Five Dead Herrings by E.J. Russell

Idon’t know what I expected from Wyn Ellis since I had no idea what a Corlun Dwr looked like. I’d seen some decidedly…unusual fae. Just last spring, I’d faced a bean-nighe, and if you’d ever seen one you’d never mistake her for anything but supernatural. Blue skin, hair accessories made of bone, a definite medieval fashion sense. Of course, if you’d ever seen one, chances are you’d be dead, since she’s a portent of doom. Pro tip: Keep your laundry locked up when a bean-nighe’s in the neighborhood, because once she hangs your drawers out to dry, you’re toast.

Given my experience with Mal, Niall, Ted and his incubus husband—who’s got wings sometimes, just saying—and even Lachlan with his magical shifting wetsuit, though, I expected Wyn to be more…strapping, I guess? But instead he was slim and high-cheekboned and long-legged. More like Zeke, although Zeke had an underlying toughness that Wyn, with his waiflike appearance, lacked.

He was wearing narrow gray trousers and a trendy red jacket that I realized must be the one he was wearing when Blair had seen him at the dock. Yep, if I’d seen that, I wouldn’t have forgotten it either.

Because there was no denying that the man was gorgeous. Not my type, but definitely gorgeous. No wonder Lachlan wasn’t in a hurry to fae-divorce him.

Reid strode over to him and wrapped a brawny arm across his shoulder. “Babe, you shouldn’t be down here. You’ve been through enough.”

I immediately put on my sympathetic expression. “I understand it must be tough to be in such….unfamiliar surroundings.” I glanced at a few of Pierce’s more alarming accouterments. The gator-footed stool and death-by-shark-and-fire carving weren’t the worst, and if this guy was a water sprite, the room probably gave him a case of the dreaded jim-jams. “This won’t take long, and then I’m sure everything can be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.”

Reid shot me a dirty look. “You—”

“Reid,” Wyn said, his musical voice weary. “Please.” He glanced around the room and shuddered. “But not in here.” Yep, definitely the jim-jams. Even if Wyn was the fish flinger, I hoped for his sake that Reid wasn’t planning on insisting they live in the ancestral pile after their wedding. The poor guy would have nightmares every time he walked to the front door.

And speaking of the front door, was somebody attacking it with a battering ram? The sound of something large hitting it boomed through the hallway, rattling the firearm collection in its case and making the stuffed marlin bounce against the wall as if it was still fighting the hook that landed it.

“What the devil?” Reid muttered as Eleri scurried past the study door.

Her muffled greeting was swallowed by the thunder of a voice I knew well, even after a short acquaintance, and from Wyn’s flinch, he recognized it too.

“I need to speak to him. I know he’s here.” Lachlan didn’t shout—he didn’t need to. The acoustics in the entryway were like an echo chamber and his deep voice was naturally resonant.

Great, just great. I had one job—well, two, although the interview part wasn’t going so well either. But with the failure of the second—keeping Lachlan away from Wyn—job one was about to crash and burn in a big way.

“Eleri! Don’t let that bastard in,” Reid bellowed.

Although I agreed with the intent of that order—and two minutes ago I would have sworn Reid Martinson and I would never agree on anything from romantic partner to hair care products—I had little confidence that the petite maid would be able to keep Lachlan out if he was determined to get in.

But when all of us—Reid, Wyn, Pierce, and me—boiled out of the creepy-ass study and into the creepy-ass entry, the maid was holding her own.

She hadn’t exactly taken root in the hallway—that would have damaged the marble tile—but her arms, now covered in bark, had lengthened. Her elongating fingers were sprouting leaves and some wicked looking thorns.

Dryad. Figures. Jeez, I couldn’t get away from them today.

I spared a moment to wonder how a dryad felt working for a fire mage, but then Lachlan spotted Wyn through the extemporaneous foliage. I expected him to be angry. Furious, even, considering he’d probably need to replace his berth. But instead, he just looked sad. Defeated. Betrayed.

“Why, Wyn? You’d no call to—”

“Don’t talk to him, you savage bastard,” Reid snarled. “Haven’t you hurt him enough?”

I blinked, my gaze darting from Lachlan to Wyn, who’d huddled in on himself, looking as though he’d shrunk two inches. Had Lachlan abused him? Is that why Wyn felt justified in striking back?

Lachlan ignored Reid and Wyn ignored Lachlan and Pierce ignored everybody, apparently checking his watch against the two grandfather clocks, which had both started chiming the hour.

Guess it’s up to me. “Wyn, did you place dead fish on Lachlan’s boat?”

“Don’t answer,” Reid snapped. “You don’t owe him anything.”

Wyn placed a hand on Reid’s chest, and Lachlan winced slightly at that sign of trust and affection. “I owe him the truth. He’s still my husband.”

“He never should have been.” Reid shot Lachlan a murderous glance. “You should never have picked him. He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t have money, he looks like he’s spent the last decade roaming the woods, and he has the temper of a grizzly.”

Actually, the only grizzly I knew was the sweetest guy on the planet—which was probably the reason I was still in love with him. I cleared my throat. “If we could return to the question. Did you place the fish on the boat?”

Wyn dropped his hand from Reid and laced his fingers together. “Yes,” he whispered. “But I’m not even sure why I did it. It was just a…an impulse.”

“An impulse?” I frowned. “Once is an impulse. Four times is—”

Wyn straightened, his eyes wide. “Four? No, I… Once. Only once.”

“So you’re saying you only vandalized Mr. Brodie’s boat on one occasion?”

