Five Dead Herrings by E.J. Russell

Istared at the coat as though it could sprout fangs of its own. “Casimir’s coat. Are you sure?”

Mal lifted an eyebrow. “My own wardrobe might be limited”—understatement: Mal wore leather pants and white T-shirts, almost like a uniform—“but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize good stuff when I see it. That’s a bespoke coat, and Cas’s tailor doesn’t make that style for anyone else. Besides…” He picked it up by the collar and thrust it out so we could see the label. “It’s got his name embroidered on the label.”

My jaw dropped. I’d never even thought to check the label, not that I could have read it in the dark. “B-but…what was Pierce Martinson doing with Casimir’s coat?”

Niall frowned. “What’s Martinson got to do with anything?”

Whoops again.I tugged at my suddenly-too-tight collar. “The thing is, see, when Lachlan was attacked, somebody stole his pack.” I pointed at it. “That one.”

“Not following,” Mal growled.

“When I talked with him in the hospital, he begged me to get it back because it held his skin.”

Niall leaned forward, his gaze intense. “Martinson is certainly capable of setting the spell that David detected, the one that injured Brodie. He knew Martinson had it?

“Not exactly. He asked me to search for it.” I bristled at their skeptical expressions. “We are an investigation firm, you know. And he could scarcely report the theft to the human police.”

“No, but he could have said something to my brother.”

“Well, he didn’t. He asked me.”

“But, Hugh,” Zeke said, his brow puckered with worry, “you wouldn’t know where to look.”

I gave them a rather sickly smile. “I, um, may have had help?”

“Hey, everyone!” Jordan bounded into the room, two large bags in his arms. “Scones are here!”

Mal stopped pacing and stared at me. “You didn’t.”

I spread my palms. “He was there at the hospital and he offered, so…”

Jordan’s habitual smile faded. “What did I do?”

I sighed. “You helped me break into the Martinson’s mansion and retrieve Lachlan’s pack.”

“Oh. That.” He beamed at everyone. “Yeah. Like I told Hugh, I’m really good at finding things.” He held out one of the bags. “Scone, anyone? Lemon poppyseed!”

Niall shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. Mal heaved an exasperated breath and collapsed into his chair—after snagging a scone from the bag.

“So what you’re saying,” Mal said around a mouthful of scone, “is that you two bloody infants broke into the house of one of the most powerful fire mages in the country?”

Jordan glanced between Mal and me, his brown eyes wide. “There wasn’t anybody there. They left before we went inside.” He handed the bags off to Zeke, who started arranging the scones on a plate from the credenza. “Except for the person we heard later. But I don’t think that was either one of the Martinsons. They’d definitely left. Drove out the gates.” He perked up again. “That’s how we got inside the fence.”

“Not helping, Jordan,” I murmured out of the side of my mouth.

He blinked at me. “What? It’s not that bad if there’s nobody home, right? And the door was open. And they shouldn’t have had the pack, anyway.”

Mal and Niall exchanged a glance. Niall spread his palms as if he was handing the problem over to Mal. “You’re one of his teachers, not me.”

“It’s my fault,” I said. I didn’t want Jordan to get in more trouble, and given that I’d let Lachlan escape, my ass was pretty much grass anyway. “I’m the one who asked him to help. I could have aborted the mission at any time.” I glared at the coat. “But Lachlan had seemed so desperate to get the skin back.”

“Wait,” Jordan said, frowning. “You told me to find the pack. Not the skin.”

We all swiveled to look at him. “You mean you knew the skin wasn’t in the pack?”

He chortled—and I’d never heard anyone laugh in a way that I could describe that way. “Duh. No seal fur smell.” He blushed. “Besides, Mr. Moreau’s coat has been, um, close to Mr. Johnson. My old boss. I could never mistake his scent.”

“Let me get this straight,” Niall said, holding his head as if it were about to explode. “Not only did you know that the skin wasn’t in the pack, but that Casimir’s coat was in there instead?”

“Well, sure. Anyone could have told that.” He wrinkled his nose. “Well, almost anyone. Who’s a werewolf. Who’s spent time near Mr. Moreau and Mr. Johnson.” Jordan sighed, a dreamy expression on his face. “He’s exactly like Thor.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I thought he was a vampire.”

“Not Mr. Moreau,” Jordan said disdainfully. “Mr. Johnson. You should see him holding a sledgehammer. He’s—”

“Jordan. I don’t think we need to get into that, all right?”

He blushed harder. “Right. Sorry.”

“What I want to know,” Mal said, snagging another scone from the plate, “is how Casimir’s coat got into Lachlan’s pack anyway, considering Ronnie was supposed to be returning it tomorrow.” He glanced at the clock over the door. “Or rather today.” He rubbed his eyes. “Shite, I’m tired. Also how in bloody blazes the pack ended up inside the Martinsons’ house in the first place.”

“Hidden at the back of a closet,” Jordan piped up brightly. His smile faded. “That room was weird, though. It made us really uncomfortable, didn’t it, Hugh?”

“Leave me out of this,” I said, like that was even a possibility.

Niall lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you think you might have felt uncomfortable because you were burgling a fire mage’s house?”

Jordan tilted his head, exactly like a quizzical pup. “No. Why would I?”

“Werewolves,” Niall muttered. “No concept of boundaries.”

An odd warmth was building in my middle, and I didn’t think it was the coffee. If Ronnie Purl had Casimir’s coat, then there’s no way Lachlan could have stuffed it in the pack before he was mugged.

Which meant he didn’t lie to me.

