Bluebird found the reindeer next to an empty bottle at the bottom of the wine cellar.
“Hey, everything all right? Bon?”
He lowered his lantern for a closer look, illuminating the young master’s face as he lay drooling on the cold cobblestone floor. His bespoke smoking jacket was undone, and a gentle snore croaked from his nostrils. Altogether, a dignified deer in a less than dignified pose.
“C’mon kid, wake up!”
He gave Bon a push, and finally he roused. Coming to slowly at first, Bon took account of his surroundings, then quickly righted himself.
“Uh, Detective!” Bon addressed, closing up his jacket. “I mean, Cadet. Bluebird, if I’m not mistaken? What would be the, well, what would be the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter. I just wanted to speak with you,” Bluebird said affably. “Couldn’t find you at your room or anywhere else really, so Grid advised I check down here.”
“Oh Grid,” he blushed. “I would suppose he’s well aware, then, of my recent dabblings as a sommelier. A-an accurate prediction on his part.”
“Haha,” Bluebird chuckled. This one wasn’t his tic. “That’s such a load of crock!”
With a self-sensitive look, Bon tried to bring himself to his four hooves, in the process knocking over the bottle beside him. “… Maybe.”
Bluebird offered him a hoof, and helped him to stand. At the moment, he seemed more embarrassed than outright drunk, at the least. “Remind me again what’s the drinking age for your kind? It ain’t my jurisdiction, mind you.”
“Oh hush, Cadet, I’ve been of age for close to a year now,” he chided. They began to walk in unison toward the cellar’s exit. “I don’t suppose you would believe me if I were to tell you that, despite evidence to the contrary, I actually am more sommelier than lush.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding at all.”
He stopped for a moment to light up the room in a uniformly natural glow. A fairly impressive display of magic, Bluebird noted. He then levitated a sampling glass off a nearby counter, floated it to his guest, and covered his own eyes with a hoof.
“Go on, choose me a wine, any wine—I’ll tell you its name and provenance. And do enjoy a little for yourself, my friend, si l’envie vous en prend,” he rhymed.
Bluebird was hesitant to induce this young buck to drink any more than he already had… buuut he figured just a half-shot more in the name of friendly rapport couldn’t hurt!
He reached at random for a bottle off a latticed shelf, popped the cork, and began to pour. A red wine of a very dark complexion dribbled out. The name on the label told Bluebird little, but the picture showed a bunch of deer dancing around a tree: White Tail Woods, perhaps? Acting on Bon’s invitation, Bluebird took a sip—and regretted it. Unexpectedly bubbly, it was also tart and acidic to the point of making him wince. Had it gone bad? He supposed he would let Bon be the judge of that.
He handed over the rest of the shot glass to the young master, whose eyes remained closed. Bon sniffed, then sipped its contents. He swished it around vigorously in his mouth, bobbing his head side-to-side as he appraised the flavor.
“What a clever selection, Cadet,” he complimented after swallowing, eyes still closed. “I’m in awe of your skills, both as an investigator and as an evident wine connoisseur.”
“… Thanks, I, uh, try my best.”
“You imagined I might not recognize a most-celebrated spirit of my kind, were I replaced by a changeling. While, as a reindeer, I’m not exactly from the White Tail’s neck of the woods, I am a great fan of that extra-fermented, sur lie red characteristic of a White Tail vintage—Lù Niào Jiǔ Sangiovese, if I’m not mistaken. I’m only impressed that you would know your wine well enough to place it from the name alone.” He opened his eyes to smile warmly at the cadet.
Bluebird gave him a round of applause. It wasn’t quite how Bluebird had arrived at his selection, but he would let Bon have his moment. At any rate, Bon was right that his own expertise in the matter would be something pretty difficult for an impostor to replicate.
“Well shucks, you aren’t just an alcoholic with extra frills! But, if you normally only drink to your tastes as a sommelier,” Bluebird wondered aloud as they exited the cellar, “then something must’ve really been weighing on your mind to put you in the state I found you, huh?”
Passing an inquisitive-eyed Girard in the hallway, Bon gave as his only answer an anxious straightening up of his jacket. Clearly, any explanation would have to wait until they’d found the privacy of his room.
