Amelia blinked and reread the note.

Are you Detective Charlie Kevrinhart’s wife?

Nope. It was just as weird and uncomfortable the second time through. She cleared her throat delicately.

“It’s, uh… Charles. Not Charlie,” said Amelia, “but yes, I am.”

She was growing more and more unsettled by this exchange, and backed up as subtly as she could from the disturbing stranger. Her hip bumped into the other side of the wraparound desk. She was trapped.

The man waved away her comment and tapped his finger demandingly on the word “detective.”

“Is he a detective?” Amelia clarified.

The man nodded, shuffling from foot to foot.

“Yes,” said Amelia slowly. “He is. Do you need the police, sir? I can call the station for you. I have a direct line.”

The man’s eyes bulged, and he shook his head frantically, making what was clearly an “are you insane, of course not” type of gesture.

“Well then, what do you need?” Amelia asked.

The man went back to frantically shuffling through his notes. Amelia flexed her hands as she waited. Her fingertips felt hot — hot enough to burn — and her nail beds tingled painfully. Her body sensed danger and was preparing to shift. She held it in check, though. She hadn’t shifted unintentionally since… but that didn’t matter now.

Legally, Amelia had every right to shift into her dragon form when faced with mortal danger or serious harm to self or others. The Supernaturals’ Health in Facing Terror (or SHIFT) act ensured that. Still, she didn’t want to be the cause of unnecessary damage or paperwork.

Her dragon form was small, about the size of a well-bread horse, with a 36-foot wingspan and bones built like a bird’s to help with flight. That alone was enough to scare away most opponents, but where her true danger lay was her fire. It burned at temperatures that could melt copper and left behind a sticky, chemical-type residue that made industrial bleach seem like fresh mountain spring water. Even once her short-lived flames were used up, the aftermath was devastating for anything in her wake.

Amelia glanced around her beloved library. The last thing she wanted to do was destroy Valehaven’s access to all these wonderful stories. Hiring a dragon shifter as a librarian had raised a few eyebrows within the city council. But between FAE (Fair Access to Employment) laws, her master’s degree in library science, and her unparalleled love of stories, picking Amelia had essentially been a no-brainer for the library board. Still, she was all too aware of the risk her dragon form posed to this magnificent place.

The strange, mute man before her was unsettling, but so far he’d made no move to harm her. She would watch. Wait. She wasn’t about to make any rash decisions.

The man triumphantly pulled out his next note. Amelia took a couple of deep breaths, cooling her fingertips, before reaching for the paper. The stench of stale alcohol mingled with that faint flowery scent tickled her nose again, and she wrinkled it slightly to hold back a sneeze.

I have information for Detective Charlie Kevrinhart, the note read.

“Like a tip?” Amelia asked. “Why didn’t you bring it down to the station?” She set the note next to the others he’d given her and examined the rough-looking man with narrowed eyes.

The man made desperate shushing gestures and glanced shiftily around yet again. When he looked back at Amelia, his brown eyes were watery and more desperate than anything she had ever seen. She was sure in that moment that a mud-soaked puppy lying starving and abandoned at the bottom of a dumpster could not have looked more pitiful or more in need of her help.

“Okay, okay,” she said quickly, using her most gentle tone of voice and making placating motions with her hands. “Not the police station. We’ll stay right here. You and me.”

The man’s sigh of relief gusted out from his chest, and his eyes looked like he was about to break down in tears. He silently mouthed “thank you” through dry, chapped lips.

“Did you want to tell me, then have me tell Detective Kevrinhart?” Amelia asked.

The man nodded eagerly.

Oooookay then, Amelia thought. She was actually pretty sure that this wasn’t okay in the slightest, but she didn’t know what else to do.

She expected the man to offer her bits and pieces, note by note, and was surprised when instead, he pulled out a plastic grocery bag from his other pocket, stuffed the remaining, ransom-style notes into the crumpled sack, threw them on the desk before her, and ran out of the library like death itself was hot on his heels.

“Wait, sir!” cried Amelia. “I didn’t get your…” The door slammed shut. “Name.”

Sighing, she went to the cleaning closet and grabbed a pair of nitrile gloves. She didn’t know if Charles would be able to get prints off the bag, but she knew better than to carry it around in her bare hands. Glancing at her watch, Amelia noted that she still had plenty of time before she needed to set up for the book signing later.

