by RJ Blain
My fellow librarian pointed towards the main entrance of the building. “Mickey got hosed, and he was at the desk.”
If my brows rose any higher, they’d end up in my hair, which I’d decided to wear in a bun to keep it out of the way while hobbling between the stacks. For the blood to have reached the reception desk of our library, the culprit must have ruptured every blood vessel in the victim’s body and expelled it through every available orifice. Alternatively, the culprit could have made a few extra holes to streamline the job. “Is he all right?”
“You know Mickey.”
Yes, I did. Nobody could send him into the mystery, medical, or horror sections, as the sight of blood on a book’s cover might result in him dropping into a faint. “Please tell me he didn’t crack his head open on the desk.”
“No, but I’m not sure if he’s a suspect or evidence. They woke him up, asked him about the incident, and he fainted again. We have a betting pool going over how many times he faints before they’re done asking him questions. Honestly, I can’t imagine them actually thinking he’s a suspect. He can’t even hear the word blood without freaking out. He’s so lucky he’s not a woman.”
Despite the severity of the situation, I snickered at the thought of Mickey trying to deal with the perils of being a woman. I didn’t miss popping more painkillers than my kidneys appreciated to function through a shift guarding Bradley Hampton while my uterus and ovaries attempted to put me in the grave. As I didn’t want to write off having children one day, I’d dealt with it, although things had gotten better for me after the accident that’d almost claimed my life.
Thanks to my falsified magic rating, I’d found a doctor willing to use me as a guinea pig for a treatment meant for pure adepts or mundanes, one that resolved the crippling pain and would allow me to have children later. It’d involved using a mix of medicine and magic to mimic a pregnancy, and after nine months, imitating the so-called joys of childbirth to trick my body into believing I’d had a child. To my relief and the doctor’s delight, I’d suffer through only minimal discomfort before menopause naturally solved the problem for me.
Unfortunately for me, according to my test results and my doctor’s magic, she believed I wouldn’t start menopause until my sixties at the earliest. I blamed my magic for that.
It did a good job of keeping me healthy.
I sighed and shook my head, once again staring at the bloodstained building. “Are you being questioned?”
“I was out having a smoke, so I saw the whole damned thing. They questioned me, but beyond repeating what I’d seen, they had no use for me.”
How sloppy. “What happened?”
“Some asshole in a black car with tinted windows drove by, Senator Godrin lost his head, and they drove off before waiting for the body to hit the ground.”
“Did you say Senator Godrin lost his head?”
“Yeah. The exsanguinator burst the poor man’s head. Popped it like a grape.”
Ugh. I hated when high-powered amateurs made more of a mess of a job than necessary. When I decided to end someone’s life, I did so with some finesse, leaving the body intact enough for a viewing. “Please tell me you’re exaggerating.”
“Part of his skull landed across the street.”
I frowned. “And it’s being called an exsanguination? I thought exsanguinators just drained blood.” Well, I could do a hell of a lot more than drain blood from a body, although that ability gave people good reason to fear us. “The skull’s tough. An exsanguinator wouldn’t be able to burst a skull like that.”
I’d tried, although I’d limited my experimentations to animals rather than people. The way I figured, if I couldn’t burst the skull of livestock on route for the dinner table—or even come close—I couldn’t crack open a human’s skull, either.
“The killer was probably working with a telekinetic,” Meridian admitted. “But you’re right. Exsanguinators don’t usually manifest like that. I heard the cops and the adepts they brought in. They know of a few, but they don’t work like that. They have a different style. Now that was an interesting conversation.”
Yeah, I didn’t work like that and had no intention of starting. Even if I stretched my legs and worked some magic, my focus on keeping my magic controlled would hamper me in more ways than one. Habit ruled magic almost as much as natural ability.
I lacked habit, and I’d done my best to leash my natural abilities.
One day, I might even lose my magic altogether from disuse, although it’d still be in my blood, something I could pass down to my children, if I ever had any.
