How to Date Your Dragon E-Book

Molly Harper

• Herausgeber: NYLA
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 338

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The first book in Molly Harper's uproariously funny, sinfully sexy new Mystic Bayou series! Anthropologist Jillian Ramsay's career has taken a turn south. Concerned that technology is about to chase mythological creatures out into the open (how long can Sasquatch stay hidden from Google maps?), the League for Interspecies Cooperation is sending Jillian to Louisiana on a fact-finding mission. While the League hopes to hold on to secrecy for a little bit longer, they're preparing for the worst in terms of human reactions. They need a plan, so they look to Mystic Bayou, a tiny town hidden in the swamp where humans and supernatural residents have been living in harmony for generations. Mermaids and gator shifters swim in the bayou. Spirit bottles light the front porches after twilight. Dragons light the fires under crayfish pots. Jillian's first assignment for the League could be her last. Mystic Bayou is wary of outsiders, and she has difficulty getting locals to talk to her. And she can't get the gruff town sheriff, Bael Boone, off of her back or out of her mind. Bael is the finest male specimen she's seen in a long time, even though he might not be human. Soon their flirtation is hotter than a dragon's breath, which Bael just might turn out to be... This book is based on the Audible Original audiobook.

Leseprobe

HOW TO DATE YOUR DRAGON

MOLLY HARPER

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. Jillian

2. Jillian

3. Bael

4. Jillian

5. Bael

6. Jillian

7. Jillian

8. Bael

9. Jillian

10. Bael

11. Jillian

12. Jillian

13. Bael

14. Jillian

15. Jillian

16. Bael

17. Jillian

18. Bael

Sneak Peek at Book 2, LOVE AND OTHER WILD THINGS

Sneak Peek at WITCHES GET STUFF DONE

Also by Molly Harper

About the Author

COPYRIGHT

This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

How to Date Your Dragon

Copyright © 2018 by Molly Harper

Ebook ISBN:9781641970488

Print ISBN: 9781723247347

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

This ebook is based on an Audible Original audiobook.

No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

NYLA Publishing

121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10001

http://www.nyliterary.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am so very grateful for the series of fortunate events that led to this project. My endless appreciation, as ever, to Natanya Wheeler, who created this opportunity from thin air. Thanks go to Rose Hilliard, she of the infinite enthusiasm and author of the gentlest editorial letters ever – who didn’t even flinch when I asked, “What if we use ALL the shifters … and some creatures people haven’t even heard of?” And thanks to author Jaye Wells, who helped me come up with a better name for the series than, “That Audio Series I Can’t Seem to Come Up With a Good Name For.” And thank you to Louisiana State University and Cajunradio.org, for the online resources they have provided regarding Cajun French phrases and pronunciations. And as always, thank you to my family, who support me through my writing benders with chocolate and bottomless cups of tea.

1

JILLIAN

Jillian Ramsay, PhD, was driving a panel van without air-conditioning through an area known as the Devil’s Armpit.

She wished that was an exaggeration, or a misprint on the map. But there it was, in bold print on the highway sign, “You are entering the Devil’s Armpit.”

She supposed she should be thankful that her destination wasn’t the Devil’s Armpit, an unusually sulfurous section of southern Louisiana that smelled of rotten eggs and damnation, but a small town just beyond it—Mystic Bayou. She hoped the more attractive name also indicated a more appealing odor. Dr. Montes hadn’t left anything in his field notes about bringing air fresheners with him. But then again, she’d come to learn Dr. Montes’s methods were less polished than anyone hoped.

Jillian fanned her face and dabbed at the perspiration dotting her upper lip. The air-conditioning had crapped out within fifteen minutes of her leaving the New Orleans airport, but after a flight from Chile involving two layovers and a lengthy argument with customs over her audio-video equipment, she just didn’t have any fight left in her.

She rolled down the window, just a crack, hoping the muggy late May air would be cooler than the interior of the van. Almost immediately, her nostrils were flooded with the smell of what could only be described as Satan’s BO.

“Mistake! Huge error in judgment!” she gasped.

Jillian rolled up the window, her hands so sweaty that her fingers actually slipped off of the handle a few times before she sealed herself inside the van. Eager for some form of odor-free distraction, she used her hands-free dialer to call Sonja Fong at the League office. She grumbled as the call went to voicemail, again. But when the machine went beep, Jillian tried to make her tone more suited for a friend she was actually fond of, as opposed to a telemarketer.