Glancing at the bag in her hands, she chewed her lip. The allure of this bizarre story unfolding in real-time was strong… too strong. And the man had wanted her to see the notes before passing them on. Couldn’t hurt to take a peek, right?

A few minutes later, Amelia knelt in an empty resource room in front of a whiteboard and a pencil case full of small magnets arranged neatly on the floor. The whiteboard was stained from years of use but would serve her purpose well enough. She had turned off the fan to ensure no paper scraps went flying and then dumped out the bag of notes on the floor. Dozens of papers like the ones she’d been shown before littered the grayish-blue nylon carpet. There wasn’t a single handwritten word in the lot. Just letters from other books or magazines, snipped out and pasted to form scraps of the mute man’s secrets.

Amelia got to work.

Assembling the notes, it turned out, was something of a puzzle, but one made of bits of story. She very much doubted the man knew about her propensity for tales, so it was an enormous stroke of luck that he’d brought them to her. Each paper held only half of an idea. It made for messy work that included many guesses, but eventually Amelia had what she thought was the only logical way for these bits to fit together.

She sat back on her heels and examined her work.

Lord of the broken hears mermaids sing,
under ice-cold waters where magics cling.

One of the lost can still faintly recall; 
count all the names up on the wall.

Twisting mirrors distort what the heart perceives, 
and offers no comfort to the one who grieves.

Hellish rot festers, but within they’re alive, 
for blood laces the walls of those trying to survive.

I know more than one way to the upside down, 
but it’s dripping with rot that leaks through the town.

Each painful choice will cling to your chest; 
down, down, down you must travel to follow this quest.

New glamour shots capture what eyes cannot see, 
and contract prisoners long to be free.

Now the djinn takes his meals with a sick, sly delight; 
on the darkest of days there’s a sliver of light.

Ever part of the problem; I can’t endure it much longer.
Tick tock snuıɹǝs ʇɟɐɹ sʞɐǝq — now you must be stronger.

Amelia furrowed her eyebrows. “Well, that’s creepy as hell,” she mumbled to herself. Or at least… it was if she’d assembled it right?

She thought this was the correct order, but “beaks raft serinus” was upside down, which couldn’t be right. But that paper had words on either side of the upside-down riddle that were positioned right-side-up, so it looked wrong no matter which way she laid it.

The multiple mentions of “rot” left her feeling rather queasy, as they would for any resident of Valehaven. But we’re safe here, she reminded herself. The disease that plagued Sovra’an couldn’t make it through the Tarraven Portal, and there was no other way to the dying realm that existed just out of reach, folded over this one like a scrap of space-time-paper. Those lines of the poem had to be some kind of sick metaphor, right along with blood lacing the walls. Ew.

Still considering the puzzle, Amelia sucked in her cheeks to think and let them out with a sound like a gum bubble popping. Scanning from top to bottom, she noted the extra-large letters that started each couplet — L-O-T-H-I-E-N-N-E. A place maybe? Or the title of an organization? Charles definitely hadn’t told her any work stories about a person named Lothienne; she would have remembered if he had. Of course, it could just be a stylistic choice and not mean anything at all.

As for the rest of the notes… she glanced around. There were the three notes the man had shown her before (which she’d tried to fit into the riddle just in case, but they didn’t seem to work). The rest didn’t seem to be bits of the puzzle either, but names. Maybe the ones mentioned in the fourth line? She counted. Eighty-seven names, first and last, just pasted there in the middle of the paper like it was supposed to mean something.

“One of the lost can still faintly recall,” she mused out loud. Then she shrugged. She didn’t know what it all meant, but she hoped that Charles would.

Standing on a chair so she could fit it all in one shot, Amelia took several pictures of her work on her phone. Then she scooped the papers back up into their grocery bag, placed that bag in a second plastic zipper bag from the mommy-and-me painting supplies caddie, and peeled off her gloves. She returned her magnets and whiteboard to their supply closet, then headed back out to the front desk to lock the bag safely in a drawer.

She was… delighted and frustrated all at once. Like how a cliffhanger made her feel at the end of a book in a series that wasn’t done being written. But worse, because while she could stalk her favorite authors’ websites and find out when their next books were coming out, she had no way to find the creepy note-stranger and demand further answers.

Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that even if she could, she wouldn’t. She was a reader of adventurous tales, not the subject of them. Besides, if she got herself tangled up in whatever dangerous scheme had that man so scared, Charles would have her hide. Solving the riddle itself was excitement enough, she decided.

