Pesco was the cautious one. Right? His mentor wouldn’t have green lit his plan if it wasn’t safe. That plan for him to chaperone Girard, the potential changeling, unrestrained, by himself? It was on the level.
He wasn't convincing himself. All the cadet could think about was the syringe in his saddlebag.
In the uneasy silence of the bedroom, Bluebird compulsively rehearsed the motions in his mind, the motions that he would need to enact if at a moment’s notice he needed to use that syringe.
Unzip. Grab. Aim. Jab.
Unzip. Grab. Aim…
He forced himself to take a deep breath.
He asked the kid what some of his favorite mystery books were. The cadet didn’t remember any of the titles or characters or plots Girard mumbled in response, but it was talk. Talk beat silence—but only barely.
And so, he was delighted when his mentor finally returned. Tersely and matter-of-factly, Pesco explained that Girard’s story had checked out with Blanche.
“That’s fantastic news!” Bluebird exclaimed.
Feeling guilty for his lack of trust the past few minutes, the cadet turned to Girard to give him a reassuring smile. However, it was not reciprocated—Girard’s depressive aura hadn’t changed. Bluebird supposed there was no reason it should have, really; Girard wasn’t afraid of getting caught, he was ashamed for having betrayed Blanche’s trust. It was as if the cadet was mixing up “Girard the griffon” and “Girard the changeling” in his mind, as if the difference wasn’t even all that important.
Was he… cheering for the changeling in this case?
No, the cadet knew that didn’t make any sense. Just a moment ago, he was terrified that he would have to defend himself from the changeling.
Or… was he terrified that he would have to be the one to make the arrest?
“Hm, yes,” Pesco responded after a moment. “Anyway, that’s all we have in mind for you, Girard. We’ll be going for now.”
Bluebird mustered some forgettable words of encouragement to Girard before standing up from the bed. It was at this point he realized that if the griffon was no longer the immediate suspect of concern, Bluebird really needed to make a certain observation of his known.
“Hey, Pesco,” he began as they entered the hallway, “something funny came up while I was in the kitchen grabbing Girard his tea…”
“‘Sup.”
Bluebird nearly plowed right into Grid as he stood outside waiting for them.
Pesco nodded in Grid’s direction and explained, “Grid will be guiding us through the mansion for anything amiss regarding their winter gear. There’s a high probability the changeling would like to make use of it, if they have in mind to flee.”
“Oh, so that’s why you want to check it out?” Grid said. “Pretty smart.”
“You said there was something funny?” Pesco asked.
Grid being right here with them changed things, Bluebird realized; not only did it make it more awkward to incriminate Grid over what was probably nothing, but Pesco said Grid was here to help them, right? What if he took offense and stormed off? Colt had a temper, after all. Best to wait until later to toss out any accusations.
“Oh, yeah, just funny how I totally oversteeped that tea, ahah,” Bluebird said. “You know I followed those instructions to the letter? Recommended cooking times are just the worst.”
“Ha, I never took you for a tea guy!” Grid said.
“That’s ‘cause I’m not!” Bluebird said. “… But, um, I could still taste the, the oversteepiness, you know.”
“Totally.”
Judging from his expression, Pesco wasn’t much of a tea guy, either. “Grid, if you would please show us around the mansion. You mentioned there were several places we should be checking.”
With Grid’s guidance, they spent the next two hours rummaging through half a dozen locations both inside and outside the villa. This would not have taken as long as it did, had they only needed to visit each location once; whenever Grid could not find something-or-other in the spot it should have been, they would have to make return trips to check if it hadn’t been misplaced. Invariably, the missing item couldn’t be located anywhere in the villa.
Pesco had become suspicious after the first instance of this, and tasked Bluebird with keeping a running tally of all the missing gear. Bluebird was writing in the margins of a third page from his notepad by the time Pesco called it quits.
“Seven missing waterproof overcoats, six missing down insulating jackets, basically a whole wardrobe of thermal base layers… Gloves for various hooves, claws, paws… The entire stock of specifically red survival candles… Three scarves, two pairs of Grid’s skis!” the cadet enumerated. “Yeesh, I guess there’s really no doubt the changeling just wants to get the heck out of here, huh?”
“Yes, we have to assume now that we’re on a time limit in apprehending the suspect,” Pesco said.
“Why so much, though? Is he really going to wear seven jackets and three pairs of snow goggles at once?”
“Nothing so ridiculous. It’s actually very clever on the perp’s part.” Pesco explained, “By stealing away the gear they need, they've denied us the opportunity to intercept them. But by also stealing away gear they don't need—gear for every species in the villa—they’ve effectively camouflaged their own species. If they had, for example, stolen away only the equipment that would fit a reindeer, the suspicion would have carried over to Bon or Blanche.”
