The messages are mostly spam and crank calls, but one is from a previous client whose family in the country had been threatened by a feral werewolf pack. He wants a meeting sometime next week. He doesn’t say for what, but I still highlight the text in bold, copy-paste it to the top of the document, and print out the call log on her dot-matrix printer. Doing that at least feels vaguely useful.
I just get started entering the few receipts she left me into an expense report when the woman herself bursts through the door, carrying a horned demon head in a clear plastic bag. She casually tosses it on the desk in front of me, and I barely yank the printout away in time. Ms. Stryker’s dark brown skin gleams with sweat.
“Coffee…” she growls. She doesn’t even look at me as she slips off her thick black jacket and throws it over the back of the plastic “client” chair on the side of the desk opposite me. There’s a vibrant splotch of yellow blood on the collar.
She always works nights, and she always wears fullmotorcycle leathers on her jobs. I think it’s because it makes good armor, but I haven’t worked up the courage to ask. Of course, it also makes her look badass. (As if having runic tattoos around her throat and wrists, a shaved head, and the ability to shoot lightning from her fingertips left any doubt.)
I slip the call log onto a safe corner of the desk and quickly turn to get her the Nitro Brew when I realize I left it splattered all over the sidewalk on Larkin.
Oh, no.
I immediately leap to my feet. “Oh! God! I’m sorry, Ms. Stryker! I, uh, had it, but then, uh, stuff happened and I dropped it, and then I totally forgot! But I’ll go get you a new one right now!”
I round the table at speed when she stops me with an iron palm against my chest. Her amber eyes pin me in place like I’m a bug.
“It’s not like you to forget things, Alvin. What ‘stuff’ happened?”
She’s planted her grip over my racing heart, and she’s so intimidating, I instantly feel a compulsion to tell her. It’s not like she couldn’t help me. According to leaked government reports, less than 0.001% of the human population can use any magic. Apparently that represents a huge uptick in just the last ten years, and that’s still mostly parlor-trick stuff. Stryker’s a human who’s been practicing since the late 1800s, and she doesn’t look a day over forty. (Powerful magic apparently keeps you young!) She easily commands primordial elemental forces violent enough to take out an entire platoon of SUVs. And on top of that, she’s a member of some kind of elite wizardcouncil that dates back to Merlin’s time and has only twelve members.
There’s no way I could stand up to that elf, but Ms. Stryker practically eats the fair folk for breakfast. Even the Winter Queen takes her calls. If anyone could get me out of a fae Obligation, it would be her. And it would be so good to not have to do this.
I open my mouth to beg for her help just as a fat drop splats next to my shoe. Then another. The loosely-wrapped demon head has toppled to the side and rivulets of yellow goo are sliming their way over the metal lip of the faux-pine Ikea desk. It’s the blood from the paranormal she just killed. She kills a lot of paranormals for her cases, because most of us are predators, one way or another.
Right. If Stryker confronted him, Lord of the Rings would almost certainly tell her what I am. Of course, I always planned to do that myself someday. When I was sure I could convince her I was “one of the good ones.” When she wasn’t fresh from a fight with an evil monster. When I didn’t just totally screw up and forget her coffee.
Today is not that day.
Instead, I punt. “Oh, uh… It was stupid. I slept through my alarm, and I was rushing, and then I tripped and spilled everything and banged my knee, and I— Well, I was already late, and so I just booked it here. I meant to go get another, but then, uh… I got caught up with work… So yeah, I did forget… I guess…”
My voice spools down into a mumble as her eyes narrow. She’s got six inches on me. You’d think after lying about what I am my whole life, I’d be good at it. You’dthink wrong. And Ms. Stryker has a world-class bullshit detector.
“You tripped, spilling everything…” she says. “And then youforgotabout the coffee—” Her eyes flick from the three receipts she left me, perched on a still-clean corner of the desk, to the handful of junk mail I threw in the trash. “—Because you were sobusy…”
She’s using the same tone on me she uses with clients who try to get out of paying her day rate.
“Um, yeah,” I say, doubling down, weakly. “I’m sorry.”
When I look up from the waste bin, her attention is on the torn button on my polo, and I can only assume the sour expression on her face represents profound disappointment. It’s not like the look Mom gives me. That’s just about what a complete failure I am. This is tinged with suspicion, which makes it more dangerous.
I have the insane impulse to fold my arms to hide the button, but she has me trapped and there’s probably fricking red brick dust or something all over my shoulders, anyway. The only thing I can do at this point is push through, so I unfurl my most helpless, innocent smile and try to pivot my body toward the door. “But I’ll get you that coffee right now, boss! It won’t take ten minutes!”
There is a pause of a fraction of a second before she drops her hand, but it’s long enough for her face to shutter into cold stone. Whatever she thinks I’m hiding, it’s beneath her notice. At least for now.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to be off-world for a few days while I help an old friend with a favor.” She brusquely turns from me and strides the five steps to the door of her private office. “Put that head in cold storage.Get my jacket cleaned. And if anyone calls, we aren’t taking on any new cases for the foreseeable future.”
I nod, not skipping a beat when she mentions going “off-world.” That’s just another day at work for her. (God, I’d do anything to be half as cool as she is!)
I quickly clutch the slick top of the plastic sack with the scarlet-skinned head and follow as she steps through the door into her office. My little reception area might look low-rent, but she’s got an oak Humphrey Bogart desk hulking in front of a high-backed swivel chair of fine Corinthian leather. Shelves with rare vellum-covered books line the walls. There’s a crystal decanter with thirty-year old scotch on a silver tray. Even a stuffed raven, eyes glowing with cold moonlight, on a high shelf, frozen-winged in flight. If you come looking to hire a wizard PI (and you’re worthy enough to make it in here), she lookslegit.
Sweeping forward, she whisks a spare motorcycle jacket off the freestanding coat rack by the entrance and slides it on. She then lifts a sheathed obsidian sword from the side of her desk, buckles its belt around her waist (complete with actual utility pouches, like freaking Batman), and finishes her ten-second prep by hoisting a waiting tactical black Cordura Go Bag over her shoulder.
All this time, I’m just standing awkwardly in front of the doorway, freaking out because I’m dripping demon goo on her hardwood floor, but not wanting to move in case she has more orders for me. When she turns, I stiffen my back, determined to appear confident and reliable.
The suspicion in her gaze hasn’t completely gone, but there’s now something else. If I didn’t know better, I’d sayit was concern. “Alvin… Youwouldtell me if something happened that could use my attention, right?”
“Of-of course!” I say, still lying, badly. (And feeling even worse about it since it now seems like she might actually be worried about me.)
She nods, frowning. “All right. It’s Friday. Once you drop off my jacket at the cleaners, you should knock off work and close the office.”
