Lunacy (Blood Trails Book 13), page 1
Lunacy
Jennifer Blackstream
Contents
Copyright
Don’t Forget!
Summary
Also by Jennifer Blackstream
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
From the Author
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LUNACY
A Blood Trails Novel, Book 13
USA Today Bestselling Author
JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM
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Lunacy
©Copyright Jennifer Blackstream 2022, Skeleton Key Publishing
Michelle
Cover Art by Clarissa Yeo © Copyright 2022
This is a work fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form without the written permission of the author. You may not circulate this book in any format. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.
Temptation, Blood Trails #0.5
A dinner party ended with a dead body.
A young officer recognizes the foul stench of demon at the crime scene.
It’s time to call for backup.
Not a cop.
A witch.
Tap or click HERE and tell me where to send your free ebook. Quick! There's a murder to solve...
I love hearing from readers, and I respond to all messages. You can reply to a newsletter, you can message me on Facebook, or you can email me at jblackstream@gmail.com.
I will always respond, because you’re the ones that make these books possible.
With much love,
Jennifer Blackstream
P.S. Your laundry is still in the dryer.
A witch has no business meddling in the affairs of werewolves.
Still…
Witch PI Shade Renard and werewolf Detective Sergeant Liam Osbourne have come a long way since their hostile first attempt to work together. But even in her wildest dreams, Shade never dared to imagine he would ask not only for her supernatural help on a case—but for her to take the lead in the investigation itself.
There’s been a murder on the doorstep of New Moon, the shifter rehabilitation center run by Liam as alpha of the local werewolf pack. The number one suspect has killed once before and gotten away with it. If she’s proven guilty this time—of a murder committed while she was in Liam’s charge—it could be the leverage a rival alpha needs to oust Liam from New Moon, or worse, seize control of the Rocky River pack itself.
A rival alpha like Liam’s vicious patriarch, who arrives eager to remake New Moon in his own violent image.
Solving this murder is about more than bringing a killer to justice. It’s about making sure that Osbourne Sr. doesn’t get the chance to destroy the sanctuary his son has worked so hard to build.
Fortunately, Shade isn’t just a private investigator. She’s a witch.
And she knows how to handle tyrants…
ALSO BY JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM
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Urban Fantasy
Blood Trails Series
Temptation (prequel, mailing list exclusive)
Deadline
Monster
Taken
Corruption
Mercenary
Caged
Betrayal
Thrall
Conviction
Misdirection
Sacrifice
Shroud
Lunacy
Paranormal Romance
Blood Prince Series
What Big Teeth You Have (bonus short story, mailing list exclusive)
Before Midnight
One Bite
Golden Stair
Divine Scales
Beautiful Salvation
Bonus Novel: The Pirate’s Witch
Blood Realm Series:
All for a Rose
Blue Voodoo
The Archer
Bear With Me
Stolen Wish
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Short stories are not listed here, but can be found on my website here.
“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; to be kind, but not weak; to be humble, but not timid.”
Jim Rohn
Chapter 1
“He peed on someone?”
Peasblossom’s high-pitched voice pierced the noise of the morning rush at Goodfellows like a needle through cheap cotton. The group of witches three tables over stopped with their teacups hovering in front of their mouths, their eyes sliding over to the booth where my pixie familiar and I sat with Detective Sergeant Liam Osbourne. Scath was with us too, but my—Friend? Bodyguard?—was in her feline form lounging under the table with her black-furred body pressed against my legs, so she escaped the embarrassment of association.
Across from me, Liam blinked down at the file he’d laid on the table beside his mug of coffee, seemingly uncertain of how to handle the pixie who’d wedged herself inside said folder and apparently started reading its contents. His dark brown hair lacked its usual grooming, falling over his forehead with a hint of curl as if he’d gone longer than usual between haircuts. Liam and I had been working together for almost a year—and we’d been dating for a few months. Still, he hadn’t quite gotten used to Peasblossom. Deep blue eyes met mine with an expression all too familiar in those who found themselves with a pixie in their personal space.
A plea for help.
I mouthed an apology at my fellow witches, then scowled as I reached into the gap between the pages of Liam’s file. My fingertips brushed Peasblossom’s skirt and I seized it in a firm grip before pulling the squirming pixie across the table. A page from the file came with her—stuck to her hand with a glob of the honey she’d been enjoying before her impromptu reading session. I sighed.
“Hey!” Peasblossom tried to swing at me, but the page weighed her arm down too much, so it ended up as a twitch more than anything. “I wasn’t finished!”
