The Griffin Marshal's Heart (U.S. Marshal Shifters 4)

“Glad we could help,” Cooper said. “Do you, ah, participate in a lot of unethical criminal activity?”

“Not knowingly,” Isabelle said severely, “but my father is a disreputable man.”

Gretchen remembered that Theo had told her that: Isabelle’s father had been the one to offer sanctuary to corrupt businessmen. He’d been found out partly because of Isabelle’s inability to stand idly by once she knew his schemes were getting people hurt. Once he knew that, he’d turned on his daughter and cowed wife with a snakelike quickness, lashing out bitterly. Gretchen knew how much even well-intentioned families could sometimes wind up hurting their kids; she couldn’t imagine having Isabelle’s background. It was another reason to admire how well the dragon girl carried herself.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Gretchen said.

Isabelle lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t be much use if I didn’t, would I?” She pointed out their next turn and then sat back imperiously in her seat, wrinkling her aristocratic nose. “Where did you get this car?” She said “car” like she was tempted to put it in air-quotes.

Gretchen and Cooper traded amused glances, silently conferring about whether or not to tell Isabelle the truth. Gretchen made the call: there was no point in getting the girl more deeply involved than she was already, and no point in mixing up their stories about Ford.

“We stole it,” she said brightly.

Isabelle perked up. “That was clever,” she said, “because no one would ever think anyone would deliberately steal this kind of... vehicle.”

Cooper seemed to be biting down on his lower lip to keep himself from laughing, but his voice was perfectly controlled as he said, “What are you studying, Isabelle?”

“Law enforcement.”

“Really?” Gretchen said, turning around in her seat. She’d been ready to guess fashion, or maybe something like hotel management, that involved excellent manners.

“Really,” Isabelle said firmly. “I want to follow in Cousin Theo’s footsteps and become a Marshal.”

“You might want to get a little less fond of breaking the law, then.”

“Why? You’re both Marshals, and you’re breaking the law.”

“I’m not technically a Marshal right now,” Cooper pointed out.

Isabelle waved her hand breezily, like the exact circumstances of Cooper’s conviction and imprisonment weren’t her problem, and Gretchen thought that he probably found it weirdly refreshing to have someone just flat-out confirm that he was the same person he’d always been, no matter what the rest of the world said. And since Isabelle wasn’t his mate, he didn’t even have to worry about whether or not she was biased.

“I hope you have a plan if you intend to arrest a dragon,” Isabelle said.

Gretchen jingled the handcuffs at her side. “These are custom-made. They have shiftsilver threaded through the steel.”

Shiftsilver kept shifters locked in their human form. All they had to do was make sure they got them on Phil before he turned in the first place. Gretchen didn’t have cuffs wide enough to go around a dragon’s forelegs.

Isabelle wrinkled her nose at the mention of shiftsilver: most shifters were squeamish about it, for obvious reasons. “I suppose it’s a necessary evil.”

“We never used those,” Cooper said, fiddling with the cuff where it hung down from Gretchen’s belt. “I didn’t even know that was an option, but I bet Roger did. I guess that was just another way he didn’t care about doing the job properly. Well, this makes me feel better about not being able to shift at all when I was wearing them before.”

Isabelle gave them directions, taking them far out of town. It was almost dusk when she called them to a halt outside a frosted-over orchard. She unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Every town has its own ritual,” she said. The twilight had turned her hair a kind of soft lavender color that Gretchen admired. “But if you have to do one of these without me, just improvise. Sincerity counts as much as accuracy.” She put on a pair of elegant leather gloves and then stepped out of the car.

Cooper looked after her. “She’s nothing like Phil,” he said softly.

“She’s not too much like Theo, either.” Though Gretchen was willing to bet that at least half of Isabelle’s seeming arrogance was a teenaged affectation that would burn off as she got more comfortable with herself. “But she wants to be, and that counts for a lot. She’s got that sense of noblesse oblige, you know—where people feel like if they have a lot of good fortune, they should make sure to give some of it back. She might think she’s better than people, but at least she thinks that means she owes them something. She’s a good kid.”

“Like Keith. They just both need a little seasoning. Some growing up.”

They watched as Isabelle knelt down in the road and wrote her name in the snow with one glove-clad fingertip.

+ guests, she wrote afterwards, in the same elegant script. The words melted away instantly.

Magically. Gretchen had to suppress a shiver. After the basilisk mind-fuck, she didn’t find magic magical as much as terrifying.

Isabelle straightened up, unbuttoned her coat, and unwound her scarf. With a sigh so enormous that Gretchen could see it in her shoulders and chest, she also gently tugged the neck of her top aside, allowing the luminous glow of her dragon-marks to light up the chilly, darkening night.