Page 6 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

FAWKES

Leah was strangely difficult to find. Fawkes would have liked to have breakfast with her and perhaps ask her some questions about the other members of her theater group.

But when he went down early, dragging himself out of bed, she wasn’t there; and when he came back a bit later, he found out she’d just left—according to Hester, the manager, who was clearing away the buffet.

“I’m not in the habit of facilitating meetings between guests,” Hester said. “Can I ask why you’re looking for her?”

Because she’s my mate and the love of my life and I seem to have gotten off on entirely the wrong foot with her. Also she’s possibly got information I need.

“Nothing important,” Fawkes said. “It’ll keep.”

“Good,” Hester said, straightening up from the buffet. “Because I wanted to talk to you about?—”

“You!” said a voice behind him.

Fawkes whirled around just as a woman he had never seen before with bouncing brown curls descended on him like a whirlwind of fury. She seized his arm.

“We’re going to have a conversation,” she declared and strong-armed him out of the hotel restaurant.

“May I ask where we’re going to have this conversation?” Fawkes inquired politely as he was marched down the hall leading to one of the exits.

“Somewhere that it doesn’t matter if I shift, just in case.”

Fawkes tried to keep the look of frozen panic off his face. What the heck did she shift into, a polar bear? “Er—dare I ask what your shift form is?”

“None of your business, is what it is.”

She let him go as soon as they were outside.

Fawkes gave some thought to shifting himself, but decided it probably wouldn’t be a great idea to open this conversation by scuttling up a tree.

(He could always reserve that for later in case she turned out to be someone from his past that he needed to avoid.) He tried to lounge in a casual, cool-looking sort of way on the wall.

“So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“You’re Fawkes, right? The guy my little sister was babbling about all day yesterday?”

Aha. Leah had said something about a sister.

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Don’t butter me up, buddy. I want to know how well you know my baby sister and what your intentions are towards her. She was half awake this morning, and I get the feeling she was off somewhere with you.”

Okay, so this was the shovel talk. Fawkes just hoped she didn’t turn into anything huge and force him to engage in defensive combat.

“She was with me for part of the evening,” he said. “She showed me around backstage, and then we split up.”

“You weren’t helping her sneak around the lodge?”

“Nope,” Fawkes said, hoping his innocent look held better with the sister than it did with Leah. The sneaking around had been entirely separate.

The sister relaxed a little. “Okay, that’s ... better than I thought, I guess. You still haven’t told me what your intentions are for her, though.”

“My intentions,” he said. “Uh.”

To hold her and protect her and love her and ravish her gently until she begs for more and make all her dreams come true ? —

“Mostly undecided,” Fawkes said over his brain’s determination to show him in great detail how, exactly, he was going to make Leah’s dreams come true, especially any of them that could take place in the bedroom.

We shall grasp her in both hands and take her back to our den and curl up gently with her and cling to her forever as our greatest treasure, foremost among all the trash in our hoard.

Ah yes, there was his inner animal, being helpful as usual.

It really was true, he thought: when you met your mate, she was all you could think about.

Which was very inconvenient for him on this particular weekend, especially with Leah’s sister giving him a look that suggested he hadn’t provided the correct answer and she was about to go full polar bear on him.

“ Mostly undecided ?” She shook a finger in his face. “My sister doesn’t date people very often, she’s had some bad experiences in the past, and if you’re planning a weekend fling followed by dumping her?—”

“Look,” Fawkes said, actual anger on Leah’s behalf beginning to stir in him.

He pushed aside the hand that was thrusting a finger in his face.

Leah’s sister looked shocked. “Your sister is an adult. She can have a weekend fling if she wants to, without having to answer to you. And no, a weekend fling isn’t all I have in mind, there hasn’t even been an actual fling yet, but if there was, it wouldn’t be any of your business. ”

“How dare—” the sister began, but just then she was interrupted by a wonderfully familiar voice.

“There you are!”

Leah crutch-stomped around the corner and made a beeline for Fawkes. He tried not to visibly light up at the sight of her, but it was probably obvious.

“Fawkes,” Leah said. Her eyes flashed hazel fire; her hair was coming out of a casual braid. The sun lit her up like a goddess, which made him nearly miss what she said next. “Where were you last night? In your room?”

“Uh,” said Fawkes, who very much had not been in his room. “Yes.”

Leah abruptly noticed that he wasn’t alone. “Joy, move. I need to yell at Fawkes properly.”

At least now he had a name for the sister. “We were having a discussion,” Joy said.

“Yes, well, now Fawkes and I are having a discussion.” Leah frowned. “What were you talking about?”

Joy was looking back and forth between them. The anger had faded out of her face, leaving a dawning curious expression. “I think we’re done here, actually,” she said slowly. “I’ll just be in my room if you need me.”