Once they were both inside, Bon closed the door behind him and sat down on his bed. On habit, Bluebird took a moment to soak in the personality of the room. Although the things the stag chose to surround himself with weren’t nearly so overwhelming in quantity or consistency as those of his sister, they still spoke to a pattern: Origami cranes and elephants sat elegantly on his writing desk, next to a game of mahjong still in progress and an open text on chess strategy; score sheets on a music stand indicated that piano wasn’t the only instrument he had tried his hoof at, and hanging portrait sketches of his friends at the villa could compete even with Blanche’s art; he also noticed a plethora of language-learning books on the shelf, including (wouldn’t his mentor like to know) Zebrish.
The pattern being, of course: “You’re really a deer of many hobbies, aren’t you, Bon?”
Bon chuckled as he reached for a blank sheet of origami paper with his magic. “I’ve always preferred to call them my ‘passions.’ Admittedly, yours may simply be the more correct designation.” He looked down longingly at his paper construction in progress.
“So what’s up with that? Why so many?”
Bon smiled at the cadet’s bluntness. “And here I thought the investigators would be asking me much more practical questions, of alibis and of motives and everything else.”
“Ah, that stuff can wait a few minutes. You’re smarter than me—if there was anything important, I bet you would’ve already told me. For the moment, I just want to learn more about you as a pony—er, as a deer. Sorry, force of habit!”
“Or, dare I joke, as a changeling?”
“Haha, maybe!”
“I suppose you may have a point with this, that the impostor can only wear their borrowed skin so convincingly. So go on ahead, play the therapist rather than the interrogator, if you’re so inclined.”
“Therapist, huh?”
A therapist wasn’t exactly what the cadet had in mind, but he could roll with Bon’s interpretation.
“Well, like I said, you seem to have a lot of hobbies in your life. Most folks take to hobbies to pass the time and have fun, if I had to say.” Bluebird sat down at the other end of the bed, continuing, “But, I’m guessing you don’t have a whole lot of fun with these hobbies, do you Bon?”
“Not particularly,” he admitted, between origami creases. “But they are well placed for distracting oneself from certain boredoms and anxieties, yes…”
“But not all of them, I take it?”
“Indeed not all.”
“Such as, the thought of a changeling having taken out one of your closest friends.”
“You mean, one of my audience members.”
Bluebird chuffed at the awkward joke. “Ahah, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well it means I’m an insufferable narcissist now doesn’t it Cadet?”
Well, that was something. Whatever it was, it demanded to be the new topic of conversation.
“Oh, don’t be that way!” Bluebird said. “I can tell your friends occupy a very special place in your heart.” He walked over and gestured to Bon’s portraits of his friends. “Even if your appreciation for them comes off as being a bit… unconventional, at times.”
“Unconventional how? I want to hear you say it.”
“Well, sure, there’s an element of ‘showing off’ to it. Most folks don’t combine ‘friendly appreciation’ with ‘showing off’ in the way you do, but is that really so bad?”
“Only when it is a combination.” He finished his origami creation, a bipedal dragon of a charmingly asymmetric design, and set it on his desk next to the others.
“Well, go ahead and insult some of your friends as just your audience members. I won’t be in a position to contradict you. But, anyone with eyes could tell you’ve put a certain amount of extra-tender care into one of these drawings in particular…”
Bluebird lifted up Grid Iron’s portrait in demonstration of his point. Of course, the artistically inept cadet could not himself see anything that set it apart from the rest, and was only guessing. But it was a very confident guess—and Bon’s subsequent blushing upgraded it to a certainty.
“He’s what had you in the wine cellar,” Bluebird insisted, shaking the painting for effect. “You’re stark raving mad for the colt, and you’re upset that he’s upset—or rather, that you upset him, in the foyer earlier today.”
After a long and mortified silence, Bon declared his surrender. “All right, Cadet, you can go back to being an interrogator, now…”
“Don’t wimp out now!” Bluebird chided. He was having a little bit of fun with it. “While we’re here, though, I do have a question for you: Could your relationship with Grid have anything to do with the changeling?”
