? I loved that show, though I did not understand many of the references."

  "You got TV waves too," Andy said slowly. "My mom talks about Leave it to Beaver. It was a television show."

  Jack, who'd been uncharacteristically silent through all of this, cleared his throat. He had the look of someone who'd been punched in the gut.

  Hard.

  "Maybe we can talk about TV and radio later, and right now you can explain the meaning of your dramatic pronouncement," Jack said in a low, dangerous voice. "And tell us who you really are while you're at it. I'm having a very hard time believing that you're my long-dead ancestor, who just happened to be trapped in a statue all this time."

  Jed narrowed his eyes. "Stubborn, just like me. All the men in our line are more bullheaded than smart."

  Jack stared right back at him. "Insults aren't answering my questions, old man."

  "Old man? Old? Ha! Well, how about this?" Jed glanced around the foyer of the station house and took a couple of steps back. "We're actually not so much bullheaded at all, are we?"

  And then he shifted into a tiger right there in front of us.

  Susan kept one hand on her gun and clapped the other to her forehead. "Here we go again."

  9

  Tess

  The two tigers in the sheriff's office—one in cat form, one in human—squared off. Jack immediately moved to stand in front of me, and Susan pulled her gun.

  I wasn't having it.

  I ducked under Jack's arm and confronted the other tiger in the room. "Okay, Mr. Shepherd. You made your point. You're definitely Jack's great-great-great—oh, for Pete's sake, let's just do granddad for convenience's sake. You're Grandpa Shepherd, and you've brought us a very serious message. As a Dead End resident, I'm going to admit I'm pretty scared. My family lives here. My home and business and friends are here. How about you shift back to human and tell us what that dramatic message means exactly, and how we can save our town?"

  He just looked at me and swished his tail, and I was suddenly just done. I stamped my foot and pointed at him. "You turn your furry butt to human right now, Grandpa!"

  I think if he'd snarled at me or even looked at me funny, Jack may have shifted too, and we'd have a terrifying battle going on right there in the jail. Susan pulled her gun and pointed it at the spot of floor a foot or so in front of the tiger—a clear warning.

  Jed ignored both of them and focused on me for a long moment, and then he opened his mouth, let his tongue hang out, and did the tiger equivalent of laughing. Jack and Susan visibly calmed down, and I could feel muscles relaxing that I hadn't even realized were tense.

  The shimmering glow of a shift surrounded Jed and, seconds later, he transformed back into his human form. Luckily for all of us, he brought his clothes into the shift with him like Jack always did, so I didn't have to see my boyfriend's grandpa naked.

  Jack slow clapped. "Okay, we'll take it as a given that you're a Shepherd. But there's a big problem with your announcement—I haven't stolen anything from the Fae. To be honest, I don't think I've ever stolen anything except a candy bar once when I was a kid, and Uncle Jeremiah dragged me back into the store by the ear and made me apologize. I had to sweep out the store for a week."

  "Well, you steal pie from my fridge all the time," I pointed out, but stopped when everybody looked at me. "Anyway, what is it they think he stole?"

  "A powerful magical dagger," Jed said.

  I rolled my eyes. "Of course, it's a dagger. Why can't it ever be a fluffy bunny? Or a chocolate-strawberry cake? Why does it always have to be valuable and dangerous?"

  Jed raised an eyebrow. "Well, your ideas are pretty much just lunch. Who cares if you steal lunch?"

  "I said fluffy bunny! Not…" I looked from one shifter to the other.

  Right.

  "Never mind," I muttered. "My point still stands. What kind of power does the dagger have?"

  "I'm not exactly sure. They didn't want to let specifics get out. But I heard rumors it can open portals into the Summerlands—wherever the wielder is. Not just where the fixed doorways are. And na Garanwyn is hot for it—"

  "Rhys or Kal'andel?" Jack pinned Jed with a grim stare. "They're twins, but the answer is very important, trust me. Please don't say Kal—"

  "Kal'andel."

  Jack swung away, faced the wall, and muttered a string of words that included a lot of growled consonants. Then he turned back to face us.

  "This may be trouble," he told me.

  "I'm shocked," I said dryly, holding my hands up to my cheeks in a parody of that Home Alone kid. "Trouble in Dead End? Who could have guessed?"

