Five Dead Herrings by E.J. Russell
When the FTA driver—not my usual guy again, but not a dryad either—delivered me to the woods outside Ted’s cave, I didn’t even stop to hang out inside the way I normally did to…well…moon over Ted, I guess you could call it. Instead, I plunged down the hillside, Lachlan’s pack bouncing painfully on my back and my own bag smacking me on the hip with every stride.
I’d never been so relieved to reach my little one-bedroom rental house and spot my dusty Honda parked in its usual spot, its hood scattered with brown leaves from the oak tree in the neighbor’s yard. I tossed the pack and my bag in the trunk and got in. It started up first thing—the car might be unlovely, but it was reliable—and I tore out on the road from Dewton to the marina.
Once again, it didn’t take long. The traffic was sparse, even though one jerk decided I wasn’t going fast enough and passed me on the blind curve leading to the bay. When I reached the marina, the parking lot was empty, so I cut the lights on the Honda and parked a ways down from Lachlan’s boat.
There were lights in the cabin.
Months of surveillance experience kicked in as I made sure my dome lights were turned off before grabbing my camera and climbing out of my car. I didn’t close the door all the way, just pushed it to so it wouldn’t make a noise. Keeping low, I crept along the dock until I could get a clear view through the starboard windows.
Lachlan was there, all right. So was Wyn, and they were looking pretty dang cozy, if you get my drift. No—not that drift. But they were standing close together, Wyn gazing up at Lachlan and Lachlan down at Wyn. Wyn’s back was to me, so I couldn’t see his expression, but I could see Lachlan’s, and it was like a punch to the gut.
I’d seen that same tenderness on Ted’s face whenever he looked at Quentin, on Mal’s when he thought of Bryce, on Niall’s when he had Gareth on his mind, on Zeke’s when he was on his way home to Hamish.
Lachlan took Wyn’s hand in his and pressed something into it, closing Wyn’s fingers around it and engulfing Wyn’s smaller fist in his own. I backed away. Were they planning to take things…further? The fish-infused berth made any onboard shenanigans unlikely, but what if they headed back to their apartment or to some other cozy hideaway to, er, consummate their reconciliation?
“I’m not about to surveil that,” I muttered. But I took enough shots of the boat and the lot as evidence for terminating Lachlan’s contract. As I backed away, ready to return to my car, a wave rocked the boat, and the moonlight caught on something that I hadn’t noticed before.
There, on the transom, right over the lettering that spelled out the boat’s name—Cridhe na Mara—someone had nailed a split and gutted fish.
My ears started to burn again. Seriously? Lachlan could canoodle when the evidence of Wyn’s perfidy was right there—nailed to his precious boat.
One of Quest’s contractual requirements in taking a case was complete transparency on the part of our clients, for their benefit as well as ours. Lachlan had signed that contract, but clearly there were a few pertinent details he hadn’t shared with us, with me. Had he been intending to use our investigation as leverage to convince Wyn to come back to him? That seemed pretty far-fetched, yet the result—Wyn back on the boat with him—couldn’t be denied. Had he manufactured the whole thing, made Quest complicit—hell, turned me into a cat burglar—just to save his marriage? Was he really that selfish and manipulative?
“I bet his seal skin isn’t even in the damn pack,” I growled as I photographed the latest herring. And suddenly I had to know. I stalked back to the Honda and pulled the pack out of the trunk. I may have slammed it and the door too after I tossed the pack inside and climbed behind the wheel, because I didn’t really care if he knew I was here. Not that he’d probably notice. Not with Wyn taking up all his attention.
I unzipped the pack’s largest compartment and something soft and black practically exploded out of it, spilling over my lap and onto the floor. I didn’t turn on the dome light, but I didn’t need it to tell this wasn’t any damn seal skin. Not with lapels, silky lining, and a label sewn in the back under the collar.
I took a deep, shaky breath, trying to tamp down my anger. There was a lot I didn’t know about the supernatural community yet, but nothing I’d read indicated that the seal skin could shift its appearance without the selkie inside. In fact, that was one of the reasons selkies back in the day got captured so easily, with all those nosy fishermen finding their discarded skins on the beach.
“He played me,” I growled. Had he just been trying to get me out of the way until the hospital contacted Wyn and he could play the sympathy card on the path to make-up sex? If that was so, he didn’t have to call me. After the Martinson interview debacle, I’d chalked the case up as done and dusted and never expected to hear from Lachlan Brodie again. I’d half expected him to refuse to pay his bill.
If I wasn’t afraid of what I’d interrupt—there were some things I really didn’t need to see—I’d have confronted Lachlan right this moment. But I wasn’t a full-fledged investigator yet, nor was I fully invested by the council. I’d let Mal handle cutting Lachlan loose, as well as imposing whatever penalty was appropriate for this kind of infraction.