“Hey, Sonja, it’s me again. I’d really appreciate a call back, so maybe you could explain to me what’s really going on back there. The League keeps assuring me that everything’s just fine, as they turn my life completely upside down. But I keep getting the feeling I’m a heroine in one of those awful seventies horror movies, where the unwitting outsider ends up a human sacrifice. Cell phone reception is getting pretty spotty, so if you can, call back soon. Love you, bye.”

Jillian pursed her lips. This was not a very auspicious beginning to her first real field assignment. She’d flown all the way to Santiago, only to get a call that her mentor and boss had been seriously injured on his assignment in northern England, and the International League for Interspecies Cooperation was sending her in his place to southern Louisiana. Her in-depth study of the mohana and their mating habits would just have to wait.

All that background reading on malevolent sex-obsessed dolphin shapeshifters for nothing.

Nearly an hour later, Jillian had sweated completely through her clothes and was beginning to worry that she was lost. The gnarled trees dripping with Spanish moss were all starting to look the same. She was pretty sure she’d passed a carnation-pink shack on stilts twice, and she’d realized those “logs” resting against the banks of the swamp, dangerously close to the road, had legs and very large jaws. She was beyond jet-lagged, couldn’t remember her last application of deodorant and was starting to think maybe the League could go jump into the murky, gator-filled water looming on either side of the highway.

Just as Jillian started to search for a place to either do a three-point turn or sleep for the night, another sign came into view. It read, Welcome to Mystic Bayou, Home of the Fighting Marsh Dogs, over a caricature of a large rat with its fists raised a la the Fighting Irish.

Jillian nodded. “OK, then.”

Maybe it was better for her to stay lost.

Jillian opened the van window again, hoping that maybe the air in Mystic Bayou was more palatable. She took a tentative breath. She could almost taste the sweetness on the air, redolent with honeysuckle and dried grass and earth. She took several gulps of it, lifting her mass of honey blond hair off her sweaty neck. She balked at the reflection in the rearview mirror, wondering who let that pale, sweaty woman with the under-eye luggage into the driver’s seat.

She was due to meet her community liaison in just a few minutes and she was a mess. Maybe she could duck into the back of the van to freshen up before she met Mayor Berend? That was something legitimate scientists did, right? Change their clothes in vans?

The town quickly came into view in that “suddenly there are buildings and if you blink you will miss them all” way unique to tiny rural towns. Main Street was pretty much the only street from what Jillian could see, with the occasional short side street branching out into clusters of two to three small homes. Dr. Montes had written that few families lived in town, preferring to keep almost clannish compounds in the outlying areas of the county and only venturing into town limits for errands.

Main Street led to a town square centered on a gazebo, and, behind that, a large white-washed building topped with a golden shape she couldn’t quite make out. The street boasted a freshly painted collection of businesses with flower baskets hanging from every surface, giving the town a cheerful, neatly kept air. Aside from the inordinate number of them that seemed to involve taxidermy, there was a bank, a boat dealership, a grocery, an “apothecary,” a beauty salon, a book shop, a newspaper called the Mystic Messenger, and finally, Bathtilda’s Pie Shop, which boasted the world's best chocolate rhubarb pie. Jillian had never heard of chocolate rhubarb pie, but frankly it sounded a bit gross. Each business had a little addition under the shop name stating, “Owned and Operated by Bonner Boone” or “Owned and Operated by Branwyn Boone,” or in the sweet shop’s case, “Bathtilda Boone.” Was every business in town owned by a Boone?

Dr. Montes’s instructions were to go to City Hall, which appeared to be the tall, white building at the end of the street. With a gold spire rising from a bell tower-like structure on the roof, it was the tallest building in town. As she drove closer, she spotted a gold-and-green SUV marked “Sheriff” parked out front, next to a rather large Harley Davidson with custom-painted claw marks raking down the body.

She parked the cursed van in an empty spot, near the fountain that stood across from Mystic Bayou City Hall’s door. She glanced down the street at the sweet shop and wondered if she could duck in unnoticed and change clothes in the restroom. It would probably cause a bit of a stir. She couldn’t imagine a town like this got a lot of tourists hauling luggage into public restrooms with them. But it would be better than⁠—

Jillian shrieked. “What the hell!”

