Stag and the Ash (The Rowan Harbor Cycle Book 5)

by Sam Burns

  Wade looked up at Fletcher and nodded. “I’m sure the doctor can deal with anything that gets thrown at her, but ask her if she wants anything from us.”

  “Will do,” Fletcher agreed, pulling the keys out of his pocket and heading for the door. He paused in the doorway. “What about Isla?”

  “She’s been with my mother,” the mayor said. “I’ll leave that to them, if it’s okay.”

  Everyone nodded at once; there wasn’t a person in town who would question Madame Cormier’s decisions, at least not openly.

  “Thank you, Mayor,” Wade told him as he turned his body slightly, so he could lead Devon out to the parking lot.

  Jesse gave the man a salute and backed out of the office, closing the door behind him.

  When they got back to the parking lot, Devon looked at both of them. “You think Madame is the target?”

  “It’s the most reasonable option. She’s powerful, and the only woman who’s a part of the town’s public face.” Wade was starting to recover his professional demeanor, and straightened his shoulders. “She’s who I’d target, if I wanted to weaken the town. Well no, after the last few months I’d target you or Jesse, but if it’s a woman, she’s the best guess.”

  “Unless those hunters told someone how scary the doc is,” Jesse pointed out. He’d heard the story of her refusing to let a hunter with a broken arm into the clinic until they disarmed. He could picture her, hands on hips, eyes burning, standing between her clinic and danger.

  Wade inclined his head, allowing the point. “They’re probably the most powerful women in town.”

  “What about your grandmother?” Devon asked.

  Jesse dismissed that easily. “She’s spent maybe a day as a human in the last year. Anyone who calls her a woman and not a wolf doesn’t have enough information to be dangerous.”

  They were quiet as Jesse drove Devon back to the shop, Wade sitting in the back seat with his boyfriend. Usually, Jesse would have made a crack about not being a chauffeur and insisted someone sit up front with him. Given the circumstances, it was hard to begrudge his brother and best friend a stolen moment. As they put the town into defense mode, they might not get much time together for a while.

  Devon waved when they dropped him at the shop, and Wade climbed into the front passenger seat. “Madame Cormier, you think?”

  “If they know what they’re doing, yeah.” Jesse let silence fall in the car while he considered all the options. “If they got their information from any of the people who’ve been harassing the town since December, it could be anyone from the doc to Cassidy. I’m gonna talk to her too, just in case.”

  “Good idea,” Wade agreed. “Do you think you’re going to find anything in the package from last month?”

  It took Jesse a minute to remember what he was talking about. “Oh, that. No, I just wanted to talk to you. You’re worried about Devon.”

  Wade was so quiet that Jesse didn’t think he was going to answer, but finally, he sighed. “He can’t control it. Sometimes it seems to take over. Jess, Madame told him he’s more powerful than Ms. O’Meara.”

  Jesse gave a low whistle. “I shouldn’t be so surprised. He did almost break the clinic when you got silver-bombed. But still, he’s not going anywhere when he does the creepy thing with the silver eyes. It’s like getting distracted. He comes back.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “He will.” When Wade didn’t look convinced, Jesse sighed and continued. “Even if drifting off for good was an option, he’s got you to come back to. You can worry all you want, little bro, but Devon is always coming back to you.”

  “I hope so,” Wade said, and it was as uncertain as Jesse had heard his brother sound since they were teenagers. He wanted to say whatever would make Wade feel better, but he of all people knew that sometimes, there wasn’t any magic combination of words that could do that.

  Jesse considered dropping Wade off in the parking lot of the station and leaving, but he thought better of it when they arrived. “I should go in and look at the stuff from the package. It may not be why I came, but I said I was going to, and you never know if it’ll help.”

  “Did you think I was going to let you go without looking at it? Devon would kick my ass if I let you lie so blatantly and get away with it.”

  Jesse threw him a scowl. “It wasn’t a lie. I said I hadn’t looked at it and should.”

