Two more blood bolts, two more airborne werewolves. I winced as one of them hit a tree, which broke with a crack like a gunshot, and then just kept sailing.

  Then it was Mr. Reid’s turn. He came at me, his face twisted by grief and fury, teeth barred. I didn’t want to hurt the man. I didn’t even much want to fight him, in spite of his dumbass relative turning my car into a convertible. I mean, the man had just lost his daughter.

  But the magic sang beneath my skin, coiling down my arms like bloody ribbons to twine around my fingers. I didn’t want to lash out, not at a grieving father, but from the look on his face, he wasn’t going to give me any choice. He came at me in a rush, almost too fast to see, and I braced my knees, power pooling into my hands, waiting to be thrown.

  Before I could do more than twitch, there was a blur of shadows, and Mr. Reid went sailing off into the woods, skidding across the wet leaves.

  Everyone froze. There was a gust of air, and another werewolf went flying. I shoved my hair back out of my face, trying to understand what was happening, but things were happening faster than I could follow.

  When a good half of the gathered wolves had been sent flying into the night, they finally seemed to realize something was going on and started to back away. There was another rush of wind, and between one blink and the next, Lorcan was by my side.

  Lorcan prided himself on his ability to blend in with humanity. Thanks, at least partly, to his Irish charm, he was actually better at it than I was. He lived his life as normally as possible, running his dental clinic and taking care of all the pearly whites in Haven Hollow.

  Even after everything we’d been through, he didn’t normally get much more than annoyed.

  Standing there beside me now though, in the dark, facing down a pack of werewolves, he was furious.

  I’d never seen him look so much like a vampire. His eyes almost glowed in the dark as he snarled, fangs on display. He hunched forward, like a lion ready to pounce, a vicious reminder that he was just as much a predator as they were.

  He tipped his chin down and snarled through his fangs. “Leave.”

  It was unfairly hot.

  It was also apparently enough for the Reid pack to realize that they weren’t going to be winning this particular fight. After they hauled their fallen members up off the ground, they retreated to the woods, growling threats all the while.

  “This isn’t over.” Mr. Reid glared at me as his relatives dragged him off.

  I waited until they were gone before I turned to Lorcan, wondering if I could coax him home to bed for some quality time before dawn. I’d just opened my mouth when he rounded on me, still furious.

  “What the bloody hell were you thinking?”

  My mouth closed so fast that my teeth clicked together. Not quite sated, the fury in my blood reared back up like a snake about to strike. “Excuse me?”

  “Fighting with werewolves, out where God and anyone could have seen you.” He raked a hand back through his hair, making it stand up in places. “You’re supposed to be a vampire now, if you’d bother to remember, Wanda. And here you are, out flinging your magic around like you forgot what in the hell you’re supposed to be!”

  When Lorcan got worked up, his brogue tended to get thicker. Normally, it was attractive as hell, but in that moment, it just made me want to punch him even harder than I already wanted to punch him.

  “I was thinking I didn’t want to get mauled by werewolves out for revenge.” I folded my arms across my chest, and ignored the cold, squirming feeling settling into my stomach. “What exactly did you want me to do? Offer to arm wrestle them? Am I not supposed to defend myself?”

  He growled, frustrated. “Of course, you are. But do you have to be so bloody obvious about it?”

  I flung my arms out to the sides, gesturing to the woods, the road, the tree in front of my car. “We’re in the middle of nowhere! And I didn’t pick it, thank you. I didn’t go looking for a fight. I’m just trying to figure out who murdered Bryony Reid. All by myself, I might add, since someone’s been too busy with his own head up his ass to notice anything else around him!”

  That took some of the wind out of Lorcan’s sails, and he visibly sagged. “I told you, things at the clinic–”

  “You’re not in your scrubs, Lorcan.” I glared at him, feeling the hot press of tears at the corner of my eyes and hating it. “You weren’t at the office, so don’t pretend like you were. Spare me that insult, at least.”