A huge man in an extremely tight black t-shirt and even tighter jeans was staring at her through her driver side window. He stood several inches taller than the van, and his hands were the size of picnic hams. He had thick, wildly curling black hair tied back in a ponytail and a matching beard that spread across his barrel chest. His smoke gray eyes seemed to penetrate through the window glass, making her shiver despite the muggy heat.

He raised a hand, and it was all she could do not to flinch. “Hi, there.”

A friendly grin spread across his face, warming his features as he waggled a massive hand.

Should she roll down the window? Was it safe? At this point, it would be rude not to, but she’d always read that a woman traveling alone should ignore their instincts to be polite and err on the side of not letting an enormous man pull her through a van window and onto the human trafficking market.

OK, yes, this was becoming terribly awkward. She rolled down the window. “Can I help you?”

“Dr. Ramsay?” his voice boomed, practically shaking her van windows. “I saw you from the sweet shop window, thought I should come over and introduce myself proper.”

Jillian sagged against her seat in relief. “Oh, thank you, but I’m just here to meet the mayor. Mayor Zed Berend?”

“Yeah, you right!” The man grinned again, showing perfectly white, razor-sharp canines. “You must be the League doctor. Bienvenue!”

Without an invitation, he yanked the van door open and pulled Jillian to her feet. He gripped her much smaller fingers in his very warm, very rough hand. Jillian stared up at him, mouth slightly agape. This was the mayor of Mystic Bayou? He looked more likely to be driving a long-haul truck route or forging lightning bolts on Mount Olympus. Who had dared challenge him for the position? Did he chew all of the ballots in half to remove his opponent from the election?

“Everybody’s been waitin’ for you to show up,” he told her. “Well, they were waitin’ for Dr. Montes, but they’ll be just as happy with you. I can’t say the whole town is gonna be thrilled that you’re here, but like my maman always said, learnin’ never hurt nobody. The guy at the League office said I have to sign a buncha papers before you can get started? Didn’t I already sign enough? Y’all tryin’ to steal my house and my firstborn?”

Jillian laughed at the rapid-fire questions. “No, but with Dr. Montes being replaced so quickly, the League just wanted to make sure the paperwork reflected the appropriate names, in case issues came up later.”

Like the “issues” that came up with the cave troll study in the Reykjavik sewers. No one liked to talk about the incident that led to a League scientist being mailed back to headquarters in a shoebox, not even for training purposes. Jillian shuddered.

“What happened to Dr. Montes anyway?” Zed asked. “He was plenty keen to hit the ground runnin’ and then he just stopped callin.’”

Jillian chewed her lip and tried to compose an appropriate answer. Currently Dr. Montes was in a League-funded ICU, ten stories below the surface of London, recovering from a unicorn impalement to the gut. Jillian couldn’t imagine what he could have done to provoke that response from a unicorn. Hector Montes was a senior member of the paranormal anthropological staff. He wrote an actual book on approaching and interacting with sapient creatures. How had Dr. Montes underestimated the will (or the ticklishness) of a creature as old as a unicorn? Had he become too arrogant to consider his subject’s feelings? Or had his clammy hands, combined with breath that smelled of old coffee and gingivitis, pushed the unicorn into a panic?

Zed was staring at her, waiting for an answer.

“Oh, um, he ran into some medical problems and couldn’t travel,” Jillian said, smiling through the awkward lie. “It happens sometimes. But I assure you, Dr. Montes trained me in field work. I’m fully qualified to handle this.”

He jerked his shoulders. “Oh, I’m sure y’are, cher. No worries. You’ve probably taken dozens of these research trips, right?”

Jillian cleared her throat. “Well, not exactly.”

Zed paused and tilted his enormous head toward her. “How many have you taken?”

Jillian pursed her lips and admitted, “One.”

Zed asked, “One before Mystic Bayou?”

Jillian shook her head. “No, just this one.”

Zed’s cheerful demeanor faded. “You’ve never done this before?

“I was heading out on my first assignment in South America before the League called me back in and redirected me here,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve studied the process over and over. I’ve collected and interpreted other researchers’ data… This is just the first time I’ve done it on my own.”

Zed practically deflated, leaning against her van with a dumbfounded expression. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I just don’t know about this, Doc. It was hard enough to talk my neighbors into participatin’ when they knew that they were gonna be dealing with an expert. I just don’t know how people are gonna react to someone your age, without any real experience.”

