I smirked. “Calm down, Vincent. I haven’t had a chance to tell you that I met him out in front of the store before Sally and I went out to the mine. He approached me to introduce himself, and when we were talking, he mentioned in passing that he knew you were a vampire, and I was a unicorn. He said he knows all about shifters.”
“What?” Vincent still looked shocked, and he thought deeply for a minute. “If that’s the case, he must have known to call me as soon as the vampires walked into the store. He no doubt knew what they were.”
“Yes, no doubt about it,” I said.
“Now that makes me wonder if he knew about the books and what they were all along,” Vincent said, scratching his head. “Perhaps I need to give the man a medal for hopping on the phone and calling me immediately.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you and Scott need to have a long talk, Vincent, but for now, maybe you can help me figure out some things about my new case.”
“You have a new case?” He looked excited and almost relieved about the change in topic.
“I do, but before I tell you everything about it, I need more coffee and some eggs. Do you have eggs in the house?” I was pretty sure he didn’t. I tried to put in a grocery order at Sid’s store every now and then to keep him stocked. I noticed Sid now tended to throw in things I liked for my own house, and I always had to smile when Vincent was stocking his shelves. Clearly, the witch knew I spent more time at the vampire’s residence than I did at my own cabin.
“I don’t have eggs. Will cereal do? I have milk.” He looked slightly embarrassed as I jumped, lost in my thoughts the way I was.
I nodded and stood. “Cereal is good.” I walked to the kitchen and poured another cup of coffee for myself as well as a bowl of corn flakes before sitting down at his kitchen table. He joined me a moment later, sitting across from me.
In between bites of cereal, I relayed everything I could remember about the crime scene Sally and I had attended the day before, assuming it was a crime scene. I certainly hadn’t noticed what caused the sheriff’s death, but I didn’t expect he walked in there to die unless he’d been suicidal. By all accounts, he was energetic and looking forward to retirement, so that scenario seemed unlikely. I knew not to expect a coroner’s report from Tammy Willoughby until this afternoon at the earliest. She’d told me she had two autopsies to complete before working on the sheriff’s remains.
“Do you need help with determining whether shifters were involved in the death?” Vincent asked. “I smelled werewolf on you when you returned last night, so I assume they were involved, right?”
“Sally said she picked up the scent of werewolves but that it was faint, not recent. There were also no outward signs of a werewolf attack on the corpse. We couldn’t even find any footprints or boot prints around the body or even in its vicinity, so we have no idea how the body got in there without a trace.”
“So…Sally smelled werewolves? You were right about her being a shifter, then.” He smiled broadly at me.
“Oh, shit! I forgot to tell you! I talked to Sally about shifters, and she already knew everything about you, me, and the confrontation between us and Floyd’s pack in front of your house that night.”
“I figured,” Vincent said, looking contemplative. “So, she was spying on us that night?”
I chuckled. “She was hiding in the woods in her own shifter form. She said we had a lot of shifter witnesses.”
Vincent’s eyes widened. “I should have guessed. I would have known if I’d been paying attention to other scents, but of course I was caught up in only one man and the threat to him that night…you.”
I smiled at him, setting my spoon down, and leaning over to kiss him. When I pulled back, I rested my chin in both hands, elbows on the table as I stared at him.
“Guess what kind of shifter Sally is,” I said.
Vincent’s brows drew together adorably. “I haven’t met her but if you make me guess, I’d say she’s definitely not a prey animal.”
I laughed like crazy, imagining a tiny hedgehog as a prey animal. I shook my head, trying to compose myself, though, it was impossible to lose the grin.
“No, she’s not a prey animal. She’s very small with a pointy pink nose and spiky fur.”
“I would say porcupine, though, they’re not small,” he said thoughtfully.
“She’s a hedgehog,” I said with a grin. “Have you ever heard of something so charming?”
Vincent smirked. “Charming? Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it. In fact, I’ve seen a whole lab full of white mice shifters once. Come to think of it, they were pretty charming when they suddenly all shifted back to humans at the same time.”
I laughed. “What happened?”
“Seriously? It was incredibly charming when all the lab techs and scientists shit their pants at the same time as a dozen naked blond Vikings suddenly burst out of mice cages all at once.” He smirked. “I heard that the doctors were starving them or something.” He snorted. “They reacted to that with extreme prejudice.”
“They were Vikings?” I bent over at the waist, gasping for breath as I laughed so hard my stomach started to cramp.
“Anyway, I’d like to meet your hedgehog deputy sometime,” he said. “Her size might be a great advantage to you. Just think of when you’ll need to interview a suspect who thinks you have no backup. You could just
