"Hi, Carlos! Welcome back," I said. "Good trip?"

  Carlos, who had a mysterious job that involved the ruling North American Vampire Council, was the male version of Susan—dark hair, golden skin, and gorgeous. Throw in the natural arrogance, wicked sense of humor, and love of pecan pie, and he was one of my favorite people.

  He shoved his long, wavy black hair out of his face and grinned at me. "It was fine, but not nearly as exciting as what's going on here, if Susan hasn't been pulling my leg."

  "No leg pulling," I told him. "Sorry."

  "Okay, everybody," Susan said, hands on hips and staring up at the tree. "The tree is over three hundred years old and was ninety-two feet tall last year when we had to hire the tree doctor to spruce it up—"

  Logan started laughing. "Heh. Spruce it up. Get it? Tree? Spruce?"

  Jack groaned, and Susan and I both rolled our eyes, and then she continued. "I don't know where to begin. Could it be hidden inside? There are nooks and squirrel dens, for sure. But what if it is or was hidden somewhere high up? I can get the tree guy back, but—"

  "Allow me," Logan said with a bow. He stepped back from the group and leapt into the air, transforming into his eagle shape in midair. Then he flew up and landed on a branch at the very top and started hopping from branch to branch, his head moving in short, jerky, birdlike movements as he searched.

  Well, not really bird like, since he was actually a bird.

  Sometimes, magic made my head hurt.

  Speaking of which … I rubbed my temples with my fingertips. The headache had been gone when I woke up, but was roaring back.

  Carlos leaned closer. "Are you all right?"

  "It's just a headache, but it won't go away," I told him. "I'll take something when I get to work."

  "You're going to work today?" Jack shook his head. "Maybe you should take a sick day."

  "I can't take a sick day for a headache—or for a potentially town-destroying situation," I said impatiently. "In fact, it's more important than ever for me to go to work. If we don't succeed—" My breath caught in my throat, and it took a moment for me to continue. "If we don't succeed, we'll need to evacuate Dead End. So I need to figure out what I can transport out of the shop before … before …"

  "Let's not give up now," Jack said firmly. "I'll climb up the tree from here and meet Mackenzie in the middle. One of us is going to find something."

  "The most powerful Fae objects emanate a magical resonance that we, who are touched by the supernatural, are very susceptible to," Carlos said. "You'll feel it if it's in the tree, or if it has been there in the recent past. I should feel it as well."

  Jack nodded. "I know. I've felt it before, so I know what to watch out for. So has Mackenzie. Honestly, I'm surprised I sense nothing from here, if this dagger is powerful enough that a Fae queen will kill for it."

  Jack shifted into his tiger shape and, before I could even think to tell him to be careful, five hundred pounds of beautiful wild cat began climbing the tree.

  "I didn't know tigers climbed trees," Carlos mused, watching him.

  "Yes, but usually only cubs do. Tigers love to swim too," I said absently, watching Jack. When I realized Susan and Carlos were both staring at me with identically amused expressions, I felt my cheeks get hot. "What? When Jack came back to town, I got a book about tigers."

  "Of course you did," Susan said, grinning. "You read more than anyone I've ever met. Thanks for the recommendation of those Valerie Bowman Regency romance novels, by the way. I love that Footmen's Club series."

  "She's great, and she's from Florida," I said. "Always a bonus. Jack! Be careful! You're too high!"

  My tiger boyfriend was now about forty feet up the tree, and I was getting a very bad feeling. Also, my head was pounding. I stepped back to get a better view of Jack and Logan, tripped on a root, and groaned, clutching my temples.

  "Let me help, Tess," Carlos said. He stepped over to me and peered down into my eyes. "I'm going to try the smallest bit of compulsion if I have your permission. It won't take away the cause, but it will give you relief from the pain until you can figure out what's wrong."

  "It would be better if you could take the cause away too," I muttered, and then felt bad. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be ungrateful, and it's silly to be so bothered by a headache when the fate of Dead End is on the line. It's just … it really hurts."

  "I know, sweetheart, and I'm sorry," he said sympathetically.

