"Jack, hush," I said, moving away from Alejandro. "Be friendly."
"Yes, Jack, be friendly," Alejandro said, laughter in his deep, rich voice. Alejandro was from Guatemala, and his accent was lovely.
He was not at all what I'd thought of when—if?—I'd ever thought about FBI agents and what they might look like. In fact, he was kind of gorgeous, with dark golden-brown skin, black hair, and dark eyes. Today, he wore an elegant navy blue suit. He was also very smart and very dangerous, which made him a good person to have on our side, although he kept asking Jack to become his partner, which would take Jack away from Dead End.
Away from me.
Luckily, Jack had no interest in leaving, so I'd forgiven Alejandro. His former partner had quit the FBI over a basilisk issue a few years back, and nobody else he'd tried to work with had measured up yet, he'd told us.
I sympathized, but he still couldn't have Jack.
"I guess it's a good thing I brought the cookie dough on top of the pie," I told him. "I'm delighted to see you, but why are you here?"
Jack homed in on my car like he was in tiger form and it was a fleeing gazelle. "Pie?"
Alejandro gave me a hopeful look. "Cookies? What kind of cookies?"
"Homemade Snickerdoodles. And chocolate cream pie. I'll just—"
Jack stopped me with a hand on my arm, his beautiful green eyes filled with concern. "Pie can wait. Tess, are you okay? How's your head?"
I blinked. Had he really just said "pie can wait"?
Wow. He really,reallycared about me.
"Are you ill, Tess?" Alejandro pulled out his phone. "Tell me what's wrong, and I'll call Rose. Healing herbs and spells are among her specialties."
I started to answer, but then Shelley popped into my mind. "I'm fine, but thanks. It was just a headache. I do have a favor to ask, though. We just found out this week that Shelley has manifested magic. She—well, her mother was a garden witch, as you know."
Alejandro had helped us expedite Shelley's adoption. Federal and state laws might not apply to Dead End, but my sister would leave town to go to college one day, and we'd wanted to be sure her adoption and any other necessary paperwork were all in perfect order.
"You'd like advice from Rose?" Alejandro flashed a big smile. "She'd be delighted. She has a lot of experience dealing with adolescent witches from her sisters. And her own teen years, I suppose."
"She's not quite a teenager yet, but thank you. That's a weight off my mind, since she doesn't have anybody else to talk to. Pretty much all the witches left town after what happened."
Alejandro nodded solemnly. He'd been there for part of the time when a terrifying and dangerous coven leader practicing black magic had kidnapped Shelley. I didn't even like to think about what could have happened to her—and me—if Jack hadn't been there to help us escape.
"Anyway, whyareyou here?" I pulled the pie and cookie dough out of my car and handed it to the guys to carry inside. "You can't have heard about Jack's grandpa already."
"Your grandfather?" Alejandro turned to Jack. "Is there something I should know?"
Jack sighed. "I don't know. There's danger on the horizon, but it looks like it will only affect Dead End. But it's the Fae, and you just—"
"—never know, with the Fae," Alejandro finished Jack's thought, looking grim. "Maybe you should tell me about it, if you can, but first I need to tell you the reason I came. I'm on the trail of the leader of a black-market ring of smugglers. They've been linked to the theft, abduction, and sale of numerous magical creatures over the past three years. The most recent victims are a rare mated pair ofSchwarzwaldunicorns. The female is—"
"Pregnant. It's all over the news," Logan said, walking out from the side of the house, from where he'd been doing who knows what. Lurking? Eavesdropping? Mysterious eagle things?
"You," Alejandro hissed at Logan. He tossed the pie to Jack, who snatched it out of the air. And then a gun was in the agent's hand before I even saw him reach for it.
Logan put his hands in the air. "Whoa. I think we have a case of mistaken identity here."
"I doubt it," Jack drawled.
"You put a colleague of mine in the hospital in Boston," Alejandro said, his voice pure ice. "You are under arrest."
"I did not," Logan said hotly. "In fact, I tried to stop Smitty and got shot myself for my trouble. I was unconscious and bleeding on that boat when it left the harbor." He started to lower his hands.
Alejandro shook his head, his aim steady and his gun pointing directly at Logan's heart. "No, Mr. Mackenzie. If you make the slightest movement, I will happily shoot you."
