A Study In Shifters Read online

  First Published by Monster House Books, LLC in 2018

  Monster House Books, LLC

  34 Chandler Place Newton, MA 02464

  www.monsterhousebooks.com

  ISBN ebook: 9781945723292

  ISBN Print: 9781945723308

  Copyright © 2018 by Monster House Books LLC

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “You have exactly thirty minutes to solve this mystery,” Balthazar Rollins said as he glanced down at his shiny, expensive watch. “Good luck,” he added in the most insincere tone possible.

  The Conclave, spearheaded by Rollins, had come up with this test to see if I was still fit to work for them after the catastrophe that was my last mission. I’d screwed up the assignment so badly that people had gotten hurt. A lot. Thinking about that conjured up a lump in my throat and brought back the horrible guilt that had haunted me ever since.

  The guilt was the main reason why I wanted back into the Conclave. That, and without them, I didn’t really know who I was anymore. Working for the Conclave wasn’t just my job; it was my life. But if I wanted back in, I had to complete this test, which was, quite frankly, a waste of time.

  A real test, I would’ve appreciated, one that taught me how to close off my heart for guys who liked to use it as a pincushion. That would’ve been helpful and would at least prove to me that I wouldn’t fall into a trap like that again.

  But a locked room mystery like the one the Conclave was currently subjecting me to? I could solve that in a heartbeat. Although I had to admit, the presence of Balthazar Rollins, a man I’d nicknamed “Balthy,” was getting on my nerves. He was a tall bone-thin man with a long face, black, slightly greying hair, wearing a shiny, silk suit that made him look like he’d escaped from the set of a Victorian period movie.

  The most infuriating thing about his presence was the way he was leaning against the wall as if he had no care in the world, and nothing better to do than to glance pointedly at his watch every minute or so.

  I scanned the room I was in, meanwhile wondering what I’d have for dinner. A juicy, greasy hamburger sounded excellent, but Mother’s nagging voice in my mind, “You better watch your waistline. Rolls of pudge don’t look good on anyone, let alone royalty,” made me doubt my dinner decision.

  The wall clock ticked the seconds away, and I only had fifteen minutes left to solve the case. That’s what you get for being too arrogant, Marisol, I scolded myself. Thinking about hamburgers and Balthy’s obnoxious presence had wasted valuable time. Even if this was an easy case for me, I needed to focus.

  Locked room mystery. Someone had been murdered inside these quarters. The question was who and why. Of course, there was no real body, no real murder. This was all a test, and one designed to make me fail because of course, the Conclave being the Conclave, they had incorporated a supernatural element into the test.

  The room was old-fashioned, with sturdy wooden furniture that suggested whoever inhabited it was either extremely old or had a dated sense of decoration. The door had been locked from the inside when the body of said owner had been found, and police had to kick in the door. The room had no windows and no other possible means for escape. So, who had killed its occupant, and why?

  I sniffed the air for any unusual smell. From the first moment I inhaled, I scented something out of the ordinary. Brimstone. My strong sense of smell was one of the few perks I couldn’t attribute to my great-great-great grandfather’s bloodline, to the grand Sherlock Holmes name, but to my mother’s. Unlike me, my mother was a full-blood jaguar shifter, and she could smell prey from miles away. I used my slightly more limited abilities, not to kill or hunt, but to catch scents like brimstone. Inhaling again, I also caught faint scents of wolfsbane and mugwort.

  A sense of frustration flooded me. Before the ordeal that made me persona non grata on the list of just about every other Conclave member, I had been able to shift. Easily. I could hunt, I could fight, and I was strong.

  But since the Big Betrayal, as I often nicknamed the events that brought me here, I hadn’t been able to shift. Not once. It was like someone had locked my shifting abilities behind a door and threw the key away, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t turn into a jaguar anymore. The only remnants I had of my inner jaguar were my latent abilities – enhanced smell, stronger hearing, faster speed.

  The room smelled so stale, probably thanks to the lack of windows, that I had barely caught the two scents that mattered, but I did, and it was enough to convince me that the occupant of this room was a witch. Who else would use those magical herbs?

  The only item out of place was brimstone. Brimstone wasn’t common in a witch’s arsenal. It wasn’t even an herb at all, but a chemical element. Why would the room smell like that?

  My heartbeat picked up, adrenaline kicking in at the prospect of nearly solving the case.

  And then, before I fully formed the thought in my mind, it clicked. Brimstone was a residue of demonic activity. The ancient furniture suggested that the witch living in these quarters was old. Old meant powerful, and only powerful witches could summon demons. And only demons left brimstone.

  “Three minutes left,” Balthy said, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife.

  Come on, Marisol, think, think!

  Demons also had other skills like simply vanishing from rooms, disappearing into thin air, or more literally, in a giant puff of black smoke. Which explained the locked room—demons didn’t require doors to get in or out.