“How do you mean?”
“If I’m not wrong, changelings can exist on platonic love alone. But, they’re drawn to romantic love like moths to a flame, no pun intended,” Bluebird explained. “Have you noticed any change in your relationship? Is he acting any differently, say? Or is there anyone else who might’ve found out you two are—”
“Grid doesn’t know I exist, Cadet!” he mewled. “I mean, not as anything more than a friend. He just doesn’t get the vital message, Cadet. And understand, I’ve tried everything but the most embarrassingly direct means, especially these last two weeks.”
“Wait, you mean,” Bluebird said, taken aback, “he doesn’t know, and you haven’t told him…?”
Grid actually was telling the whole truth back in the foyer?
“Do you honestly think we could be compatible, Cadet?” Bon said harshly. “I mean, I’ve never seen him take an interest in any girls at school, so I don’t really doubt that he’s of the same, well, preferences, as yours truly. But it doesn’t change the fact that I know he only sees me for the boastful, callous individual I really am inside…”
Grid wasn’t the only one who wasn’t getting a vital message, Bon!
Bluebird now saw the obstacle clearly, and he didn’t know how to move forward or backward from this point in the conversation.
“Do you honestly think we could be compatible?” Bon asked again, more sincerely now, eyes pleading.
Bluebird didn’t have a gameplan anymore. “Well look, what’s the worst that could happen? And I mean cut the crap, Grid sees you as a good friend and always will, even if you totally strike out with him!”
“I-I could embarrass myself. Make a complete fool of myself. Again.”
Oh. Bon had reminded him of at least one thing he had to confirm. He could salvage something from this trainwreck yet. “Again? The first time being, that very first piano exhibition of yours, back when you were…?”
“Who told you about The Blue Doenube!?” Bon buried his face in his hooves with violence. “No! Godsakes, Cadet, that incident with the stool was nine years ago! I simply meant my dreadful showing in the foyer earlier today.”
Well, it was something to have that account confirmed, Bluebird thought, even if the rest of his rapport-building with Bon was clearly fizzling out. As he took the moment to record this latest detail in his notepad, Bon sprang up from his bed and headed for the door.
“Yours is a very exhausting form of interrogation, Cadet. I’m afraid I’ll have to take a brief constitutional before we continue.”
And with that, Bluebird was left alone in the youth’s bedroom.
Was it a wash? Was anything learned at all? At the very least, he felt that Bon’s response to Blanche’s shared memory was perfectly correct, and that everything concerning Bon’s talents and personality rendered it vanishingly unlikely that he was the changeling. The entire encounter had been awkward to the umpteenth degree, but very genuine.
And really, to Bluebird, all these kids were genuine. Maybe, just maybe Blanche and Zorn were somehow mistaken about there being a changeling involved after all?
No. That was just his excessive optimism speaking, Bluebird knew. There would be a perp here, there would be a tragic story here. Just like every other case he and his mentor had ever worked. He needed to get a clue.
Several minutes passed, and Bluebird decided to leave Bon’s bedroom; he had little left to discuss with the buck, anyway. He would meet back up with his mentor, and go from there.
He found his way to the foyer. It was empty but for the griffon girl reading a book by herself. He figured Pesco must’ve been taking his time at the library, having found something of note. He would have to look—ah, never mind. There he spied his mentor, just down the other hallway. He seemed to be standing just outside Zorn’s bedroom door.
“Hey, Pesco!” he called, as he trotted up behind him. “I just got done interviewing Bon. Dunno how useful you’ll find all of it, but at the least he’s confirmed Blanche’s—”
He cut himself short. His mentor was not simply standing in front of Zorn’s door, but hunched over it, clearly up to no good. Pesco turned back an eye at his partner, and then immediately spun around. A lockpick and tension wrench fell clattering at his hooves.
“Pesco, what are you—”
The detective gauchely stepped on his tools as if to hide them, but he was far too slow. He gave every appearance of a foal caught guiltily in the act. The flustered Pesco remained silent.
“I thought we agreed that going behind Zorn’s back would be a last resort, Pesco!” Bluebird scolded.
