The Deer Prince's Murder: Book Two of 'Fantasy & Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 2) (6 page)

“That’s exactly the kind of info we need. As for the creature itself, well…there are dragons, and then there are
dragons
. Maybe this one is old and feeble enough for us to beat. Do we have any resources, references, or guides we can consult on this ‘Sirrahon’?”

“I know naught of dragons,” Shaw admitted. “But the elders of my kind may be able to tell me more. Shouldst I take wing now, ere the fall of evening I should be able to return.”

“And of course, I have access to King Fitzwilliam’s royal libraries,” Galen finished. “An old creature like Sirrahon will surely have been thoroughly documented. When you return, where shall we meet you? In the corner tower room?”

I chewed my lip for a moment before answering. One of our leads would likely turn up the information we needed. But if not…it was better to have a backup. A backup which I hoped that I wouldn’t have to use.

“No,” I said. “When I return, it will be to the antechamber outside of the throne room. I’ve got a hunch that we’re going to need a favor from the new ruler. And of course, I’ll need an audience with him if I’m going to get it.”

“You wish to ask a boon of King Fitzwilliam? What in the world can he give us for this task?”

I smiled grimly. “If all else fails, he can get us a person. A person I’m betting knows more about this Sirrahon than anyone else in the kingdom.”

Chapter Seven

The spell Galen had concocted to send me back to my world was familiar to me now. But it still wasn’t exactly what I’d call ‘pleasant’. I held the picture of my living room steady in my mind, and then squeezed the medallion that hung on a chain around my neck. Instantly, I found myself dumped back into a sea of eye-searing white static. Smell of ozone filling my nostrils, jamming itself down my throat with the sour taste of burning plastic.

I landed with a jolt that nearly knocked me off my feet. I stumbled on the sandy brown edge of my living room carpet and managed to grab the arm of my couch to steady myself. The ozone smell vanished, to be replaced with the homey, domestic smells of lemon-scented furniture polish and potpourri.

Ever since my place became the ‘landing pad’ for travel between my world and Andeluvia, I’d made a couple of small changes to the room. For starters, given the flashy way one could enter and exit, I kept the blinds down and the curtains drawn shut over the windows. I’d also kept all the flat surfaces like the mantle and desktops clear of anything heavier than a newspaper – Shaw’s half-spread wings had shown me that to do otherwise was inviting trouble.

And finally, I’d cleared the place of excess furniture. Not only did it give more space should heraldic creatures arrive, it was also safer. The night I’d returned from Fitzwilliam’s coronation, I’d stumbled off the carpet and came within an inch of barking my shins on the closest coffee table.

I thought about meeting with the new king as I went to the bathroom to wash up and then prepare for a different battle in my business attire. My unease grew as I rubbed a warm, moistened towel over my face, dried off, and went to the bedroom. Fitzwilliam was the legitimate heir to the murdered Benedict, and he’d seemed friendly enough at first blush. Better yet, he’d fawned over my aquamarine colored dress at his coronation, commenting on how the piece matched my eyes and set off my black hair. But I still didn’t really know him as a ruler per se. It was one of the reasons I’d remained on the fence regarding his offer to remain in his kingdom as the court ‘forensic examiner’.

So I didn’t know how he’d react to a request from me. Especially one that could be upsetting to him. And me, for that matter. My stomach gave a churn, as if to emphasize the point. I gave it a mental command to settle down as I selected a business jacket and pants. Both articles of clothing had the oh-so-sexy color of mesquite charcoal briquettes, and were completely impractical for work in the chiller room. But they matched, and it made me look professional on a day when I was more likely to be sitting in a meeting room than a morgue.

The freeway gods of Los Angeles chose to go easy on me for once. I got onto the 101 freeway in that blissful time between the lunch hour traffic jams and the evening crush. I made a mental note to sacrifice a can of motor oil or something as a ‘thank you’ as I pulled off on my exit. A few minutes later, I buzzed my way through the security checkpoint and was on my way to my broom-closet of an office when the roiling in my stomach turned into a full-bore cramp.