Now, she was sure there was something she was supposed to…

Amelia glanced at her watch and swore. She had only twenty minutes to set up for the book signing! She checked her phone and groaned. The stupid thing was on silent for some reason, and she’d missed her alarm. Soon the notes were forgotten as Amelia raced to set up for her local author, who’d be arriving at the library any minute.

A Hoard of Tales: Episode 4

The next morning, when Amelia woke, Charles was already gone. Which wasn’t unusual. On workdays he rose long before the sun to clock in at the station. Crime apparently never slept? Rude.

Amelia yawned and stretched, lying spread-eagle for a moment and trying to claim every square inch of their large bed with her small frame. Then she scooted to the edge and picked up her phone.

Four messages.

There was a text from her boss asking her to run a background check on the new morph who’d volunteered to do story hour. Made sense. It was super fun having morphs read books to kids, as they could physically change their vocal cords and create distinct voices for every character. They didn’t want to unwittingly bring a creep around children, though, and Amelia made a mental note to see to it first thing when she arrived at the library. It shouldn’t be too hard to get a background check. She knew a guy. In fact, she was married to the guy.

The next was a text alert for an ebook sale, which she starred for later perusal (she needed more books like she needed a tear in her wing, buuuut… it didn’t hurt to look. Right?)

There was a message from her sister, Lucy, asking if she had Mom’s recipe for “stuff,” which was actually less vague than an outsider would assume. Yes, she did have Mom’s recipe for “stuff.” Do you want a photocopy, or will a list of ingredients suffice?

Finally, she opened Charles’ “Good morning, beautiful” text, and felt her cheek quirk in a soft smile. He’d punctuated it with a yellow heart and dragon emoji. He sent her a text like this every day that he wasn’t with her for morning tea and coffee. And seven years of marriage later, it still made her feel all warm down to her toes.

Amelia stretched again with a groan, then padded out to the kitchen to make herself some tea. She set the electric kettle to 195 degrees Fahrenheit — the perfect temperature for the black tea with bergamot she was craving. Then she ventured into the bathroom and turned on the shower to its very hottest setting. The water could have blistered a human, but was only just warm enough for Amelia’s liking. Charles had a second water heater installed two winters ago and shut off the temperature safety feature on both of them so Amelia could bask in a near-boiling deluge whenever she felt chilly. Call her crazy, but she was convinced that second water heater was the most romantic gift ever.

By the time she’d dried herself and dressed in a pair of faded jeans, ballet flats, button-up shirt, and cardigan, her tea was ready and her phone was chiming to usher her out the door.

Amelia had dozens of alarms set on her phone that went off at all hours of the day (much to Charles’ dismay). They were a necessary evil, unfortunately. She’d long since learned that she couldn’t be trusted to arrive anywhere on time if she was distracted by a new book or a podcast, as was all too often the case.

She took a hearty swig of scorching tea, grabbed her purse and keys, and hurried out the door.

***

Four hours later, Amelia teetered precariously halfway up a spindly spiral staircase to re-shelve a wayward mystery novel.

So far this morning she’d run a background check on their morph story time reader, overseen a mommy-and-me painting class, and helped a faerie woman access family history records from the interdimensional FaeFam database. She had a book signing to set up for later for a local author and was currently taking advantage of a lull in the day’s activities to get some books returned to their homes.

A soft tinkling noise up front told her that someone had arrived and wanted her attention at the front desk. So she climbed down quickly and brushed off the front of her blue cardigan before hurrying to help the patron.

“Welcome to the Valehaven Public Library. Can I help you find anything?”

The man standing by the front desk quickly dropped the brass nameplate he’d been holding. Its clatter was muffled by papers scattered across the desk.

Amelia Kevrinhart, Senior Librarian

That was her nameplate. Amelia’s brow furrowed. The man glanced around the room before leaning in close. His balding head was sweaty, and his breath came out in labored gasps. Curiosity — and just a touch of apprehension — tickled Amelia’s spine.

“Sir, are you alright? Do you need me to call someone?”

Her eyes roved over his attire, which was extremely worse for wear. He had several days’ stubble on his chin in a way that screamed neglect rather than style. Charles had a bit of scruff too, but he kept it neat and intentional. This unfortunate soul just looked like he hadn’t bathed in a week. Looked and smelled. The overpowering scents of stale smoke and alcohol lingered on him in a way that rarely boded well for anyone on a bright Tuesday morning. Amelia’s stomach twisted uncomfortably.

