by Zara Zenia
Every day I called Mei, my pen pal and best friend. For me, it was always noon, but for her it was one in the morning. It should have been the end of her day and the middle of mine, but often as not Mei went to bed with the sunrise.
"I can't see the sky there either, but if I had to guess, I'd say the sun's peeking out."
I shivered involuntarily as the same sense of dread that always came before the nightly sign off started to creep over me. In a futile effort to keep the chill at bay, I reached for the fluffy, blue blanket on the back of my couch, swaddling myself in it.
"Think I'll sleep, then," she said it casually, but the drowsy thickness in her voice told me that sleep was coming whether Mei wanted it or not. "Ja ne, Kel-chan."
"Hai, Ja ne, Usagi-chan." I clicked on the button to end the call before she could whine in protest. The nickname was hers and she was keeping it, no matter how much she protested.
With Mei gone, I was left in the heavy silence of my apartment again. Mei didn't know it— at least I'd never brought it up —but she wasn't just my best friend. She was my only friend. On days where I didn't have a client or owe anybody money, she was the only person I spoke to. I had a whole list of ways to fill the time— like I said, systems and processes were my thing —but I hadn't found a way that made me feel as alive or at home as the few hours I spent talking to her.
My emotional side told me to go out and find some local friends. There had to be women as laid-back and cool as Mei living somewhere in Baltimore. My rational side had a counterpoint I could never argue down, and it was sitting outside of my window in Federal Hill Park, not that I could ever stand to look at the thing.
Every city with one of those palaces in it faced a constant cycle of women from all over the world. They weren't looking to live here any longer than the time it took them to get their shot at matching with the local Prince. He and the fabulous life they would have when they were his bride were all those women wanted to talk about. When His Alien Highness inevitably shot them down, they packed up and disappeared as soon as they'd come, leaving a gaping hole in the local housing market we locals were beginning to have a hard time filling. Didn't that asshole know what he was doing to us?
I shivered again, this time against the wave of negative emotions flooding through my body. In search of a positive distraction, I checked the eyesore of a pizzeria website. My circular monument of deliciousness was still ten minutes from being in my hands. The idea of spending that time concentrating on my growling stomach was unappealing, so I turned to the television.
The headline beneath the smiling blonde anchor read: Trilyn Prince Saves Dozens From Seven-Man Terrorist Team.
What the ever-loving hell? My blood ran cold as my eyes combed over the words again. It had finally happened here in Baltimore. The Princes had overstayed their welcome, and someone— someones —had decided they'd had enough. I wondered if it was that Humans First group that had struck in New New Orleans months ago. I grabbed the remote again and turned the volume up.
"—local intercultural center funded by the planet's king," the anchor said. "The terrorist attack occurred at the beginning of a lecture of courtship and mating rituals among their species."
The screen cut to a shot of the Prince leaving the cultural center. Every window in the building had been shattered, probably by the explosives that had ripped apart the cars in the parking lot—which the footage cut to next. The footage cut again, this time to mug shots of a Human man with flaming red hair and gray eyes so cold that looking at them made me wish for the warmth of summer. They stood out against his face. There were deep circles beneath the eyes and his cheeks were hollow, but he looked like any other poor working stiff spending too many hours chasing too little money... until you got to his eyes.
"Twenty-three year old Jacob Corbin, a local man with ties to the so-called Anti-Trilyn Movement, was apprehended along with six other alleged terrorists, though detectives with the Baltimore PD declined to release their names or photographs."
So not the Humans First group, but another one. How many groups were there? And why not release their names and faces? Are they lying to us? I raised an eyebrow. Whoever the new chick was, she wasn't new enough to justify telling such an obvious lie with a straight face. If the BPD still had Corbin, they couldn't refuse to release a mug shot on a suspect in custody. On the off chance they broke out, the community needed to know what a violent suspect looked like. Plus, they would never miss the chance to gloat, even if they had to share some of the spotlight with an interstellar aristocrat. Either they were lying or blondie was. I would believe either. A lot of money and ego had to be greasing the Prince's reign in Baltimore. Not many people would be willing to take a hit to either.
The footage cut one more time, this time to a face I'd seen before. Text in the lower part of the screen identified him as Captain Michael Johansson.
"The cultural center is in effect an embassy. As such, it falls under the laws and jurisprudence of the Trilyn Kingdom. But as this attack was committed on our soil and harmed or stood to harm residents of our city, His Highness has agreed to let the suspect remain in our jails."
With a sniff of disgust, I clicked the mute button. I didn't need to hear Blondie recap the Prince's lifetime highlights to see what was happening. Captain Johansson didn't mind sharing the spotlight with the Prince as long as they could pass on the heat for seven cars being bombed and a terrorist cell popping up in his city. I couldn't quite wrap my head around why the Prince would leave the man who tried to kill him in Human hands, but it didn't matter. Pandora's Box was open. Again.