  Wade’s pursed lips and the tiny line that formed between his brows practically screamed that he wasn’t impressed. “Seriously? Isn’t Devon the one who’s supposed to spend his time finding clever ways to lie?”

  “Devon’s no kind of liar. I figure I can make up the difference if I try real hard.” Jesse returned the glare with his best Cheshire-cat grin, and miracle of miracles, Wade softened. He rolled his eyes and turned away, but his shoulders relaxed, and the corner of his lips quirked up in an almost smile.

  The newest deputy waved them through the front desk after one look, smiling at Jesse and giving Wade a slightly more serious nod, calling him “sir.”

  Jesse managed to curb his chuckle until they were almost to Wade’s desk. “Sir?”

  “He’s respectful.”

  “He’s scared of you.”

  Wade shrugged. “Maybe. He’ll get over it. He’s doing okay. Plus, Jen’s happy to be off desk duty.”

  “He’s an Anderson, isn’t he?”

  “It’s Warren. Luke Warren, I think. But maybe. Isn’t everyone in town an Anderson?”

  “They do procreate like bunnies,” Jesse agreed.

  Wade pulled out his desk chair and made a sweeping motion toward it. “Have a seat. I’ll pull the box.”

  Half an hour later, Jesse was elbow deep in receipts and invoices. He’d known the police would be thorough in their investigation, but he was impressed with some of the details they had noted. He didn’t think a forensic accountant could have done much better.

  Maybe the bad guy was a forensic accountant.

  That seemed like the premise for a clichéd superhero movie. Ignored, boring guy with an even more boring job turns villain and tries to take over the world. No, this guy wasn’t bored. He was full of hate.

  Jesse knew there was evil in the world, but it still surprised him sometimes that people could be so spiteful that they would hurt children and other innocents in their rage.

  He sighed and put down the set of gas station receipts. Nothing of interest there.

  He peered back into the box to find the next batch of nothing useful and caught sight of a flash drive. Excellent. Something that wasn’t more pointless dates and locations. The whole thing was like a bad history class.

  He plugged the flash drive into Wade’s computer. There was only one file on it, so he loaded it up. Wade came out of the break room with two paper cups that smelled like coffee, if coffee were from hell. He scrunched up his nose.

  “I know,” Wade said, waving him off with one cup. “It’s bad. I think one of us is going to break down and spend our own money on a new coffee maker someday. Maybe Sheriff Green’s taste buds are all gone.”

  Wade put a cup in front of Jesse anyway, and even though it smelled like the gunk burned onto the bottom of the oven, Jesse took a drink. “It tastes like it smells, only with sugar.”

  “Sorry. I know you’re a black-coffee guy, but this stuff can’t be drunk like that.”

  Jesse shuddered. “Agreed.”

  A buzz came from the front desk, something Jesse assumed was intended to get the attention of the officers in the back. Not that Jesse knew jack about being a cop, but Wade did wander off in that direction. He turned back to the computer and realized he’d forgotten the video.

  The computer was muted, but the second his eyes fell on the screen, the ash-flavored coffee soured in his stomach. He set the cup down with numb hands and reached for the volume control. He had to stab at the button a few times before he got it right and the tinny speakers came to life.

  “Tase the damn thing again,�
�� came the voice from the computer. A voice he wished he didn’t recognize with every part of his soul.

  The video showed the back of a man, watching as two people in full body armor tried to coax the angry troll into a cage that barely fit it. It looked like it came from an old traveling circus—a wood frame covered with peeling red paint and dark metal bars.

  The video was shaky, the man of indeterminate height, only shown from the waist up. The lighting wasn’t good, but his hair looked to be light brown, or maybe dishwater blonde.

  For all its faults, and there were many, the video was good enough to show Jesse his worst nightmare. He tried to take a deep breath, but had to gasp a few times before it worked. It felt like there was a python wrapping itself around his lungs.

  “I told you to fucking tase it, not stab it. We want it alive when it gets to Oregon,” the man yelled. Then, more quietly, he muttered. “It can’t kill other monsters if these dumbasses kill it here.”