Pesco spoke not a word. He only bit his lip in response.
“Wait, is that really—”
“I’m sorry, Bluebird.”
Pesco’s face became like a mirror for the cadet’s own growing terror.
It was more than a mirror. In his eyes, there was more than terror: Desperation. Commitment. Regret. Obedience.
He raised a hoof engulfed in green flames, and drew a step closer.
!
!!
!!!
“Where’s the book, Princess?” I demanded midstride. “And don’t you dare say—”
“—this book?” she suggested in confusion, holding up her reading material. Poetry. And her wings unfolded, clearly emptied of whatever contents they’d once held.
I didn’t know if I imagined it, a smirk at the corner of her beak. What I did know, was that I had never seriously considered laying a hoof on a minor up until that moment.
“Pesco!” my partner hurled from a nearby hallway, beyond my line of sight. “It’s the changeling, he’s right—”
He was interrupted, replaced by the sound of a body crashing onto the floor. A flash of green light erupted from around the corner, and I heard hooves in full gallop heading toward the foyer.
I vaulted over Gloria, knocking the poetry book out of her claws. I’ll deal with you later. Once armed with the syringe, I turned the corner and stood to blockade the escape route. A moment too late to react—Zorn’s body in a headfirst sprint collided with mine. We were both sent reeling, and the syringe as well.
I saw nothing but stars. My consciousness wavered, and a red scar bloomed in my mind’s eye—it was a headache that threatened to split my brow in two. An uncertain number of seconds passed. My internal clock was shattered in the collision.
I shook my head, and my vision slowly cleared: I now saw my partner, mounted atop the perpetrator. He was scrambling to restrain Zorn with a shoulder lock, and Zorn squealed in pain. But inside a cocoon of bright green light, the changeling was now rapidly transforming into someone else. Still unsteady, I bounced back to my hooves and scooped the syringe up off the ground as I sprinted to Bluebird’s aid.
I took aim, and plunged the needle downward at the impostor’s chest. This is how your story ends, fiend!
I missed by millimeters. His transformation to Bon Vivant’s lithe figure in concert with my dizziness left the needle stuck uselessly into the carpet.
In one motion, Bon wriggled free from my partner’s compliance hold and chomped down on his wing. My partner yelped and lost his balance, tumbling to the floor. Bon recovered to a stand, about to escape.
I ripped the syringe from the carpet, its payload still intact, and lunged again at the changeling, but by now he had already transformed into the lean and muscular Grid Iron, who brushed my tackle aside. The redirected momentum caused me to trip over my hooves, and I fell prone. From the corner of my vision as a clumsy heap on the floor, I saw the changeling make one last transformation into Gloria, and take flight down the entry corridor that would lead to the front doors of the villa. Bluebird hobbled after her for a few paces, but he was far too slow to gain ground on her in this form.
There was a distant creak and THUNK as the front doors opened and then slammed shut. The changeling had left the villa—but who knew if its business here was finished?
Bluebird turned to me, unsure of what to do. A thin line of blood trickled down his left wing, which he nursed with his opposite forehoof. “Are you all right, Pesco?”
I held my throbbing head with one hoof as I sat up, looking side to side from him to (the real) Gloria, who was sitting shocked and immobile where I had left her.
“We need to take a headcount, now!” I barked.
And so we sprang back into action: Having failed to apprehend the changeling, the plan now was to assemble everyone from the villa as quickly as possible in order to deduce the missing head. This was only a time-sensitive matter, of course, if the changeling had in mind to return and discreetly reprise their assumed identity. But if that was their strategy, we had to act with haste.
Bluebird volunteered to fetch Bon, saying he wasn’t in his room but that he had an inkling where he might be. My partner also doubted that Zorn was in his room, and so I ordered Gloria to locate him as well as Grid Iron and bring them to the foyer. I tasked myself with gathering Blanche and Girard, whose bedrooms I was told were nearby on the second floor.
Within thirty seconds of the changeling having escaped us, we had coordinated and set off on our search parties.
I raced up the spiral stairs and down the second floor corridors to reach Blanche's bedroom. Her light was on, and from inside I could hear the scratching of quill on parchment.
