Chapter 13
A CLUE
Where did Mother go now?
And why did she leave Gus Behind? Again?
— gus
It’s not very easy doing this sleuthing in the woods when you have a six-foot tall Alpha so close, you feel like he’d climb into your skin to keep you safe.
I get being overprotective. That’s part of the whole ‘being a packmate’ thing; if he wasn’t concerned with a weaker packmate under his protection, he’d be a shit Alpha.
Max Lobo isn’t a shit anything, and right now he’s doing a brilliant impression of a bodyguard.
I wish I could let myself enjoy it. That he was acting this way because he was my mate, and my safety was the most important thing in this world to him. But since I made this mess and have to wait to see it through to the end, it’s getting a little frustrating.
“You don’t have to keep doing that,” I finally tell him when I… I just can’t take it anymore.
“Doing what?”
“Hovering. Growling at twigs. Acting like I’m going to trip over my own shadow and break my neck.”
He’s quiet long enough that I have to wonder if he’s ignoring me. Then, in a gruff voice that breaks the silence of the woods: “You might. You’re a trouble magnet, Killer. If something like that does that happen, I’d rather be there when you do. Maybe I can catch you.”
And maybe my heart flip-flops to hear him say that.
I stop, turning on my heel so that I can look at Max’s profile. The hint of moonlight overhead catches the golden glint in his eye, softening his sharp features.
“It’s not control, Honey,” he says, voice low. “It’s instinct. You walk into danger, I follow. Every damn time. If you want to follow me, I’ll slow down so that you can keep the pace.”
He sounds almost frustrated, like he doesn’t understand why he can’t keep himself from chasing after me—or letting me stay by his side while we search for a possible killer who, for all my teasing, is definitely not me.
“That’s very nice of you,” I begin, not really sure how I’m going to finish my comment.
No need. Max thrusts his hand through his hair, claws leaving track marks through the russet-colored strands. “You ever think maybe I’m not growling at you? Maybe I’m growling at the idea of you getting hurt.”
Oof. That’s a guilty pang running through me right there.
This is my fault. What started out as a way to guard my heart from rejection has gone too far.
It hasn’t been a week since I’ve been thrown into this with Max—or, well, butted my nose into this murder case…
though that’s not really fair when the killer involved me first—but it feels like I’ve known Max my entire life.
Bonded mates have forever. The two months that I’ve spent avoiding him while I got out of my own head…
it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Right?
“Max—”
“They’re targeting you, Honey. You’re too sweet to see it.” He rumbles deep in his chest. “They came onto my territory. They challenged me. I can’t let that stand… I can’t let you get hurt, either.”
Too sweet to see that I’m in danger? Oh, I see it alright.
But between running my bakery without my family finding out I’m in trouble, trying hard not to swoon as I learn more about my fated mate, our forced proximity making it impossible for me to keep up my walls around me…
worrying about some deranged supe-killer is a little low on my priorities right now.
Mainly because, sometime after Sheriff Lobo became Max, I began to trust him with my safety. Gus’s safety, too, and that doesn’t say anything about the way my feelings are changing, nothing will.
Two shifters are dead. I was involved in both, between Declan and the cupcake, plus Abigail and the tea. I’ll clear my name, help Max close the case, and then I can focus on telling him that he’s my mate—and maybe figure out why he hasn’t realized that I’m his.
I don’t know what I’m doing. My one lead crashed out; I don’t even know if Max ever talked to Joey and, if he did, I doubt he’d fill me in. It’s one thing, letting me tag along. It’s another entirely for me to try to do his job for him—
Hang on.
I pause. Max immediately freezes.
“Honey?”
“Do you see that?”
I point a few feet ahead of us. Something glimmers in the sliver of moonlight shining down on the woods. No… it glitters.
Just like the poison someone added to my frosting glittered.
Max throws his hand out. Lifting his nose, he takes a deep breath.
“A hint of caramel,” he says, exhaling. “That’s all I get.
” He looks at me. “Your scent is always a tease. Like, I get a whiff of it, then it’s gone.
Sometimes there’s opossum. You or Gus… I’m blocked when you’re near.