  Every word was punctuated by a sharp pain in Jesse’s chest.

  Other monsters.

  Leah Anderson and two five-year-olds were “other monsters” in his mind.

  Charles’s mind.

  Charles was the one who had sent the troll.

  If there had been room in the chair, Jesse would have pulled his knees up to meet his chin and cried on them.

  Everything that had happened last month was his fault. His boyfriend’s mother was dead because of him. Because he’d shown his ex-boyfriend his true nature, and Charles had responded by sending a troll on a murder spree in his town.

  Wade came back sans coffee cup, wiping a tattered paper napkin down his stained shirt, muttering about clumsy new kids. He looked up at Jesse, and his gaze sharpened. “You okay?”

  “I’m fi—” Jesse curbed the instinct to lie outright and softened the statement to the obvious. “It’s a lot to deal with. The troll. The guy.”

  It was a minor miracle that the words came out at all, and with every single one, Jesse berated himself. He knew telling Wade the truth was the smart thing to do, but when he tried to put those words—truthful words—into sentences, they scattered apart like dandelion fluff on the wind. He had to take another deep breath.

  Wade dropped the shredded napkin in the trashcan by his desk and reached over to squeeze Jesse’s shoulder sympathetically. “I know. I wish she’d been able to give us more to go on. If we could find them, we’d stand a better chance of stopping them.”

  Again, Jesse tried to open his mouth, to tell Wade everything. He already knew about Jesse’s history with Charles; surely he would understand about this too. About the fact that Jesse’s mistake had cost an innocent life, and that Charles wasn’t finished trying to murder the inhabitants of Rowan Harbor. That Jesse had brought this down on them.

  He hung his head, staring at his shoes. He couldn’t even look at the screen, let alone look his brother in the eye.

  “You guys have done a great job finding those businesses. Those assholes covered their tracks like nothing else I’ve ever seen. I wish I could do more to help, but—” He waved his hand toward the mess of evidence on Wade’s desk. “I just can’t.”

  Wade gave him a tiny smile that made him feel even worse. “Thanks for trying, Jesse. I appreciate it. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than this, anyway. I’ve been looking for a month, and I don’t think there’s anything to find here.”

  He stood, picking up the paper coffee cup and handing it to Wade so fast he almost splashed it onto the already forming coffee stain on his brother’s shirt. “I’ll drop by the Half Moon and get my own on my way to work. I’m kind of sorry to give this to you, even if you inflicted it on me first.” He rushed out before Wade could respond.

  He sat in his car for almost ten minutes trying to get his breathing under control, right there in front of the sheriff’s station. If someone saw him sitting there it would cause concern—and spread across the town gossip network in five minutes flat.

  Finally, he dragged himself together and started the car. He had to get back to work. He didn’t have time for a nervous breakdown. He looked in the rearview mirror and his own dark brown eyes stared back. The man in the mirror didn’t look like the world was crashing down around him, so everything must be fine, right?

  Wade was right. He was becoming a consummate liar.

  3

  Nkotb

  “I don’t know why you’re pretending to work,” Miss Vander told him from her place behind the counter, where she was arranging a small bouquet of purple flowers. “You keep nodding off, and there’s no way you’re making any progress on that.”

  She was right. He had only managed to sleep a few hours Tuesday night, and he’d almost immediately lapsed into the old nightmares of Charles, the knife, and that horrible last night in Berkeley.

  He’d woken to find Sean sleeping peacefully, and slipped out of bed and out of the house, like a thief in the night, to walk the whole circle of wards again. He considered going to see Madame Cormier about adding more wards, or altering the ones they had to include all creatures with evil intentions. He felt like a little kid asking his mommy to check under the bed for monsters.

  In the end, he left Madame Cormier alone, if only because the mayor had said she was ill. He wasn’t going to drag her into his neuroses, let alone while she was sick.

