James’s Note: Here we join Daniel for some magical CSI investigation and delve deeper into the mystery at hand.
I managed to get my examination of the body and scene complete with a minimum of molestation. I was starting to develop a theory as to what did this, and I didn’t like it one bit. The conventional wisdom is to think horses, not zebras, but in my line of work, not only could it be zebras, they were likely to breath fire. This was going to be a zebra kind of job.
I dug in my messenger bag, looking for a vial I had made up for just such a situation. It contained a viscous concoction of oily liquids that smelled like a cross between camphor and fear sweat. I took it out, along with a long cotton swab, which I thickly coated in the victim’s blood, then dropped into the vial. I swished the contents of the vial, watching the liquid bubble. It would take about a day, but based on how the color and consistency changed, it would give me a positive ID on the killer.
Nodding to myself, I stood up, ready to make my escape, when I heard a female voice shout, “Witcher Man!” I groaned deeply and turned around, all hope fleeing me forever. Anna had seen me, which was the point at which my night took a nosedive.
I spent the rest of the night being batted back and forth between the two faction leaders like a shuttlecock. Anna wanted to know what I intended to do about the city’s werewolf problem, while Wolfgang insisted continuously that I confirm definitively that his people had nothing to do with the matter. Caught between haughty vampiric condescension and (admittedly classy) werewolf bravado, I spent the rest of the night repeating in every way I could think of that I couldn’t tell them anything for twenty four hours. I said it in so many times, I was considering using different languages. Before the night was over, I was about to pull out my phone and look up how to say it in Klingon. It was ridiculously late before I managed to extricate myself and make it home to gratefully collapse into my soft and wonderfully downy bed.
Thankfully a good night’s sleep, even if it was too short, had washed away the monster politics and left me here, in my favorite place in the world. After a year of real estate shopping and nearly murdering two agents, I found this land. I needed to be within an hour of Houston, where my office is located. I also wanted enough land so I wouldn’t have too many neighbors to frighten.
When my third agent showed me this place just south of Pearland, it was so perfect that I decided to let him live. I now live in this wonderful old farm house sitting on ten acres with a stream that runs through the north west corner. I’m convinced the stream must be some kind of place of power, as it is the only natural body of water in all the swamps of south Texas that is actually clear. From where I sat in my garden, I could just barely hear it as it flowed through the two acres I had turned into my food forest.
Given that I had only been on the the land a few years, the trees should still be getting established, but since I cheat, the forest was already lush and full of deliciousness.
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Gray Matters: The Works of Sharon and James Gray 
I am really enjoying the Witcher Man series. I look forward to the next installment.
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