"So you'd deliberately put yourself in harm's way to find this dagger that we don't even know is here in town," Jack said grimly. "No."
"You don't get to say no," I said gently. "We've had this conversation. If we're not on equal footing in this relationship, then we're not having one."
"You'd letmedo this thing? Take a chance my head would explode to find a Fae dagger?"
"Exploding heads is melodramatic. Sheesh.Tigers. Are you all the drama queens of the cat world?" I thought a little levity might lighten the mood, but my smile died when both of them gave me stern looks.
I sighed. "Fine. Yes, I would ask you to do this, if you were the one with the sensitivity. On balance, a headache, no matter how painful, when weighed against total town destruction, seems like a fair trade."
It was amazing how loud silence could be, but I waited it out. Finally, Jack blew out a breath.
"Fine, but you're discounting the possibility that this headache is actually damaging your brain. What if you have an aneurysm?"
I hadn't actually thought of that, and it set me back a moment. "Okay, how about this? At the first sign of pain, I'll point it out and stay back from the source while you check it out. Oh, and that's Mr. Washington's house just ahead on the left. The yellow house with the porch light on."
Jack made a U-turn, pulled up next to my former teacher's mailbox, and parked on the street. Jed stepped out to let me climb out of the truck, and I made it three steps toward the front door before a spike of pain shot through my temples.
"Okay," I said faintly to Jack, who'd just walked up next to me. "Like now. Pain. Lots of pain."
I stepped right and then left, and there was no change in the head pain's intensity. Then I took a small step forward, and it increased. A small step back, and it decreased. So I kept backing up until I was clear to the truck and pointed at the house.
"Yes. There. I'd bet anything that the same magic that's in that box is or has been in his house."
Jack ran up to the door and pounded on it, calling out Mr. Washington's name.
Unfortunately, nobody was home.
Even more unfortunately, somebody called the police on us, which was weird when everybody in town knew who we were and what we were looking for.
Susan wasn't happy when she arrived to find out that we'd been investigating on our own, without bothering to pass along this new lead.
"Susan, I didn't want to call and interrupt your very important work on the evacuation to tell you that a nine-year-oldmayhave seen something thatmayhave been the dagger at a high school dress rehearsal," I said impatiently after she finished dressing us down. "We were going to call you the second we learned anything real."
I quickly explained my dowsing rod theory, with Jed helpfully interjecting his experiences of hiring a dowser to find the site to dig the well on his property. Susan, while extremely impressed with Jed's appearance—he looked like he was in his thirties now—was singularly unimpressed with our theory.
"Okay. Now I get why you didn't call me. It hit me as kind of ridiculous, Tess, when you explained it. On the other hand, here we are, and your head hurts at the home of the teacher who has a jeweled dagger he found important enough to yell at a kid over."
She nodded, and we both spoke at the same time.
"And Mr. Washington never yells."
"He may act very out of character if he's under the influence of Fae magic," Jed said, his face grim. "You'd be shocked at what those artifacts can do to people. Not just to humans, but especially to us, if you understand my meaning."
"All right," Susan said. "I'm going to put out a BOLO on Mr. Washington. Does anybody even know his first name?"
Jack and I shook our heads.
"BOLO?" Jed looked confused.
"A Be On the Lookout," I explained. "It tells police to keep an eye out for someone who is often but not always a crime suspect."
When Jed turned to stare at me, I smiled modestly. "I read a lot of mysteries."
"I'll put out the BOLO. You two—three—keep doing whatever you're doing, and we'll touch base in the morning, or if we find anything in the meantime. And this time youwillcall me if you have any news—any news at all. Do you hear me?"
Jed raised his hand, and Susan sighed.
"You don't have to raise your hand, Mr. Shepherd."