  He felt his body start to fall forward and jerked himself upright. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed his eyes. Glancing up, he found Miss V looking at him, paused in her work, lips pursed and eyes calculating. “Is there anything you want to talk about, dear? Have you and Sean had a fight?”

  “What? No. I wouldn’t—”

  She rolled her eyes and waved a flower at him. “Don’t give me that nonsense. He’s grieving, but that doesn’t mean that any fight you had would be your fault. Being sad doesn’t excuse poor behavior, it only makes it more likely.”

  “We didn’t have a fight. I don’t think he’s got a fight in him right now, Miss V. He’s just tired all the time.”

  With a sad nod, she turned back to the flowers. “That’s not a surprise, either. But what about you? Not sleeping?”

  Decisively, he closed the ledger he’d been dozing over. “Not last night, anyway. I’ve been doing fine—it’s just proving to be a rough week.”

  She pretended to pay attention to her flowers, but her eyes focused on him. “Does this have something to do with all the gossip about Esmerelda Cormier being in danger?”

  “Is that how they’re spinning it? Yeah, it’s kind of about that.”

  “That is how they’re talking,” she agreed, setting the flowers down and leaning over to rummage around behind the counter. “What’s the truth?”

  He’d never been an active participant in the town’s gossip network before, but he didn’t suppose it would hurt anything if he told her the truth. “It was more vague than that. A threat against a woman who protects the town. She seemed like the obvious person to fill that role, since she’s the only woman on the council right now.”

  Miss Vander came back up from behind the counter. She had a bag in her hand, which she held out to him. Cookies. “I knew he wouldn’t have eaten them. He’s not much for cookies, with a chest like his.” She didn’t seem to have any compunction about objectifying his boyfriend right in front of him. On the other hand, she was right about his chest.

  “Yeah, he’s a fruit-and-vegetable kind of guy. I could start eating vegetarian, and I don’t think he’d notice.” He gave her a deliberate frown and crossed his arms over his chest. “So, are you saying I’m not as hot as my boyfriend?” It didn’t take him long to break down, reach out, and snatch the cookies anyway.

  She laughed as he tore the bag open, and turned back to her flowers. “I’m sure you’re lovely, dear. But really, who could compete with him? On my very best day, he was out of my league.”

  Jesse snorted and almost coughed on the cookie he’d shoved in his mouth. After catching his breath, he shook his f
inger at her. “You did that on purpose.”

  She smirked at him but didn’t respond.

  “He doesn’t think he’s out of anyone’s league, you know. That’s half of why he’s so damn sexy—he doesn’t care.” Jesse leaned on the counter across from her and watched her finish the bouquet. He reached out and brushed the sweet-scented flowers with his fingertips. “Is that for someone specific?”

  That earned him a smile. “It is. It’s for you to take home to Sean. Lilacs are his favorite. He was so pleased to find out I’d cultivated an early blooming variety. I thought he might like them.” She reached out and took a cookie from the package as she pushed the flowers across the counter to him. Before she took a bite, she told him, “It will be okay, you know. He’ll get better. It just takes time, and you’re both young; you’ve got plenty of that.”

  Jesse hoped she was right, though with the threat of Charles hovering over him, he wasn’t so sure. Even if Charles killed him, he wouldn’t let the bastard kill anyone else in his town.

  He nodded to her and picked up the bouquet. “Yeah. Thanks, Miss V. I might come back tomorrow when I’ve gotten some sleep. Is that okay?”

  “Of course. Your presence doesn’t bother this old woman. It’s nice to have company. I’ll be out in the greenhouse first thing, since there are some seedlings that need transplanting, but you can always come out if you want. A little dirt won’t hurt a boring accounting book.”

  He stifled a laugh at that and nodded to her. “Probably not. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks.”

  She waved as he left the shop, already turning to whatever was next on her agenda. She might not have run the shop in a way he understood from an accountant’s perspective, but she knew what she was doing. He was glad she was there to help Sean. She was a wild old lady, but the more he got to know her, the more he liked her.