*Jack prowled around the shop like…like a tiger. Tiger. It triggered something in my mind.
“Did you, and I’m sorry if this is offensive, but did you smell anything? Anyone? On Chantal? Like, like—”
“Like a dog?” Jack’s eyes narrowed.
He was making me feel like an idiot, and he was doing it on purpose. I didn’t deserve it, so I stood my ground. “No, like a cat. You think I could grow up in Dead End and not know about shapeshifters? You may not respect the sheriff, and with good reason, but don’t treat me like an idiot.”
Jack blew out a breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I tried to see what scents I could get. Mostly, she smelled like beer and cigarette smoke. A little pot, maybe. Lots of sweaty bodies. She was at a bar or party, I’m pretty sure.”
“And it’s not like a gun is an up-close-and-personal weapon,” I mused. “Her killer might not even have touched her.”
“Maybe not, but he wasn’t far away, either. I could tell from the gunshot wound.” His eyes iced over. “I’ve seen too many of those before.”
“Or she.”
“What?”
“He or she wasn’t too far away. We don’t know if her killer was a man or woman.”
“You’re right. I was just going by the odds. Unless you know something about Chantal I should know?”
I sighed. “No. I hardly knew her. We didn’t hang out with the same people. She liked to go out and party, and I’m more of a homebody. We should talk to Aunt Ruby. She’ll know something, and whatever she doesn’t know, she’ll be able to point us in the right direction to find out.”
My stomach picked that time to send out a ridiculously loud grumble, and I realized I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. It seemed wrong, somehow, to think about food, but being hungry wasn’t helping my headache any, either.
“I’m going to have to go find something to eat.” I grabbed my bag and rummaged around for keys.
“Sounds good. Where are we going? Is Beau’s still pretty much the only place in town?”
“Um. I—you want to eat with me? Not that I mind,” I hurried to add, southern manners coming to the fore, even though all I wanted to do was go home, go to bed, and pull the covers over my head. For maybe a week.
“If you don’t mind. I haven’t exactly had a chance to lay in supplies at Jeremiah’s house. If you’re not up to it, though—”
“No. It’s fine. But I’m definitely not up for going to Beau’s. Everybody and his brother-in-law, literally, will be there and gossiping about Chantal. I don’t think I could take that right now.”
He nodded. “Don’t worry about it. I understand. I’ll just figure something out.”
I took a deep breath. “I have steaks. We could grill them. You’re welcome to have dinner with me. After all, we’re practically family.”
His eyes gleamed as he looked at me for a long moment. When he finally replied, his voice was edged with laughter and something else. Something darker. “No. We’re definitely not family.”
*
Jack followed me on his motorcycle from the shop, which sat just north of town, through downtown, to my small house about ten minutes south of town. Since saying “downtown Dead End” was like saying “giant postage stamp,” it wasn’t a long trip. Our little town was home for maybe five thousand or so people, and a magnet for misfits of all types—human, supernatural, and other. I hadn’t yet determined exactly what “other” meant, but if aliens from outer space ever came to Earth, they could show up in Dead End and nobody would even blink.
Jeremiah had said Dead End was like New York, but with fewer naked cowboys. I’d responded that New York was like Dead End, but with fewer gator wranglers. I’d always had pride in our little town, even when I’d been trying so hard to leave it. We were all but hidden in the heart of the Everglades, could drive to Orlando in an hour, depending on traffic, and drove airboats as often as we drove cars.
The origin of the name Dead End was lost in the murky swamp waters of the past, but mostly people just assumed that our quirky little town was the dead end for anybody who had no place else to go. And right now, that apparently included an ex-soldier named Jack.
When I turned onto the short dirt road that also served as my extended driveway, since mine was the only occupied house on it, I glanced in my rearview mirror to be sure Jack was still behind me. He was. I realized that I was oddly nervous about having him in my house. He seemed to take up so much space, almost as if he owned a room just by walking into it. Maybe it was the soldier thing. Or the tiger thing. But this twinge of butterflies in my stomach was ridiculous. I wasn’t sixteen years old anymore, and I wasn’t bringing a boy home to meet Aunt Ruby. Jack was my new business partner, whether either one of us liked it or not, and if he was sticking around Dead End to look into Jeremiah’s death, I was determined to be part of it.