  I walked to the other side of the room, inspecting a reading stand situated in the corner. The reading stand had a rather basic witchcraft book on it—at first glance an herbal cookbook for newbie witches that looked brand new. It could’ve been purchased yesterday. It was as out of place in this dusty, decrepit room as a bull in a china shop.

  I glanced at Rollins, who pretended not to stare at me by yawning obnoxiously loud. His behavior, the increasing scowl on his face in particular, tol
d me I was on the right track with the witchcraft book.

  When he caught me glancing at him, he looked down at his hand, waving it back and forth as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

  Gotcha now, Balthy. I’m definitely on to something.

  I looked at the spell book from all angles while my pulse raced. Time was ticking away, and I hadn’t solved the case yet. On instinct, I reached out and waved my hand above it. A faint, almost undetectable spark went through me as I came closer to the book. Obviously, a spell had been cast to transform the real book into this shiny-new cookbook to make it appear as something far more harmless than it truly was.

  While I couldn’t break the spell myself, I was pretty convinced that the book hiding beneath the spell was an advanced demonology book. The owner, a witch of certain seniority with considerable powers, had used the book to summon a demon. Rather than doing his or her bidding—her, I guessed, by the faint perfume still lingering on the loveseat in the corner of the room—the demon had attacked and killed the witch, and then disappeared.

  In a regular murder case, I would have had the opportunity to investigate the corpse. But considering this was just a test, there was no real body to examine, so how exactly the witch was killed would remain a mystery. Besides, figuring out how she was killed wasn’t what the Conclave wanted me to uncover; they wanted me to find the culprit.

  “Two minutes left.” The smug look had returned to Balthy’s face. He obviously wasn’t convinced I could solve the case in time.

  And honestly, I was getting pretty nervous, too. The fact that it took me slightly over ten minutes to figure out a demon was the culprit proved I was still off my game. My focus had suffered drastically during my last mission, and the reason for that had a name.

  Mannix.

  Just thinking about him put a picture of him in mind instantly. Of his sparkling green eyes that pierced straight into my soul. Of his unruly black hair that sometimes covered his gaze. Of his whiskey-rough voice that promised me things that would never be real… Promises like how he loved me.

  And with those words, he’d distracted me, made me bring down the walls around my heart, with the end result that people died. People I cared about.

  I shook my head, trying to get rid of the thoughts haunting me, determined not to let feelings get in my way this time.

  “Thirty seconds left,” Balthy said in a gleeful tone. “You’re losing your touch.”

  The words hadn’t left his mouth before the final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in my mind. “I’m finished,” I said.

  Balthy’s eyes turned into slits and his smile into a scowl as he moved to the door and knocked on it twice. His behavior didn’t surprise me. Balthazar Rollins, snake shifter, Sigil Bearer of the Conclave, and one of the highest-ranked members of our crime-solving institution hated me, my mother, and any non-snake shifter he had ever laid eyes on.

  The door opened and another man appeared. He had an impressive beard riddled with a few strands of grey and wore a brown suit beneath his coat. His green eyes shone brightly, amused, as he looked at me. Saldor, as he was called, was an old, grumpy wizard who had been friends with several ancestors of mine and who was probably my only supporter in the Conclave.

  Even after the Big Betrayal, Saldor had stuck by my side. He was the closest person I had to a grandfather, and if I had failed the test and let him down… I don’t think I would’ve been able to take that, not on top of everything else. If it wasn’t for Saldor, the Conclave never would’ve let me back in.

  I had a love-hate relationship with the Conclave. Ever since I was ten years old, I’d been solving cases for them, but they questioned everything about me: my methods, my name, my talents. If I hadn’t been such an outstanding detective, they would’ve kicked me out a long time ago—as they eventually did following the Big Betrayal.

  The Conclave‘s primary task was making sure humans didn’t find out about the existence of supernatural beings, in particular us shifters.

  Unfortunately, the Conclave existed of a bunch of stuffy old men and women who thought they were the finest specimens who had ever walked this earth. All of them had impressive family names and more impressive records, but they had cultivated their snobbism more than their good manners. All besides Saldor, that was.

  “Tell us your findings,” Balthazar snarled at me.

  “Gladly.” I smiled at Saldor before I continued. One-upping Balthy was a great way to keep my mind off more serious topics, like the past. “The book is spelled. The room’s inhabitant was a grizzled old witch of considerable power. She was killed by summoning a demon. The demon killed her and vanished.” I clapped my hands. “Case solved.”

  I started walking toward the exit, but Balthy grabbed my arm to stop me. “Not so fast.”

  “What do you want from me now?” I asked him. “Do you want me to solve another one of your silly locked room mysteries? You know I will.”

