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My name,honest-to-fucking-God, is Valentine Hart. Guess when my birthday is?
Yep. You got it in one.
My mother is a completely hopeless romantic, and my father will do anything she asks, so… here I am. My completely ridiculous name that meant grade school was nothing short of absolute hell. High school was only marginally better. The Police Academy was the worst.
As a result, you might think that I would resent my parents, but other than the whole name fiasco, they’re pretty great folks. I look nothing like them, of course, because I contracted the Arcanavirus and they, being nice, obedient German-descended Midwesterners, did not, because they always wear masks and wash their hands and even have a “virus room” instead of a mud room.
So they’re a lovely white couple of average height on the slightly pudgy side, both with brown hair and eyes, and I’m… well, I’m a six-foot-four, moon-skinned, silver-haired, pointy-eared, lavender-eyed elf.
With one fucking millstone of a name.
And I stick out about ten times more than any sore thumb I’ve ever seen at family events.
But Mom and Dad loved me when I looked and ate like them, and they still love me now that I look like a magical fairy prince and eat like a goddamn rabbit. Because, apparently, elves can’t digest meat-based proteins. No more burgers. No more bacon. No more spicy wings. No more fish n’ chips or popcorn shrimp.
That still pisses me off more than a decade later. I really fuckinglikedbacon cheeseburgers.
At least I can eat dairy. I think if I couldn’t, I might actually give up on life.
So Mom’s trying to cook vegetarian, and at least the world at large is getting better at making fake meat that isn’t completely revolting, so Mom buys that and does her college best while Dad sighs loudly and laments the lack of actual meat at family meals. They also always make sure to bring extra of whatever dishes they make to the extended family holiday gatherings because the aunts and uncles and cousins usually forget that things like chicken and bacon aren’t vegetables.
Welcome to the upper Midwest. Although if I’m honest, the Mid-Atlantic isn’t all that much better.
But enough about my dietary challenges. No one likes a whiner. Especially me.
My solution to the name problem is that I just don’t tell people my first name at all. When I worked the beat, I ignored the “V” printed on my nametag under my badge, and now that I’m a plainclothes detective and don’t have to wear a nametag, nobody ever asks. As far as most people are concerned, my first name is ‘Detective.’
Even the handful of people I consider friends just call me Hart.
And that’s just fine with me.
“Detective Hart!”
I looked up to see one of the rookie uniforms sauntering over, a giant orc and a man in a wheelchair following close behind him. The rookie looked nervous. Most people do when they meet Doc Manning for the first time, although, really, the guy in the wheelchair is actually a fuckton scarier.
Ward Campion is a medium and a warlock, and he can not only see and speak to spirits, but drag them physically from the plane of the dead into the world of the living. He typically only does that when everything has gone well and truly tits up, and things usually keep going downhill from there, at least for the dead people.
It’s also fucking terrifying. And with almost twenty years on the force under my belt, I have seen some fucked up shit. Ward has me quaking in my proverbial boots. Not that I don’t like the guy—I do. But that doesn’t make him any less scary.
But most people are dumbfucks, and when they see a skinny pale guy in a wheelchair, they feel pity or slight disgust. They also tend to panic when faced with a six-seven muscular green dude with upside-down fangs, even though Doc, who was a professor once upon a time before he went all Hulk, is quite possibly the nicest guy I know, assuming you don’t piss him off. He’s also a witch, which makes him damn useful to me anytime I need an arcane expert—whether practice or theory.
I stood from where I was crouched next to the pale and cold female form on the ground, stepping away carefully to avoid the semi-congealed pools of blood. I brushed my cold hands against the sides of my navy blue wool greatcoat, which I wore as much for its aesthetic impression as for warmth.
I’m from Wisconsin. What it gets down here in Virginia in winter isn’t ‘cold.’ It’s ‘chilly and I might need a jacket.’ But the coat was intimidating, so I wore it anyway. Usually without bothering to button it.
I waited for my medium and witch to get closer. “Ward. Doc.”
“Hart,” the orc replied mildly, his voice a low rumble. Behind him, Ward’s forehead wrinkled as he grimaced at the body, keeping his distance from both it and the blood. Which was a good idea, since despite being a badass warlock who could summon the dead, he was awfully squeamish around actual bodies. That, and CSI tended to get really annoyed by tire-tracks through their crime scenes and vomit anywhere near the body that didn’t comefromthe body.
“What can you tell me?” I asked them.
“She’s not human,” Doc remarked mildly.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Shifter,” he clarified. I saw his nostrils flare. Orcs have better senses of smell than pretty much any other Nid—shifters excepted. I guess dead shifters must smell different than dead humans. This was news to me, but what the fuck do I know? My nose isn’t any better than it had been in my pre-elf days. I can tell a live shifter from a live human—part of the elf gig is the ability to sense magic—but once they’re dead, they’re just meat.
