Scout shrugged. She was used to her boyfriend messing with her. She gave him a hard time right back. Their relationship wasn’t all that different from the one I shared with Landon. “She was attacking people trying to come into Canada. She didn’t care if people left the country, only if they were coming in.”
“I guess she was anti-immigration,” I teased.
“She didn’t want anyone crossing into her territory. She was powerful, but she was older. Her magic had started to become erratic. She couldn’t control it any longer.”
“I didn’t realize that happened with naiads.”
“It can happen with any creature,” she replied. “It happens to humans and paranormals alike. I tried talking to her. She wasn’t all there. Eventually, because she killed a few people, she had to be put down.”
“Did you have to do it?”
She nodded. “I made sure it was quick. She was already so far gone that she didn’t have much fight in her. Something tells me we’re dealing with something different this time.”
“Three men are dead.” I pulled out my phone so she could see the photos from the site where we had found the bodies.
“How did they die?”
“They were choked to death,” I replied.
“Two of them just stood there while one of them was being choked?”
“Can naiads glamour people?”
Scout considered it. “The one I saw was having a negative effect on the people in her vicinity. She was angry and they grewangry. It’s possible they can affect the moods of humans. That’s a form of mind control, but…”
“We don’t know if the dead naiad was a sister, or maybe a girlfriend.”
“It could’ve been a friend,” Gunner offered. “Maybe they were just hanging around.”
“Either way, I thought we could form two teams. We need to find the naiad. Landon is providing a list of people who have been at the construction site in the last week. We figure something bad happened out there and the naiad is out for blood.”
“My guess is that the naiads didn’t like the construction team invading their space,” Scout volunteered. “They probably put up a fight and the construction team decided to fight back, not initially realizing what they were up against. When it became obvious they killed one of them—maybe in self-defense—and then they panicked.”
“Did they bury the other naiad?”
Scout tilted her head back and forth as she considered the question. “It could have gone either way. Did the naiad look as if great care had been taken in her burial?”
“Not really,” I replied. “She was only a few feet down. She was hard to look at because of the bruises and marks on her body.”
“I think the construction workers chased off the other naiad and buried the dead one. It’s possible the one out there hunting doesn’t know what happened to the mate … or sister … or friend.”
I pursed my lips, considering. “Maybe taking her to the body will be enough to get her to leave the area.”
“It wouldn’t be enough for me.” Scout was brutally frank. “I would want to put my loved one to rest my way. I would also want revenge.”
“The construction workers panicked and didn’t realize what they were up against.” I shifted from one foot to the other, doing a little dance as I worked it out. “They might believe they killed a human.”
“Do you think they realize they’re in trouble?” Stormy asked. She’d been quiet for the duration of the conversation, taking it all in. “I mean, three guys dying all at once has to be frightening.”
“I would think so,” I replied. “We don’t know that anyone else was involved. It may have been just the three of them.”
“It’s our job to figure it out. You need to be careful. The Feds are in town. They know about me—mostly—but they don’t know about you.”
“We’ll be fine,” Scout assured me. “Give us the list. I can lie to the Feds just as easily as I can lie to the cops.”
“Yes, she could do it professionally,” Gunner teased.
I grinned. Nobody acted as if I was putting them out by calling for help. This was the sort of thing I didn’t want Thistle and Clove involved in. They didn’t have active powers. I wanted to keep Landon and Chief Terry at a safe distance too, although they insisted on being kept in the know.