POOMF POOMF POOMF, I pounded on her door.
She answered.
“It’s an emergency. The changeling has struck. We need to gather everyone who’s still around.”
She understood.
We took a moment to close her door, and then we bounded down the hall at a gallop. Destination: Girard’s room.
Blanche highlighted a door in the distance with her magic. “Right here, Detective. He shares a double with Gloria.”
Sharp and to the point. I admired her priorities.
I stopped before the door and knocked forcefully at length. No answer.
About to turn around and leave, we heard the flush of a toilet and then the running of a sink—Girard had been using the facilities in a bathroom just nearby. I gave him the same rushed explanation I gave Blanche.
“Oh the, the changeling?” Girard stammered. He was white in the face. “Um, do you know…?”
“We know nothing yet. We need to hurry.”
“Oh.” He stood rooted in place, curling his claws. “Where’s Gloria?”
“She’s safe,” I said, my impatience bleeding through. “Let’s go.”
Finally he got the picture, and we assimilated the nerve-addled griffon into our party.
My targets recovered without obstacle, I led us back to the foyer on the double. There I found Bluebird, who was busy assigning a seat to a very bleary-eyed Bon, looking worse for wear. He looked like he himself had gotten into a scrap with the changeling, but I had my own, much more mundane suspicions.
After motioning for the youths under my charge to take a seat, I asked my partner, “No word on Zorn or Grid Iron yet?”
“None. Should we go looking for Gloria now?”
I nodded in the affirmative, and then addressed the twins and Girard. “You three stay here. Holler if the changeling returns.”
My curt instruction didn’t put them at ease, but time was of the essence.
Bluebird followed my lead toward the kitchen. This would be a nearby and obvious place to search for him, and if he was not there, the gym was further away in the same direction.
As we neared the kitchen, however, Bluebird voiced his doubts. “Maybe we shouldn’t bother searching down this way. Gloria already took off in this direction, and she would’ve returned even from the gym by now if she had found him.”
He was probably right, I thought. And yet, just as I was about to recommend we split up again in more optimal directions, Bluebird and I were both proven wrong—Gloria emerged from the kitchen with Grid Iron in tow.
“Gloria! Grid!” Bluebird exclaimed. “Any sign of Zorn? This time, he really needs to be here.”
“No, I haven’t found him,” Gloria said, distressed.
“But you just now found Grid in the kitchen, didn’t you?” I probed.
“Yes, well I—um, yes, I did.”
More surely than the changeling, this bird’s duplicity was going to be the death of me.
“Yeah?” Grid spoke up, looking confused.
“No time to explain, let’s get you two back to the foyer,” Bluebird urged.
We hurried back on our previous steps, myself and Bluebird leading the charge. We have five accounted for now; is that proof of Zorn’s guilt? If not already, then how long until we can make that call?
We were coming up on the foyer. “I’ll go search for Zorn near the library. You drop Gloria and Grid off with the others, and then head—”
But my plans were proven unnecessary as soon as they were spoken. Zorn stood at the front of the foyer, eyes locked with his three friends on the furniture. His stare was curious, quizzical, scientifically perplexed; their stares were only frightened.
“Oh, hello, Zorn…” Girard greeted.
“What were you doing outside?” Blanche asked pointedly.
Zorn looked to us for an explanation. “Have I missed something, Pesco?”
“Yeah, a little!” my partner interjected. “Where were you?”
“I was outside, taking a brief walk.”
That’s going to be a problem.
“Did you see anything?” Bluebird asked. “The changeling, I mean, or anyone else?”
“No, not at all,” Zorn said. Curiosity gave way to concern.
And so the stage was set for the second act. It was the beginning of a trial by peers in the foyer—this time with everyone in attendance. We had failed to subdue the changeling, and we had even failed to prevent them from slipping back into their assumed identity under our very noses. But, such was my resolve, this would not be the changeling’s victory. They had accomplished nothing but an evasion of immediate capture with their maneuver. They had in return gifted us information, not the least of which was the unambiguous proof of their existence.
And for all the literal and metaphorical headache this changeling was causing me, I would see to it that this information would win us the day.