  Jack, so high above us I could barely glimpse orange, black, and white, made a loud chuffing noise, and Carlos laughed.

  "I'll call her sweetheart if I want to, Kitty Cat. She's my friend. Now be quiet and let me help her," he called out to Jack.

  Then Carlos looked a question at me.

  I nodded. "Yes, you have my permission to try, but I'm not susceptible to compulsion."

  "Think of it more as therapeutic hypnotism. I have your permission and your cooperation; nothing is being done against your will here."

  A sharp spike of pain decided me. "Okay. Let's do this."

  Carlos's lovely dark mahogany eyes glowed as if back-lit by molten gold, and he murmured, almost too quietly for me to hear, "The pain will flow away now. Flow down from your head, through your body, out to the tips of your fingers and toes, and through there, out into the air and vanish with the breeze. Focus, Tess. Let the pain flow away."

  I closed my eyes and visualized the pain leaving my body, floating on golden streams of light, and actually felt my nerve endings tingle as the pain traveled through me and then out into the air and vanished.

  My eyes flew open. "It worked! I can't believe it worked! And so fast! It's magical vampire healing! Wow, you could make a fortune with this."

  Susan snorted. "It's basic biofeedback technique combined with a vampire's natural compulsion powers, but I'm glad it worked for you."

  "Thank you so much, Carlos," I said fervently.

  I felt great.

  "You are very welcome. If it comes back, we can try again. Or you can take the serious cure, if you like." He shrugged. "I didn't offer, since I knew you might feel bad about declining."

  "The serious cure?"

  He flashed an entirely too-seductive smile for six in the morning. "Drink some of my blood."

  "Oh. Oh, no, thank you. I'm not—I can't—" I stammered. I didn't to be rude, but nope. Definitely not.

  He grinned, clearly more amused than offended, and I relaxed.

  "If you're done making Tess stumble over her own tongue, I think Jack found something," Susan said, pointing.

  While I'd had my eyes closed, Jack had climbed back down the other side of the tree. He was now perched about twelve feet off the ground, in human form, with part of his head pushed forward into a hollow on the side of the tree.

  He leaned back and looked down at us. "There either is or was definitely something Fae here. My skin feels like it's being electrocuted."

  "Can you reach in and feel around?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "No, I tried that. This is a deep hole that goes down into the tree, and I've already felt around as far as I can reach."

  "Too bad you can't turn into a little kitten and climb down there," Carlos said, unhelpfully.

  Logan flew down and landed next to me, shifting back to human. "I'm way too big to climb in there too, unfortunately. Don't you have any magical levitation tricks, vampire?"

  Carlos bared what looked like a few too many teeth—but no fangs, thankfully—at the eagle shifter. "I don't like you, bird boy. Don't press your luck."

  "Nobody likes him," Jack said, lightly dropping to the ground next to us. "And yet he keeps turning up. Okay, thoughts? We have enough of various types of magic users in town that we should be able to—"

  "Just get a chain saw," Logan said. "We can chop this baby down in—"

  "Nobody is chopping this tree down," Susan said. "Don't make me throw you in jail."

  "Hey! Why is everybody always trying to put me in jail? I—"

  "Stop," I shouted. "Just stop. All of you stop. You supernatural types—"

  "Says the woman who can see how I'm going to die if I touch her," Logan murmured, but when I glared at him, he stepped back, holding his hands up in an "I surrender" pose. "Sorry."

  "Yes, you've made your point," I said. "But I like to rely on good, old-fashioned, human ingenuity to solve problems. Like right now, when I have a tent in the car."

  They all gave me blank looks.

  "A tent?" Susan's brows rose. "Maybe that headache is worse than you thought, Tess—"

  I cut her off. "Do you still have those tennis balls from when that K-9 dog visited?"

  "I—tennis balls?"

  "Yes. We need one."

  It took a beat, but then she nodded. "Yes. I'll get one out of the locker room in the station. But—"

  "Great! I'll get the tent and the duct tape out of my car." With that, I ran for my car, Jack right behind me.

  I opened the trunk and dug around to find the duct tape—never leave home without it!—and then grabbed the tent and handed it to Jack.

