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It hadn’t actually been allthat late when the protest had broken up—as it had gotten dark, and cold, which probably helped disperse people, the MFM dickbags had wandered off to find warmth and food and shelter, allowing those of us who weren’t complete bigoted fuckwads to go the fuck home.
I was a good little elf and waited for Raj to come upstairs, dutifully handing over the report of what I’d done that morning before things had gotten a little too interesting for me to keep concentrating on the case.
“Fucking hell,” had been his response as his golden-brown eyes skimmed over the pages.
“Pretty much,” I agreed, grabbing my coat and Taavi’s leash.
I stopped on the way out to pat Dan Maza on the arm awkwardly, and he’d gripped my hand in return. “Stay safe, Hart.”
“You, too, Dan.”
Raj had parked next to my car and followed me closely the whole drive back to my apartment, parking only a few spaces up the street and giving me a furious scowl when I got out of the Charger before he had a chance to walk up to it.
“Raj, if they’re going to stage a drive-by, you standing next to me isn’t going to help either one of us,” I pointed out as we walked up the three flights of steps, Taavi scrambling ahead of us, his leash dragging behind him because I’d dropped it as soon as we got in the building’s front doors.
The tiger shifter simply grunted.
At least I had food in the house. Nothing particularly fancy, mind you, but fettuccini alfredo and garlic cheese bread was easy and filling when you bought your sauce in a jar—which I usually do, because I’m a lazy bastard who doesn’t have time to make a damn bechamel every time I want to eat carbs and heavy cream. I also had extra cookies left from the batch I’d dropped off for Ward at Beyond the Veil, so we even had s’mores cookies for dessert.
I sat, as I’d gotten used to doing, on the floor next to Taavi, who was eating his cut-up pasta out of a bowl. He’d tried to eat it un-cut the first time I’d made spaghetti, and while it had been fucking hilarious to watch him struggle with the long noodles, it was both mean and a giant mess, so now whenever long noodles were involved, I cut them up. Raj sat on the couch, his legs folded up under him, twirling his fork through his pasta and sauce like a damn Italian culinary afficionado.
I heard his fork clink against the side of his bowl, and then he sighed. “You know people worry about you because we actually give a fuck, right?”
I stared into the beige of my bowl. I hated emotional shit. “Yeah, I know,” I muttered.
Taavi let out a half-chuff, and I looked over at him, a small half-smile pulling at the corner of my lips as he licked sauce off his nose, one ear flopped over as he turned his head to look at me out of his brown eye.
“Hart.”
Raj waited, and I turned over my shoulder to meet his steady gold-brown gaze.
“You don’t owe the job your life,” he said softly. “It’s taken enough.”
I shifted uncomfortably, and not because I was sitting on the floor. I’d once had a similar conversation with Elliot—not long after I’d woken up lavender-eyed and pointy-eared. When I’d decided to take the job in Richmond because I couldn’t keep working in Milwaukee.
“You don’t owe this job everything, Val. You can do anything you want with your life. You don’t have to settle for a job that treats you like a second-class citizen.”
I’d insisted that the job was my life. I’d wanted to be a cop since I was little. I’d already put in years on the force, and I understood the risks. I’d accepted that I could end up dead, one way or another, as a result of being a cop.
I hadn’t understood what it really meant to be an Arcanid in an organization that was fundamentally a good old boys’ club in which the boys—regardless of actual gender—were very much tied to the traditional order of human society with all its attendant sexism, racism, and arcanism.
But my life was the job, and the job was my life. I wasn’t about to give it up just because I’d put on seven inches and some supermodel looks.
Instead, I gave up my life for the job.
Left home. Left my family and Elliot and moved halfway across the country chasing the promise that I could be some sort of fucking hero worthy of respect if only I gave enough blood, sweat, and years to the badge.
What fucking bullshit.
Not that I’d been able to see that a decade ago.
Elliot had.
And now I was over forty, and it was abundantly fucking clear that the job didn’t give two shits about me, no matter how much I had given to it.
But what the fuck else was I going to do?