“Well, we don’t exactly have to include that information when I introduce myself. I’m not planning on handing out copies of my CV to random citizens,” she protested.

Zed’s cheerful demeanor returned full force. “Good point, smart lady. If I’ve learned anything since takin’ office, it’s that less is more when it comes to information and your public image. It’s why I deleted my Facebook. Nothin’ good can come from your constituents knowin’ you unfriended them.”

The radiating heat of his hand on her elbow as he led her into the building had her sweating even more. She cast a mournful look over her shoulder, to the van, where fresh clothes and her trusty dry shampoo were waiting in her bag.

Zed shrugged. “We’ll just have to see how things play out. I’magine you’re pretty tired after all that flyin’. The sheriff says there’s nothing like it, but I never took to it. Prefer to keep my paws on the ground, if ya know what I mean.”

Zed flung the heavy wooden door open so fast Jillian didn’t get a chance to study its carved details. He led her into an open office, divided into sections with lines on the floor. One corner was marked “Revenue” with gold lines. Another was marked “Public Works” with green lines. “Schools and Social Services” was marked in red and “Everything Else” was marked with blue.

“The whole parish government operates from this one room?” she marveled.

Zed seemed very pleased with himself as he pointed to the various departments. “Well, I get my own office over there and the sheriff gets his own office on the opposite side. But it works just fine. We don’t have much room here and it keeps things simple if we can just holler at each other from across a room instead of callin’ and leavin’ messages and cursin’ the voicemail and gettin’ so stirred up you can’t remember why you called in the first place. End-of-work was a little while ago, but usually this place is a beehive. Theresa Anastas keeps us all lined up and running without smacking into each other. She runs the Everything Else department. Gigi Grandent—she’s a seventy-seven-year-old human and more terrifying than I could ever be—runs Public Works with an iron fist. Mr. Chiron retired as superintendent, but he’s good at keepin’ the schools running. And Betchel Boone may be a bit of couillon but no one can keep the books balanced like he can.”

“Boone? As in the family that seems to own all of the businesses in town?” She gestured toward the street.

Zed grinned. “Caught that, did ya? Nice enough folks, the Boones, I suppose. They’re used to gettin’ their way and get plenty fired up if they don’t. We let ‘em throw their money around because it makes them happy and keeps the town in clover. And then we mostly get things done when they’re not around.”

A sharp voice interrupted him, “Not all of us are like that, Zed.”

Zed’s cheeks went a little pink under his beard, when another man, lean and tall with almost preternaturally sharp cheek bones appeared in the doorway marked, “Sheriff’s Department. Check all firearms with the mayor before knocking.” The man’s light hair was shorn close, which only emphasized his large, amber-colored eyes and sharp features. He was wearing a tan police uniform and a gun belt that seemed to have a lot of “extras,” but Jillian wasn’t super-familiar with law enforcement gear… And she was staring at his narrow waist, which he had noticed. Awkward.

Zed shook off his embarrassment by flashing that winsome grin again.

“’Course not. Sheriff, you are the exception to all the rules,” he said in a condescending, teasing tone. “Dr. Ramsay, this is Sheriff Boone. Sheriff, this is Dr. Jillian Ramsay.”

“Sheriff, I’m pleased to meet you.” Jillian did not reach out to shake his hand, another etiquette issue. Some species of the supernatural world, like the Irish spriggans, could lose their glamour when touched by humans, so casual physical touch with strangers was taboo. Also, some species, like the rainforest-dwelling nagual were extremely prone to colds and therefore a little germaphobic.

The Sheriff said nothing. He simply stared at her with those strange eyes of his, as if he was categorizing her every freckle and flaw.

Zed sighed. “I told you all about her, Boone. Twice. This is the doctor that’s gonna be studyin’ how well we run things in our little town, so she can help other little towns do the same,” Zed said, in a tone that was probably meant to evoke some sort of friendly response.

Instead, the sheriff growled, “Seems to me that those towns should figure that out for themselves.”

Jillian scoffed, “Well, that’s an interesting approach to interspecies cooperation.”

The sheriff crossed his rangy arms over his broad chest. “Never said I planned on any approach.”

Zed cleared his throat. “Doc, you got those papers for me to sign? I’ll leave you two to your howd’ya do’s.”

