The One and Only Crystal Druid (The Guild Codex: Unveiled Book 1) by Annette Marie

Author:Annette Marie [Marie, Annette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988153582
Publisher: Dark Owl Fantasy Inc.
Published: 2021-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

The clinic was closed and the others had gone home for the night. One vet remained, completing paperwork in her office, while I finished the last of the cleaning. No MPD agents had made an appearance, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing. They were in the area. Maybe they were collecting more evidence before arresting me.

I didn’t dare hope they lacked sufficient evidence to arrest me.

My thoughts all afternoon had fluctuated between MagiPol paranoia and pointless analysis of Zak and his true nature, whatever that might be. It hadn’t helped that every time I’d walked into a room, the other techs had been whispering about “Saber’s hot boyfriend.”

Hot. Gorgeous. Rugged. Hunk. Man-candy. All words they’d been tossing around.

I chewed my lower lip as I tidied up the cleaning supplies. They weren’t wrong. His features were striking. Beautiful even, and he exuded a magnetism that was difficult to explain. Plus, he was tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular, with a commanding physical presence almost as strong as his druidic aura.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Grateful for the distraction, I pulled it out, glanced at the caller ID, and answered, “Hi Dominique.”

“Saber.” She sounded troubled. “You know how you asked about the necropsy for Harvey Whitby’s palomino?”

I shut the storage room door, enclosing myself inside. “Yes.”

“The vet doing it called me. He was tracking down the new owner of Harvey’s other horses.”

“He was? Why?”

“He’d just finished the necropsy, and …” She gulped as though to steady herself. “He said the horse’s heart was … gone.”

Adrenaline spiked in my blood.

“The vet opened the horse up, and the coronary arteries and veins just … ‘shriveled up to nothing,’ is what he said. The heart was missing entirely. But that—that’s impossible.” She laughed shrilly, then cut herself off with a cough. “He swears the horse’s chest cavity was intact, with no damage or anything that would suggest the heart had been removed.”

I stared at the wall, seeing the small herd of dead bucks in my mind’s eye. Seeing Arla slumped over her desk.

“The vet wants me to bring the other two horses in for chest x-rays. He’s theorizing about some sort of crazy new virus that attacks heart tissue, but he probably just messed up the necropsy somehow. Maybe he missed a wound or … something.”

How could an experienced vet fail to notice a wound large enough to extract ten pounds of muscle and arteries from the horse’s chest?

“Anyway,” she said weakly, “thought I’d fill you in since you were asking about it. Were you expecting something like this?”

“No.” My voice was almost as thin as hers. “I wasn’t expecting this at all.”

A short pause. “Will you be home in time for dinner? Greta is making maultaschen dumplings.”

A shimmering flash of white in my peripheral vision. Feline-form Ríkr trotted through the closed door, probably sensing my distress. His gaze lifted questioningly.

“I can’t,” I replied, my voice hoarsening. “There’s something I need to do this evening.”

“All right. I’ll save you some, so just grab it out of the fridge when you get home.

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