I winced, made it to my office door, and put my hand against the knob. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, willing things to settle down. This was a little odd, as it was completely off cycle for the menstrual hijinks my body played at the right time of the month. Plus, the pains weren’t in the right location.

A bright, happy voice cut through my misery. “Dayna, there you are!”

Shelly Richardson, the senior M.E. and my longtime friend, came marching down the hallway to join me. Shelly and I had taken different career paths at the LAPD. She’d stayed with the medical examiner’s office while I moved over to crime-scene examination as an independent contractor. But we’d always been close, and I think she felt a little motherly towards me. She had a body that Reuben would’ve thought paint-worthy, a poufy frizz of light brown hair, and eyes that twinkled behind a pair of stern-looking pince-nez glasses.

“I’m here, all right, but part of me isn’t enjoying the experience,” I admitted, and she put her hand out to touch my forehead for a moment.

“You’re not feverish or anything,” she remarked in her soft southern drawl. “But you’re looking more than a little green ’round your gills.”

And, believe it or not, that set my nausea alarm off again. As I lurched down the hall to the ladies’ restroom, it did flash through my mind that I’d coined the Chrissie Scale of Stinkiness (patent pending) to rate a given situation’s grossness. Apparently the bad karma I’d earned from all the times I’d put people off their lunch was coming back to get me.

I made it to a stall, barely. Then I went ahead and placed a collect call to God on the big white telephone. Of course, when it was done, it wasn’t white anymore – and Miss Slow Learner finally figured out what was going on. The bright green and brown mess came from the enchanted food I’d eaten this morning. Only it had been fine on a Fayleene’s stomach, not a human one.

One flush and mouth-rinse later (actually, a half-dozen rinses followed by an old breath mint fished out of a handy pocket), I stumbled back to my office. Shelly had taped a piece of paper to my door with a single image on it: an arrow pointing to the left. That made me feel better for the first time since walking into the building, as it was our old way of saying ‘come by my office’.

Shelly’s space was only a dozen yards further down the hall. As usual, her door had been left propped open in welcome. She looked up from where she’d been typing on her computer as I came in and settled into the plush chair at the side of her desk. I exhaled gratefully as she finished up the email she’d been composing. Shelly’s office was larger than mine – or at least, it felt larger – and next to her computer she’d stacked what she called ‘all the comforts of home’. A totem-pole of electrical appliances sat in a stack from the floor on up: a squat compact fridge made up the base, followed by a drink dispenser, topped with a microwave, and capped off by a coffee maker.

“You look a world better,” she remarked kindly.

“I feel better. Something disagreed with me.” Shelly had met and then promptly swooned over Galen when the wizard had transformed himself to look like a rather hunky human male. She wasn’t fully aware of Andeluvia’s existence – which was how the people there wanted it – so I kept mum on that note. For her part, Shelly wasn’t one to pry much, except when it came to my welfare.

“I’d say that it didn’t set right at all. What in the world have you been eating?”

“Bark, leaves, and grass.”

She nodded sagely. “I told you to stay away from that vegan place down the block. They got shut down by the county for health violations last winter, and frankly, I doubt they’ve improved things a whit.”

“You always have my best interests in mind,” I said honestly.

“Then take my advice and put a little soup on that tummy of yours.” Shelly took out a container of soup in a microwavable cup, popped it open, and put it into the second appliance from the top for a quick dose of radiation. In less than a minute, she removed it and handed it over to me. “Creamy tomato. I find it’s a non-contentious sort of food.”

“Mmm,” I mumbled, as I took a grateful slurp. “Thanks. I’ll need a little fortification if I’m going to speak to our esteemed Deputy Chief. I just wish he’d drop the whole thing.”

“You’re not the only one. That corpse we picked up, the one that kicked off this whole mess? We never did match up the prints. And no one stepped forward to pick up the body. I filed it as a ‘cold case’ a few days ago.”

I looked away as I took another long drink of soup. That body never would be ID’ed, since it came from someone who’d never been born on our world. Shelly knew that there was more to the story than I let on, but again, so long as she figured I was safe, she was willing to do me this favor and let it slide into red-tape oblivion.

“Your going AWOL last month made McClatchy look foolish,” Shelly continued. “And that’s one man who has a thin skin.”