  It had taken me a minute, in all the chaos, to notice that instead of his usual scrubs and jacket that he wore home from work, Lorcan was in slacks and a mulberry shirt that I’d picked out for him, since it made his eyes look like emeralds. He’d thrown a long wool coat over it all, but it was a far cry from surgical gear.

  Lorcan froze for a second, like a jammed sewing machine, before stuttering back to life. “I changed when I got home, and I heard fighting.”

  I looked away. I was cold and tired, and I just wanted to go home. Not get attacked and then yelled at for protecting myself. “Sure.”

  Lorcan gave a gusty exhale, his shoulders sagging. “I’m sorry, Sweetling. Are you alright? I didn’t mean to bark at you. You just scared me.”

  I wasn’t injured, so I nodded. ‘Fine’ might not have been the word I’d have used to describe how I was feeling, what with my magic still roiling beneath my skin, itching to be set free, but it was close enough. I was too tired to deal with anything else for the night. Too tired to even demand where the spell he’d been. But at the moment, I didn’t care.

  “Let’s get you home, then.” Lorcan reached out and laid a tentative hand on my shoulder. When I didn’t bite him or shrug it off, he tugged me closer to his body.

  I stayed stiff in his arms, but allowed it. “I don’t think my car is going to make it home.”

  The werewolf had really done a number on it. The jerk.

  “We can send a tow truck for it tomorrow.” He tugged me forward. “Let’s go, Sweetling. The sun will be up soon.”

  Lorcan was a lot faster than I was, so I let him scoop me up in his arms and hurry me through the woods. The day felt like it was dragging off my shoulders, long and heavy. I hadn’t really learned anything worthwhile, and I still didn’t have any idea who would have wanted to kill Bryony, or why.

  And I was still pissed with Lorcan, and whatever it was he was hiding from me. But just for the moment, I let myself be tired, and I promised myself I could figure everything out tomorrow.

  Chapter Eleven

  Someone was pounding on my door.

  I jerked my head up from the pillow, and tried to shove all my hair out of the way so I could see, and breathe, again. A baleful glare at the clock told me that it was still almost a half an hour to sunset, which explained why Lorcan was still passed out beside me, not even twitching at the fact that someone was doing a battering ram impression with the front door.

  The previous day came back to me in a rush, and my head dropped forward into my hands as I groaned. I still wasn’t any closer to finding the killer, and now I had angry werewolves out for revenge, and Lorcan was being even weirder than he normally was.

  Whoever it was knocked so hard that the house shook.

  “Alright, alright, give me a minute,” I shouted, grabbing my robe.

  “Someone had better be dying,” I muttered as I stalked through the hall. My steps stuttered, and I tripped, righting myself against the wall. When I finally got to the door and wrenched it open, it occurred to me that maybe I should have checked who it was first, what with the vengeful werewolves and all. Luckily for me, it was just Taliyah.

  Maybe not so luckily, if she was here to arrest me.

  “Taliyah,” I greeted her, warily. “Why are you trying to kick my door in? This is becoming kind of a bad habit.”

  Instead of saying ‘hello’, or, ‘sorry for the big bad wolf wake up call’, Taliyah just stepped up and pushed her way past me. “I need to talk to you.”

  I snorted, closing the door behind her as she stalked down the hall towards the living room. “Please, come on in. No, no, I insist.”

  Taliyah wasn’t really one for jokes, even when she was off the clock. But it was very much Police Chief Morgan who sat down at the seldom used table in the kitchen, and set a very official looking manila envelope down in front of her.

  I eyed the envelope like most people would a bucket of scorpions, but I took the seat opposite her. “Taliyah, it’s not even sundown. What is this about?”

  Taliyah’s face twisted up with frustration, and some other emotion I couldn’t place. “I have the results of Bryony Reid’s autopsy here. I need you to look at some pictures.”

  I’d been thinking about putting some coffee on, to see if that would help clear out some of the cobwebs in my brain, but Taliyah’s words made my stomach lurch in a way that meant it was probably for the best I didn’t have anything in there.

  I stared at her. “You want me... To look at autopsy photos.”

