"Your grandfather?" Alejandro turned to Jack. "Is there something I should know?"

  Jack sighed. "I don't know. There's danger on the horizon, but it looks like it will only affect Dead End. But it's the Fae, and you just—"

  "—never know, with the Fae," Alejandro finished Jack's thought, looking grim. "Maybe you should tell me about it, if you can, but first I need to tell you the reason I came. I'm on the trail of the leader of a black-market ring of smugglers. They've been linked to the theft, abduction, and sale of numerous magical creatures over the past three years. The most recent victims are a rare mated pair of Schwarzwald unicorns. The female is—"

  "Pregnant. It's all over the news," Logan said, walking out from the side of the house, from where he'd been doing who knows what. Lurking? Eavesdropping? Mysterious eagle things?

  "You," Alejandro hissed at Logan. He tossed the pie to Jack, who snatched it out of the air. And then a gun was in the agent's hand before I even saw him reach for it.

  Logan put his hands in the air. "Whoa. I think we have a case of mistaken identity here."

  "I doubt it," Jack drawled.

  "You put a colleague of mine in the hospital in Boston," Alejandro said, his voice pure ice. "You are under arrest."

  "I did not," Logan said hotly. "In fact, I tried to stop Smitty and got shot myself for my trouble. I was unconscious and bleeding on that boat when it left the harbor." He started to lower his hands.

  Alejandro shook his head, his aim steady and his gun pointing directly at Logan's heart. "No, Mr. Mackenzie. If you make the slightest movement, I will happily shoot you."

  The screen door banged open, and Susan stood framed in the doorway. She held a gun too, but hers pointed at Alejandro. "I think not, Agent Vasquez. This is my town, and your laws don't apply here. Put your gun down, and we can discuss it."

  "I knew I liked you," Logan said, grinning at Susan, who slanted a narrow-eyed look at him.

  "I'd advise against any sudden moves, or I'll be happy to shoot you for Agent Velasquez," she told him, turning so she was now aiming at Logan.

  My head twinged, and I blew out a breath. "Enough! Let's sit down and have something to eat—is there dinner?"

  Jack nodded. "I was just getting ready to grill steaks."

  "We'll eat, we'll have dessert, and then we'll figure this out," I said firmly. "No shooting anybody on an empty stomach."

  Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized they made little sense, but I didn't care, because everybody was listening to me. The tension in the yard ratcheted down several notches, and Alejandro put his gun away, albeit reluctantly.

  I retrieved the pie from Jack and headed to the house. We'd eat, we'd talk, and we'd figure out how to save Dead End from the Fae. Everything else—even pregnant unicorns—could wait.

  But…

  "Unicorns exist? Unicorns? And they live in Germany?"

  Alejandro's lips twitched. "Yes, and other places, like Siberia. How did you know these were from Germany, if you didn't even know unicorns existed?"

  I shrugged while shouldering the screen door aside. "Schwarzwald is German for Black Forest, which is a mountain range in southwest Germany bordering France. We had a cuckoo clock in the shop once that was made there in the early 1700s—the Black Forest is renowned for them—and I read up on the region. I've always hoped to travel there one day."

  "Ah. It is hard for you to travel, I imagine," he murmured, a hint of sympathy in his expression, but I pretended not to see it.

  I hated it when anybody felt sorry for me.

  Sure, it would be practically impossible to fly without touching strangers. Getting shoved on the airport shuttle or bumped in the airplane's aisle—a minor annoyance to most people could be a major stressor for me.

  I definitely didn't want to know how the pilot died.

  But one day … one day I'd find a way. I wanted to explore the world. All the amazing historic sites. The music and culture and food.

  One day, I'd do it. And, hopefully, I wouldn't be alone.

  By the time we were all in the kitchen, I realized Jed was nowhere to be seen.

  "Jack? Where is your granddad?"

  "He's resting." Jack frowned. "He looked completely exhausted, but I'm surprised he didn't come outside just now. Even in the back bedroom, he would have heard the standoff, due to—"

  "Superior tiger hearing," Susan and I intoned together. Then the two of us burst out laughing, dispersing whatever tension still lingered in the air to a considerable degree.

