Page 5 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

LEAH

“Late night?” Joy asked, buttering her toast.

“Hnngghhh,” was Leah’s response. She took a long drink of coffee.

She was in the lodge’s restaurant with her sister.

Around them, a number of the cast and crew of the play were exploring the lodge’s breakfast buffet or wandering around yawning and carrying coffee cups.

Gloria, Halstadt, Maggie, and some of the other actors were at a table in the corner.

They had waved Leah over, but she had already accepted a summons from Joy.

She had stayed up half the night watching Fawkes’s window from her tent and wondering when the man slept.

His light stayed on, and occasionally a shadow came into view and vanished.

At one point the window had been opened, and then it stayed open for a while, and she thought (but wasn’t sure) that she had seen something dark ooze over the windowsill and slither down the wall.

If the man was a jellyfish shifter, she didn’t know how to react to that. Supportiveness? Probably? Could jellyfish even live on land?

Also, lying in a sleeping bag on the ground was really uncomfortable. And colder than she had thought it would be.

She finally fell asleep in the middle of wondering if she ought to go over there and sneak into his room while the window was open and he was presumably out being nefarious somewhere.

The next thing she knew, the camp was starting to wake up, and she found out tents weren’t soundproof in the slightest, and the canvas walls did nothing to keep the morning sun out.

“You couldn’t have slept worse than I did,” Joy said.

She looked wistfully at Leah’s coffee and picked up her orange juice instead.

She had banned herself from caffeine as soon as she’d found out she was pregnant.

“I know that it’s too early in the pregnancy to be needing to get up and use the bathroom ten times a night, but tell that to the bean.

Which I guess is what we’re calling it, because I told Bar that and he couldn’t stop laughing and then he said that’s its name now. ”

“Hnnghh.”

“Drink your coffee.” Joy gazed longingly at it. “Before I steal it. By the way, you weren’t sneaking around the lodge last night, were you?”

“What?” Leah demanded, righteous indignation rousing her from her half-asleep stupor. “Of course not. Why would I do such a thing?” What a good idea; she’d have to do it tonight.

“I thought I heard footsteps at odd hours, that’s all. And maybe something skittering around on the drain pipes. Scratching sounds, like something with claws was climbing the building.”

“You know that part’s not me,” Leah said. “If it’d been me, you would have heard skittering and rolling.”

Joy said in horror, “Your shrewmobile can’t go up the wall, can it?”

“Not yet, but that’s a great idea. Thanks, Joy.”

A few more swallows of coffee, plus a fruit and whipped-cream laden waffle, got Leah’s brain working again, and she began to wonder where Fawkes was this morning.

However, she was distracted from this pleasant musing when Alana, the stage manager, came in, half-running, and hurried over to the table where Maggie was.

As she leaned down and whispered something, the table erupted in a babble of concerned chatter.

Leah pulled herself to her feet and reached for her crutches.

“Sorry, gotta run, I think something’s happening.”

“If you need me later, I’ll be up at Bar’s and my place for most of the day,” Joy said. She and her mate were fixing up his old family home on the mountainside.

“Sure, whatever.” Leah’s attention was on the theater crew. They were all on their feet now. Gloria looked visibly distressed, Maggie angry.

When Leah arrived, Maggie was saying, “I want everyone’s whereabouts last night accounted for. Especially the new people.”

“You don’t think it was someone in the company, do you?” Halstadt asked in his deep drawl.

“What happened?” Leah asked, inserting herself.

Maggie turned to her, eyes wide. “We’ve been sabotaged.”

Outside, the fresh morning sun gleamed through the trees, gilding a veneer of beauty over the mess around the Darling set.

“I don’t think the damage is too bad,” Maggie said, picking up a cut rope. “We can fix it pretty easily. But who on earth would do such a thing?”

It looked as if someone had gone around the Darling set pulling down sheets, cutting ropes, knocking over furniture, and otherwise wrecking the place.

If there had been high winds last night, Leah thought it could easily have been the weather.

But sleeping outside in her tent, or more accurately tossing and turning and failing to sleep, she would definitely have noticed a sudden storm.

Odd that she hadn’t noticed this, she mused, picking up a chair. Someone had trashed the set, but they had done it quietly, trying not to disturb the people in the tents and trailers nearby.

She tried not to think—but immediately thought it anyway—that she had just been showing Fawkes around. He could easily have done this.

But why would he do it? That was the inexplicable part.

Well, if he is the thief, he might’ve had all kinds of reasons, she thought. To cover up another theft, for example. Or to give everyone something else to worry about, if they thought they had bigger problems than a few missing items.

But this felt different, she mused, looking around. There was real anger here. If whoever had done this was sincere, not just trying to throw them off the scent of the thefts, they did actually have bigger problems.

“Leah, can I talk to you for a minute?” Maggie asked.

They left the rest of the crew busily moving objects back to their previous locations and pulling down ropes to replace them.

(Gloria wasn’t pitching in, Leah couldn’t help noticing; heaven forbid the star should get her hands dirty doing actual work.) Maggie hustled her off behind some trees, near the site of last night’s now-cold bonfire.

“You’re going to ask me about Fawkes, aren’t you?”

“The guy last night? Yes, I’m going to ask about him. Leah, you know it’s fine to invite guests, we’re open to all. But you had someone new back here last night, and now the set is wrecked—so yeah, I’d like to know how well you know him and where he came from.”

“He’s—well—I just met him yesterday.” Leah crossed her arms defensively, leaning against a tree to keep herself upright. “But I don’t think it was him.”

“Why not?”

Because he’s my mate, possibly, kind of, even though he says he’s not, and he just wouldn’t —was probably not a good enough reason. “He had no reason to,” Leah said instead. “All of that damage, it wasn’t done by someone who doesn’t know anybody here. It’s personal. Don’t you think so?”

“It looks like it,” Maggie said, and she looked nervous for some reason, for just a minute—an odd expression that passed across her face and was gone before Leah had a chance to fully register it. “You can’t know for sure that he knows no one here. Why is he up here this weekend, anyway?”

“He’s doing some kind of gig work from his hotel room,” Leah said, but the words reminded her that she wasn’t sure if she believed that, either.

“I’d like to know more about that Fawkes guy, Leah.”

“Good,” Leah said. “Me too.”