In good news for me, I still had more time than I cared to think about before I hit the end of the road on that.
I considered Meridian’s words, and I recognized she wanted me to bite on the little tidbit of information she dangled in front of me. Before the accident, I’d been curious and inquisitive.
Nothing had changed.
Heaving a sigh for her benefit, I asked, “What was so interesting about that conversation?”
“Did you know there’s a woman who can shoot someone’s blood all the way up to there?” Meridian asked, pointing up to the sixth floor of our library. “All the way to there! And some think she could clear the roof if in a mood. Apparently, her control is so refined she can build pressure in the veins, use her magic to contain it so the vessels don’t rupture, and control the spray. It gets better, though.”
My life sucked, and I’d have to put some serious thought into moving. “How does it get better?”
“She’s a mouse.”
I was a what? “A mouse?” I held my hands apart several inches to indicate the size of a mouse. “Like a rodent? About this big?”
“Personality wise. She’s meek as a mouse, prim and proper, and the prime example of an adept lady. They agreed she could if she wanted, but that it went against all of her training and behavior. And you know how adepts get. They pride themselves in their style, and she’s a mouse.”
The rumor mill had gotten bored, drunk, and possibly high before attacking my reputation, which likely hadn’t survived the onslaught. I could act like a lady, I’d even owned a few gowns, but I’d never gotten to wear them because a bodyguard didn’t wear pretty dresses to social events.
A bodyguard wore a suit.
Sometimes, I’d worn a skirt with my suit, but they’d always allowed for a full range of motion and I’d worn some form of spandex shorts beneath the skirt in case of emergency.
The last time I’d acted like a lady, I’d been at some gala the night before I’d been sold off to Bradley Hampton. Then, I’d found the arrangement pleasant; my parents had gotten lucky with me, with my percentage jumping two complete brackets thanks to a lucky roll of the genetic dice. It happened sometimes.
Once, a pair of mundanes had produced an adept child with a staggering 98.5% rating, with every recessed adept gene becoming dominant in an evolutionary triumph. It happened with adept pairings, too, resulting in a prized pure mundane packed with adept potential.
Those stuck in the middle rarely did anything interesting, although my parents, on the higher end of the spectrum, had bucked the trend with me and my 97.6% rating.
But to be slated as a mouse?
My pride wanted to go into a corner and weep over how far I’d fallen. “I can’t tell if that’s a good or a bad thing,” I admitted.
“Good. She’s the kind of mouse who can turn into a dragon.”
I stared at Meridian. “Did you have a few drinks on the way to work this morning?”
“No, but I wish I had.”
Me, too. “I’m officially late for work.”
“I don’t think we’re working today, but I’ll go tell the boss you did show up and ask what he wants you to do. I think we’ll either be sent home or asked to clean up if the cops ever finish with the place. Wait here. I’ll come back and report. Just don’t go near the cordon. That’s how you get sucked into being questioned, too.”
I owed
Meridian for that gem, and I waited at the corner, examining the blood on the library walls while wondering how much of a mess the murder would make of my life.
Two
Ajani loved the brush more than life itself.
For some unfathomable reason, Bradley Hampton had opted to pay a visit to the crime scene. Ah. Wait. No, he had a perfectly good reason to be at the crime scene.
Senator Godrin had been one of my ex-boss’s friends, a rather close one, if I remembered correctly.
I wondered how much of my dislike for Godrin stemmed from how much my former boss had liked the man despite his political tendencies, which screwed people like me over on a good day.
Ugh.
From my vantage at the corner, I witnessed the cops let him through the cordon as though he belonged there. That told me a different story, one where he’d been requested to show up, likely to use his magic to discern the truth of the crime.
Unlike me, who could exsanguinate someone with frightening speed, he could see the truth of the past along with a bunch of other clever tricks making him ideal for law enforcement. The cops loved him, because when he witnessed the truth of the past, he couldn’t breathe a word of a lie, either.