Jillian reached into her enormous canvas shoulder bag, handed him a carefully labeled manila envelope full of reprinted paperwork. Zed opened the sheaf of official documents and beamed at her. “I get to use my official mayor stamp. I love doin’ that.”

Boone muttered, “To a point that might embarrass any other man.”

Ignoring the sheriff, Zed strode into his office. Jillian turned her head toward the sheriff. The hair elastic keeping her thick blond mop off of her neck gave up the fight. It snapped and her hair fell around her face like a slightly damp gold curtain. The sheriff’s eyes flashed and not with annoyance at the mayor. There were actual rays of light shining behind his irises. Which she now realized were longer, and narrower than average, like a cat’s. He had to be a shifter of some sort. The mayor also had “double corporeal forms” written all over him, for that matter. But there were far too many varieties to guess just from eye shape or build. From what Jillian understood of shifter etiquette—or any other sort of etiquette, really—it was rude to ask someone, “so what are you?”

So, she would just have to wait.

“Sheriff Boone. Do you have a first name? Is there a reason the mayor doesn’t seem to use it?”

The sheriff cleared his throat. “’Course I do. I’m Bael Boone. And the mayor doesn’t use it, because he likes to needle my ass at every opportunity.”

“I sure do!” Zed called from the next room.

“I’m sorry. Did you say Bill Boone?” she asked.

“Bael.”

Jillian repeated what she heard, “Bill.”

“Bael.”

Jillian shook her head. “I don't understand. It’s not Bill?”

The sheriff was starting to look annoyed, or, at least, more annoyed. “No. Ba-el.”

“I could swear that’s what I’m saying.”

“No, B-A-E-L. Bael.”

Jillian would admit that, at this point, she was needling him just a little bit. She had an excellent ear for accents, but very little patience or politeness left in her.

“Sorry about that. I guess it will take me some time to adjust to the accents.”

Bael sniffed, “Well, it will take us just as long to get used to yours.”

Jillian watched the sheriff’s angular face carefully. Clearly, he was amongst the people who were “not all that thrilled” with Jillian’s presence in town. And given the Boone family’s apparent stranglehold on the town’s economy, that pricked at Jillian’s distrust.

No, she was a scientist. She wouldn’t let preconceived notions or her discomfort in having someone attempt to stare through her skew her opinions.

“Well, I’m here to stay, Sheriff, at least for a while, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity.” She smirked at him.

Bael jerked his shoulders. “I just don’t see the point in it, is all.”

Jillian’s brows drew together. “Your town represents one of the few settlements where supernatural creatures from nearly all cultures live and work together in relative peace, and have for generations. The League expects humanity to stumble on ‘the secret’ of the otherworldly any day now. The Loch Ness monster can’t hide from Google maps forever. And when one domino falls, so will another and then another, until everyone knows that it’s all real. Werewolves, fairies, shifters, spirits, mermaids, witches, all of their fairy tale nightmares come true. Don’t you think it would be better if they had information on how other communities overcame their differences instead of running around in a blind panic and well, act out the whole ‘War of the Worlds’ phenomenon all over again.”

Despite her impassioned speech, Bael was not moved. “I’m just sayin’ that no good has ever come from people havin’ the answers handed to them.”

Zed rushed back out of his office, the papers flapping sloppily as he moved. “All done ‘cept for the last one, which has to be signed in front of a witness. Sheriff?”

Bael sighed, “Hold on.”

The sheriff very carefully reviewed each page…to the point where Jillian became concerned about his reading comprehension.

Zed seemed endlessly amused by Bael’s insolence. “Bael hates it when I boss him around. He’s hated it ever since we were kids. But I just remind him that his job description includes “other duties as assigned” tacked right there at the end, with an asterisk, and then he has to do it. Because the asterisk says, “‘assigned at the Mayor’s discretion.’”

Bael’s eyes flashed angry gold again. “Mighty big words from the guy who needed flash cards to remember his swearin’ in speech.”

Zed’s grin should not have been as proud as it was. “I put the ‘swear’ in ‘swearin’ in.’”

Jillian cleared her throat. “Sheriff, that’s a pretty standard cooperation agreement between the League and the town of Mystic Bayou. Because of your unique population, you are a perfect case study for assimilation tactics. You guarantee me access to any archives or census information I need and attempt to smooth the way for me with the locals. I agree to be as unobtrusive as possible and show you all of my research before I leave town. Mayor Berend was pretty specific about that.”