See? She thought to herself sternly. This is why you can’t ever again. Not even one.

There was more, though. Beneath the rough odor, Amelia smelled something… flowery. It was cloyingly sweet. Almost sickly. That saccharine scent seemed familiar, but was hard to make out without taking a deeper whiff. Which Amelia was not about to do. Her sharp dragon senses were already overpowered by the smell of a desperate man drowning his sorrows.

The man peeked over his shoulder again and stuffed his hands in his suspiciously bulging pockets. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t speak.

Amelia cleared her throat and smiled gently. “Is there a book I can help you find? Or a resource? If you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for, perhaps you could tell me your situation, and I’d be happy to let you know what’s available.”

The man opened his mouth and moved his lips for a moment. No sound came out. He tried again and nearly choked on the effort. He ran a hand through his oily hair and looked at Amelia with a pleading gaze. His rich brown eyes seemed like they might have been warm and inviting… once. Now they were just desperate.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Amelia, grimacing slightly from embarrassment. Perhaps the man could not talk? Or couldn’t hear her? She felt rude, but also wasn’t sure how she was supposed to help him if she didn’t know what he needed. “Could you… maybe write it down?”

To her surprise, the man nodded eagerly. Almost as if he’d been waiting for her to make that exact suggestion. Amelia reached for a pad of sticky notes and a pen, but the man waved her off. He pulled a wad of crumpled notes from his bulging pocket and shuffled through them as if looking for a specific one. When he found it, he let out a breath of relief, then checked over his shoulder again as if afraid they were being watched. Spooked by his wild behavior, Amelia looked around too. There was no one. The man pushed the note across the desk to her and gestured eagerly for her to pick it up and read.

Amelia did so and was surprised to find that it was a sheet of college-ruled paper, hastily torn out of a notebook, and covered with dozens of other tiny bits of paper, cut out and glued to the front in haphazard lines. Each piece had a letter that was a different color and font from the others. Together, the pieces formed words. It resembled how Amelia would have imagined an old-timey ransom note from a 99¢ detective novel.

Are you Amelia Kevrinhart, it read.

Amelia glanced up at the man and nodded slowly. “Yes, I am. Please, sir, I’d love to help, but…”

The man looked relieved and waved away her concern. Then he sifted through his notes again and slammed another one onto the desk before her. It too was made up of cut-out letters glued to a page. Amelia’s throat tightened, and her hands grew hot as she read.

Are you Detective Charlie Kevrinhart’s wife?

A Hoard of Tales: Episode 3

Amelia Kevrinhart reached into the four hundred degree oven and pulled out a sizzling pan of herb-roasted potatoes with her bare hands… and didn’t flinch.

She did gasp, but not from pain. The audiobook she’d been consuming on double speed had just hit a major plot twist, and her luminescent amber eyes grew to the size of dinner plates with excitement.

Amelia, you see, was a dragon shifter. Which explains not one, but two things.

First, the heat of the oven meant nothing to her. She’d pushed up the sleeves of her pale pink cardigan before reaching in, but only so she wouldn’t singe her cuffs. Her bare skin was not affected by the blistering temperatures.

Second, like all dragons, Amelia kept a hoard.

Some dragons hoard jewels, and others hoard swords. Back in the old days — before they’d learned what an implant of gold could do — many dragons hoarded golden treasure. That was out of fashion now, though, and the new “it” thing was hoarding various computer systems and cutting-edge software.

Amelia was different. She didn’t hoard stuff.

She hoarded stories.

If you visited her home in the suburbs of Valehaven and saw the floor-to-ceiling shelves of books on every wall, you could be forgiven for assuming she hoarded books. But what Amelia truly collected were the intangible tales that lived between those pages. Untouchable, but every bit as real to her.

Amelia had seen what physical hoards could do to a dragon. The way they bred greed and malice in the hearts of her older family members and turned them into shells of themselves. She didn’t want that — had never wanted that — and she’d already experienced quite enough loss in her life, thank you very much. So while she’d be sad if something terrible ever happened to her books, she wouldn’t be ruined by the loss the way another dragon might.