But I should be able to smell the woods. ”
The guilty pang becomes a stab almost too painful to ignore. I know why he’s blocked: the scent-dampener charm that keeps him from using his instincts to take in my innate scent and aura. The woods, though? “You can’t smell the outside?”
“I didn’t… shit. I didn’t even notice. I’ve lived in Moonburrow my entire life. I know every tree in the woods. Every bush. Every trail. My olfactory memory provide the scent… but we’ve been chasing a ghost the last half an hour. I don’t smell anything except for a touch of you.”
I know what he means. His dark pine scent has my head swimming, but while a wild opossum has an exceptional sense of smell, my nose when I’m in my skin is less than average for a shifter. I didn’t really smell anything out of the ordinary, either—and I think I know why.
I duck under Max’s outstretched arm, scurrying where I swore I saw the glitter. He calls my name, but I don’t stop until I’m right on top of it.
Silver glitter. A violet powder. Shattered glass that looks like it once belonged to a small vial. Look, I even see a cork stopped a few inches away. A black ash underlies most of the mess, and though I’m careful not to touch it or breathe it in, I know exactly what I’m looking at.
I’m looking at wolfsbane.
I’m looking at poison.
Max comes to the same conclusion at the same time. Gripping my shoulders, he lifts me from my slight crouch easily, moving me until his body is between me and the shifter poison.
That, my friend, is what we call in the sleuthing business a clue. Someone is mixing the concoction. It wasn’t just a one-time thing. They’ve killed twice already, and they had enough here to kill again before they… what? Dropped it?
Is that what happened with the cupcake? Did someone dose it for some reason… to kill Max, maybe… and then Declan came back to the alley behind Dough You Believe in Magic to eat it?
I don’t get it. It just doesn’t make sense. Abigail drank poisoned tea at home. Why was Declan left in the alley? Why was that dumpsite important?
I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.
Returning to the crime scene is a terrible idea, which is how I know it’s mine.
Even more amazing, Max agrees that we should go.
Okay. That’s making it our… discussion… sound a lot smoother than it really was. I suggested we go back to the bakery. Now. Not tomorrow, but since we were awake and I’m not going to be able to sleep again with the memory of those gold eyes watching me through the window, we go now.
Max said it was a good idea, but he was going to call Riordan and have him stay with me and Gus while he went with a few of his trusted wolves over to Dough You Believe in Magic.
I said that it’s my bakery,
He reminded me my grandmother actually owns the store.
I told him to bite me’.
He showed me his fangs and said, “With pleasure, Killer.”
There was plenty of snarling from the Alpha after that. I let my opossum side out and chittered in a perfect imitation of Gus that had Max looking at me in surprise. I glared at him. He called me cute.
I decided to shift gears. Softening my features, going as innocent as possible, I fiddled with one of my messy braids, peering up at him with a sheen over my purple eyes.
I said, “Please, Max,” and even though we both know very well that I just manipulated the hell out of him, he sighed and said, “Let’s go.”
We took the cruiser. Because it was close to one in the morning when I had my brilliant idea, he kept the lights and sirens off. There’s no parking in the back alley—there’s barely enough space for the garbage truck to pick up the dumpster—so he leaves his car in front of the bakery.
I hop out of the cruiser before he can come around and open my door for me. Max frowns—he did that the whole ride so I’m used to it—and follows me to the front door.
When he returned to the Alpha cabin for his car keys, I snagged my set so we could get into the bakery. We do, and I keep going until I’m unlocking the back door, leading Max out into the alley.
It still stinks of peppermint. While wolfsbane is essential in covering up a scent and dulling the connection between a shifter and their beast, whoever killed Declan wasn’t taking any chances.
They wanted him to suffer, and for anyone who came to investigate his death to not be able to use their shifter senses to do so.
But I’m not trying to use my nose. Now that we have an idea of what we’re looking for, I want to see if the killer was as reckless by my bakery as he was on Max’s territory. Too many shifters rely on their nose.
What about our eyes?
Our night vision is excellent. I don’t even need to use a flashlight to see what I’m doing, though it’s nice to have an alpha wolf shifter with me.
The lingering peppermint might have him blowing air through his nose before he jerks up his t-shirt to cover his nose, but it doesn’t do a damn thing for his impressive shifter strength.