He paled, which considering he wasn’t exactly rosy beforehand, did him no favors. “Vandalized? I only tossed a fish onto the deck. Lachlan runs fishing cruises. The deck has fish on it all the time.”

“So you deny placing additional, er, deceased sea life in the aft locker, on the engine block, and on the berth, thereby causing him financial and emotional harm.”

“Oi!” Lachlan said. “Enough with the emotional harm!”

“What?” Wyn whispered. “The… No!”

“There are significant damages on the table,” I said softly. “It would be better if we could come to an arrangement privately, don’t you think?”

Wyn’s eyes widened even further. “I swear I didn’t… It was only because of the sundering, and I—”

“Wyn, lad,” Lachlan said tiredly, “I never wanted you to be unhappy.”

“That’s rich,” Reid sneered. “You didn’t care how he felt. You only cared about your ego. You flat out refused. You made him beg.”

“There was no begging, you wanker,” Lachlan growled. “I made a promise and so did he. I wasn’t about to break it unless he was sure.”

“He was sure. Sure that you’re a brutish slacker who—”

“Eleri,” Pierce said mildly, “if you wouldn’t mind, I believe our guest is leaving.”

For a moment, I thought that Pierce was about to toss Wyn out of the house for being a phantom fish flinger. But after Eleri defoliated herself and held the door while gazing pointedly at me, I realized I was the guest in question.

Jeez, if I ever expected to be a full-fledged investigator, I needed to manage interviews better than this. However, it was clear that Wyn wouldn’t be able to answer anything clearly while Reid and Lachlan were sniping at each other over his head. I pulled a card out of my breast pocket and held it out to him. “If you think of anything else you’d like to add—”

“He won’t.” Reid tried to snatch the card out of my hand, but Wyn blocked him neatly with nothing more than a reproachful glance.

“Thank you.” Wyn tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, his gaze shifting to Lachlan. “I’m sorry too. I never wanted you to do anything you didn’t want to. Truly.”

I tried to walk out with as much dignity as possible. So of course I tripped on the rug inside the door and fell right into Lachlan’s arms as he was stepping over the threshold. By the time he untangled me from his chest and set me on my feet on the porch, the door was shut firmly behind us.

Mindful of the gardeners all peering at us surreptitiously out of the corners of their eyes—all except Ronnie Purl, who was blatantly staring, his jaw slack—I tried to shove Lachlan down the steps and up the drive, which was like trying to push a boulder uphill.

“Jeez, now I know what Sisyphus felt like,” I muttered.

“This how Quest handles business, is it? You bolluxed that up royally.”

“I bolluxed it up?” With one final shove, we made it through the gates, which swung shut behind us. Guess keeping us out was more important than the inconvenience of keeping the gardeners in. “What are you doing here? Mal told you that you weren’t supposed to be present during the interview!”

Surprisingly, pink bloomed under the brown of Lachlan’s cheeks. “That was when Mal was doing the questioning.” He dropped his gaze to his feet. “I thought you might need some help, you being…well…”

“Human?” I said dryly.

His chin jerked up. “Unfamiliar with the bloody Martinsons. They’re a piece of work, and no mistake.”

“So you know them?”

“Unfortunately,” he growled.

Something Reid said tickled at the back of my mind. “Inside just now, Reid said Wyn should never have picked you. Did he mean that Wyn should have picked him instead? Was Reid one of his other…suitors?”

“Suitors?” Lachlan’s lips quirked. “Been reading historical romance, have you?”

It was my turn to blush. I remembered that Mal had been one of Wyn’s sexual partners. “I was trying to be polite.”

Lachlan hitched his backpack onto his shoulder. “No need to pull your punches with me. I’m no blushing flower.”

I remembered the thorns on the maid’s fingers. “I’m beginning to think nobody is.”

“To answer your question, Reid was sniffing around Wyn back when we were…courting.”

“Courting?” I lifted an eyebrow. “Now who’s been boning up on their historical romances?”

He snorted. “Don’t have to read ’em, do I? I lived them.”

I blinked. “Er…how old are you?”

He lifted an eyebrow—the one with the scar running through it, which gave it an extra quirk. “Old enough.”

I sighed. Supe lifespans were something that I still hadn’t gotten a good handle on. From what I could tell, some of them could be as close to immortal as made no difference. “Look, Wyn admitted to the first incident, which was annoying but not damaging, right?”

“Other than to my self-esteem,” he replied.

“Well, we’ve already established that you’re no blushing flower, so that makes your self-esteem immaterial. Do you believe him when he says he wasn’t responsible for the others?”

Lachlan stared meditatively through the iron gates. “I…don’t know. I’d like to say he never lied to me, but isn’t promising to be true and then shagging another man a lie? He didn’t hide it, but…” He shrugged. “If he wasn’t guilty, though, why hide out with the Martinsons?”

I bit my lip. This wasn’t going to be an easy question. “Did you ever… I mean, would Wyn have any reason to believe that you mean him bodily harm?”

Lachlan glared at me, his face a mask of absolute fury. “You’re asking if I beat my husband? Goddess bless, what kind of man do you think I am?”

It was my turn to shrug. “The kind I don’t know very well?”

He hitched his backpack onto his shoulder again. “No,” he said through bared teeth. “I never did.” He turned on his heel and strode off down the street.

“Wait!” I called, running to keep up. “Where are you going?”

“To call one of your bloody FTA drivers so I can get home and find out if I’ve got another load of offal piled on my boat.” He lengthened his stride. “Don’t call me,” he said as he increased the distance between us. “I’ll call you.”

“Right,” I muttered as he disappeared into a copse of Doug fir. “I’ll expect that right around the time pigs start dive-bombing my Honda.”