Traditionalists found her “imaginary” hoard strange, but Amelia didn’t care. She loved her stories, and when she shared them with her husband, Charles, he brought them to life with his illusions. Which made her love them all the more.

When she wasn’t sharing stories with Charles, she shared them with their city. Amelia worked at the Valehaven Public Library and had an arsenal of cardigans to prove it. As if to match the vibe of cardigans, her human form was that of a soft, bookish woman with bright blond hair that fell in short, loose waves around her face. Her reflective, liquid-amber eyes were the most dragonish part of her human form, and they were framed with tiny crinkles that she’d earned prematurely from copying the expressions that book characters made while she read.

The front door clicked and creaked. Amelia smiled. She double-tapped her earbud to pause her book and rushed to the front door — to the only man who would ever make her happy to pause a book in the middle of a jaw-dropping development.

“Chuck!” she cried, before throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him breathlessly.

“Hey Millie,” replied her husband against her lips. He slid an arm around her waist, and his tone turned sly. “You’ll never guess what I brought home for you.”

Amelia pulled back, eyes wide and hands resting on Charles’ chest. “Another story?!”

Charles grinned and bopped her nose. “You betcha, baby. Today we got the Sweetheart Siren, and you’ll never guess who it ended up being.”

Amelia squealed and punched the air with delight. Charles laughed. She wanted to hear the tale right away, but he insisted he needed a shower. So while he cleaned up, Amelia devoured another chapter of her audiobook.

Apparently, the protagonist had known about his father’s evil schemes all along, and had only been pretending to be mad in order to glean information and bring down the wicked king’s empire from within! Stellar stuff.

Charles emerged from his shower, wearing loose black sweatpants and a snug gray t-shirt that was darker in spots across his shoulders from the wetness of his dripping brown hair.

“Whodunit?” he asked, and Amelia beamed. The question was a small thing, but it showed her he genuinely cared about her and the things she found exciting. (Even if those things were fictional stories in fantasy worlds that didn’t really exist.)

Amelia set plates and forks on the table, then brought over two steaming cast-iron pans — one with steak, and the other with potatoes. “Turns out Prince Nerrum knew about the conspiracy the whole time and was actually just pretending to be crazy, but never mind that now. I want to hear your story!”

Charles smiled and began heaping food onto his plate. “Right,” he said, “well, you know how the Sweetheart Siren has been running that drug ring in Lower Valehaven down by the Mirror Ports?”

“Of course,” replied Amelia, who kept up to date on every article the Crypticonsortium published, as well as every work story her husband would share. There were some that he wasn’t willing to share, but only ever for good reason. Sometimes detective work required confidentiality. Other times it was too grisly for Amelia to stomach.

“Based on the leads we got, how would you describe the Siren?” asked Charles.

“Hmmm,” said Amelia, tapping her fork against her lip while she thought. “I’d say average height, but very curvy. Late-thirties. Red hair and redder lips. Super sultry.”

As she spoke, an illusion of her exact description materialized in front of them. The woman blinked heavily-lidded eyes and glanced around the room as if bored. Her chest moved with illusioned breath, and her hair even shifted slightly from the overhead fan. The only thing Charles couldn’t replicate were the sounds she would have made if she’d been real. Still, she looked so lifelike that had Amelia not been so used to her husband’s magic, she probably would have screamed from fright. Instead, she just nodded at the figure. “Yeah, like that,” she said, “but maybe a little more wily-looking in the eyes. She is a drug lord, after all.”

“Is she now?” asked Charles, face stoic, though his eyes sparkled mischievously.

Sweet, sweet Portals. Those were the words of a man about to reveal a plot twist!

“Well, isn’t she?!” demanded Amelia.

“I wouldn’t exactly call the Siren a she. Picture them a little more like… this.”

The bombshell of a woman before them expanded and distorted until standing before them was an absolute walrus of a man.

“What?!” gasped Amelia. “But you said even the Siren’s employees described them the way I did!”

“They did,” agreed Charles. “And turns out this guy’s one heck of a siren. They knew he wasn’t like that at all, but he made them so desperate for his approval that they were willing to describe him like this, even under oath. In fact, I think a few of the inner circle even started to believe it. Serg expects those ones to plead magical insanity in court.”

“No!” gasped Amelia. “Tell me everything.” She rested her chin on her hands and stared at her husband with wide, expectant eyes. Her dinner lay utterly forgotten.

