Honestly, Leonard was sort of looking forward to it. He’d liked the vast majority of the Mystic Bayou residents he’d met. They were strange and fascinating people with even weirder backgrounds than his own. It was the only place he’d ever lived where he could be honest about his life and be completely accepted. All he had to say was “fairy curse” and people just nodded and moved along with their business.

“I know it’s going to be demanding for you, but I’m confident you can handle it,” Sonja told him. “Now, if you’ll join me at the clinic, we have a new midwife to initiate into the ways of Mystic Bayou.”

“Jillian’s midwife is here!” Leonard exclaimed. For weeks, Jillian had been talking about the specialist with extensive experience in rare hybrid pregnancies, as if this Charlotte woman was a golden lifeline. “How did I miss that?”

“She got here right before the pie stand thing,” Sonja said gently.

“Well, hell,” he sighed. “But it’s just the normal new employee, ‘please don’t do anything evil’ meet-and-greet, right? Do you really need me for that?”

“Not really, but it means Jessica will have to figure out how to move your desk on her own,” Sonja said.

“That sounds just fair enough to be properly vengeful,” he said, standing and gesturing grandly towards the door. “Lead the way!”

Jessica was still trying to get maintenance workers to come help her move Leonard’s enormous work station back as they left. Leonard figured that was justice.

There weren’t a lot of advantages of living in a place as small as Mystic Bayou. There were no chain stores or Starbucks or even a bar. But he could walk basically anywhere in town from his office door. Or his trailer door, which happened to be about three hundred feet from his office door. He hadn’t bought gas since he moved to town. They walked across the street to the clinic, past the giant silver airstream that had sort of appeared during the wedding reception. The side featured a highly-stylized white bird over swooping lettering that read, “The Silver Stork.”

That was different.

The clinic was technically an old veterinary hospital that Sonja had almost single-handedly converted to treat people so the town could have a doctor again. And that doctor happened to be Will Carmody, a Mystic Bayou-born physician who happened to be Sonja’s boyfriend. And he happened to be a mermaid, sort of. Leonard wasn’t sure how that worked but honestly, he was afraid to ask.

“Will? Love of my life!” Sonja called, walking through the brightly painted waiting room. “I’m here! With Leonard!”