  She nodded, one short, sharp slice of her chin.

  What the spell? I wasn’t exactly squeamish. Most witches weren’t, the covens saw to that. But that didn’t mean I wanted to look at graphic pictures of a dead body. I was gearing up to say, not just no, but spell no, when Taliyah pushed the envelope towards me and said one word.

  “Please.”

  It really must have been the magic word, because I found myself opening the envelope and sliding the glossy photos into my hand with the kind of disgusted caution of someone handling toxic waste.

  I forced myself to look at the images and then glared at Taliyah. “Is this a joke?”

  “I wish it was,” she answered ardently. “But no.”

  The photos were clearly taken in a morgue. If I squinted, I could see all the trappings—from the gurneys to the medical equipment. But the focus of the pictures was the gurney in the foreground, where a white sheet had been rolled back to reveal a pile of green and yellow leaves. There were a few thinner branches, and even a couple acorns rolling around on the metal table.

  No body.

  I looked back up at Taliyah, who had the expression of a woman who seriously needed a drink. Or a vacation.

  “I’m going to need some context here.”

  Taliyah pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “It seems that when the coroner went to examine the body, the second he touched it with his tools, the ‘body’ fell apart into that mess you see in the picture.” She gestured to the image of the pile of foliage and bark.

  “So, wait.” I flapped my hand in the air, thoughts whirling. “Wait, wait, wait. The body was glamoured? And the doctor broke the glamour accidentally?”

  Taliyah’s face pinched in frustration. “You tell me.”

  I dragged the photos back towards me, looking over every detail. “I’ve heard about this kind of thing. Back in the day, when fae abducted humans, they would glamour a log, or an animal, or a bit of leaves and sticks to look like a dead body to leave behind, so people would assume that the person was dead and not look for them.” I squinted, bringing the photo close enough to my face that my nose almost brushed against it.

  “Did they?” Taliyah asked and seemed annoyed she didn’t already know this, probably owing to the fact that she was fae. But, hey, that was hardly my fault! It wasn’t like I’d placed her with a human family that had raised her.

  “That kind of thing fell out of favor, even before I was born, though,” I continued, before my attention returned to the images in my hand once more. “Wait.” My arms dropped back to the table with a soft thump and I stared at Taliyah as the thought dawned on me. “Then this means, there’s a chance that Bryony isn’t dead, after all.”

  “That was what I was hoping you could tell me,” Taliyah said, her eyes intense. “Though if this murder case just turned to a missing person case, I have just as few leads regarding who might have kidnapped Bryony Reid as I did on who could have killed her.”

  “Then you have no one?”

  She cocked her head to the side and then shook it. “The few suspects I questioned, one was tight lipped, and the other almost wet himself when I started asking about Bryony.”

  I cleared my throat and dropped my eyes to the table, hoping Taliyah wouldn’t notice. She wouldn’t be exactly thrilled I was out questioning people on my own. She was right, though. If I couldn’t think of any reason for Bryony to be murdered, then I had less ideas about why she’d be abducted. Especially in a really old fashioned fae kind of way. Not many people could pull off that kind of glamour.

  Wait a second. What was it that Jackson had been blubbering about the night before? About having to break up with his fae ex-girlfriend in order to get married to Bryony? His ex-girlfriend who had, apparently, been devastated by the split? And had a very compelling reason to get rid of the competition?

  A nymph with a grudge would be very capable of glamouring some leaves into a body. The only question was, what would she have done with Bryony herself?

  “You’ve thought of something,” Taliyah said, her eyes far too sharp as she stared at me.

  I hesitated, but then figured I might as well tell her. Sneaking around investigating was one thing. Lying to Taliyah’s face was another, and she was liable to be a huge pain in the butt if she found out about it. Besides, I needed a ride, since my car was still out in the woods somewhere. Lorcan had pushed it onto the gravel shoulder to get it out of the way, but we hadn’t had a chance to call for a tow the night before.

  “I do have an idea,” I admitted. “But if I share it with you, you are contractually obligated to not get mad at me.”