  "They're not wrong," the man himself said, walking out from the guest bedroom.

  I had to clench my jaw to keep from gasping. The Jed who stood in the kitchen with us now appeared to have aged ten years since I'd seen him only a few hours before.

  I pasted my biggest smile on my face and bustled over to the table, where I put the pie down in the center. "Hello, Mr. Shepherd. It's nice to see you again. I brought a chocolate pie. It's only one, but I have cookie dough, so I can pop cookies in the oven after dinner."

  Jack's grandpa put a hand on the back of a chair, steadying himself, and returned my smile. "That's delightful, young lady. Even in this modern age of female sheriffs and electric carriages, I see we have some women who understand their rightful roles are to cook for and care for their men. Please call me Jed. Or," he glanced at Jack. "Grandfather."

  "Oh, boy," Susan muttered, but I just laughed.

  "Well, I can see how it must be a shock to you to wake up to an entirely different set of societal rules and expectations, Mr.—Jed. I love to cook and bake for my friends and family, but I also own and run a business," I said.

  Behind me, I heard Logan and Alejandro having a terse, low-voiced discussion, and when I glanced back at them, Logan was handing the agent his phone.

  "Your own Boston division agents will verify my claim," the eagle shifter said. "Talk to them. They're the ones who found me after the harbor patrol fished me out of the water. I nearly bled to death."

  Alejandro handed Logan's phone back, put his own to his ear, and stepped out of the kitchen.

  We watched him go, and then Susan spoke up. "Doesn't the shift heal injuries?"

  "Not always, Miss Susan, er, Sheriff," Jed said, sinking down into the chair as if his legs wouldn't hold him up any longer. "If the injuries are bad enough, the body doesn't have the energy to shift."

  Susan studied the shifters in the room. "Is the shape-change magic? Or science?"

  "Yes," all three of them promptly answered.

  "Seems to be both, as far as I can tell," Jack elaborated, shrugging.

  "So many scientific principles looked like magic before we understood them," I said. "The magical healing power of hot springs? Cold suppresses the immune system, so the heat would have helped people a lot before the invention of central heating. Think about what cell phones would have looked like to people in the 1700s. Or airplanes. Or that thing where you put Mentos in a Diet Coke."

  Logan started laughing. "Your mind is wonderful," he told me.

  "So much better than my singing," I confided, grinning. "But, honestly, I just read. A lot. And I truly believe that, one day in the next decade, we'll discover the science of shapeshifting."

  Susan nodded. "Maybe. And vampirism too. But for now, let's have dinner and figure out how to stop the Fae from destroying Dead End over a dagger they think we have."

  Jack and Logan took a pile of meat out of the fridge and headed out back to the grill, and Susan checked in on her job and people while I pulled plates and silverware out to set the table. Jed moved as if to help me, but I waved him back to his seat.

  "I appreciate it, but I know where everything is, so why don't you just sit and visit with me while I do this? Also, would you like to change clothes?" I studied him doubtfully, imagining he wouldn't appreciate it if anything got splashed on his very fancy outfit. "You'll fit Jack's clothes. In fact, I'm sure he has some of his uncle's things, and Jeremiah was more your size."

  He perked up. "Jeremiah? I have more kin alive?"

  "I'm sorry. He … died almost a year ago," I hedged. I certainly didn't want to get into the conversation about Jeremiah's murder now.

  "Perhaps I'll change clothes after dinner, child," he said. "I'm a little tired right now. Is there any of that coffee left?"

  I poured him some, and he smiled his thanks. "Is my grandson very rich, that he can afford coffee for ordinary occasions?"

  I paused, caught off guard. "No, actually, coffee is very inexpensive these days. Well, except for special coffee houses. Then you pay an arm and a leg for a cup."

  "Ah, yes. We, too, had coffee houses. They were mostly gathering sites for fiery political talk, though."

  I tried to imagine the Starbucks outside of town as a hotbed of political unrest and chuckled. "Not so much anymore. Sometimes they're gathering sites for beat poetry, though, which can be far, far worse."

  I explained beat poetry as much as I could to a man of his time while I set the table and made a huge salad with vegetables I'd brought over earlier in the week. Jed seemed to be a little suspicious that I was telling tall tales, though, judging from his skeptical expression.