  “Yes.” His voice slithered like a snake. In fact, everything about the man reminded me of the viper he could transform into. “You might be an exceptional detective, Miss Holmes, but you’re careless, and you don’t care about the consequences of your actions. You didn’t even cry. Your own cousin, Holmes, and you couldn’t even shed a tear.”

  My heart raced in my chest. I wanted to pull my arm away, but Balthazar’s grip was strong as a vise. If I could still shift, I would turn into a jaguar and rip him apart. My inner animal, the last remnants of my shifter side, growled furiously.

  Balthazar was wrong about me, but I knew I would never be able to convince him. I did care. I cared so much about the people who died because of Mannix—because of me—that I hadn’t allowed myself to cry. I hadn’t cried because I hadn’t deserved to cry. It was all my fault. I hadn’t even deserved to be at her funeral, and I wouldn’t have gone if my mother hadn’t forced me along. I’d fought her the entire way, but without my ability to shift, I was powerless against her. So I had stood there in the soaking rain, the weight of guilt so enormous it seemed to push me straight into the ground.

  Balthazar wasn’t the only one who thought I didn’t care. But it wasn’t that I didn’t care; it was that my guilt wouldn’t let me grieve.

  “One day, Miss Holmes,” Balthy said as his fingers dug into my skin, “you’ll have to face the consequences of what you did. Of the people who got hurt because of you.”

  “That’s enough, Balthazar,” Saldor said.

  Balthazar gave me a look that said I wasn’t worth the dirt under his boots. His eyes turned into slits, like a snake, and I found myself stumbling back. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

  Saldor watched him leave, shook his head, and turned back toward me. “You did well, Marisol,” he said. “Not that I had expected otherwise.”

  I sighed. “Rollins has a point, you know. I can come up with a logical deduction in seconds, and I’m perceptive, but what good does that do in real life situations? I can’t trust myself. I can’t trust my emotions.” I glanced down at my hands. “I shouldn’t have come back. The Council was right to suspend me.”

  Saldor put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t talk like that. You were born for this, and you know that. Your great-great-great grandfather was there to help establish this very Conclave. You deserve a spot in our ranks just as much as anyone else does.”

  “Yes, but I’m pretty sure the great Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have fallen for Mannix’s dirty tricks, now would he?” A hint of envy slipped into my voice. People always compared me to Gramps, and I always felt like I came up short. Who could compare to such a name? Such a legacy?

  “If Sherlock Holmes were here, then he would be proud of you for not giving up,” Saldor said while he patted my back. Growing up, Saldor was the closest thing I had to a grandfather, and I loved him, but sometimes I feared he was too close to me and my family to see what others saw. The great Holmes family name, our ancestry, our lineage, held no real meaning anymore
in the present world, in the new Conclave. It might have held sway and power two hundred years ago, but it had lost most of its fame.

  The thought of letting down my ancestors felt like another weight on my chest. Today was supposed to be a happy day, with me being allowed back into the Conclave, but so far, I didn’t feel much happiness…just guilt.

  “Come on,” Saldor said. “You should be celebrating. You can go back to doing what you love to do. Be a detective. Solve mysteries. Bring justice to the wicked.” He smiled like Father Christmas in those Coca-Cola commercials.

  I nodded and gave a weak smile while my stomach roiled. Saldor was so convinced this was my calling, that I was destined for this, but part of me wished I wasn’t. That I wasn’t a Holmes. That I didn’t descend from the world’s most famous detective of two centuries ago, and that I didn’t have so much to live up to. My inner jaguar whined in sympathy at those mile-high expectations.

  On the other hand, I also wished I was more like Holmes—that I could turn off my feelings the way the great Sherlock Holmes could. That I was as cold as ice. At least that way, I never would’ve fallen prey to Mannix.

  Chapter Two

  Even if I hadn’t been a descendant of Sherlock Holmes, I still wouldn’t be normal—heck, even by shifter standards, I was far from normal. I was reminded of that when I returned home from my trial with the Conclave, as the limousine rolled to a stop in front of the apartment building I lived in, a tall, five-story high building in Renaissance style with tall windows and countless balconies, right in the middle of the bustling capital of France. Paris.

  I pushed through the revolving door, greeted the receptionist, and took the elevator to the top floor where Mother and I lived. Our home was a lavish penthouse in the middle of Paris, with a butler and two maids (because why have one if you can have two?), our private chef, and more money than we could waste and more clothes and jewelry than we could ever wear.

  Even without the Big Betrayal that ruined my reputation with the Conclave and with most other shifters, I would have a hard time proving myself. My mother was “La Duchess,” the royal that ruled over all other shifter species. She came from a long line of royal jaguar shifters, and while that position that came with considerable wealth and power, it also came with a considerable list of responsibilities and an extraordinary list of enemies.