She turned and went briskly back into the lodge. Leah stared after her.

“That was weird,” Leah said.

“What does your sister turn into?” Fawkes asked, which made Leah give him that unfairly adorable narrow-eyed suspicious look again.

“She’s a squirrel. Why?”

Well, that was definitely 100% less likely to result in a mauling than anything else he had been thinking of.

“Just curious.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not what I came here to talk about. I don’t believe you were in your room last night.”

“Why not?” Fawkes demanded indignantly, all too aware that he hadn’t been.

“Because someone trashed the sets I took you to look at just a few hours earlier.”

His budding protest of wounded innocence died in shock. “What?”

“We’ve cleaned up most of the damage, it’s not too bad, but there aren’t a lot of vandals to choose from around here.

It was either someone on the crew, or someone from the hotel who was sneaking around in the middle of the night.

And for the record, I know you weren’t in your room for at least part of the night. ”

“And how exactly do you know that?”

“Because,” Leah said, “I saw that your window was partly open, and I saw something dark crawl over the windowsill and go down the wall.”

Fawkes closed his eyes briefly. Of course she had.

His eyes snapped open when she said, “Are you a gelatinous blob shifter?”

“A—what?”

“You know. From D now she took it out and pointed a finger at him. “Where did you go and what did you get into with your little raccoon hands? I’m going to guess you weren’t going through the trash.”

Sadly , his raccoon sighed.

“I can’t tell you,” Fawkes said.

“Can’t or won’t? Oh wait!” She wheeled as if an idea had struck her, grabbing her other crutch, which had been leaning against her thigh. Her big purse was slung over her shoulder. Fawkes guessed she used it in lieu of hands when she needed to carry something.

He was wildly curious, in a way he couldn’t quite explain even to himself, about everything to do with her. What happened to her, where she was from, did she have any family other than Joy ...

And where exactly was she going? He followed her, struck all over again at how fast she could move on those crutches.

“Where are you taking me?”

“I’m not taking you anywhere, but where I’m going is to check for muddy little raccoon paw prints on the Darling house’s wall sheets.”

“Oh.” Not a bad idea, he supposed, and now he was frantically trying to remember just where exactly he had gone as a raccoon.

It wasn’t like raccoon tracks were an unusual sight in most of North America, a convenient fact that he took full advantage of.

Raccoons might not be the sort of charismatic megafauna that scored points with the ladies in shifter bars, but there were times when it was handy to turn into something ordinary and easily forgotten, rather than, say, a tapir or an African water buffalo.

Having hands in his shift form was also useful.

“I did not leave muddy paw prints on your sheets,” he said, hoping it was accurate.

They reached the set, which looked much more ordinary and less ethereal in the daytime. As far as Fawkes could tell, it looked exactly like it had the last time he’d seen it. Leah began pulling on the ends of the rolled-up sheets, trying to get a look at the fabric.

“I don’t see any damage,” Fawkes said.

“That’s because we put everything back. The ropes are still down.

We’re going to have to get more. They were all cut up, and some were only partly cut through, so if anyone used them, they might be badly hurt.

Maggie wants everything checked before we trust an actor’s weight to them, even during rehearsals.

Ugh! I’m too short. Grab that for me, would you? ”

Instead, Fawkes caught her arm lightly. “Don’t touch everything. If your mystery vandal left any evidence, you could be destroying it.”

“Oh.” Startled, she dropped her hand to her side. “We, uh—we didn’t think of that.”

“I can see that,” Fawkes remarked wryly, looking around at the Darling set. It was easier by day to see it as a facsimile of a room indoors, with tarps draped over the furniture and rugs to keep potential rain off. “What did it look like when—who found the damage, anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” Leah said. She seemed subdued now, but focused, her scattered manner falling away as she was abruptly on . Focused Leah was unbearably hot. “Alana, the stage manager, was the one who came into the restaurant to get Maggie. And we all came out to see.”

“So there were people walking around all over.”

“Yeah. That would have wrecked any tracks, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.” She was sharp, Fawkes could see; she didn’t have any trouble following him from one thought to another. “Did anyone take pictures?”

Leah muttered something under her breath that sounded like “Nice work, Detective Shrew.” Louder, she said, “I’m not sure. I can ask around.”

“That’d be good. But don’t ask everyone. Just people you know didn’t do it. Maggie’s the director, right? She’d be the place to start.”

“You’re good at this,” Leah said, gazing at him.

“Too much CSI,” he said lightly, and began to unbutton his shirt. Leah’s eyes went huge.

“What—uh—what are you doing?”

“I’m going to use my nose,” Fawkes explained. He pulled off his shirt and started on his jeans.