I tugged the paper loose from her sticky grip and put it on top of the file folder. “We haven’t gotten to that part. We’ll review the file after Liam tells us what’s going on.”
Peasblossom crossed her arms, multi-faceted pink eyes narrowing. “He’s taking too long to get to it. I’m bored.”
“Eat your honey.”
“I finished the honey,” Peasblossom snapped. Then she paused. “You could get me more…”
“You’ve had enough.”
“But you just said—”
“I’m sorry,” I said to Liam, raising my voice so Peasblossom would get the hint. “You were saying?”
In addition to being a detective sergeant with the Cleveland Metroparks Police, Liam was also the alpha of the local werewolf pack. He was a large man, but unfortunately for him, size didn’t intimidate pixies. They were smaller than the majority of their enemies, and they’d evolved to compensate.
And then some.
Liam kept one cautious eye on the sulking fey as he finished his coffee and set his mug on the table with a deliberate thump. “Peasblossom isn’t wrong. I’m dragging my feet here, and I shouldn’t be.” He dropped one large hand onto the file and slid it across the table toward me. “I need your help.”
“You have a case with a magical aspect?” I guessed, opening the folder.
“Not that I’m aware of. There was a murder last night behind the New Moon property line. The man’s name was Dustin Walters.”
“He was a werewolf,” I said, reading the notes on the first page. “A client?”
“No. And he wasn’t pack, either.”
I kept my eyebrows down with some effort. Liam was asking for my help investigating a murder. A murder with no magical aspect. Liam was a cop and an alpha—and he was good at both. If there was one person in Cleveland I didn’t expect to need the help of a private investigator, it was him. Witch or no witch.
“A lone wolf?” Peasblossom crawled up my arm, craning her neck to get a look at the page in front of me. “What was he doing that close to New Moon property? I thought lone wolves avoided pack territory like the plague?”
“They do, normally. And even though the forest behind New Moon isn’t legally part of the New Moon property, it’s still pack territory. But Dustin held a grudge, and he liked to express that grudge by coming into the forest and marking territory.” Liam’s blue eyes darkened. “Drove some of our clients nuts.”
“Marking territory means peeing, right?” Peasblossom clarified. “Is that how he ended up peeing on someone?”
Liam held up a hand. “Wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let me start from the beginning.
I closed the folder and lifted my cup of tea, giving Liam my full attention. Under the table, Scath shifted her weight, leaning more heavily against my legs. The steady rise and fall of her chest gave the impression she was sleeping, but I knew better. The sidhe woman was listening.
“Dustin worked at one of the local substance abuse clinics. Two months ago, he applied for a counseling position at New Moon.”
“Why would shifters need a substance abuse counselor?” Peasblossom interrupted. “I thought drugs didn’t affect you?”
“Most shifters with substance abuse issues became addicts before they were turned,” Liam explained. “And any drug can affect us if you mix it with the right amount of wolfsbane. But getting that mixture right without making it poisonous requires a lot of skill. Shifters that try it end up dead more often than not. It’s what makes addiction in a shifter so dangerous.”
“I take it he wasn’t hired?” I said, gently guiding the conversation back on track.
“He was not. Emma’s been running background checks on new clients and prospective employees. Dustin was a police officer for three years before leaving to get a counseling degree. When Ruth interviewed him and asked him what had made him quit the force to become a counselor, Dustin told her he wanted to make a real difference. He gave her a speech about how prison doesn’t fix any problems, it just makes them worse, and if society is going to improve, then we need to start addressing the underlying issues that feed crime instead of just locking up the people driven to crime.”
I actually agreed with that philosophy, but that wasn’t what this conversation was about, so I didn’t say anything.
“Ruth checked his references at the clinic, and his boss had nothing but nice things to say about him,” Liam continued. “But Ruth knows enough cops to know that anytime someone leaves the force early, it’s best to find out the circumstances. Especially if the person in question immediately moves to a different area after they quit, like Dustin did. She asked Emma to look into it, because in situations like these, if you want the real story from the cops that worked with the person you’re looking into, you need to be a cop yourself.”
“The blue line,” I said.
Liam wrinkled his nose, but didn’t comment. “Long story short, Emma found out that Dustin was ‘encouraged’ to leave. One too many excessive force complaints.”
“I’m guessing nothing turned up in his background check about those excessive force complaints?”
“No,” Liam admitted.
“So Dustin didn’t get hired,” I prompted.