I parked the car neatly in the small gravel-covered space that served as my parking lot, instead of carelessly angling the car in as I usually did, so he had room for his bike. I was pretty good at lots of things, but parking had never been one of them. I didn’t have the right spatial sense or idea of distance, people told me. I blamed it on faulty rearview mirrors, personally, but that excuse had worn thin with my family and friends after I’d used it for every car and truck I’d ever driven.
By the time I grabbed my bag and climbed out of the car, Jack was parking his bike next to me.
“Nice house,” he said.
My little house was small, and nearly a hundred years old, but it was all mine, and I tried to take care of it. I’d had it repainted a fresh white just two summers before, which nicely set off the deep blue storm shutters. I’d always thought it was crazy to live in Florida—hurricane central—without storm shutters, unless you wanted to end up buying plywood and bleach every fall like some kind of tourist.
“Thank you. It’s mine,” I said, feeling that little rush of pride I had every time I thought about it. “Well, mine and the bank’s, but you know how that goes.”
Jack shook his head. “No, actually, I don’t know. I’ve never owned a home. Never had a house payment or a car payment. Nothing to tie me down to one place.”
“That sounds…lonely.”
His eyes widened. “Usually people say that it sounds great. Or that it sounds like freedom.”
I shrugged. “What do I know? Maybe it’s all three. I’ve lived here all my life. I like it. I like knowing my neighbors and being part of the community.”
It hadn’t always been true, but it was now, and I wasn’t going to go into the childish yearnings of my teen years anyway.
“Jeremiah was the same way,” Jack said. “He was always trying to get me to come home and stay for a while.”
I led the way up my front steps to the porch and unlocked my door. “Why didn’t you? If that’s not too personal.”
He sighed. “There was always too much to do. I was caught up in one battle after another after another. We fought back against the vampires who were trying to turn the country into some kind of vampirocracy. We fought back a demon invasion. I was there when Atlantis was attacked, and I helped out a little bit with that. I almost died.” He laughed, but not like he found something funny. More like he had a whole bunch of bitterness built up inside.
“Atlantis. That’s so crazy. I still can hardly believe it’s real.” The lost continent wasn’t lost anymore. Apparently it had been hidden under the waters of the Bermuda Triangle for eleven thousand years under some kind of dome, and now there was an actual kingdom of Atlantis in the world. I’d seen news images of the Atlantean king, who’d married a woman from the US he’d met on his travels, apparently. From social worker to queen, as the tabloids liked to say. It had a nice ring to it.
And my mind was wandering, again, to try to avoid thinking about Chantal. I took a deep breath and tried to focus.
“Well. If it helps, Jeremiah was very proud of you. We knew you were some kind of rebel leader, fighting to keep people safe,” I said, almost reaching out to touch his hand before jerking mine back in horror.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. He was polite enough not to mention it, though. Instead, he turned to sweep his gaze over my living room.
“This is a great house inside too. Cozy. Why don’t you touch people?”
I opened my mouth to thank him and then the second part of his comment struck me, and I blinked. “Oh, so you put people off guard with a compliment, and then go in with a zinger? Nice. Do they teach that to all the rebels?”
I dropped my keys in the bowl next to the door and avoided looking at him.
“No. Mostly we taught people which end of the stake was pointy,” he said dryly.
I laughed, and it eased some of the tension between us. “Can I offer you a cold drink? Or some coffee?”
“I don’t suppose you have any beer?” He followed me into the kitchen, which was one of my favorite rooms in the house. It was bright and sunny in the daytime, with big windows that looked out over my tiny lawn and, beyond that, a field of wild grasses. At this time of night, the back porch light cast the yard into shadows that would have taken on a far more ominous cast if Jack hadn’t been in the kitchen with me. There was something solid and safe about him—maybe he was just too big to mess with—that offered a measure of reassurance, and I didn’t mind it at all after what had happened.
He sat down at my sturdy old wooden farm table, and I rummaged around in the back of the fridge until I found one of the two bottles of beer in there from the last time Uncle Mike had stopped by for a visit.