  His forehead furrowed. "Are we going to camp at the tree until we find the dagger? I mean, I'm with you, no matter what, but maybe you could explain the game plan?"

  "Nope. No camping. We're going to MacGyver this problem." I grinned at him and slammed the trunk lid shut.

  "We're what?"

  "Come on, I don't want to explain twice." We ran back to the tree, and Susan joined us a few moments later with a ragged-looking tennis ball. That dog had loved to play fetch.

  "Okay," I said, dropping the duct tape on the ground at my feet and holding out a hand for the tent. When Jack gave it to me, I untied the drawstring and pulled out one of the collapsible tent poles. Then I held my hand out for the tennis ball.

  "We can't get a pole or stick down in the hollow because poles and sticks don't bend. But this collapsible tent pole is built in segments, with this elastic rope holding it together from the inside of the pole. So we can feed it into the hollow in the tree, segment by segment, and attach each segment to the length of the pole once it's inside. But first …"

  I looked at the rounded end of the pole. "Nope. We need something sharp. Anybody have a knife? I need to make a hole in the ball to stab the end of the pole into."

  Susan, Logan, and Carlos all reached into their pockets, but Jack simply held out one hand and extended a tiger claw from the end of his human finger.

  "Showoff," Carlos said, his lips quirking into a smile.

  Honestly, it was pretty freaking cool.

  I handed him the ball, and he punched a hole in it, wiggled his claw around a bit until the hole would fit the tent pole, and then handed it back to me, retracting his claw.

  "Perfect!" I poked the pole's end into the ball and then handed it to Jack. Then I picked up the roll of duct tape and wrapped the tape around and around the ball to be sure it would stay on the pole. Then, for the final and most effective piece of the plan, I wrapped more tape all around it, but this time sticky side out.

  "Voila!" I showed them my masterpiece. "Anything that's down in the bottom of the tree will stick to the tape so we can pull it out. We can also tape a phone and flashlight to the pole and FaceTime with the phone from here to see exactly what's down there."

  Susan grinned and started clapping. "Tess, that's freaking brilliant!"

  "And no magic at all," Logan said. "Jack, you do not deserve this woman."

  "Don't I know it," Jack murmured, giving me a smile I felt clear down to my toes.

  "So let's do it," Carlos said. He attached his phone to the pole, light and FaceTime turned on, and then flew? Levitated? The dozen feet up in the air to the hollow, where he floated motionlessly in midair and fed the pole in, patiently attaching segment after segment, until the entire ten feet of the pole—and Carlos's arm up to the armpit—were both inside the tree.

  The rest of us crowded around Susan's phone and watched as the phone descended into the middle of the hollow—and very empty—tree.

  "Wait! What's that?" Logan pointed at what looked like a smudge on the screen.

  "It's a baseball," I said. "Wonder how long that's been in there?"

  "Surprised there's only one," Jack said, grinning. "I remember some shenanigans when I was a kid where—"

  "Bingo!" Susan shouted. "Look at that! Carlos, to your left! Or the phone's left. Or whatever!"

  We stared at the phone as Carlos slowly rotated the pole until we could see an object highlighted in the center of Susan's screen.

  "Stop!" I yelled. "That's it! That's got to be it!"

  It surely had to be the dagger.

  On the screen, an object sparkled in the light from Carlos's phone.

  "Are those … jewels?" Logan's voice was filled with awe. Or maybe greed, considering what little I knew of Logan.

  "They must be," I said. "Wow. That's amazing! And it's definitely dagger-shaped, right, Jack?"

  He made a humming sound. "Mmm. Maybe? Whatever it is, we need to get it up out of there. But first, is there anything else?"

  He stepped back and called up to Carlos. "Hey, do a slow, complete revolution so we can see the entire bottom of the tree, okay?"

  Carlos did exactly that, but there was nothing else down there but leaves and dirt. Susan talked him through positioning the taped tennis ball directly over the sparkling object, and then he pressed down on it with the tennis ball and started to bring it back up through the tree, disassembling the pole segment by segment as he pulled it through.