I know instinctively where Declan died. Not because of any supernatural ability or anything. I’ve just relived the moment I noticed his legs sticking out, peeked around the side of the dumpster, and found his corpse so many times that it’s been etched into my brain.
“Here,” I say.
Max nods in agreement.
When I first proposed taking the ride from the heart of pack land over to downtown Moonburrow, Max asked me why.
I laid out my theory: that the same person who smashed a vial while we were searching for them in the woods might’ve been the same person who was peeking at me.
With the nightroot, wolfsbane, and silver concoction left behind, odds are they had a connection to Abigail’s tea and Declan’s poisoned cupcake.
It all began at Dough You Believe in Magic.
I still don’t have any idea why anyone had to die, but one thing was for sure: Declan was found here.
Whether he was killed here or moved was yet to be determined.
I don’t know if we’ll ever know until we find the murderer.
Still, I’ve been avoiding coming out here if I didn’t have to—letting the trash pile up so that I was taking multiple bags out to the dumpster instead of going out whenever I needed to—because I can’t forget Declan’s dead silver eyes and his blue lips.
No more avoiding. The body is gone; the pack burial over with. All that’s left is the scent of spoiled Christmas in the air—and the four-inch gap beneath the dumpster from where it’s lifted up on caster wheels.
We didn’t come all this way to stare at the alley, then stare at each other. If the killer dropped one vial, what if he dropped another? What if it didn’t smash?
Hey. I’m an amateur sleuth. He’s the bigshot detective. Fingerprints can come in handy when it comes to solving murders.
Now, do I really think I’m going to have Max heft up the dumpster, peek under it into the shadows, and find a vial of poison like a smoking gun?
This is real life. It’s not like one of those cozy mysteries with the strapping dark-haired cop hero and the cat sidekick.
For one, Max is a sheriff whose hair has a tinge of red to it.
On the other, my sidekick is a kickass opossum, thank you very much.
And while I don’t have a hope for a HEA until I find the words to tell Max that he’s my mate, I’ll be happy if we can solve the crime.
Too bad real life doesn’t work that way.
Only sometimes it does.
“Max!” Excitement colors my tone. “Holy shit… Max! I see something. It’s glittering.”
He’s standing there, holding the dumpster, like it doesn’t weigh a million pounds. “Like silver?”
Maybe. “I’m going to grab it. Don’t drop the dumpster on me.”
He grumbles. “Do you really think I would?”
I pause for a second.
No, I realize. I don’t. Somehow, my lifelong nerves when it comes to being a prey shifter around predators have disappeared when it comes to this predator in particular.
“I trust you,” I murmur, though maybe I have a few second thoughts when the dumpster groans, his arms jerking. “You good, Max?”
“Just get it and see what rolled under the dumpster.”
Can do.
Going flat on my belly, I scooch under the two-foot gap Max created before I can scoop up the glass vial in my hand. Slithering like a snake, I back up until I can go to my knees. Max waits until I’m clear before lowering the dumpster back to the asphalt.
He wipes his hands against his jeans, then reaches out to me, offering to help me up.
I let him. Once I’m on my feet, I show him the vial.
It’s half full. I can make out the dark wolfsbane ash, the nightroot powder, the glittering silver, and the same cork that we found in the woods. It’s a different blend than the tea, I notice. The ratio is different. It’s much paler, the silver outweighing the rest of the components.
Makes sense. Declan’s lips might’ve been blue due to the violet nightroot powder, but the only part of the poison that stood out was the glittering silver. Not the wolfsbane ash, either.
I think… I think I’m looking at the murder weapon.
I’m careful to hold it by the cork so that I don’t accidentally get my fingerprints on it. I thought that would be enough, and maybe it would’ve been… if the vial didn’t starter glowing a vibrant green.
Magic green.
Ah, crap.
I just triggered a blow-back spell.
Grandma Jean was a pro at them. Just like how some witches specialize in charmed bakeries or dream spells, there are a few who make bank with protection spells. Most are designed to keep people safe. Others? They’re offensive rather than defensive.
A blow-back spell is a highly offensive spell. If there’s something that you’re worried might get stolen, that you want to protect, you charm it with a blow-back. If the wrong person gets their hands on it, they’re penalized.
I wasn’t supposed to grab this vial. The caster meant it for someone else. And now we’re paying for it.