  Before I had to pull out my phone and show him a video of Allen Ginsberg, Jack and Logan came back in with the meat, and Susan and Alejandro returned from their calls.

  "Boston confirms your story," Alejandro told Logan, neither his voice nor his eyes showing even a hint of apology. "This time, at least. You are on our watch list, though. Don't make me regret not arresting you, Mr. Mackenzie."

  "Everybody regrets not arresting him," Jack muttered, putting a large platter of steaks and burgers on the table. "And yet somehow he's still not in jail. Amazing."

  Jed sat up straight and leaned forward, an almost-palpable aura of danger suddenly surrounding him. "Is he dangerous to our Miss Callahan?"

  Jack put an arm around me and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. "Nobody is dangerous to our Tess. Not while I'm around."

  I bared my teeth at him. "Same goes, buddy. Now, can we eat? I'm starving, and I don't want my headache to come back."

  "Unfortunately, I must leave to catch a flight," Alejandro said, casting a longing glance at the food.

  "Let me pack you up a quick to-go bag. You can eat on the plane," I said, and did just that.

  "You are an angel," Alejandro told me. He gave Logan one last long look, smiled at me and Susan, bowed to Jed, and then Jack walked him out. I think they discussed something, because it was a few minutes before Jack came back inside, frowning. He didn't say about what, though, and I decided not to ask until we were alone.

  After that, we focused on dinner and ate in relative silence for a while, other than "pass the salt" or "great steaks." At one point, I realized Susan was sitting frozen, fork forgotten in one hand, as she stared around the table at the men.

  She caught me looking at her and shook her head. "How can they afford to feed themselves? I mean, I've seen Jack at Beau's eating three or four of the specials all by himself for lunch, but I guess I never thought this was a daily occurrence."

  "Shifter metabolism," I told her. "Remember, the tigers each weigh a quarter ton in their other shapes. And Logan … well, his eagle shape was the size of a small pony."

  Logan nodded and put another burger on his plate. "Plus the energy the shift takes."

  Jed, who was looking much better since eating, looked up. "And I haven't eaten food in centuries. I have some catching up to do. Maybe we could go hunting later to put by some venison for the winter? I would not want to deplete your stores."

  Logan hummed an mmm sound. "I do love venison."

  "You won't be around for the winter," Jack told the eagle shifter.

  "We don't have to worry about depleting stores these days," I told Jed. "We just go to Super Target when we run out of food. We'd like to get a grocery store in Dead End one day, but so far, no luck."

  "Ah." Jed nodded. "I have heard of this place. 'At Target, what we value most shouldn't cost more.'"

  "Right!" I said. Evidently, all those radio waves had filled him in on modern stores. "We shop there for food."

  "Perfect." Jed leaned back in his chair and smiled at me.

  "Perfect?"

  "We will visit this venison store."

  Or maybe radio waves weren't exactly enough…

  12

  Tess

  Jack put a hand on my shoulder to stop me when I stood to help him clear dishes.

  "You sit. My turn."

  "Okay, but don't you want me to put the cookies in the oven?"

  Both Logan and Jed perked up. "Cookies? Yes! The Keebler elves. E.L. Fudge. More chocolate! I once mentioned the cookie-making elves to the Fae and nearly started a war."

  "They don't like Tinkerbell, either," Jack said, grinning.

  Susan just laughed.

  After the first batch was out of the oven and demolished, we finally got down to business.

  "Okay, let's have it. The entire story, please, Mr. Shepherd," Susan said, pulling a notebook out of a slim, black briefcase.

  "Nice bag," I said.

  She flashed a grin. "Thanks. I splurged when I got the sheriff's job."

  Jed toyed with his coffee cup, ignoring this interplay, and then sighed. "First, I should give you some context by going back to the beginning."

  Logan groaned. "Three hundred years of context? Maybe I could skip this part."

  "The door's that way," Jack said, pointing. "Don't let it hit you on the—"

  "Why is he here?" Susan looked at me. "And who is he? Agent Vasquez didn't like him, and I've learned that where there's smoke, there's definitely fire with P-Ops."