  "Carlos, wait!" I pointed at the screen. "It's going to fall off. Can you press the pole against the tree to your right? Gently? No, not that way, your other right!"

  As we watched the screen, he pressed the ball of tape and the object against the inside of the tree to more firmly attach our precious prize, and then slowly, ever-so-slowly pulled it up and out of the tree.

  "I've got it," he yelled, tossing the tent pole down to Jack.

  Carlos floated down to the ground, and we immediately surrounded him. He held out the object, cradling it in his hands to show us. "Unfortunately, it's not a dagger."

  "It's beautiful, though," I whispered.

  "Stunning," Susan said.

  "Worth a fortune," Logan said, rubbing his hands together.

  "Forget it," Jack said, pushing Logan out of the way. "So, let's see this dagger that I'm supposed to have stolen. It must be inside that box."

  Here's the thing: It actually was a box. A wooden box, made of what looked like teak—and I'm pretty good with identifying wood, from the shop—about eighteen inches long, six inches wide, and four inches deep. Jewels covered the entire lid and all four sides.

  Lots of jewels.

  Lots and lots and lots of jewels.

  "Is that egg-sized gem inset into the center a ruby?" Logan asked, wiggling his way back up to see the box.

  "I think it's a red diamond," I said. "I had to learn a lot about gems to work in the shop, not that we get that many, but … if that's a red diamond, at that size, and the clarity is amazing … that one gem alone may be worth millions of dollars."

  Susan gasped. "Millions?"

  "I think I'm getting aroused," Logan said. "Yep. Definitely aroused."

  "Shut up," the rest of us said.

  I smacked his hand away when he reached for the box. "Okay, we can worry about the jewels later, and I can't believe I just said that, but sure, fine, millions of dollars of gems, no big deal, but let's open the box already!"

  Carlos chuckled, but then he held the box out toward Jack. "You should do the honors, my friend."

  Jack took a deep breath, reached out, and unfastened the silver catch on the front of the box. Then he looked around at all of us, back down at the box, and flipped the lid open.

  We all eagerly leaned forward.

  Somebody—I didn't even know who—gasped.

  The box was empty.

  16

  Tess

  "Somebody else got here first," Jack said grimly. "Why they wouldn't take this box, though, I have no idea. It's got to be worth a fortune."

  "We can give her this," I said, feeling desperate. "Surely she'll want this back. It has to be precious to her—the Fae love beautiful things."

  "Jewels are a dime a dozen in the Fae lands, though," Logan said. "She won't care. But I know a guy who knows a guy … we can make a fortune with it. Even split, right?"

  If disgust were a physical weapon, Logan would have been bleeding on the ground from the looks we all gave him.

  "What now?" Susan, ever practical, asked. "The box is here, and that's clearly an indentation on the velvet lining that was made by something shaped exactly like a dagger. Odds are, this is our case—just without the part we need."

  "We need to find out who got here first. Jack, can you, I don't know, sniff around and find out who else put their arm down that hollow?" Carlos asked, flickers of red glowing in his dark gaze. A vampire's eyes only turned red because of extreme emotion, and I didn't think the one he was feeling right then was happiness. If he hadn't been my friend, I would have been terrified of the scowl on his face.

  Jack sighed. "As I keep telling everyone, I'm a tiger. Not a wolf. Superior hearing, not sense of smell. We need a werewolf."

  "Or a bloodhound," Susan said. "If lifting the dog twelve feet into the air to sniff the inside of a tree didn't scare it to death."

  "The box, though." I reached out a tentative finger, but my head ached even more the closer I got to it, so I stopped without actually touching it. "What this tells us is that somebody found it. Maybe the dagger is in town still? Jack, Carlos, Logan, do you feel this magical resonance you mentioned?"

  All three of them nodded.

  "It's like electricity stabbing at me with mild shocks," Jack said.

  "An icy burn radiating out from my hands where I'm holding it," Carlos said.

  "And it makes my head hurt, just like the runes in the well must have," I admitted.

  Logan shook his head, but then saw me narrow my eyes and threw his hands up in the air. "Fine. Fine, yes, I feel it too. It feels nasty to me, though. Actively hostile."