A soft
rap
came from behind me. I half-turned to see Detective Alanzo Esteban standing in the doorway. As usual, the gap-toothed grin and appreciative hazel eyes that shone from the homicide detective’s copper-bright face said that he still carried a torch for me, of sorts.

“If you’re talking about our favorite
diputado
being thin-skinned,” he ventured, “maybe we’ll all get lucky. He could cut himself shaving and bleed to death.”

I let out an amused chuckle at that. Shelly rolled her eyes, but she waved at Esteban to join us. He perched himself on the edge of her desk as he went on.

“I’m afraid that I’m the bearer of bad news today. McClatchy sent me down here to tell you that he’s rescheduled your meeting for tomorrow morning.”

“That doesn’t sound all that bad,” I said, though I was a little annoyed at having dressed up for nothing. Plus, I’d hoped for a longer stretch of uninterrupted time to work on Liam’s problem.

“Not at first, maybe. But I’m hearing through the grapevine that he’s busy trying to dig up more dirt on you. And he’s not going to just talk with you – he’s calling a formal probation hearing. If I were you, I’d be ready to answer some tough questions tomorrow.”

I groaned. If I had to be truthful that very second, I’d have said ‘screw all of this, I’m upping stakes for Andeluvia’. But I couldn’t do that. Among other things, it was one thing to move cross-country or even to another country. It was a completely different thing to be severing – or at least limiting – ties with the world you were born into.

“Damn it all,” I groused. “Friday morning just got ruined for me.”

“Maybe,” he agreed sadly, and then beamed a shy smile my way. “But afterwards, how about doing something to cheer yourself up? Say, by making good on that Friday evening out on the town that you keep promising me?”

I gave him a look that was one part amazement, one part objection. Not a single word got past my lips. Esteban knew more about Andeluvia than Shelly – he’d actually met Grimshaw the griffin, for starters – but I hadn’t had the opportunity to tell him much of anything after I’d brought Benedict’s killer to justice.

That said, I was torn. We hadn’t gone to bed or anything, but on the one date that we’d managed to consummate, we’d steamed up the inside of his vintage Plymouth Barracuda. He’d still been in the middle of restoring the thing, so our make-out session had been liberally scented with the aroma of fresh primer, but I hadn’t complained. In fact, it made my skin goose-pimple when I thought of how far down my front I’d let him kiss me with those hot lips of his...

“Oh, gosh darn it!” Shelly said, with a snap of her fingers. With a voice that dripped sincerity, she added, “I think I left one of the bone saws running on the slab. Can’t let that happen, you know. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I glared at her as she left. Shelly was of the opinion that I didn’t date nearly enough in order to find the perfect man. She was probably right, but she also thought that Galen was giving me some action on the side – something that would be anatomically difficult-if-not-impossible in his real form.

“Believe me, I really want to go out this Friday,” I pleaded. “But this is a really bad time.”

He sat back and appraised me. “It’s been a ‘bad time’ for almost three weeks now.”

“I know, and that’s not fair to you. It’s just that I can’t leave a friend in the lurch.” I hastily sketched out Liam’s problem for him. I decided to leave out my transformation into a deer. I especially left out the part where I had gone as Liam’s consort. Esteban was already a little jealous of Galen, and I didn’t need any more complications on that front.

Esteban frowned as I finished my story. “Wow…this guy Liam, did he break a bunch of mirrors as a kid or something?”

That made a laugh bubble up from my chest, one that I really needed. I got to my feet, took a last swig of the soup, and tossed the container away in the trash can by Shelly’s desk.

“Depends how you define ‘luck’,” I said. “If Liam hadn’t been taken hostage in the first place, you might not have gotten that first date from me.”

“There is that. But I do need to know one thing. Something that’s been on my mind for a while now since that whole thing with ‘Benedict’ was resolved.”

“Alanzo, this ‘Liam’ is magical, but he’s still a white-tailed deer! There’s nothing that could possibly happen between–”

Esteban stood up and came over to me. His masculine scent, overlaid with the smell of cologne, tickled my nose. He put out his strong, calloused hands and rested them gently on my shoulders.