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“You heard him: the best way we can help is—”
Tean had to use both hands to push him out of the room, and Jem was laughing the whole way.
Shaw decided the best place to start was right there, in the living room. He drew a pair of disposable gloves from his pocket. Then he glanced at Tean, who was already pulling on his own pair. Shaw’s eyebrows went up.
“Please don’t,” Tean murmured. “He’s a very bad influence.”
They moved through the room. If there had been something easily hidden, it was gone now—whoever had torn this place apart, they’d worked hard and fast and hit all the obvious spots. But Shaw took his time: pulling back the baseboards, removing the poster from its frame, examining each leg in the loveseat and the recliner. Tean trailed after him until Shaw started giving him assignments; to Shaw’s surprise, the vet produced a multitool from one pocket of his khakis and had no problem unscrewing the back of the TV.
“I don’t understand,” Shaw said, sitting back on his heels and surveying the room again. “Who did this? Gid wasn’t in here long enough, not for something like this. The man in black wasn’t either. What about the bodyguard from the church?”
Tean nodded. “Same thing: he came through here pretty quickly. Otherwise, we probably would have been able to hold on to him until the police got here.”
“Did you check the baseboards?” Jem called.
Tean opened his mouth to answer, but it was North who shouted back, “Of course I checked the fucking baseboards. This isn’t my first fucking time.”
“Oh,” Jem shouted back with way too much enthusiasm. “Good.”
The best way to describe North’s answering silence was…big.
“I should tell him not to antagonize North,” Tean said.
“It’s actually good for North,” Shaw said absently as he looked around the room. “It’s like acupuncture or ice plunges or saunas. It gets the blood flowing.”
“I’m not sure that’s how acupuncture—”
“What kind of animal would be best at searching for hidden treasures?”
“Uh.”
“Non-mythical, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I’m basically a level ten psychic, which means I can broadcast on UHF; I just need the certificate. And you’re a wildlife vet. I was thinking a magpie. Or an otter! Or a stoat!”
“With our powers combined,” Jem said from the next room.
“For God’s sake,” North said, “don’t encourage him.”
“Exactly! With our powers combined, we could probably make a magpie search this room, and then we could spend more time—have you ever spanked a horse?”
Maybe it was just those huge, adorable glasses, but sometimes Tean’s eyes looked really big. “You know, maybe I’ll work on the kitchen.”
“That’s a great idea,” Shaw said as he followed Tean out of the living room.
“No, I meant—you could stay in the living room and put the back of the TV on, and—”
“Great idea,” North said from what sounded like the bathroom. “Give him a knife.”
“I’m very responsible,” Shaw said. “I even paid all the bill.”
“Bills,” North said. “With an s. And he didn’t pay them, he put them in the mailbox with Power Rangers stickers all over them. We didn’t have electricity for a week and a half.”
“Here’s a tip,” Jem called from the bedroom. “Fake books.”
“That’s not a tip. It’s not even a sentence.”