  That had Taliyah’s eyes narrowing suspiciously, her face looking like a brewing thundercloud. “What did you do, Wanda?”

  I grinned, unrepentant. “Rather than tell you, I’ll show you. And you’re driving, Chief Morgan.”

  Taliyah muttered something as she pushed away from the table, but I ignored her as I turned to go put something a little more appropriate on. I told her as much.

  Lorcan was still dead to the world (pardon the pun), but he’d be waking up any second. That put a little fuel in me to get out the door, because I just didn’t want to deal with whatever secrets he was so fiercely trying to keep. I figured I’d focus on bringing Bryony Reid home safe and sound, and if I got to punch someone in the process, then I guess good deeds really could be their own reward.

  ***

  “I cannot believe you withheld information about an active investigation. Do you understand that I could arrest you for that?” Taliyah was still seething as she took the turn towards the greenhouse up on the hill.

  I let her vent. Sure, she’d been at it for a while, and didn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon, but she wasn’t making a move for her cuffs, so I wasn’t paying much attention. Instead, I stared out the window without actually seeing any of the scenery.

  I wasn’t sure what we were walking into. Brooke the nymph was our best, and only suspect, but part of me was still struggling with the idea. Not that she couldn’t have done it. Nymphs were fae, after all, usually members of Spring or Summer courts, and fae could be petty, jealous, spiteful creatures just like anyone else. One getting jealous and taking out a rival wouldn’t shock me. Like, at all. It was the kidnapping aspect I was struggling with.

  What would Brooke have done with Bryony after the fact? Keeping an adult werewolf contained somewhere wasn’t exactly easy. And if Brooke had gone to all the trouble of making everyone think Bryony was dead and then stealing her away, what was the end goal? It couldn’t be to kill her somewhere else, right? Why do the elaborate glamour route, then?

  I hadn’t had enough coffee to be thinking this hard this early. I leaned my aching head against the glass and closed my eyes.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Taliyah asked, frustration in every word.

  I didn’t open my eyes. “Not particularly, no. Why? Did you say something new, or are you still going over how I interfered with an investigation and got you your only lead?”

  There was a beat of silence before Taliyah muttered, “You’re impossible.”

  I snorted. “You willingly married my cousin. You like impossible.”

  Taliyah let that one go, because it wasn’t like she could argue with facts. She switched gears instead. “I can’t believe Jackson wouldn’t have mentioned a jealous ex he broke up with in order to marry the victim when I spoke to him. Who wouldn’t bring that up in a murder investigation?”

  Taliyah’s car was very serviceable, but not very comfortable. I missed my leather seats dearly as I shifted around, trying to find a good position. “You just needed to get him drunk.”

  The sigh she let out was extremely put upon. “I’m not even going to ask. If I don’t know, I don’t have to add it to the report.”

  The Green Goddess Garden Center had been empty for a long time before the current owners had taken over. It would have been impossible to tell that by looking at it when we drove up and Taliyah parked in the gravel lot.

  Rows and rows of carefully tended flower pots, shrubs, and saplings stretched out behind the small glass fronted green house. There was even a pond with a fountain shaped to look like a woman in a short chiton style dress pouring water from an amphora, where a turtle was lazily sunning itself.

  The air was filled with the scent of dozens of flowers, like a heady perfume, and fat, fluffy bees drifted lazily from blossom to blossom, golden pollen clinging to their legs. It was like a little slice of paradise inside the city, a hidden green gem. Even Taliyah looked impressed.

  But then, I guess that was what happened when a group of Dryads and Nymphs worked together.

  There was a woman out front, dressed in khaki overalls, somehow making it work. Her skin was a perfect honey brown color, like oak wood, and the hair she had twisted up into a knot at the back of her neck was deep green, marking her as a Dryad. She was humming to herself as she watered some flowers, stopping to whisper to each one as she passed.

  The woman smiled when she heard our feet crunch in the gravel, the smattering of freckles across her nose crinkling up with the expression. “Hello, is there anything I can help you with today?”