  "I'm sitting right here, beautiful. Ask me anything you want," Logan said, clearly trying to be charming.

  Susan turned a fierce cop gaze on him. "Maybe don't annoy me too much."

  His mouth fell open. "But you—"

  She cut him off. "You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to get your butt shoved in my jail overnight. You have—"

  "Hey! What about my right to an attorney?"

  "You have no right to an attorney in Dead End. An alligator ate the last attorney who occasionally took cases as a public defender here," she said in a bland voice.

  I tried not to laugh at the expression of pure indignation on the eagle shifter's face.

  "It's true," I told him. "Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chen are lawyers, but they don't do this kind of thing, and Gruber Elliott, but he hasn't taken any new clients since he became a vampire. He got really drunk and stood up in a Town Hall meeting and said 'being a vampire lawyer gives a whole new meaning to the word bloodsucker,' and then he attacked Larry the tow guy, but Larry always carries a wrench, and he walloped Gruber over the side of the head with it."

  Susan nodded. "Broke a fang too. Didn't Elliott go see your ex to get that fixed?"

  I sighed. "Yes. Poor Owen. He said he nearly got drunk just on the whiskey fumes in Gruber's breath. But he managed to repair the fang."

  "Ah, the saintly Dr. Snodgrass," Jack said mildly. He'd been there the night Owen and I had parted—amicably, but it had still hurt—and Jack had been very kind to me. That didn't stop him from making the occasional snarky comment, though, especially when Uncle Mike reminisced about "that dull dentist fellow Tess dated who could bore the paint off the side of my barn."

  There were far too many smart alecks in my life.

  "I see life in Dead End hasn't changed a great deal in three centuries," Jed said dryly. "In my day, it was the Widow Smythe singing badly when she'd get into the grog on wash day."

  I opened my mouth to ask any of the hundred questions about Widow Smythe, wash day, or grog that the sentence all but begged for, but the timer dinged, and Jack took the second batch of cookies out of the oven. Logan just sat there, eyes narrowed, staring back and forth between me and Susan.

  Finally, he tapped one finger on the table. "I want to believe you're making this all up, but I'm really unhappy to say I don't think you are."

  "Welcome to Dead End," I told him, holding up my glass in a toast.

  "Yeah," muttered Jack, putting another plate of fresh cookies on the table. "Just don't stay long."

  "Anyway," Jed said, getting back to his tale. "The basic problem is that the queen whose palace is closest to our doorway to the Fae lands is unhappy with me."

  Jack whistled. "Not a lot worse than an unhappy Fae queen."

  "Which queen?" Susan asked.

  "There's more than one?" I learned something new about the supernatural world every day now.

  "Many more than one, and there are hierarchies," Jed told me. "The Autumn queen, Viviette, still rules here. Well, in the Fae lands adjacent to Dead End."

  Logan clenched his jaw so tightly I was surprised not to hear his teeth crack. "It was an Autumn Court prince who made the Bargain with my sister."

  "That can't be a coincidence," I said, and Jack glanced at me and nodded, looking more and more grim.

  "According to Queen Viviette, Prince Kal'andel na Garanwyn—not of the Autumn Court—stole the dagger from her and brought it to the human world. According to Kal'andel, Jack stole it from him and still has it, here in Dead End."

  Jack growled. "Again, I did not steal her stupid dagger. Not from her and not from him."

  "Specifically, Kal'andel—who claims he did not steal it, but that she gifted it to him, and there may be war yet between their Courts over these competing claims—anyway, Kal'andel says that he hid it inside the huge willow tree in town. The one that has a new gazebo next to it now," Jed said.

  "That gazebo is at least a hundred years old," Susan said.

  "Right. The new one," Jack's grandfather said, nodding; his concept of "new" was naturally much different from ours. "They believe the dagger disappeared in the past year, which is coincidentally the time since you arrived in Dead End, grandson. When she sent two of her guard to retrieve it, it was gone. You, Jack, are known to the Fae as someone powerful enough to find and hold one of their artifacts."

  "But I didn't take it," Jack said through clenched teeth. "So somebody else must have. If it was even there in the first place. I swear I'm going to kick Kal'andel's butt the next time I see him. I should have done it the last time."