Charles chuckled and popped a large bite of steak into his mouth before obliging. He told his tale between bites of food, and wove an illusion while he talked, illustrating the story in exquisite detail for Amelia.

She almost felt like she was right there next to him as the sting went down, and adrenaline tickled her stomach in the most delightful way. In return, she was the perfect audience — gasping and groaning and laughing at all the right moments. There had likely never been a man whose wife was so genuinely interested in how his day had gone.

Later that night, Amelia reviewed her stories in her mind as she brushed her teeth and dressed in her blue donut pajamas — both the audiobook she’d listened to and the story Charles brought home. She had an excellent memory, but she didn’t want to miss a single detail, so she thought them both through very carefully before tucking them away in her Hoard and padding down the hallway from the bathroom to their bedroom.

She gritted her teeth as she passed the unremarkable second door on the left in the hallway.

Don’t look at it. Don’t think about it. Don’t dwell on what’s behind that locked door.

When she arrived at her own bedroom, Amelia breathed a sigh of relief and peeled her fingers from the fists they’d been trapped in. Glancing down, she noticed eight little half-moons of white imprinted into the palms of her hands from her nails. The back of her throat burned with grief, and she wished for something — the wrong thing — to ease the ache.

Maybe just one…

“No,” she said firmly. “It’s just a door, and it can’t hurt you.”

That was a stupid thing to say. She knew it was just a door… and it hurt her all the same.

Not tonight, though. She could do this. She could be strong enough.

Amelia forced herself to step into her own bedroom and noticed the dark, lumpy mass of her husband shifting slightly as he breathed deeply. She’d taken a while to get ready, and he’d clearly dozed off after his long day. His phone was still glowing softly in one of his hands, a word puzzle pinging to tell him it was his turn to lay a tile.

Amelia gently dislodged the phone from his hand and plugged it in. Then she double-checked her morning alarms, turned on the fan for white noise, and snuggled under the covers. Next to her, Charles’ snores faded for a moment as he reached out an arm to pull her in close.

“Love you, Mill,” he mumbled before lapsing into snores yet again.

Amelia yawned and felt her mouth twitch in a soft, sad smile. “I love you too, Chuck,” she replied, even though he couldn’t hear her.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she was soon fast asleep.

— Seven Weeks Earlier —

Detective Charles Kevrinhart of the Valehaven Police Department stepped into the armory at the end of a grueling, fourteen-hour shift to the sound of scattered applause and catcalls from his squad.

“Eyyy, lover boy! Heard you brought down the Sweetheart Siren with one of her own tricks! Very classy.”

“I heard she was wily as a dryad and twice as hot.”

“Pity she couldn’t lure you to shave that sorry excuse for a beard, Chuckles. It’s an embarrassment.”

Charles waved off the cheers and ribbing with one tired hand, but couldn’t help the wide grin that spread across his face. He’d been tracking this particular criminal for nearly four months and was thrilled to have finally made the arrest.

“He, actually,” said Charles’ partner, Samuel McClemmons, as he stepped into the armory behind him. “And no. Turns out the Sweetheart Siren is a fat, old, hairy dude. So unless you’re into that kind of thing, Putter…”

Samuel smirked, and Charles snorted a laugh. Which was fitting, as they were known in the department by the monikers of Smirk and Chuckles. The pair were a dynamic duo and the golden boys of the Valehaven police force — decorated hotshots who kept crime in check and ensured gray hairs on their captain’s head remained abundant. They claimed the silver streaks gave her a dignified air; their werewolf captain counterclaimed they were gigantic pains in her backside. She grudgingly admitted that they were worth their keep, though, as Charles was an accomplished illusionist, and Samuel was a level seven curse breaker. Between the two of them, they could build up a sting and tear down a criminal like nobody’s business.

The officer who’d asked about the Siren’s physique smacked his forehead at Smirk’s declaration, while a light-haired faun to his right held out a hand expectantly.

“Told you it’d be a dude, Putter,” the faun said. “Siren magic has nothing to do with looking like a dame, and you know it. Pay up.”

“I know, I know, but would it kill ‘em to bring in something pretty to look at once in a while?” Putter swore under his breath and pulled out his wallet, offering the winner of the bet a crisp fifty-dollar bill. The faun pocketed it with a self-congratulatory smile.

“You want pretty, go be pretty yourself!” huffed a dwarf in tactical armor, and catcalls sounded throughout the room once more. The dwarf, Hasdrin, continued in a mock-serious tone, “I can get you a mirror if you wanna make kissy faces at it.”