“No. But it’s not unusual for shifters to struggle with controlling violent urges, and if he wasn’t taught how to do it at a young age, it can be harder to learn when you’re older. That’s what New Moon is for, Dustin is exactly the type of loner we’re trying to help. So Ruth offered him a place at New Moon as a client. She told him if he completed a program here to deal with his aggression, then she’d be willing to reconsider his application at a later date.” Liam shoved a hand through his hair, letting out a bone-deep sigh.
“Dustin didn’t take it well,” I guessed.
“He did not. The rejection of employment combined with the suggestion that he needed help was more than his pride could take.”
“Hence going around the forest near New Moon and—”
“Peeing on everything,” Peasblossom supplied.
“Please stop saying that,” I said tiredly. “We aren’t twelve-year-old boys, could we avoid mentioning bodily functions as much as possible?”
An amused snort under the table confirmed that Scath was, in fact, listening.
“It gets worse,” Liam said grimly. “A few days after Ruth talked to him, Dustin attacked one of his coworkers—a guy named Howard. He did it after work hours, in wolf form, so his employer doesn’t know it was him.”
There was something in the set of his jaw that made my stomach tighten. “How bad was the attack?”
“Bad, but not in the way you might think. Apparently, even before the attack, Howard was…suspicious.”
“Suspicious how?” I asked.
“Suspicious in that he wears a large silver cross around his neck and an iron nail in each shoe.”
This time I let my eyebrows rise. “He knows about the Otherworld.”
“I think Dustin’s attack moved Howard from paranoid to fervent convert,” Liam said, picking up his coffee mug and frowning when he found it empty. “And I think Dustin knew Howard suspected monsters are real. When he attacked him, he didn’t just leap out like a wild animal. He hunted the guy. Scared him. Then he bit him.”
“Did he…?”
Liam raised his coffee mug to get the attention of Alexandra, our waitress. “I think that was Dustin’s intent, but Howard didn’t turn. I checked in on Howard in my role as part of the Wild Animal Task Force. He’d treated the wound with colloidal silver.” He grimaced. “It would have burned like acid. Not many people can tolerate that particular treatment after a bite. If he managed to do it to himself, he’s either a masochist, or his hatred for shifters borders on fanatical.”
The tension in Liam’s shoulders looked painful, and it didn’t ease when he finished telling me about Dustin’s attack on Howard.
“There’s more.” I didn’t make it a question.
“I think Dustin found out that Emma is the one who dug up the excessive force complaints. The night he was murdered, he texted Emma and asked her to meet him in the forest outside New Moon.”
I sat up straighter. “She didn’t.”
“She did. What’s worse, she broke protocol and met him alone. Security regulations at New Moon state that no one is allowed out into the woods alone—not clients, not employees, not pack. It’s to everyone’s benefit.”
“Not just someone to keep you calm and make sure you don’t do something stupid, but a witness to verify that you didn’t do anything stupid.” My voice came out weaker than I’d have liked. “This is starting to sound unpleasantly familiar.”
“It gets worse.” Liam stopped when Alexandra approached the table with a pot of coffee, letting the pointy-eared waitress refill his mug—and Peasblossom’s honey dish, to my horror—before continuing. “Emma met Dustin and—”
“He peed on her.” Peasblossom made a face. “This isn’t appropriate breakfast conversation.”
“Emma went back inside, showered, and threw her clothes in the wash. She told Stephen what happened and he went outside to confront Dustin.”
“Alone?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“Actually, no.” Liam’s voice lilted upward with surprise. “Stephen went straight to Sam, our head of security, and told them what had happened. Sam went into the woods with Stephen right away, and that’s when they found the body. Dustin was shot in the chest, twice. One of the bullets took out his cell phone in his shirt pocket. We’ve got people trying to recover the data, but so far it’s looking like a lost cause.”
I looked down at the folder and turned the page. “Shot with hollow point bullets. Gun was a .45, but it wasn’t recovered. Evidence of silver dust in the wound.”
“Sam came to me immediately. I talked to Stephen and Emma, and Emma swears she didn’t shoot him.” Liam tightened his grip on his coffee mug. “But she’s got that same look. That same guilty look she had after we found Oliver Dale’s body.”
My mind immediately returned to the murder case that had introduced me to Liam. Oliver Dale had been a horrible man, and a former classmate of Emma’s. He’d managed to bully her into fixing minor traffic tickets and occasionally making harassment complaints go away, using her over and over to escape the legal consequences of his actions. Then one night she’d found him trying to hang someone’s dog in the woods and she’d snapped. She’d shot him, and Stephen had covered up the murder by eating the body. The whole case had been a nightmare, leaving Emma a lost and terrified new shifter, and Stephen a seething mess of bitterness and hatred for his alpha.
