Shadow of a Doubt

 “No one is ever ready, Mira. Not really.”

Ready or not, Mirabel Sinclair has a case: find a magical goose that lays golden eggs. The great depression has been as hard on the Templeton Agency as it has the city of Baltimore, capital of the United Territories of Coventine. Now she has the chance to bring in some money. To lift up the agency’s name. To prove herself.

But when the hunt for a lost treasure turns deadly, she finds she’s powerless to save a life.

Now Mira’s on her own, grieving a death and trying not to botch her first job. The gnomes are making illegal weapons, the elves are stoking racist fears, and the assassins known as the Jacks are on the hunt. The search for the goose becomes a hunt for a murderer, and it’s all connected to a rise in tensions that could plunge Baltimore into open war. The killer threatens everything and everyone Mira holds dear; from the city she calls her home to the witch who holds her heart.

For them, she’ll do it for love.

For herself . . . she’ll do it for revenge.

Jeff Reynolds is an author from Maryland who works for Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, home of New Horizons, Parker Solar Probe, and the Dragonfly mission to explore Titan. He’s only a software licensing analyst, though, and doesn’t do any of the cool stuff, like building space probes or meeting Brian Mays.



Besides graduating from Viable Paradise writers' workshop as well as the Stonecoast writers’ conference, Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Simulation and Digital Entertainment from the University of Baltimore. This makes him one of the 29% of graduates who do not actually use their degree for work, although it did make him a fabulous panelist on Video Game Nostalgia during Worldcon 2019.



Jeff lives with his amazing wife, Jennifer, and a dog named Cooper, who did the voice over for Doug in the Pixar movie UP (at least in the human’s heads) and who worships at the altar of Ball. All cats living in the household shall remain nameless, because calling on them opens a gateway to purr-gatory.



His short stories have appeared in a variety of venues, including: Clarkesworld, Escape Pod, Daily Science Fiction, Apparition Literary Magazine, and Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, most of which you can access for the low price of free. In addition, his story, Fishing Over the Bones of the Dragon, is included as part of the excellent Common Bonds Anthology of Aromantic Speculative Fiction, which you can pick up at the usual suspects.



He plans to grow up to be a librarian. All the coolest people are librarians.