“It’s Corona, is that okay?”
“That’s fine, thanks.”
My cell phone started to ring. Aunt Ruby. I declined the call. I wasn’t up to talking about Chantal yet, and I knew Belle would have spread the news all around town by now. Instead, I sent her a quick text so she wouldn’t worry.
So terrible about Chantal. I’m okay, just need to sleep. Will stop by in the morning. Please tell everyone not to call me or stop by.
Feeling vaguely guilty about being even mildly deceitful with my family wasn’t enough to make me want to deal with them tonight.
“Aunt Ruby. Everybody wants to know all about it,” I told Jack.
“They worry about you. It’s nice.”
“Yeah, but it can get stifling sometimes,” I admitted, both to him and to myself. I’d never said that out loud before.
I handed him the beer and excused myself to go clean up, but once I got to my room I didn’t exactly know what to do. I didn’t want to take a shower with a guest in the house, and it’s not like I’d gotten dirty or sweaty in the shop that day. I hadn’t touched Chantal, so I didn’t have any blood on myself. I stood in front of my sink for a long time, staring at my reflection in the mirror, trying not to let my mind roll the image of her dead body over and over again.
In the end, I brushed my hair and put it back in its ponytail, washed my face and reapplied a little mascara and lip balm. Not that I was trying to dress up—I certainly wasn’t changing out of my jeans and my Dead End Pawn polo shirt—but maybe as a kind of shield to keep Jack from noticing how pale I was. I looked like the ghost I’d once seen in an antique shop, except without the hoop skirt, but there was no help for that. And this wasn’t a date, anyway.
When I got back to the kitchen, Jack was still there, and he was petting the gray and white bundle of fur curled up in his lap.
“Lou, get down and leave our guest alone,” I scolded.
My cat opened one eye and stared at me, not moving a muscle.
Jack grinned. “She seems to like it where she is. Her name is Lou?”
“Short for Lieutenant Uhura,” I admitted, feeling like a giant dork. “I’m kind of a Trekkie.”
Lou started to purr loudly, arching her back under Jack’s hand, and I stared at her in disbelief. She usually didn’t like people. I’d found her on my porch one rainy night, and we’d kept each other. But whatever had happened to her when she was a kitten, including whatever had mangled the tip of her tail, had made her aloof and wary of strangers.
“Maybe it’s a cat thing,” I speculated, startling a laugh out of Jack.
“So first I’m a bloodhound, and then I’m a cat whisperer? You don’t actually know much about tigers, do you?”
“Orange and white stripes, long tails, and an excessive love for frosted cereal.” I pulled out the steaks that I’d been planning to grill the next night for me and Molly on our weekly “pig out and dish about our lack of a love life” Friday. “Are you up for grilling?”
Jack gently pushed Lou off his lap and stood up and stretched. “Well, if you’re out of frosted cereal…”
My mouth dried out a little bit, watching him stretch. He was just so well-proportioned. All the muscles were exactly where muscles were supposed to be, and those arms, and those shoulders…and I was totally standing there staring at him like an idiot.
He smiled another one of those long, slow, dangerous smiles, which meant either he knew exactly the effect he had, or worse, he’d done it on purpose. Either one left me at a disadvantage.
Well. I knew exactly how to nip that in the bud.
“When I touch people, sometimes I know how they’re going to die,” I said calmly, pulling the salad fixings out of the fridge.
Behind me, I heard his beer bottle clank against the table as if he’d set it down a little too hard.
“You what?”
I turned around and gave him my best calm, bland face. “You heard me. Here’s the lighter to start the grill.”
He narrowed his eyes, but then my stomach rumbled again, startling both of us.
“All right. I’ll grill these steaks, and then you’re going to tell me all about your ‘I see dead people’ issue. I have to admit, this is a new one, even for me.”
“I don’t see dead people. I just—”
“After dinner,” he said firmly. “You need to get something in your stomach before we talk about more death, in any form.”
I just nodded and stood there until he went out the back door before I whispered a reply. “If you think it’s a new one for you, imagine how I felt.”