  "We should move this out of the police station," Susan said, checking her watch. "Our temp guy comes on duty in a few minutes, and I don't want to try to explain this to him. Just the other day I had to tell him that saying 'This town isn't big enough for both of us' to Mrs. Quindlen because she parked slightly outside the lines at Beau's isn't something we do. I think the kid believes he's living in an old western movie."

  Andy blew out a sigh. "If he says 'a loner's gotta be alone' one more time, I'm going to toss him in the swamp and let the gators sort it out."

  Susan looked thoughtful for a moment, but then regretfully shook her head. "Maybe not. Knowing our luck, he'd survive and sue. Anyway, let's take Mr. Shepherd—the elder Mr. Shepherd—somewhere else, shall we?"

  Andy pointed at the door. "I'm going to go disperse the crowd, if anybody is still out there, and then I have to take Mom's cat to the vet. If you don't need me anymore, Susan."

  "You found a vet open on Sundays? That would be great for me," I said.

  "There's a new vet in town," Andy said. "Mrs. Lee's granddaughter moved here to start her own practice."

  "Oh, right," I said. "Charithra. Mrs. Lee said she was with that big group in Tampa."

  "Yeah, Dr. Charithra Kumari. She left Tampa to move back home. She's not actually usually going to open the office on Sundays, I don't think, but Mom talked her into seeing Mrs. Floof." Andy's cheeks turned pink. "And don't give me crap about that. Mom named her."

  "You're a wonderful son," Susan told him, but her lips quivered a little. "Go ahead. I think we've got this covered."

  Jed, who'd been wide-eyed listening to all this, shook his head. "I don't understand what's happening. Why would you take your cat to a veteran?"

  "A veterinarian," I explained. "An animal doctor. Not a doctor who is an animal, well, usually, though I guess vets can be shifters too, but a doctor who treats animals."

  He blinked. "In my day, we took care of our own animals."

  "Right, but we've come a long way from leeches," Jack drawled.

  "I said the leeches were for Miss Callahan's headache," Jed shot back at him. "Although the judicious application of leeches to a deep bruising on a cow's flank works wonders."

  Andy's face took on a green tinge, and he gulped. "Right. Anyway, Tess, do you still have a headache? Mom swears by the ABC One Two Three cure: One cup of Coffee, Two Benadryl, and Three Acetaminophen. It opens things up so everything can flow. Blockage causes headache, I guess."

  My head started throbbing again, so I gave him the best smile I could muster.

  He edged away from me, and I sighed. I really needed to work on my smiles.

  "Thanks," I said. "I'll try anything."

  Susan cleared her throat. "So…"

  "We can all go to my house," Jack said. "He's my family, after all."

  He didn't sound even a little happy about it.

  Jed held out his hand to me. "Allow me, lovely lady."

  I flinched, just a little, because I did not want to see how he'd died. Which we still didn't know. Or, in fact, if he ever had died? So then I'd be seeing how he'd die in the future?

  It was confusing enough to make my head hurt even worse.

  I didn't always see a person's death when I touched them (and when it did happen, it was only the first time I touched a person, not over and over, thank goodness), and I had no idea if me seeing visions in response to touch ran in families. I'd seen Jack's first death—did that mean I'd be more likely to see Jed's?

  Not sure.

  Didn't want to find out.

  "I'm sorry. I can't really touch people," I finally said, when I realized I'd been quiet for too long and had probably offended Jack's grandpa. "I'll explain later."

  Jed turned to Susan. "Then may I travel with you? Do you have a carriage at your convenience?"

  "In a manner of speaking," she told him.

  Jed held his arm out, as if he were escorting her to a ball, and she grinned at Jack. "Now I see where you get your charm."

  Andy laughed. "Jack has charm?"

  Jack growled, but Andy hadn't feared him for a long while, so the deputy just grinned up at my tiger boyfriend.

  "Later, then. Call me," Andy said to Susan and, with a goodbye for us all, he was gone.

  "At least we've lost Mackenzie," Jack said. "Although I worry about your friend who left with him."

  "She has a black belt in judo and enough medical knowledge to be dangerous," Susan said. "I think she can hold her own."

  With that, we left the building by the back door to avoid any curious lingerers. Susan led Grandpa Jed to her sheriff's car, and the look on his face was priceless.