“Maybe where you’re from, people give their name without a care, but I want to know what I’m signin’,” Bael drawled, placidly flipping through the paperwork.

“He’s got this whole thing about not givin’ his true name,” Zed whispered dramatically. “The whole family’s that way. Their first names are all nicknames. He refuses to tell me and I’m the closest thing he’s got to a best friend!”

“No, you’re not.” Bael shook his head, blithely reading through the contract.

Zed grinned. “I’ve been guessin’ for years though. I’m pretty sure his true name is somethin’ like Marion. It’s OK, buddy. Marion can be a boys’ name, too.”

Jillian looked to Bael, who silently shook his head.

It took several more minutes, but Bael finally signed the last page of the contract. A quick motion caught Jillian’s eye, and she barely restrained a gasp as Zed sliced his palm open with a wicked sharp claw on his right hand. In a business-like manner, he pressed his mayoral seal onto his palm and then the paper, leaving a livid red crest next to the signature line.

Jillian shook her head. “Oh, that wasn’t…necessary.”

Zed frowned at her as he signed his name with a plain old Bic pen.

“Now, the local ladies’ guild wanted to throw you a proper crawfish boil to welcome you to town,” Zed told her.

Jillian gulped, audibly. “That’s very generous of them.”

Bael rolled his eyes a bit. “Don’t get excited. People around here throw a party every time somebody loses a damn tooth.”

Zed shot Bael a warning look, the first truly dark expression she’d seen on his face. The predator’s threat sent a cold shiver down her spine. If Jillian had those icy eyes glaring at her that way, she might have added soiled pants to her list of hygiene issues. Bael simply jerked his shoulders.

In a pointedly pleasant tone, Zed said, “I thought that might be a little overwhelmin’ for you straight out the gate. I figured you’d rather get settled in and get some sleep, get your legs under you, before you have to make your first impressions. We’ll schedule your official welcome sometime this week.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” she told him. “Thank you.”

Zed grinned at her, putting his massive (no-longer-bleeding) hand on her shoulder. “You need anything, you just let me know.”

Bael growled ever so slightly. Jillian frowned at him, and turned back to Zed. “Directions to my hotel would be appreciated.”

Zed gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Oh, we’ve got you set up with a real nice place.”

“I didn’t see a hotel on my way into town. I don’t suppose there’s a Holiday Inn one street over, that I just didn’t see?” she asked.

Bael scoffed and Zed glared at him, then ratcheted up his smile a few degrees before saying, “Like I said, we’ve got a real nice rental place for you. It’s got a lot of…charm.”

Jillian found his pause before the word ‘charm’ to be highly suspicious. “Okay, I guess working out of a house will be more pleasant than working out of a hotel. Can you give me directions?”

Zed was half-way to a nod when he said, “Yes, but I can’t help you get there right now. My maman’s expecting me at her place to fix her freezer. I keep tellin’ her that she’s overwhelming the twice-cursed thing, stuffin’ two whole deer carcasses in there. But then she glares at me and reminds me winter’s always around the corner and we need to think about puttin’ on hibernation weight. And then, I shut up because there’s nothin’ scarier than a Berend woman when she thinks you’re not listenin.”

Jillian tilted her head and stared at him. “It’s May.”

Zed shrugged. “Winter’s always just around the corner to Maman. But the Sheriff here can lead the way to your place. He’s one of your nearest neighbors.”

Jillian shook her head. “I don’t want to be a bother. If you just give me directions, I’m sure I can find it.”

Zed snorted. “Not likely. The roads ‘round here twist and turn and only half them have the right signs, because the fair folk think it’s funny to switch ‘em around. I can only find my place because I’ve lived here my whole life. But the Sheriff will be happy to give ya the full police escort, won’t ya?”

Bael only glared at Zed.

“Other duties as assigned, Bael,” Zed reminded him.

Bael exhaled deeply and for a second, Jillian swore she could see smoke rings billowing out of his nostrils. “Follow my car.”

2

JILLIAN

Mayor Berend had not been kidding about the twists and turns. The sheriff had only led her a mile out of town and they’d already gone over two bridges and passed four signs marking a “crick.” She had no idea where she was.