“Hm, yeah, that does make sense.”
As the cadet slipped his notepad back into his saddlebags, however, he realized it didn’t make as much sense as he thought.
“Wait, can’t a changeling morph into any species, though? I would fully expect the changeling to assume a new identity once he was on the run, after all.”
“Yeah, fancy that,” Pesco remarked, unfazed. The cadet expected more to follow, but instead the detective turned to thank their temporary guide. “That will be all, Grid. We appreciate your help.”
“No prob!” Grid then finally left the pair.
Alone at last with his mentor, Bluebird realized he had no more excuse to withhold the latest information about Grid, the protein powder, and the kitchen. He took too long trying to find his words before Pesco spoke up:
“As I said, we’re on a time limit now. We should plan our operations efficiently.” He looked down to his hooves in thought. “The biggest leads we have right now are Gloria’s book, which must be stowed away somewhere, and all this missing winter gear, which must be stowed away somewhere. Maybe that’s the same somewhere, maybe it’s not—we can search for them simultaneously, in either case. So, let’s devote an hour to more searching, then break for lunch, then another hour of searching. We’ll make future plans based on our results, or lack thereof.” He looked back at the cadet. “That sound like a plan to you?”
Well, Bluebird didn’t want to throw a wrench in all of his mentor’s plans… His info about Grid wouldn’t override Pesco’s obsession with that dumb book, anyway. “No complaints here!”
“Very well. Take your notepad back out—I have in mind that we should split up, and check the following locations…”
Another two-hour agenda of rummaging through the villa, this time on their own. Bluebird struggled to keep up as he wrote down all the rooms Pesco had in mind for them to search. He was pretty sure he was hearing about the existence of half of them for the very first time.
“You’ll want to end your second hour with some of the more out-of-the way storage rooms, such as the wine cellar, the attic, and the boiler room. Make sure to reserve enough time to properly investigate them. Does that sound reasonable to you?”
His mentor paused his own planmaking at several points to ask for such feedback. Bluebird understood it as a polite gesture; the cadet had neither the expertise nor the energy to critique his mentor’s strategies when his mentor had his hoof on the pulse of the case. “Sounds good to me!”
“All right. Feel free at any time to improvise according to your best judgment. As for myself during the second hour…”
Once their agendas were squared away, they broke off on their respective search missions.
Several of the locations that Pesco had assigned to him were actually the kids’ rooms. Hopefully, that would be something to break up the monotony. He would have several minutes to shoot the breeze with them while he, ahem, respectfully but dutifully rifled through their drawers and closets.
First on the list: Zorn.
“So how’s that head cold treating you?” Bluebird said, striking up a conversation while searching Zorn’s chemistry lab of a bedroom. Unsurprisingly, the zebra had not been confused or offended in the slightest by the breach of privacy. “You look much better than last I saw you.”
“Thank you,” Zorn replied in his usual baritone. He was occupied in an armchair with the contents of a thick physics textbook. “I feel much better.”
“Good to hear. Y’know, Girard’s been feeling under the weather, too, as of this morning. Hate to say it, but I’m thinking you may have been contagious, ahah.”
“Hm. I see.”
Out of curiosity, Bluebird scanned for the petri dishes he had heard so much about. He didn’t find any, and he wasn’t keen on asking about them.
After a lull: “Cadet?”
“Yeah?”
“Be kind with Girard.”
He closed his eyes and briefly held a breath.
“And if ever he should ask, you can assure him that… I have always enjoyed his company as an assistant to my experiments. Even—or perhaps especially—the ones that were conducted without a word between us. And no matter if I could have done most of them on my own.” He opened his eyes and resumed his reading. “That is all.”
“Ahah, all right, will do. Provided that topic comes up, anyway,” Bluebird qualified. “Any particular reason?” … that you can’t tell him yourself?
“Not really. Only that I do not think I have ever told him as much in words.” He flipped to the next page of his text. “Hopefully, it is superfluous.”
Ultimately, Bluebird found nothing of note in Zorn’s room.
The next on the list was Bon. The young master’s bedroom was already largely familiar to the cadet, even if not the depths of its drawers and the interior of its ventilation duct.
Bon let Bluebird into his room with almost as few words as Zorn. Despite it being half past noon, the lighting in the room was kept cavernous, and the young buck himself was burrowed up to his antlers under the covers of his bed.
“I happened to overhear Gloria wanting to play a game of griffon checkers with you,” Bluebird began. “Don’t take it the hangover actually let you get out of bed though, eh? I know the feeling.”