Millions of men across the planet would hear about Jacob Corbin's stand. Maybe they were as tired and haggard as he was. Maybe they were tired of the endless waves of desperate single women that flooded their cities, leaving them on the brink of homelessness and surrounded by sweet waters they couldn't drink. Maybe they lost a girl they were sure was "the one" because they couldn't compete with the fantasy. Whatever the reason, sooner or later they would get pissed and join one of these groups. They would get violent and the money and egos would get violent right back. Or fate would flip the bird at all of us in the form of a super-powered, future-tech weapon delivered from the Prince's palace fortress.
One way or another, it was going to get bad. It was going to get bloody, and I sure as hell didn't want to be around for it.
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself and climbed to my feet, starting to pace as I ran through my options. The apartment would have to go, of course, as would everything but my clothes and one or two drawings Mei had sent me. It wouldn't take much begging for my landlord to rip up my lease. He could charge three or four times a night what I was paying him if he opened his door to the women of the wave. If I couldn't unload my stuff fast enough, maybe I could strike a deal with him. He could keep the stuff and the apartment, then toss or sell it himself when the waters finally dried up.
I reached for my phone and pulled up my banking app, which unlike the pizzeria app, was a sane and pleasing hunter green. Between my checking and savings account, there was enough money to buy a plane ticket to anywhere in the world as long as I was willing to fly coach. I could even eat for a few months, if I kept my definition of food loose and my idea of portions modest. But I couldn't afford to find a permanent roof anywhere. Not a brand new one. Probably not even a room in a stranger's house. I didn't have enough for a hotel room for more than a few nights. Not if I wanted to feel safe.
That left two options: a hostel and staying with someone I knew. The idea of sleeping on bunk beds at my age with a bunch of European tourists I didn't know made my skin crawl. As for couch surfing, there were only two people in the world I knew well enough to impose on their hospitality that much.
Like hell I was going back to live with my father. But maybe— if I begged, offered my servitude, and stayed quiet during daylight hours —I could stay with Mei for a while. Moving halfway across the world would officially make me sad. All I had t
o do was explain how I felt. Admittedly, I'd spent my entire life avoiding talking about my feelings, but if it got me out from under that palace's shadow, I could swallow my pride and ask my friend for help. Just this once.
The screen switched from my banking app to the incoming call screen. I punched the answer button the second it popped up. Damn it, I was one more stomach growl away from hangry. How could I be expected to make life altering decisions on an empty stomach!
"Hello, gorgeous! I'm so glad you finally answered," said the person on the other end. It was uncomfortably familiar and definitely did not belong to the pizza man.
"I can't talk now, Tony," I said, pulling the blanket over my head. "I'm doing something important."
"More important than talking to the future love of your life?" he asked. There was something about the blind confidence that oozed from his voice that made me want to gag.
"We went on two dates." And they were exceptionally bad. Like go to a fancy restaurant with food you hate and listen to him talk about how much money he makes at a job you couldn't possibly understand bad. But the fucker was good on paper and wanted to try a steakhouse in DC for our third date, which happened to fall around Valentine's Day. I decided to hang tough for one more date. What the hell? Luck could have been on my side and Tony could have been more interesting in bed than he was at the dinner table. I never found out.
Tony was undaunted. "I said future, didn't I? We had fun together didn't we?"
"Not half as much as you had with Rachel, no." The night of our third date, Tony never picked me up. I gave him two hours to show, then I took a ride share to his apartment to make sure nothing had happened. Rachel had happened. For several hours that afternoon, judging by the pile of used condoms on the floor.
For a second, Tony's smile trembled, but in the next it was back. And twice as arrogant as before.
"Okay, so it's the distant future," he said. "But you and me, it's gonna happen babe. I can see that far. It's a family gift, like the money."
I wrinkled my nose in disgust. "That's called delusion, Tony. You should see a therapist about it."
"Ouch, so cold!" There was a soft shuffling sound on the other end of the line. Tony panted softly, then grunted in satisfaction. "So, when can I take you out again, sugar?"
I swear, I will not be held responsible for what I do to this man if he calls me by one more corny fucking nickname! And did he just take off his damned pants? "The Saturday after never. I hear it'll be sunny."
Tony paused. In the silence, I could almost hear the clicking of his eyelids as he blinked in stunned surprise. "Kelly—"
"Don't. I only answered because I thought you were my pizza. Now you're twice as disappointing, and I don't even get the satisfaction of telling you off to your face."
"If you didn't want to talk to me, we both know you'd change your number."
A wave of anger tore through me that was so intense, I had to rip the blanket away from my face to breathe. "What. The fuck. Did you just say?"
"I mean, I'm not threatening you or anything, babe," he said. "I just like you so much. It'd be unfair to both of us not to see where this goes. Look, you sound tense. Why don't I just come over? Didn't you say you ordered a pizza?"
"Where this goes is the police department if you ever call me again. Show up at my apartment and I won't open the door. Try to come in anyway, and it ends at the morgue. Got it?" I hung up the phone before Tony could answer. He would only have tried to slide out of my threat anyway.
I knew men like Tony. I'd been dealing with them all my life. A man life him expected me to fall on my knees every time he snapped my fingers. He expected me to thank his cock and my lucky stars that he had taken an interest in me, however small or divided it was. I'd had enough of men like Tony.