Now they were farther away from town, she could see that there were a lot more houses than she expected. Not all of them were on stilts, but most of them backed up to the water. The bayou was clearly the center of life here. From the aerial maps she’d glanced at on her layover, she saw that the town’s population centered around an area of the bayou called la Faille. Dr. Montes’s notes stated that the citizens regarded la Faille as an almost sacred site. While there was a wealth of solid land in that area, no building or home was built within ten miles of it.

From what she could gather, she and the sheriff were heading northwest of la Faille…and out of town, for that matter. She was starting to wonder if he was leading her away so he could kill her and hide her body in the swamp, when he turned on a road called Possum Tail.

Who was in charge of naming things here?

There were no houses on Possum Tail, just endless trees bearded with Spanish moss. It would’ve been really pretty, if she wasn’t worried about the whole murder thing.

The squad car slowed and turned onto a gravel drive that she would’ve passed by entirely if she was on her own. There was no mailbox or marker, just a pause in the greenery. Slowly, a pale house breached the trees like some ancient sea creature.

Unlike every structure they passed so far, this house was several stories stacked on top of each other like a wobbly, metallic wedding cake. At one point, the house had been painted blue, but weather and runoff from the metal roofing had turned it an uneven pewter gray against the backdrop of lush green.

A bay window, another feature she hadn’t seen on any of the other houses, extended over the best view of the Bayou. A cupola served as the bridal “topper,” and Jillian thought she spotted a telescope edging over that cupola’s window. Each level had its own wrap-around porch, and someone had taken the time to hang baskets of geraniums from the eaves. And while they were very pretty, she was more grateful for the layer of privacy they would provide. A collection of mismatched rocking and lawn chairs were circled around a wooden platform that extended from the ground floor onto the water. Jillian slid out of her van, gaping up at the sight of her temporary home.

“What is this place?” she marveled, setting her sunglasses on top of her head.

Sheriff Boone was already out of his car, a set of house keys in his hand. “Folks around here have called it lamaison de fous, theFool’s House, since I was a boy. My mama told me it was built by a sea captain named Worthen. He fell in love with a sea sprite who’d made her home in the Bayou. He built the house here so he could be close to her. But she never returned his love and he was so heartbroken and distracted that he built his house at all these crazy angles, not paying one bit of attention to how his neighbors’ houses were built.”

She opened her van’s backdoor and slid a large duffel bag onto her shoulder. “Sounds like one mean mermaid.”

Without her asking, the sheriff picked up two of her larger boxes of equipment and balanced them in his arms as if they weighed nothing. “Well, the captain had the last laugh. He married a local witch woman who loved him beyond reason, fed him queen’s cake every day and gave him six children. And the house has stood more than hundred years. The town doesn’t have the heart to let it fall down after all this time, so people around town pick up the little repairs whenever they can. We just replaced the stilts before Miss Lottie died.”

Jillian glanced at the wooden supports that kept the house a good six feet above the waterline. Even though they looked pretty sturdy, the idea of sleeping over water wasn’t exactly comfortable for her. “Miss Lottie?”

Bael nodded, the last of the sun’s dying light gleaming off of his close-shorn golden hair. “The last of the captain’s great-great-grandchildren. She was the closest thing we had to a doctor. She had her nurse training from a fancy drole school in the city, then her mother was a white witch, so she could heal our kind through either means.”

Jillian stopped, adjusting the weight of the bag on her tired shoulder. “What’s a drole school?”

Sighing as if he was very put upon, Bael took the bag and carried it, too. “It’s just the way we refer to the outside world. Drole means funny or bizarre, and not in the nicest way, to be honest. It’s a little bit of an insult. And to us, everything in the outside world is weird, so anything to do with the outside world is drole.”

Jillian hummed. “So you’re like the Amish, but with more fangs.”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“Really expected more of a response to that,” she muttered as she slid the old brass key into the door.

Compared to the tent she’d expected to spend the next four months inhabiting, the house was luxurious. Sure, it was rough. The walls were whitewashed. The floorboards, also whitewashed, were worn smooth by years of foot traffic. Cooking and heating seemed to be handled with a large cast iron stove in the middle of the parlor, which was…intimidating. She would probably be spending a lot of time at the pie shop.