Through the haze of fatigue and highly inappropriate elation, I remembered something. “Ronnie Purl was at the Martinsons’ place when I went there to interview Wyn. He was working off his community service with the gardeners.”

Mal dusted scone crumbs off his fingers. “Well, Your Highness, I think we need to have a little chat with Mr. Purl. What do you say?”

Niall shook his head sadly. “It’s so early. It would be a shame to wake him up.” Then he bared his teeth in a manic grin. “Let’s go get him.”

The two of them jetted out of the office like the Cwn Annwn were on their tail.

Jordan sidled over to me as Zeke straightened the coffee tray and repaired Mal’s depredations on the scone platter. “Are they mad at me?”

I patted his shoulder. “If they’re mad at anyone, it’s me, so don’t worry.” When he continued to bite his lip, I scared up a reassuring smile. “And, Jordan? In case I didn’t say it before? Thank you for your help.”

Like magic, his expression cleared and he was back to his usual sunny self. “Sure thing, Hugh! Anytime!” He bounced out, as irrepressible as ever.

I shared an amused glance with Zeke. “Is he ever in a bad mood?”

“Not that I’ve seen.” He picked up the coffee service tray. “I don’t know how long it will take Mal and Niall to, er, apprehend Ronnie, since if he’s shifted, he’ll be hard to catch. Will you be heading home in the meantime?” He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Because if you don’t mind my saying so, Hugh, you look like you could use a little sleep.”

I shook my head. “A little sleep probably won’t help. Besides, between coffee and residual adrenaline”—not to mention the heavy weight of worry over holding on to my job—“I’ll be awake for hours. I might as well stay here and get some work done.” I didn’t want to miss Ronnie’s interrogation, either.

Zeke nodded. “I’ll be at my desk. Just let me know if you need anything.”

I plodded upstairs to my office, and with every step, he didn’t lie echoed in my brain. Lachlan hadn’t lied to me. I was right to trust him. Of course that didn’t mean I hadn’t screwed up by A) pulling Jordan into the investigation, B) breaking into the Martinsons’, and C) letting Lachlan go with nothing more than a promise.

But hey, one out of a billion ain’t bad.

I retrieved my camera from my bag and settled at my desk to download everything from my memory card onto the Quest server. And before you ask—our cloud storage is super secure, since it’s located in its own Sheol-brand pocket dimension.

Although the photos rendered onto my screen more rapidly than they had back in the day when I was still freelancing and using a cranky laptop nearly a decade out of date, I was in that weird exhausted state where time seems to stand still.

The shots popped up in chronological order, seeming to float an inch in front of my monitor. I winced when I realized the first ones were from the Great Dryad Debacle. I’d had the shutter release set in continuous mode when Jordan shifted, so I had ample evidence of my own failure to keep a civilian out of Quest business—even a civilian as determined to stick his nose everywhere and “help” as Jordan.

Yep. There he was, peeing on the madrone. And holy crap, those angry dryads were freaky, nearly as freaky as the Martinson’s maid, Eleri, blocking the doorway by— Wait a sec.

I enlarged one of the first boring shots of the client’s identified target, the tree of heaven, that Jordan declared to be the wrong tree. Eleri’s, er, foliage had looked one heck of a lot like the tree’s compound leaves, with leaflet pairs marching along a central reddish brown stem. Granted, the tree of heaven didn’t have thorns, but from what Bryce MacLeod had told me, dryads could manifest more than one plant species if they wanted—and if, presumably, they didn’t mind cheating on their tree.

I squinted at my monitor from my rather blurry eyes. One of the dryads in the pack charging behind Jordan—not the first or even the second, but the third—looked an awful lot like Eleri. On the other hand, all of them had started to get that attenuated twiggy look, so they looked a lot more like each other than they looked like individuals. A forest rather than distinct trees.

I sent all of those shots into the folder for the dryad case and concentrated on the next set. When Lachlan and I had arrived at his boat, I’d taken long shots of the marina from the edge of the parking lot. It was part of my process—start with the ten thousand foot view and zoom in to the specifics later. Detail shots were important, but without the context of the entire scene, you could miss something important.

I compared that shot to the one from later that night when I arrived to return Lachlan’s pack and found him cozied up with Wyn. His truck was in the same spot as it had been that morning—Lachlan was apparently a creature of habit.

When the shots of Lachlan and Reid facing off rendered, I shifted uneasily. I’d captured evidence of their confrontation in full digital color. Reid’s expression was twisted, his mouth gaping with his shouts. Lachlan’s brow was thunderous and he looked about as moveable as Haystack Rock. I’d caught one of Wyn, too, peering out of the cabin window, his big dark eyes wide and frightened. But of whom? Bracketed as the shot was by Lachlan’s truck and Reid’s Maserati, I couldn’t tell who he was staring at with that expression of absolute terror.

According to Lachlan, Wyn was trying to escape from Reid. But with Lachlan blocking access—either on or off the boat—maybe he was looking for a way to escape from Lachlan. I glanced over my shoulder, as if somebody might be standing in the corner of my cramped office and ask me why I was photographing the argument rather than assisting my client. Old habits die hard, I guess.

The shots from later on, after Reid’s body was discovered, were even more cringe-worthy. Lachlan’s boat and truck missing, the ambulance lights casting peculiar shadows over the scene, Ky and Pete working futilely over Reid. I’d screwed up the angle on that one, the Maserati blocking Reid’s body from the hips down.

I peered at the picture more closely. Something about that car… I pulled up the earlier shot of the argument and compared the two side by side.

Reid’s car was in a different spot.

Lachlan had told the truth. Reid had left after the argument. The question was, why did he come back? And was Lachlan waiting for him when he did?