And all I’d done a few weeks ago was mention Trickster Night, so everything that happened afterward really wasn’t my fault.
CHAPTER 2
Grimshaw
Windsday, Grau 31
Even as a child, Wayne Grimshaw hadn’t seen the point of Trickster Night. Why dress up in some kind of costume in order to walk down a couple of neighborhood streets and knock on people’s doors in order to receive a questionable mix of candy that was, for the most part, something you didn’t want to eat anyway?
Of course, when he had to participate because his parents wanted him to do an activity with other children, he’d dressed as some kind of cop. A frontier lawman. An old-time city detective who wore a suit and a bowler hat. The last time his parents encouraged him to knock on people’s doors, he went out as an undercover cop, and his costume was a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, a secondhand leather jacket, and a lot of attitude.
His career choice wasn’t a surprise to anyone who had known him when he was young. His choosing highway patrol wasn’t a surprise either. He was ideally suited to being a lone officer who traveled the roads through the wild country to assist people who’d had some kind of accident or needed another kind of help—or to apprehend idiots who thought they could taunt the Others and drive away, if the highway patrol officer managed to arrest said idiot before said idiot had been caught by one of the larger, more dangerous forms of terra indigene, then ripped into chunks and generously dispersed as handy meals for the smaller carnivores.
The surprise was finding himself the chief of police of the two-man police station in the village of Sproing, a small human community near Lake Silence, the westernmost of the Finger Lakes. Or Feather Lakes, depending on which species was identifying the bodies of water. His presence in Sproing had started out as a temporary assignment a few months ago, when he’d responded to the call Vicki DeVine had made to the Bristol Police Station reporting a dead body. That body had been the first of many as a secret group of men had tried to take The Jumble away from Vicki. Her ex-husband had thought she would be a pushover, not realizing that her new friends included several Crowgard, a Panther, a Bear, the Sanguinati who were her attorney and CPA, and a couple of Elementals, including Silence’s Lady of the Lake.
The loner he’d always been had found himself teaming up with Julian Farrow, a friend from his academy days; Ineke Xavier, the intimidating owner of the village’s boardinghouse; and a variety of terra indigene in order to protect Vicki DeVine and, by extension, the entire village. The end result of that was the offer to become Sproing’s chief of police.
So there he was, standing on the main street of a village whose population had swelled to almost four hundred residents—a significant jump from the three hundred people who had been in Sproing the first day he’d walked into the police station—wondering about a custom that encouraged children to go out at dusk, dressed in ways that might make it difficult for anyone to know, without examining teeth, if the children were humans dressed to look strangely furry, or furry youngsters enjoying a day when not being able to pass for human might be an advantage.
He had three choices for village information: the Xaviers at the boardinghouse; Helen Hearse, who ran Come and Get It, the village’s diner; and Julian Farrow, the owner of Lettuce Reed, an establishment that was equal parts bookstore and the village’s revolving library of used paperbacks.
Deciding he had a better chance with Julian of getting information and walking away in a reasonable amount of time, Grimshaw zipped up his jacket and crossed the street, steeling himself for an encounter with the Sproingers, the small critters that looked a bit like happy, bouncy rats but were a lethally venomous form of terra indigene. They were Sproing’s major tourist attraction, hopping around the village, cadging chunks of carrot or pumpkin from the shop owners while people from all around the Northeast Region of Thaisia came to Sproing for the chance to get their pictures taken with the happy-faced hoppy things before purchasing an I ♥ Sproingers T-shirt.
On the continent of Thaisia, Sproingers were exclusive to the land around Sproing and Lake Silence.
Thank the gods for small favors.
Julian Farrow stood outside Lettuce Reed with a bowl of carrot chunks he was handing out as treats.
When they’d gone through the academy together, instructors sometimes called them Day and Night because they were opposites in looks. Even then, Grimshaw was a large man with dark blond hair and blue-gray eyes, while Julian had a lean build and finely sculpted face, gray eyes, and dark hair. In many ways, they were still opposites. Grimshaw still wore his hair short, while Julian’s hair was long enough to look shaggy or bedroom disheveled or whatever adjectives women liked to apply to such things. There was a thin scar beneath Julian’s left cheekbone—a souvenir of the attack that had ended Farrow’s career as a cop.
Julian carried other scars too, and not all of them were visible to the eye.
Like the children Grimshaw noticed going from store to store, the Sproingers approached the businesses in small groups. A quick tally of the critters he could see put the count at around fifty, which was half the Sproinger population. He didn’t want to consider where the other half was.
He stood at the edge of the sidewalk and continued scanning the street while Julian dealt with two boys who wore furry-looking hats and mittens, a length of clothesline pinned to their jeans, and hopped after the Sproingers.
“I have carrots,” Julian told the boys. “Helen at Come and Get It is giving out brownie squares.”
The Sproinger wannabes hopped toward the diner and a better treat.
Shaking his head, Grimshaw joined Julian.
“Carrot?” Julian held out the bowl.
Grimshaw hesitated, then took a chunk. “Why not?”
“You were almost called to break up some fisticuffs at Pops Davies’s store today when two female tourists laid claim to the last bunch of carrots in the hopes of some up-close-and-personal contact with the Sproingers. Fortunately, Officer Osgood arrived before the first punch was thrown and pointed out that, since both women were staying at the boardinghouse, they could split the cost of the carrots and any candy they wanted to contribute to the goody bowl the Xaviers were using to lure costumed residents to their door.”
Grimshaw sighed. “I have one officer to help me patrol three potential trouble spots.” The Jumble was one; the boardinghouse was another. He considered the village of Sproing in its entirety to be the third.
“Two officers, two spots,” Julian corrected. “I heard Ineke walked into the dining room this morning wearing her ‘costume,’ which was a long leather coat over a smoking-hot top and a pair of shorts that were just this side of legal.”
“Gave her guests a good look at her tattoos?”