I shoved the key in the ignition, but before I could turn the engine over, another car squealed into the lot. It zoomed diagonally across the pitted tarmac and squealed to a stop right in front of Cridhe na Mara, the headlights illuminating that poor crucified fish. I recognized the car—it was Reid Martinson’s red sports car, last seen peeling out of his driveway. I blinked. Scratch that. Last seen barreling past me on that blind corner and nearly sending me into the hillside, the big jerk. Since he hadn’t made it here before me, he’d probably swung past Wyn and Lachlan’s apartment first if—I had to tamp down a wave of revulsion—Wyn was who he was seeking to “claim.”
Reid climbed out of the car and slammed his door even louder than I had. He strode toward the boat’s gangway, his footsteps pounding hollowly on the wooden dock, but he didn’t climb aboard.
“Lachlan Brodie!” he bellowed. “Show yourself.”
I half-expected Lachlan to ignore him. After all, he’d gotten what he wanted, hadn’t he? He and Wyn could just sail away and leave Reid to rage alone. But he climbed out on deck and faced Reid across the narrow band of water that separated the boat from the dock, his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw like granite.
One thing I knew for certain: Based solely on today’s experiences, as an ordinary working-class human, I had no business getting in the middle of a supe brawl. My Quest credentials were a pretty flimsy shield against feral dryads, high-powered magicians, and/or people with more money than I’d ever see in my life. Call me a coward, but regardless of my fascination with the supernatural, I had no desire to be collateral damage in one of their firefights. I loved my job, but I wasn’t ready to die for it.
I ignored the knots in my belly as I started the Honda. It couldn’t be regret. I refused to allow it. I’d had enough of that to last me a lifetime, and I wasn’t about to sign up for another stint in the lovelorn column.
Lachlan and Reid didn’t stop hollering at each other—or rather, Reid didn’t stop hollering, and Lachlan let it roll off him like water off a seal’s skin.
Seal skin.
I wondered if it was tucked away on his boat somewhere, after all. I wondered if he’d ever bother to reclaim the pack he’d begged me to retrieve, even though it didn’t contain what he’d contended. Well, he could damn well take a little jaunt to the Quest offices and retrieve it from Zeke, because once I filed my report, I was done with Lachlan Brodie.
I drove back to my place and parked the Honda. Dead oak leaves swirled into a little spiral and dropped onto the hood, even as I was trying to stuff the coat back into the pack.
Wonderful. Now the feral dryad brigade was apparently weaponizing leaves. I didn’t know if they could insinuate their twiggy fingers into the engine or puncture the tires or jam the locks, but I couldn’t be bothered now. “Knock yourselves out,” I muttered and headed up the hill to the cave for an FTA pickup.
If they vandalized my car, I’d deal with it. That’s what I did. That’s what I’d always done, whether the problem was scaring up my next freelance photography gig or nursing a broken heart.
I stopped in the clearing in front of the cave, but before I could pull out my FTA token, my cell phone rang with an unknown number. I punched the answer icon with probably unnecessary force. “Hello?”
“Is this…Lachlan’s friend?” The voice, a broken whisper, was almost too soft to hear. “From the dock?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
“It’s not you. Thank goodness it’s not you. I didn’t think it was you. The coat was wrong. But I was afraid…”
Something about the wavery voice was familiar. “Blair?”
“Yeah,” they said. “Can you come to Lachlan’s boat slip? Please?”
“I was just there. Has something happened?”
Blair’s gulp was more audible than their voice had been. “Yes. Hurry.” The line went dead.
My belly tumbled to my knees. Crap. Was the kid in trouble? Had Reid and Lachlan’s feud escalated? I tossed Lachlan’s pack into the cave. I kept my bag—I might need the camera or one of my other tools, but there was no point hauling that heavy, lumpy, worthless pack around.
As I bombed down the hill, stumbling badly more than once in the wan moonlight, I realized that physical baggage wasn’t my only problem. My heart wouldn’t be pounding this hard, my stomach wouldn’t be tied quite so tightly, if I were as indifferent to Lachlan as I told myself I ought to be.
Double crap.
Luckily, the dryads hadn’t bothered with anything more than dead leaves and enough pine sap on the windshield to make my wipers struggle in the next rain. I gunned the Honda onto 101 and broke the speed limit all the way to the dock. When I barreled into the lot, at first I thought I’d gotten the wrong slip because Cridhe na Mara wasn’t bobbing in the water where I expected it to be. But Reid’s car was still parked where it had been when I left, and I spotted Blair, huddled next to a bollard.
I screeched to a halt and shoved the door open the instant the engine juddered off. “Blair?” I called as I climbed out. “It’s Matt. I mean Hugh. I mean Lachlan’s…friend.”
Blair took a half step forward, their arms wrapped so tightly across their middle it looked as though they were wearing an army-issued straight jacket. Their jaunty rainbow beanie was gone, their long hair whipping across their face in the wind off the water. They didn’t say anything. Just pointed.
Into the water.
Heart in my throat, I hurried forward, chanting please no please no please no with every step. But when I peered over the edge of the dock, it wasn’t Lachlan’s body—in human or seal form—or even Wyn who floated there, lifeless, in a flare of sodden black overcoat.
It was Reid Martinson.