For all that the crime against Tahnee Majors was so horrifically violent and sad, Jennifer could not help but find herself enthralled by her in-depth review of everything to do with the case. She pored over the court documents and transcripts of interviews and testimonies, taking in every single detail with fresh eyes.

Much of the intricacies of the case and police procedure and the human world in general was unfamiliar to her. She periodically broke the silence to ask Nick a question. He was happy to explain everything, and with every question, he had a small smile on his face.

It was strange, sitting at the dining table—the soft humming melody fading pleasantly into the background—and reviewing this case with Jennifer, of all people. But her enthusiasm and dedication and respect for the case and the people involved in it, her open mind and her desire to solve the puzzle, it all confirmed in Nick's mind his feelings about her. She had never experienced anything like this before, but she had this innate sense of it. In less than an hour, Nick could see that she would make a brilliant detective if she were human living in his world. She related to the work just as he did. He was certainly lucky to have her with him.

"Take me through it again," she said, interrupting his musings. Hopefully she didn't notice that he was staring at her.

"Which part?" Nick asked.

Jen propped her elbows on the table and rested her forehead on her fists, closing her eyes in concentration. "You didn't have a murder weapon. Just Tahnee's head bashed in. All the other evidence already points to Dane, we know he's capable of murder, he's got no…what was that word?" She interrupted herself to turn and look at him with her question.

"Alibi," Nick supplied.

"Right. Alibi. Nothing that says he couldn't have done it. But there's no murder weapon. The…what's-its…can't determine what caused the injuries to her head."

"Medical examiners."

"Thank you. So you don't have a murder weapon but there's enough to go to trial?"

Nick nodded. She was still a little fuzzy on some of the terminology, but he was amazed that Jen had picked up so much already. She understood the case almost as well as he did already, and it wasn't even lunchtime.

Jen continued, "So then Bruce Dalton tells you to go back to Dane's house and search one last time, while the trial's going on."

"Yeah. I tried to look in places that the techs might have missed. Places that might have been hard to reach or overlooked."

"The crawlspace in the roof," she said in understanding.

"That's right. And the golf club was there. It was wrapped up. I was wearing gloves and I bagged it up and I didn't tamper with any of it."

"Then what happened?" Jen asked.

"I brought it to the station to be tagged and it was sent to the lab."

"Where's the lab?"

"In the morgue. That's where they do the testing for everything. And they found the speck of blood on the golf club," Nick explained. "It was Tahnee's blood."

Hopefully she would understand what that meant without him having to try to explain how the blood residue testing works. He actually didn't know exactly how it worked.

Jen frowned, staring off into space as she was thinking. Nick watched her, waiting for her next question. He himself had been reviewing everything that she was, but for him, it was all memories. His mind supplied more than the page provided, and he was having difficulty being able to find the fresh angle just yet. Having Jen assist and ask questions like this was more help than anything else.

All of a sudden, her eyes widened. Those big turquoise eyes went even bigger as some kind of lightbulb went off in her head.

"What?" he asked.

She turned to face him, chewing her lips, still thinking. "Dane said the golf club wasn't his. Juliette's source said the police—you and Bruce Dalton—planted evidence. So let's just say you did. Let's just say the golf club wasn't his, that someone placed it there for you to find."

"Okay…" Nick waited to see where this was going, trying not to feel sick at the very thought that his deepest fears were in fact true, that he'd been duped into putting an innocent man in jail for the death of his wife.

The smallest hint of a smile appeared on Jen's lips. "So where did the blood come from?"

It was Nick's turn to have his eyes go wide now. "Bloody hell," he breathed. She was right. If the golf club was planted, how did Tahnee's blood get on it? It must have been placed there. By whom? When? Nick thought through it aloud. "I had it properly bagged. Nothing touched that club from the moment I found it to when it got delivered to the morgue for testing."

"Is the morgue where the medical examiners looked at Tahnee's body?"