He could omit. He could dodge. He couldn’t lie.
That put him in a rather precarious position, and it made him one of the few adepts unlikely to commit an actual crime, as he’d be forced to speak the truth should he examine the scene of the crime. If they brought in someone with the right abilities, his use of magic could be verified.
In good news, Bradley wouldn’t find any links to me in the murder. In bad news, he’d catch glimpses of my presence, as frequent visitors left imprints for his magic to find. What would his magic tell him? Would he recognize the woman I’d become as the woman I’d once been?
He didn’t like losing something he’d paid for, and my contract had cost him a pretty penny, paid out to my parents so they could enjoy the rest of their lives and have a retirement. It’d done more than just give them money. Part of the payment had been a house, a nice one they could enjoy for the rest of their lives, free of all debts except their property taxes, and Bradley had made an account to cover those for seventy-five years.
Huh. I’d been worth a lot to the man, and most days, I had no idea why.
I supposed his life and security were worth a lot to him.
I considered the problem of him recognizing me, and after some debate, decided he had a rat’s chance in hell of figuring out who I was if he did catch an image of me going up the stairs each day to work.
Months and some magic had grown my hair out far beyond what he’d ever seen me wear, as I’d kept it short so it wouldn’t interfere with my work. Before the accident, I’d had perfect eyesight. Head trauma had resulted in a loss of vision. My brightly colored, oversized glasses served as the only disguise I’d needed.
The Janette I’d been before the crash wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing anything someone might view as fun or tacky.
My glasses redefined fun and tacky, and I loved them.
Not only did I love my glasses, they also added to the librarian look I enjoyed cultivating. I regarded my clothes with a sigh, which followed the bright and bordering on tacky look I’d adopted since moving back out east.
My parents wouldn’t recognize me. As a child, I’d favored black, gray, and brown. As an adult determined to never bring shame to the body I guarded, I’d gone for exclusively black and white. What self-respecting bodyguard would wear purple?
Not me.
Nobody would recognize me.
“Janette, I talked to the boss.” Meridian dodged people loitering for a look at the bloodstains and the body. “He says you can go home if you want; they’re not going to let the staff come back today. They’re bringing in adepts to try to figure out who would want Senator Godrin dead and why.”
I could think of a list half a mile long without putting in any real effort. Who didn’t want the bastard to kick the bucket, excepting people like my ex-boss? If I’d been given half a chance, a decent alibi, and an excuse, I might’ve done the job.
He wanted people like my parents studied and experimented on to make them more pure. Given his way, he’d eliminate anyone with a moderate rating. He liked calling people like my parents mutts—and he hated people like me even more, those who rose to a higher station thanks to a lucky roll of the genetic dice.
Really, he hated anyone who wasn’t just like him, boasting a perfect 90.0% rating.
I beat him in the magic department, and how dare a daughter of mutts beat him?
I wouldn’t miss Senator Godrin. In person, Godrin had treated me like a boot scraping, but that was how adepts treated bodyguards like me. Most bodyguards lacked my rating, and Bradley went out of the way to avoid telling people about the nature of our contract.
He’d liked the comfort of having a for life bodyguard. Nobody expected a woman to match with the men in the field, and I did. Thanks to my magic, I could oxygenate my blood at my whim, allowing me to push the limits. Before the accident, I’d been able to sprint an entire mile without slowing.
It took the equivalent of a flick of my wrist to help my lungs maximize oxygenation. I could control blood flow to keep my body performing at its peak. Oxygenated blood minimized muscle fatigue, and I had developed a stronger cardiovascular system experimenting on myself.
I figured I had at least an entire quart more of blood than other women my build and physical fitness. The extra veins and blood capacity had led to a larger-than-normal heart, too. My doctors had noticed that, but as the enlargement didn’t equate to undesirable swelling, they’d written it off as a fluke.