“Come now, Cadet, you know me better than that,” muttered the lumpy mass underneath the blankets. “Hell or high water, migraine or nausea, I always step up to the plate.”
“Oh, so you did play? How’d it go?”
“A shutout. A no-hitter. No mercy rule in effect.” The mass undulated as the antlers rotated away from the cadet. “In other words, I struck out. Seems to be a theme recently.”
Sometimes, it was best to just let sleeping deer lie. Bluebird returned to his as-of-yet unproductive work in silence.
After a lull: “Cadet?”
“Y-yeah?” Bluebird supposed this is what someone like Bon would’ve referred to as déjà vu.
“You don’t suppose it would be a ludicrous thought… an outlandish hope, in other words… to imagine that the victim so replaced by the changeling might still be alive?”
“I wouldn’t say that’s outlandish at all,” Bluebird assured. “Take it for what it is, but my gut tells me all of your friends are fine.”
“Entertaining such optimism for the moment,” Bon continued, his sophisticated language at odds with his strained tone, “do you furthermore think it’s possible that perhaps, just perhaps the changeling has failed in some fundamental way to understand certain aspects of the replaced’s personality… o-or inclinations?”
Of course, the cadet’s and the detective’s leading theory was that no one had been replaced, and the changeling had been with them in the long term. The cadet was reluctant to air this hypothesis aloud just yet, but there was no problem with hinting at it, was there?
“Hm, well, I would honestly say the changeling’s done a bang-up job blending in so far,” Bluebird said. “Uncanny, really. One could even say flawless—don’t you think? It’s like everyone is exactly who they were before. Why do you suppose that might be, anyw—”
Bluebird caught sight of bright, glassy eyes underneath the covers. Blinking rapidly against a growing moisture, they stared desperately into the cadet’s own. He understood now that Bon’s question wasn’t so sophisticated as he made it sound: Was I rejected by the real Grid?
“—well, on second thought, I can’t dismiss it out of hoof. It’s certainly possible. Anything’s possible! Ahah.”
The cadet scurried out of there just as soon as he could confirm the bedroom was devoid of anything of relevance to the case. Bon didn’t stop him.
The rest of the kids had been even less sociable than the first two, when they had been present at all:
He wasn’t surprised that Blanche had insisted on keeping the chitchat to a minimum. She was committed to her writing, and right now, it didn’t seem to be going well. For the short amount of time Bluebird spent in her presence, she had thrice crumpled up and cindered with her magic the latest page she had been working on. The curses she muttered grew more profane with each act of arson.
Girard had let Bluebird in and nonverbally consented to a search of his and his cousin’s room (Gloria again being absent). He had pointed at his throat and croaked an apology and a mention of worsening laryngitis. Bluebird had his doubts it was a genuine excuse; after this morning, the cadet couldn't blame him if he wasn’t feeling up to talk.
Finally, there was Grid. Bluebird didn’t know what he wanted to say to him, but he knew he needed to say something. Ask him some questions. After all, wouldn’t it be for the best if he could work out that silly misunderstanding in the kitchen without getting Pesco involved at all? It was best for everyone that way.
And yet, he was nothing short of relieved when his knocks at the young earth pony’s door went unanswered. He didn’t know how he felt about how he felt about that.
Consequently, Bluebird took an early lunch. Or rather, he spent the extra time he had gained from Grid’s absence to prepare something basic in the kitchen for himself and his mentor. At the time of their planning, they had both just assumed Bon would take the honor upon himself to cook for them again (and probably he still would have if asked, Bluebird reckoned), but the deer clearly needed his time to rest, and Bluebird needed the distraction.
Once his mentor had arrived, it didn’t take many words for Bluebird to explain the sum total of his findings the past hour.
“Nothing,” Pesco repeated gruffly, before taking a ravenous bite into his avocado club sandwich. He swallowed without chewing. “So neither of us found damn all.”
“Guess not,” Bluebird said, taking a nibble of his own sandwich. Alas, it was no divine hoagie. “But like I was saying, Grid wasn’t in his room, so I think I’m going to work some time in to find him. That all right?”
“Yes, go ahead with that.”
He devoured the rest of his lunch in two bites, in just about as many seconds. Food was no more than a source of calories for his mentor right now.
“Gloria’s book is vexing me,” he seethed.
He might as well have confided to Bluebird that the cow goes moo.
“But even if it’s all but fallen off the face of the planet, I have one last means of finding out about it.” He added, “I would say I didn’t want it to come to this, but then I would be lying.”
Bluebird wasn’t sure why his mentor said that last part out loud. “Why are you so suspicious of her?”
“Why are you so suspicious of Grid?”
His eyes looked redder than ever as he strode past the cadet and out of the kitchen.