No, I'd had enough of my life. I was tired of taking whatever the agency threw me— which paid just enough for me to save too little to escape in an emergency —because it was the only way I could work legally in the state. If I had one more bad date, one more painful night with a narcissistic loser, I would swear off my species for the rest of my natural life. I wasn't crazy or desperate enough to throw my lot in with the women of the wave, but I wasn't above living a life of celibacy. I'd already had practice.
I looked back at my computer screen, where Mr. Mustache waited with his lust-less gaze and sexless smile. According to him, my pizza was ready and would be delivered in the proper window with five minutes to spare. Why couldn't all men be as reliable as him? Because there were no more decent men on Earth. And if there were, they weren't in Baltimore.
"Time to get serious, Mr. Mustache," I said to my digital friend. "Whatever the agency has next on call, I'm taking. Cheating bastards, receipts from embezzling CEOs' illicit shopping sprees, even insurance fraud, I don't care. The next thing they call with that will pay, I'm taking. And the next one. And the next one. Until I can get the hell away from this city."
Mr. Mustache stared in blank silence that I could only take as agreement. Hopefully, Mei would be more enthusiastic about my plan when she woke up. If not, I would have to come up with another and another. As many as it took to get someplace safe.
My phone rang again. This time it was the agency. I answered with a mix of relief and worry. Trust the take-away restaurant deities to be fast with delivering on their cosmic bargains.
Chapter 4
Kelly
From the second my beat up sedan pulled into the parking structure, I knew I was in for a shit storm. It was the oldest car in the structure, not a surprise for downtown, but definitely a bad sign. The exterior of the building only deepened my growing sense of dread. I stared up at the squat, glass skyscraper— if a building just over five stories with high architectural aspirations counted as such —for two minutes before I went inside. As long as I stayed outside, I hadn't met Laurie Donner yet. Because I hadn't met her, I hadn't taken her case at twice my usual rate. Which meant I wouldn't be pulled into whatever drama came with her fancy name and fancy offices.
Could I really do this? My mind went back to the palace parked in Federal Hill Park, to the Prince and the kid with the cold, gray eyes.
"Fuck it," I whispered to myself. Gathering my courage, I strode into the building as if I owned the place, but inside, I was ready to head back to my car without a validation or a job.
After a few years on the job, I realized you could tell a lot about a client and their story by where they want to meet for the first time. The housewives always chose coffee shops, and nine times out of ten they were only blocks away from the homes they shared with their cheating husbands. I guess they figured that if the guy was likely to come home, she wouldn't need me in the first place. The husbands always met me in bars. The first few times it annoyed me, but it turned out to be easier to turn down a middle aged man without destroying his ego— and losing a potential rent check —when he was too drunk to remember his own name, let alone that he'd made a pass at all.
Corporate types chose their location based on their needs. If they thought an employee was faking a workman's comp claim, they didn't want his co-workers tipping him off, so they met me off site and away from prying eyes. The truth was, most people never thought they'd need a private investigator. When life handed them a heaping handful of crap and they needed a PI, the last thing most people wanted was anybody finding out.
Except when the client hiring me was an average Joe with a lawyer. Lawyers loved to meet in their offices. If the office was even marginally impressive, they had to show it off. This little skyscraper had lawyer written all over it.
I forced a smile to my face as I approached the security desk. The salt-and-pepper haired man behind it— William by his name tag —looked up at me with the bleary eyes of a man too many hours away from the end of a double shift.
"Where're you going?" he asked. Double shift and overdue for a vacation.
"Floor five, suite six. You look beat." I should have known this was coming when the agency gave me th
e address. A perspective corporate client wouldn't call me to a place labeled as a suite.
William tossed a clipboard onto the desk, filling the lobby with the small, sharp clatter of wood against marble. The sheet of paper on the clipboard had spots for visitors to fill in their name, destination, time of entry, and departure. A security desk and a time log. This place screamed lawyer. The only things I hated more than cheating men were lawyers and politicians. They were all liars by another name.
"I need to see your license or ID, too," William said. "For the records."
It figured. I pulled my driver’s license and passed it to the guard. He checked the watermark and scribbled the details down on his own paper. William slid out from behind the desk and motioned for me to follow him to the elevators.
"You on the job?" he asked, passing back my card.
"How’d you know?"
He shrugged. "You’ve got that look about you. Are you a cop?"
"PI." I shrugged and slid my license back into my wallet. "Whether I’m on the job depends on Ms. Donner. You know anything about her?"
William whistled and leaned back, his face brightening. "Miss Swiss Watch. Six forty-five swipe time in, six forty-five swipe time out. Every day, rain or shine. Always speaks. Gives cookies at Christmas."
"You know what time the regulars swipe in?"
A sheepish grin crossed William’s lips. "I do when they've got that caliber of...assets, if you know what I mean. But I wouldn't make a pass on her or anything. Sister's got too much class for that."
I couldn't help but smile at the note of reverence in William's voice. If the man behind the counter when I walked in was at the ass end of a double shift, this dude was fresh off the plane from a Caribbean vacation.
"Is she a partner or something?" I asked, praying the answer was no. Relief washed over me when William shook his head.