A tall woman with cropped white hair, pointed ears, and smooth brown skin slammed a magazine into her handgun and shook her head. “Absolute children, the lot of you.” Her faint accent was neither Cohllian nor Fae, but had subtle traces of both.

Putter swatted at the dwarf and shot the woman a sheepish smile. “Sorry, serg,” he mumbled.

The night elf sergeant just rolled her eyes and began disassembling a rifle for cleaning.

The dwarf’s suggestion had been gross, but not unfounded. Putter, you see, was a morph, and could make his own appearance look like, well… like anything. Anything organic, that is. He’d earned his name by forever getting assigned to stakeouts while in disguise, and spending hundreds of hours on the job simply puttering about, waiting for his target to make an appearance.

Charles and Samuel walked over to their lockers, receiving a few celebratory claps on the shoulders as they went, and began stripping off their department-issued gear. Their duty belts held an eclectic assortment of tools — an array that only law enforcement officers from one of the fae sanctuary cities would find useful. Steel cuffs for humans and iron cuffs for fae, a 9mm Glock with elemental magic resistant bullets, a taser, glamour ray, military grade pepper spray, hobgoblin repellent, and an assortment of charmed smoke bombs that could slow minor curses or reveal recently cast hexes. Charles removed his body cam with magic-sensing infrared and docked it on the charger in the port with his badge number on it. Next came his cross-realm radio that could transmit all the way to Sovra’an (if his location in Valehaven overlapped with that of the person he was trying to contact in the Fae realm). Then he shrugged out of his bulletproof vest and removed the bracers that protected him from magical mental manipulation.

He sniffed his sweaty T-shirt and grimaced. Great kings, he stank like a bridge troll.

“Yo, Chuckles,” called one of the men. “We’re going to Merlin’s for a drink after shift. Buy you a round to celebrate?”

Charles glanced over his shoulder while he pulled a wadded-up flannel out of his locker and tugged it on over his undershirt. He ran a hand through his dirty brown hair and down his scruffy jaw. “Nah. Thanks, man. I’ve gotta hot date.”

“Lookin’ a little rough for a hot date, brother.”

Charles grinned and shook his head. Luckily, his “date” would not be perturbed by his disheveled state. She might wrinkle her cute little button nose, but she’d run into his arms and kiss him soundly all the same.

Charles leaned over to Samuel. “She’s making steak and potatoes tonight,” he said under his breath. “Told me to tell you that you’re welcome to stop by for a bite.”

Smirk rolled his eyes and stood, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. “Tell your wife to stop mothering me, Chuck. She’s gonna give herself an ulcer the way she fusses.”

“Ahhh, she just knows I’d be a disaster without her. She probably thinks we’re enough alike that you’re hovering on your deathbed even now.”

Samuel smirked. “I’m not dead yet. Though if I do keel over, I’ll be sure to haunt you first and give you the good news. Tonight I’m drinking a beer and going to sleep. Tell Millie thanks for me, though. I’ll stop by on Sunday if the invitation’s still open.”

“It always is, Smirk. You know that.”

“That I do,” said Samuel, tapping his fist on his friend’s shoulder before closing his locker with a slam and walking out the door into the cool evening air.

Charles quickly packed his own bag and hurried into the parking lot, feeling tired, sore, and more than ready to be home. His day had been fulfilling, but the best part was still yet to come. He had a steak to eat and a dragon to kiss.

As he drove home, windows down and a melodic house mix streaming via Bluetooth through the speakers of his SUV, Charles breathed in deep and slow, savoring the scents of the city that was his home.

Little did he know that across town a hunted man was on the run, with a list of names, a bag of letters, and three words that supported his fragile hopes like a fading Portal feebly winking on its last Shift…

“Detective Charlie Kevrinhart.”

A faun wearing scrubs and a fleece-lined hoodie scrolled on his phone with a bored expression. The monitors surrounding him beeped softly in concert, and the one-way glass in front of him depicted a rather dismal scene.

The woman on the cot in the small medical room wore a thin hospital gown but no blanket, and her shallow breaths puffed out of her nose in tiny frosted clouds. Her lips were blue from the cold, and her golden-blond hair lay tangled and lank on the paper sheet below her. Hands, feet, waist, and forehead were secured to the cot with wide leather straps, and scabbed-over incisions dotted her body every six inches from head to toe. She had an IV in her hand and a feeding tube in her nose.