Nick slammed his hand down on the table. It shrieked in revolt, but he had to ignore it for the moment. "Tahnee's blood was in the morgue. Whoever planted the blood on it would have had opportunity. Would have had to be someone who could get in and not be noticed. Or else someone in the morgue…"

"Could you find out who had access to the golf club once it was at the morgue?" she asked.

He nodded. "We'd have to go look at the morgue logs. Everyone signs in and out." That decided it for Nick. "Get your shoes and hide your wings. We can go over there right now," he told her, standing up from the table.

Nick also briefly put his hand on the wood, hoping it would accept his apology for hitting it. A little trill in the song let him know it had. Jen stood up and smiled at him. "That was nice of you," she said softly.

Not knowing what to say, Nick just shrugged.

As they drove through Melbourne to the morgue, Jennifer found herself looking out the window. She always seemed to be looking out the window when Nick drove her places. The human world was just so big and busy and loud. So different than what she'd always known in the fairy realm. It was all very exciting and frightening in equal measure. But she fond herself wanting to stay here, stay with Nick, learn about this world and be a part of it. Well, as much a part of it as she could be. This was not her world, and, in many ways, she did not want anything to do with it. The humans could keep all their machines and noises and crowded places and violence and all the rest. But this was Nick's world. And that made her curious. After all, he was a part of this world, it had shaped him and turned him into the man he was. There was just so much she did not know or understand, and that was what kept her staring out this window and greedily absorbing every bit of the world she could get.

Nick parked his car on the street and shut off the engine and turned to her. "Right, so here's what I was thinking. Do you think you could go invisible and sneak in with me? I want your help going through the records, but I don't think they'd let you in. They all know me here, one of the medical examiners is a good friend. Hopefully they can just leave me in a room with the records and then you can make yourself visible again and look at everything with me."

"Yeah, alright," Jen replied with a nod.

"You sure that's alright? Is that…offensive at all?" Nick had come to the sudden realization that he'd been bandying about the assumption of her magic, that it was within his right to ask her to do these things. For all he knew, what he was saying was incredibly rude in the fairy realm.

Jen chuckled slightly and shook her head. "No, you're fine. No one's ever asked me to go invisible. But that's because in the fairy realm and in my work, we all have the same powers. Some are better at things than others, but we can all do the same sorts of things. But this is your world, and I want to help. I can't help you if I'm causing more problems. And me walking into the morgue with you would be a problem. So I'll go invisible. I'll probably walk, but I can fly if I need to. And we'll see what happens."

And in the end, it was all much simpler than Nick had even imagined. Nick walked right in with Jen beside him. He could sense she was close. He could smell her. And he ran into Ronnie in the lobby. She was happy to help, was disappointed to hear he'd been suspended. But she took him down two hallways to an empty exam room. Jen followed, keeping far enough way to not be discovered but close enough to not get left behind. They didn't even need to worry about the elevator.

Ronnie talked to someone in records, and in about half an hour, a young man came in carrying a huge box of logs. Apparently there was some silverfish damage a while back and the records from the year they needed were all jumbled up. The month he was looking for was in there somewhere. The attendant just handed everything over rather than wasting his time looking through to find exactly what Nick needed. He put the box down and left Nick alone. Or so he thought.

"Right. Let's get started," Nick announced.

Jen shimmered back into visibility. She kept her wings hidden, which was for the best, though Nick was mildly disappointed that he didn't get to see them. Instead, it was just beautiful Jennifer looking the part of a human who perhaps just had a healthy tan and some shimmery stuff on her skin to make her glow. She wore a blouse she'd fashioned from her dress the day before—white with a green and pink and purple floral pattern—and a pair of Nick's jeans that she'd used magic to modify to fit her. And fit her they did. In their casual clothes, Nick felt like they were ready to go out for a day of errands or maybe another picnic in the woods. Instead, they were standing in an empty exam room in the morgue with a dusty box of records on the slab. Strangely, working side by side with Jennifer was almost as fun for Nick as getting to go on a picnic. Though he'd definitely have to take her out on another when all this was over. However it all ended up.