  "You know, I heard about this over the years from the sound waves, but to see it is wondrous," he breathed.

  "Wait till you get up close and personal with Susan's hundred-mile-per-hour driving," I muttered, having been scared witless by the experience in the past.

  "What?" Jed swung to look at me, and he was considerably paler than he'd been a moment before. "One hundred miles per hour? What is this sorcery?"

  If my head hadn't hurt so badly, I'd have offered to ride along with them, just to see him experience automobile travel for the first time. Instead, I waved, and Jack and I walked around the building to find his truck.

  "Still no sign of Logan," I observed, scanning the square as we strolled by.

  "He'll show up," Jack said darkly. "He didn't come all this way to be distracted for very long."

  My head twinged again, and I suddenly didn't care that much about Logan, statues, or even long-lost ancestors. I just wanted to go to bed.

  "Jack? Please drop me off at home. I feel terrible, because this is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to us, and he's your grandpa, but I just can't take this headache." I climbed into the truck, fastened my seatbelt, closed my eyes, and dropped my head forward into my hands. Whatever was causing this, it wasn't letting up.

  I was almost desperate enough to consider leeches.

  Well, maybe not that. But close.

  My phone buzzed with an incoming text. "It's Granny Josephine. I didn't even know she had my number. Oh. Huh."

  Jack backed the truck out and then glanced over at me. "What does she want?"

  "She's offering a headache cure. She says I should drink some apple cider vinegar and lie down in a dark room. When I wake up, my headache will be gone."

  I shuddered at the thought of drinking vinegar but, you know, leeches.

  Vinegar suddenly sounded delicious.

  After Jack took me home, he made sure I was settled in my room with a bottle of water after I'd had a few gulps of vinegar (which tasted just as nasty as you might expect) before he left. I brushed my teeth, changed into my Donald Duck pajamas, and crawled into bed.

  Then I spent the next few hours dreaming that a giant, vinegar-scented salad monster was chasing me around the town square and trying to stab me with a magical dagger.

  Even in my dreams, it's never dull in Dead End.

  10

  Jack

  Jack drove

  Jack worried

  Damn.

  [I'm not sure how to do this properly, and I'm definitely not talking about myself in the third person like some idiot, so I'll just type up my notes about what happened, and maybe Tess can fill in any gaps later. She's the storyteller; I'm just a soldier-turned-private eye. Anyway, here goes. - Jack]

  I worried about Tess the whole way from her house to mine. She'd been too tired and in too much pain to even argue with me about drinking the vinegar, which was so unlike her that her headache must have been worse than she'd admitted.

  She'd also refused to go to the hospital. Hospital bills were not in the budget this month, apparently. And when I'd told her I'd be glad to pay for it—I had all that gold from Atlantis, after all—she'd narrowed her eyes at me and pointed at the door, in a silent command to get out.

  I got out.

  For a pawnshop owner, she'd have made a fine general in the rebel army.

  Now, I just needed to come to terms with the reality of a dead ancestor come to life and hanging out in my living room. Or a spare bedroom. It wasn't like I could kick him out, after all. The current house was only a hundred years old or so, but it was built on the property he'd originally owned and built a farmstead on back in the day. So did that mean it technically belonged to him? Did resurrection affect property ownership?

  Did it matter?

  No. No, it did not.

  He was family.

  The evidence was clear enough on that, even though I wasn't about to take the rest of what he'd said at face value. To begin with, I'd stolen nothing from the Fae. Second, anything involving Kal'andel na Garanwyn, High Prince of the High House, Unseelie Court, was almost sure to be sketchy. The Fae lord was more dangerous than any other I'd encountered—and I'd run into a lot of Fae during my time with the rebels.

  When I pulled into my driveway, Susan and Jed were sitting on the porch steps, and she was … laughing?

  Susan wasn't the type to relax while on duty, especially when the town was under threat of imminent destruction, but evidently my great-whatever granddad was entertaining. Or charming.

  I don't trust charming, entertaining people.

  I rested my head on the steering wheel and thought a few of the words I'd never say around Tess, and then I firmed my resolve and got out of the truck. They both stood to greet me, but I noticed Jed looked a lot more tired than he had at the station.