Page 5

5

J ack

Wednesday: Wedding minus 10 days

“ Y ou see?” Tess pointed at me and shook her head. “You know better.”

Susan groaned. “Not again. Which was it? ‘How could it get any worse?’”

“Nope. ‘How bad can it be?’” Tess told her with more than a hint of smugness aimed at me.

“Will you never learn? Wait. What’s bad on your side of town?” Susan asked, shoving her hair back from her face.

Susan Gonzalez, the new sheriff, was tough, competent, and lovely. Criminals who underestimated her for her looks never did so twice. We’d started off with a prickly relationship but had come to trust each other. I helped her out when she really needed it, but I’d made my position clear more than once that I never wanted to go back into any kind of uniform or law-enforcement-adjacent job.

I’d even anonymously funded a slot for a new deputy, not that anybody knew it was me. Except Tess. She somehow knows everything.

Tess quickly told her about the troll.

“Great. Argh . And your Aunt Ruby, my boss, texted me three times about a town hall meeting when I was driving out here. Do you know anything about that?”

By the time we filled her in on the Fae and their Bargain, Susan was slumped in an ancient velvet-covered chair, her head in her hands.

“Just one week. Is that too much to ask? Just one week with no craziness?” she said, her voice muffled.

“Apparently,” Tess said a bit sharply. “And the deadline is the same day as our wedding.”

Susan raised a shocked face to us. “That sucks. That’s not fair at all. ”

“The Fae never worried too much about being fair to mortals,” I said dryly. “Now, what was it you came racing in here to tell us? What dead body?”

She sighed and stood. “To be honest, I’m not even sure it’s a dead body. A coffin-shaped box showed up on the lawn outside my office.”

The sheriff’s department shared space with a tiny jail on the ground floor, and Mayor Ruby’s offices were on the second floor of the Dead End municipal building.

“Well, did you open it?”

“We couldn’t open it. That’s why I came to find you.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not the only one in town who can get a box open, Susan, so clearly there’s more to this.”

She held out a card, and Tess took it and read it out loud.

“This container is only to be opened by one with great courage.”

“Susan. You’ve got some false modesty going on if you don’t realize you have great courage,” I said, and she flushed.

“Thanks for that. Yes, I do realize that, but turn over the card, Tess.”

Tess flipped the card over and frowned. “One with great courage who does not wear the uniform.”

“That’s pretty specific. I probably would have tried, anyway,” Eleanor said.

The sheriff shrugged. “We did, of course. No dice. So, I came to find you.”

“I wore a uniform,” I remind her.

“Not you. Tess .”

“Me?” Tess’s eyes widened. “I mean, okay. I’ve had to be pretty brave during some of our wilder adventures, but great courage?”

“You’re brave, plus you’re immune to some Fae magic, so just in case …”

“You absolutely have great courage,” I told Tess. “Let’s go. We can open Susan’s box on our way to eat lunch with a stinky swamp troll.”

“Great!” Susan started for the door. “Also, Tess, granny wants to know if you want to wear her wedding dress since, and I quote, ‘my granddaughter the sheriff won’t get married’ . . .”

“If the swamp troll has a wedding dress for me, too, I’m going to take you up on the eloping idea,” Tess said darkly, grabbing my hand.

S usan wasn’t exaggerating. The box looked exactly like a coffin, if coffins were made of rowan wood and edged in what looked like actual gold.

“It doesn’t have a latch,” I said.

Susan gave me a look. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Tess circled the box but didn’t touch it. “How are we supposed to get into it? Did you check the bottom? Maybe it has a trapdoor or something.”

“Wait for me!” cried out a very familiar voice, and we all turned to see ninety-plus-year old Mrs. Frost toddling up the sidewalk with her walker. She was dressed for the summer heat in a pink floral dress with large white flowers that matched her snow-white hair, and she wore hot pink orthopedic shoes with little white ankle socks.

I casually strolled over to walk next to her; in case she tripped and fell. Those bones had to be pretty fragile the nearer to the century mark she got.

“Hello, Mrs. Frost. Are you okay?”

She gave me an impatient look. “Of course I’m not okay. I’m rushing to the sheriff’s office, aren’t I?”

Susan sighed. “What’s wrong? How can I help? Did Mr. Frost lose his car keys again? Did you look behind the chest of drawers in the hallway?”

