“Arranged matches are comparatively unusual in the outside world. Lady Marianne agreed that it might reassure my teammates to know that I had the chance to get acquainted with Iris before the ceremony.”
Neither Blake nor Seraphina looked especially convinced by this, which made sense. It was impressive that they’d sold Marianne on it in the first place.
“Your team,” Seraphina said musingly. “This is a group with the ... U.S. Marshals, correct?”
Keith nodded.
Blake circled the table, refilling everyone’s glasses with more sparkling juice. (Keith missed the cocktails.) “I did a little research into the standard Marshal duties. Witness Protection, tracking down fugitives, safeguarding courthouses, transporting prisoners, handling asset forfeiture—it certainly sounds like they keep you busy.”
Seraphina gave a decorous little shudder. “It’s disturbing that there’s enough crime in the outside world to keep so many people occupied.”
“It ebbs and flows,” Keith said. “But there are definitely times when we have our hands full. But the duties you’re talking about—I did more of them at my old job than my new one.”
Blake paused, his glass halfway to his lips. “I didn’t realize the Council had moved you to another post.”
“Not exactly. They approved a transfer to an adjacent department. I’m still with the Marshals, but I’m on another team now than the one I started with.”
“And what do you do now?”
“Our unit investigates shifter-related crimes. We’ve got considerable latitude over them, regardless of whether or not they fall under traditional Marshal jurisdiction. A lot of the big federal agencies have units like ours, ones that look like traditional teams but do most of their real work under the table. It’s ... morally tricky. We have to see that justice is done, but we also have to make sure the shifter world is kept as secret as it can possibly be.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility,” Iris said in something closer to her real voice. “Your team must have to make a lot of big decisions, mostly on your own, and—”
“Shifter-related crimes?” Blake said. “What does that mean?”
Keith had been focused on Iris, and Blake’s question jarred him.
He wouldn’t have said it was a hard concept to understand, so he had to think a second to define it in a way that didn’t sound condescending:shifter-related crimes are crimes related to shifters, and also you interrupted Iris. Since when are the Abbotts that rude?
“Usually they’re cases where right from the start we know—or can reasonably guess—that the crimes have been committed by a shifter, especially if it would be hard for human law enforcement to understand what happened. Or hard for the human justice system to detain the prisoner. Even then, it’s a judgment call. Sometimes it’s fine to leave it in someone else’s hands. If someone shoots his brother, it doesn’t really matter if they can both turn into meerkats. And it’s not that likely that you’d try turning into a meerkat to escape prison, either.”
“I don’t know,” Seraphina said, with an unexpected flicker of humor. “I might give it a try.”
Keith knew it didn’t entirely fit his persona for the night, but he risked giving her a slight smile in return before he went on.
“But if you have a lion shifter serial killer who’s been going after his victims while he’s on all fours, then we probably do need to get involved. And of course, we do a significant amount of work in closed-off shifter communities like ours.”
“Oh?” Blake said, pausing with his fork halfway to his mouth.
Keith shrugged. “If something happened here, it’s not like you could call 911.”
“We wouldn’t need to.” Blake seemed to glow with pride. “We have reinforced doors and a state-of-the-art security system. If Seraphina or I trigger it, it locks the whole house down. If there’s ever a threat, we can literally batten down the hatches. The place becomes impregnable.”
Keith couldn’t help wondering why on earth someone would need that intense a security system in a town where people never even locked their doors, and Blake must have sensed his incredulity.
“Mostly I wanted to see if I could do it,” Blake admitted. “Setting it up was a kind of hobby. But the world outside is getting worse and worse, and we have to make sure it doesn’t ever come to our door. We have to protect the community’s peace and safety at any cost.”
It was pure paranoia. People in the outside world were a lot more vulnerable than Blake, and they still generally got by just fine without turning their homes into fortresses. But when you defined yourself as one of the last holdouts of peace and prosperity, of course it always felt like the barbarians were at the gate. At least Blake hadn’t gotten to the point of installing kill drones.
Seraphina seemed to know that Keith was skeptical about all this, because she rushed in to smooth things over. “Having a unit that can respond to shifter issues makes so much sense. It’s the same with medical emergencies, of course. We can’t afford to rely on human hospitals. When Iris—well.”
She cut herself short, glancing at Iris in silent apology.
Maybe having relived the memory of the accident earlier today had steeled Iris against this kind of thing, though, because she pushed through it.
“Exactly. I was just telling Keith about the accident, and I was saying that thankfully no one passed by on the road and called an ambulance before someone could pull me through the barrier.”
“You told him?” Seraphina said. “About ... all of it?”