The harshly lit room had no decorations, no flowers from loved ones, and no chair for visitors. Because this woman was not a patient.

She was a prisoner.

The door behind the faun banged open, and he swiveled in his office chair, raising an eyebrow at the newcomer. A burly minotaur edged in sideways, as if worried he wouldn’t fit through the door walking normally. He sat on the other chair in the observation room, which looked comically small under his girth, the pitiful plastic groaning slightly in protest. The minotaur ran his hands up and down his heavily muscled arms.

“Don’t know why you always gotta keep it so shift-snared cold in here,” he grumbled.

The faun rolled his eyes. “You know why, Bent. You’ve just gotta find reasons to complain.”

“Think you’ll turn the heat up once her implants heal?”

The faun sighed. “I don’t know, man. She’s dangerous. Higher-ups say it’s best to keep her cold. Keep her docile.”

The minotaur, Bent, snorted. “Her entire body is the size of my forearm.”

“First, your forearm is freaking huge, so that doesn’t mean much,” said the faun. “And second, she’s a kings-cursed dragon, you moron. She may not look like much now, but if she shifts, it’s over. For all of us.”

“Well, it ain’t over yet, Nick. The Boss wants to know when she’ll be ready for another extraction,” said Bent.

Nick snorted. “Tell the blasted fae to go suck a tire iron. How am I supposed to know?” His companion raised a single bovine eyebrow, to which the faun swore and tossed his phone on the control panel. “I was kidding, okay?” Nick snapped. He paused for a moment before adding quietly, “Please don’t tell him I said that.”

Bent nodded, and the faun looked relieved. “Your secret’s safe with me, goat boy. But it’s been three days, and he’s getting impatient.”

“It’s my job to keep her alive,” said Nick. “And those extractions are brutal. I know he needs intel, but sucking her dry doesn’t exactly make my job any easier. A dead girl won’t do him any good.”

The minotaur raised his vast hands in surrender. “Hey, don’t hex the messenger. I’m just saying, whatever you’ve gotta do to get her ready, do it. Because you’ve got a day, maybe two, then you’ve gotta start ‘er all over again.”

“Oh joy,” replied the faun in a paper dry-tone, his sarcasm serving as a rather ineffective mask for his anxiety.

Bent stood, and his chair whined in relief. He walked back to the door and paused by the threshold. “Thirty-six hours, Nick. I can’t promise you any more than that.”

Nick nodded. “Thanks,” he said softly.

Bent nodded back and squeezed out the door.

Inside the medical room, the blonde woman shifted slightly on her paper sheet. She could hear… things. Vaguely, as if from deep under water. People? People said… words. Words made… stories. And stories — she swallowed and nearly choked on her own dry tongue — well, stories were important. Very important.

Maybe?

An empty part of her mind, where something significant had once been, ached like the loss of a limb. Like the loss of a loved one. She wished she knew what that empty bit was. Or rather, what it had been. Her forehead wrinkled from the effort of trying to remember. The empty part was like… like a smell from childhood, but one you couldn’t quite place.

She wasn’t just empty, though. She felt weak and cold. So very bitterly cold. But she couldn’t even shiver. Could hardly think. And — molten rot — she hurt. What was that pulsing source of acrid, metallic pain? Was it coming from inside her skin? She was… was…

Wait.

Who was she?

She was sure she’d had a name… before.

Inside the observation room, Nick noticed his charge stirring. He pressed a button to release a potent sedative into her IV — a dangerously strong combination of propofol, etomidate, and distilled naiad tears — then documented the time and dose in her chart. He double checked her heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. All within normal limits.

He breathed a shallow sigh of relief. So long as he did his job well, he stayed in the Boss’s good graces. Which meant that right now, the soft steady beeping of the woman’s heart monitor was the most beautiful sound it the world.

These moments of semi-wakefulness were happening less frequently since her implant surgery two days ago. Which was great news for him. The more she rested, the quicker she’d heal, and the more she healed between extractions, the less his own life was on the line.

Lothienne is just a man; get a grip on yourself, Nick sternly reminded himself, picking up his phone again as a distraction from his churning stomach.

The lecture might have helped… if it had been true. Unfortunately, the fae mob boss of Valehaven could hardly be called “just a man.”