Mrs. Frost drew herself up to her full, not-quite-five feet and lifted her chin. “No, but thank you. I put one of those electronic things on his key ring, so we just have to clap, and it beeps. Now, I just have to worry about him losing his hearing aids and not being able to find the … never mind! I’m here because somehow, I knew I needed to come here.”

Tess gave her a doubtful look. “Mrs. Frost, it’s a little early to be into the plum wine.”

The nonagenarian gave her a stern look. “Don’t you sass me, young lady. I haven’t had a drop. I just got a feeling that I was needed.”

“You’re always needed, Mrs. Frost,” I told her, because I adored her. Also, she made the best cookies in town and liked to share them with me.

“It’s that box,” she said, pointing. “I … this is going to sound weird, but the feeling is centered on that box.”

“That’s one of the least weird things that has happened today,” Tess said honestly. “We’re trying to figure out how to open it.”

Mrs. Frost pointed at the box. “Well, why don’t you just push on that latch?”

“What latch?” I asked her, but when I looked at where she was pointing, I saw a latch.

A latch that hadn’t been there before.

“Fae magic,” Susan said grimly, and Tess nodded.

We filled Mrs. Frost in on the card that came with the box, and she preened. “I do have great courage, if I say so myself.”

“Nobody would dispute that,” I said sincerely. She’d certainly proven it many times over the eighteen months I’d been back in Dead End.

“Let’s open the thing!” She started toward the box, but I gently put a hand on her arm.

“Ma’am, please let me do this. Just in case the Fae have booby-trapped the thing.”

She narrowed her eyes, but then nodded agreement. So, I walked over to the box, threw the latch open, and then shoved the lid—which was heavier than it looked—upright.

Susan, meanwhile, had drawn her gun and stood holding it, pointing down but ready.

Just in case.

“Just in case” was always a good philosophy in Dead End.

Nothing exploded, though. No armed warriors leaped out and attacked. No poisonous gas, no magical doom.

Nothing at all.

I leaned over to glance into the box and saw a bulging bag at the bottom with another notecard on top of it.

“Okay. Looks like more games.” I sighed and reached in to get the note.

“Read it, Jack,” Susan said, coming forward to peer into the box.

I read it out to them:

Courage is a Trial with three parts. Three tasks shall you complete before you can move on to the next Trial.

First, your Champion shall compete with ours in an archery competition. The winner wins the prize of a golden arrow and, should the Dead End Champion win, the privilege of moving on to the second part.

Second, your Champion shall compete with ours in a magic competition. The winner wins a crystal chalice and, should the Dead End Champion win, the privilege of moving on to the third part.

Third, your three Champions shall compete with ours in battle competitions. The winners win a box of jewels and, should the Dead End Champions win, the privilege of moving on to the next Trial, which shall be explained to you later.

The archery competition begins at midnight tonight.

T ess and Susan pulled the bag out, opened it, and dumped the contents on the grass.

“Archery gear,” Susan said, looking down at bows, arrows, and even a target.

“I guess I know why I’m here,” Mrs. Frost said. “Nobody in Dead End can match me at archery. I need to go home and make sure my bowstring is in good shape. Not a chance I’m using their bows. They could have rigged them to blow up or something.”

Susan held up a hand. “Mrs. Frost, this may be too dangerous?—”

Our pocked-sized archer cut her off. “Danger, shmanger. There are going to be plenty of other competitions, according to what Jack just read out. I’m doing this one.”

“She’s not wrong,” Tess said, shrugging. “Nobody is better than her with a bow. Especially since Alaric cured her cataracts. We don’t have a chance against Fae archers without her.”

“If I’m going to meet anybody at midnight, I’d better get a catnap,” Mrs. Frost said, turning toward the parking lot as if the matter were decided. “We don’t drive at night, though, so somebody will have to pick me up.”

We walked her to her car with no further discussion, but I had serious reservations about the plan to set little Mrs. Frost against immortal Fae archers.

Tess was right, though. She was the best we had.

I seriously needed to work on my bow skills.

“We can discuss it at the town hall,” Susan said grimly.

“Not to mention the magical competition,” Tess said, frowning. “The most powerful witch in Dead End is my little sister, and there’s no way I’m letting her anywhere near this.”

“We may need to—” My phone rang, interrupting me.

Lorraine.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“You need to get over here right now, before I shoot this swamp troll!”

“Is he threatening anyone?”

“No! Worse! He asked me out on a date.”