From what she could tell, there was no air-conditioning. The captain-architect had built screened grates into the higher floors, to vent the warmer air as it rose. But the wooden furniture was polished and well-cared for. Miss Lottie had left hanks of fragrant herbs hanging from the summer porch. And someone had recently cleaned the windows. She could see the vinegar soaked newspapers in the kitchen trash. The porch ceiling was painted a soft blue-green called “haint blue,” meant to keep away both evil spirits and insects. Small animals carved from peach wood stood sentinel on the window sills. Several more hung from live oak trees surrounding the house. In some cultures, peach wood was used to ward off negative energy. Miss Lottie clearly wanted to keep her home free of bad vibes and had used a lot of cultural touchstones to do it. Even though she was still a bit skeptical about such things, that was a comfort to Jillian. She needed all the good vibes she could get.

Jillian had been dropped into a fairy tale cottage. She wasn’t sure whether to take notes and photos or start removing the talismans before she broke one and cursed herself. She was vaguely aware that she had a big dopey grin on her face when she turned and saw the sheriff staring at her with that inscrutable golden gaze of his. She cleared her throat and tried to adopt a more professional expression. “Um, how much French do people speak around here? Will I have a hard time getting around, communicating? I’m pretty fluent in Spanish and a little Portuguese, which was appropriate considering I was on my way to South America. But French has always eluded me.”

“Well, not nearly so much as in other towns. We’re not a true Cajun community. When the first creatures moved here in the 1800s, there was a small Cajun settlement, just a few humans. Some of them inter-married with our kind, others stayed separate. We kept some of the French sayings, and most of us have accents, to varyin’ degrees. We have some of the same food customs, but we’ve also mixed in our own traditions, our own flavors and our own languages from the places where we come from. It’s a big mess sometimes, but it works for us.”

Bael turned his gaze upwards. “Your bedroom is the first on the right on the second floor. The back door doesn’t always catch, so make sure you lock it at night.”

“So, this isn’t one of those small towns where people pride themselves on not locking their doors?” Jillian asked.

Bael shoved his hands in his pockets. “Our crime rate’s pretty low, but there’s a good chance of varmints gettin’ in if you leave the door open.”

Jillian’s expression was vaguely amused. “Varmints?”

He jerked his broad shoulders. “Nothin’ wrecks your mornin’ like findin’ that a possum’s tossed your kitchen. Speaking of which, Zed’s mama stocked the fridge with basics for you.”

Boone nodded toward a white-and-rust-colored icebox straight out of the 1950s. Frankly, she was surprised the floorboards would support that much weight. “That was very sweet of her.”

“Well, mama bears never want to see starvin’ cubs.”

Jillian wiped at her forehead, sticky with the day’s last layer of drying sweat. “I’m sorry, I’ve been traveling for almost twenty-four hours now and I’m having a hard time focusing. Is that a euphemism? Are there really going to be bears and possums outside my door?”

“Bears? No,” he said, though she noted he paused just a little too long before eliminating the possibility. “Possums? Maybe. Gators? There’s one out there right now.”

“What?” she glanced out the back window to a pair of reptilian eyes through a layer of green algae on the water. “Oh, no, no, no. That thing can’t get into the house, right? It can’t break through the floor boards or anything?”

He snorted. “I think you’ve been watching too many scary movies. Gators don’t want any more to do with you than you want with them. Just stay out of the water, unless you’re with someone who knows what they’re doing. And make sure you don’t change in front of the windows,” he told her, nodding toward the gator. “He could be a magie.”

She rolled her dark blue eyes a bit. “Very funny, hazing the over-tired new girl in town who doesn’t know any better.”

“I’m not kiddin’. The Beasleys are gator shifters and they’re known peeping Toms,” Bael insisted.

Jillian recoiled from him. “Oh.”

“But they live on the other side of town,” he added. “So…yeah, you shouldn’t change in front of the windows.”

“Thank you, I’m sure that will help me sleep at night.”

The corner of his lips twitched ever so slightly. And for a second, she thought he was going to make a remark about how she slept through the night, but he stayed silent, which was even more unnerving.

“Also, what does magie mean?” she asked.

“It means ‘magic’ in French. It doesn’t quite cover the nature of all of the creatures in town, but our ancestors considered anything that wasn’t human to be magical. It’s a lot easier to spit out than supernatural. And it prevents a lot of confusion and offense, because no one is left out.”

She nodded. “That’s nice.”