I couldn’t fix my busted ankle and foot. I couldn’t do a lot of things anymore, but once upon a time, I’d been a living work of art.
I still used my magic to maintain my cardiovascular system, although that barely scraped the surface of my abilities.
I figured Senator Godrin had hated me for my magical capacity as much as I’d loathed his friendship with my ex-boss. As I had half a brain and even understood how to use it, I wouldn’t voice my opinion and add myself to the suspect list. In fact, I’d consider heading home and finding some form of magic trick I could do to convince people I wasn’t an exsanguinator capable of bursting an asshole’s skull like a grape.
I’d never been able to pop a skull, and Bradley Hampton knew that. He’d been the one who’d dragged me to a slaughterhouse to test the limits of my magic, having evaluators record precisely how far I could go in case of a murder like Godrin’s.
Meridian huffed at my silence.
“What kind of adepts are they bringing in?” I asked, not because I wanted to know the answer, but because Meridian expected the question.
That was what curious mutts like me did when in the presence of adepts. We asked questions. We asked a lot of questions. We annoyed our higher-ranked friends in our thirst for the knowledge we didn’t need, because why would low-ranked mutts need to know how the world worked?
Meridian pointed at my ex-boss. “The hot kind.”
Yes, Bradley Hampton classified as hot. I didn’t miss the days I’d dealt with the hate-filled glares of women who wanted the adept. He could have any single woman in New York, and his status as single put him at the top of the eligible bachelor charts. As I didn’t want to think about my ex-boss at all, I pointed at the library, which contained a very important matter of personal business in the form of my grumpy cat. “What about Ajani?”
Right after limping my way back to my home turf, I’d found a cold and soaked tabby kitten, and she’d been at death’s door. Taking the suffering animal to my job interview at the library had counted as blatant idiocy, but I had refused to let the poor girl die in the storm, and I hadn’t had time to take her somewhere safe before the interview.
We’d both been worse for wear then.
In some ways, the wet, shivering fluffball had won me my job, as my boss valued one thing above all e
lse: compassion. I’d met his criteria through putting a potential job at risk for the sake of another.
We’d both been hired that day, me for my knowledge, literacy, and ability to follow basic directions, and her for being nothing more than a sickly little kitten.
I got paid in money, she got paid in cat food, treats, and her own lodgings at the library. She did an excellent job of controlling the mice and rat populations and protecting the stacks from pests, an unexpected benefit of having her around. She came home with me on the weekends and most evenings, as the boss insisted I be around to keep an eye on her during the days.
Some nights, especially if we’d notice signs of rodents in the building, she stayed at the library.
With my ex-boss around, I’d be taking her home every night.
“Oh, right. The boss is talking with the cops to get clearance to bring Ajani out for you. I caught her and put her in her carrier right after the murder, so as soon as we get clearance, I’ll bring her over. The boss thinks you should stay well clear; he’s had enough of the staff being hassled for one day. I think he was more worried you’d shove your cane up someone’s ass, but you didn’t bring your cane today.”
“I forgot it on my way out the door.”
“You can’t keep forgetting your cane, Janette. You can barely walk without it. Just get a second one to keep at the library if you must insist on walking without it like a stubborn idiot. I’ll get one for you if you don’t bring your own.”
When Meridian issued threats, she meant them. I caved, holding my hands up in surrender. “I’ll bring a cane just for work. The cops aren’t going to claim my cat as evidence or anything, are they?”
I’d turn myself into a suspect if anyone thought they could hurt my kitty. There would be blood, none of it would be mine, and I’d regret nothing.
“I’m sure they won’t treat your cat as evidence.” With a laugh and a shake of her head, Meridian headed back to the cordon, slipped under the tape with the help of a cop, and spoke to someone. After five tense minutes, she headed into the library with a police escort, emerging a few minutes later with my fleece-lined carrier.