by RJ Blain
“You don’t mind me checking her brush?”
His courtesy startled me, as I expected him to take exactly what he wanted when he wanted. “It might be all that saves you from being mauled for daring to brush her wrong. You’re not precisely the nurturing type. Kittens and puppies would have taken too much of your time, and heaven forbid you spend time brushing random strays.”
“It seems I’ve made a few mistakes.” Bradley headed to my couch and located the brush, rolling it between his hands. “Will you share your coffee, or will we have to fend for ourselves?”
“If you value your taste buds, fend for yourselves. I’ll even be a courteous hostess and leave the door unlocked. I bought the cheapest coffee money can buy, because I chug it in the morning and use its terrible taste to wake me up.”
“I’ll send Ren down the street,” Bradley announced, pulling out his phone. “Would you like anything, Beatrice?”
She gave him her order, which involved three different coffees, one of which was destined to be mine, as she wouldn’t touch caramel, hazelnut, and chocolate syrup unless someone held a gun to her head.
“Ren?” I asked rather than betray I would become the benefactor of Beatrice’s jab at Bradley’s wallet.
“He’s one of my bodyguards. We bore each other half to death, and he was quite relieved when I said he could play on his phone in the car until I finished here. He won’t mind fetching coffee. It beats actually doing his real job.”
“That is how idiot adepts like you get killed.”
“I’m not without my defenses. You know that.”
He wasn’t, but Bradley preferred having someone else do his dirty work. “And what’s your flavor of the day?”
Bradley opened his suit jacket and showed off his shoulder holster, something I found to be uncomfortable at the best of times. The sight of the standard-issue, common as dirt Ruger, a lightweight and compact model meant for conceal carry reduced me to muttering curses under my breath. Unlike the newer versions, it lacked a proper trigger safety. “Burn it with fire, get rid of it, and don’t be a cheap ass. That piece of shit doesn’t have a proper safety.”
Bradley laughed, took the gun out, and showed me the profile of the weapon. Unlike the original Ruger, he’d gotten someone to install a mod, and at first glance, the mod likely served as a robust safety system, although it didn’t match my general expectations for the weapon. “Trigger safety mod?”
“It’s a magical trigger safety. I could hand it to you, and if the trigger can’t register my magical signature when it’s pulled, the safety remains engaged and the gun will not fire.”
I leaned on my cane, eyeing the gun while fighting the urge to lick my lips. “Really.”
“If you’re going to work as an investigator, you will need to be licensed, and every investigator cell requires a shooter. You could talk me into providing you with a weapon with a similar safety system installed.”
“But will it be a Sig Sauer?”
“And you want to yell at me about no safeties?”
“They have a four point safety system to prevent accidental fire. While they have an optional system that has fewer manual safety features, they still have safeties. It won’t stop you from being a complete and total idiot and discharging via the trigger, but if you’re going to be giving me a special trigger safety system that requires my magic to activate, then there will be zero risk of accidental discharge.”
“You’re excessive,” he complained. “Next you’ll tell me you want a Glock. I should give you a Smith & Wesson with a manual safety and the magic safety system just to annoy you.”
I considered the idea of a proper dual-safety system, liking what I heard, as I’d seen a few too many sloppy bodyguards pull the trigger when they didn’t mean to, resulting in a lot of injuries and one death. As doing investigative work sounded a lot safer than being anybody’s bodyguard, I asked, “How many shooters per investigator cell?”
While I’d been aware private investigators did band together into small groups the government dubbed cells, I’d never bothered to look into them beyond an awareness of their existence.
Investigators tended to leave Bradley alone, as it was very difficult to get any sort of dirt on the man—or it had been when I’d worked for him.
I’d been part of the reason why.
“You can only have one licensed shooter on the cell. The qualification process will annoy you.”
The entire job would annoy me. “Bring lunch with coffee, and I will consider your bribe of a firearm as sufficient reason to listen to the rest of what you have to say.”
“You’re going to take me for everything I’m worth, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
“I tried to warn you,” Beatrice said, and she relaxed on my couch. “But if I’m going to be stuck here, lunch would be nice.”
“You two are going to make my own bodyguard want to kill me,” he complained.
I stared at him, as he’d made me consider killing him multiple times every day.
Beatrice cackled. “Your expression, Janette! What did you do to her, Mr. Hampton?”
“Bradley, please. And I annoyed her. Annoying her is one of my joys in life.”
“Then you must have been the happiest of men,” I muttered in my wryest tone.
“That I am. So, lunch and coffee. Is there anything else I can get for you ladies?”
I shook my head, and Bradley set Ajani’s brush on the coffee table before excusing himself to go on his quest for coffee and lunch. If I kept quiet, Beatrice would make sure I talked, so I said, “Just say it.”
“He’s hot.”
Of all the things she could say, she opted to comment on his unfairly attractive appearance? “While you’re not wrong, that’s what you picked?”
“How far would you have sprayed the senator’s blood had you been his killer?”
As that was closer to what I expected, I replied, “Six stories.”
“Damn. And you picked to be a librarian? But why?”
“I wanted to.”
“Every time I talk to you, you find some way to surprise me. What do you think he really wants with us, Janette?”
“Well, that’s simple enough. He was friends with Senator Godrin, and he abhors injustice. He wants precisely what he says he wants. He wants someone to find out who killed his friend, and for whatever reason, he doesn’t believe the official channels will do what he needs. And he needs the truth. So, I’m a known entity. You have connections within the library, which means you have connections to the other senators and politicians. It’d be trivial for you to drop a comment here or there to one of them and possibly get them to talk. Bradley is a very logical man, and he is not an impulsive man. Well, usually. I haven’t done any real research into investigative cells, registering to make one, or anything like that, so as soon as we ditch him, that’ll be our first job. I do recall that it’s possible to seal who is part of a cell, which was really annoying for some of the less ethical adepts, as they couldn’t just look up registrations to know who to avoid.”
“You showing up wasn’t in his plans.” Beatrice glanced at the door, waited to make sure Bradley didn’t sweep back in, and said, “I am getting the feeling you surfacing has changed his plans, and this shindig was an unscheduled addition.”
I nodded, unable to argue with her. “I’m sorry you were dragged into this.”
“I suspect I would’ve been dragged into it regardless. I do have those connections he wants to take advantage of. I deal with the library donors daily, and many senators do donate because they use our buildings for their business—and not all of their business is legitimate. I’ll want to go over just how you hid your real rating and falsified your identification, however. Mostly so I can be on guard against it in the future.”
I shrugged. “What the senators talk about in our building isn’t really any of our business. As for my identification, it was easy enough. I had one document falsifi
ed, got the government to fall for that, and claimed I’d lost the rest of my documents. They then rated me, but I’ve been trained to deal with dampening my ability for long enough to pass a rating test. Most are only trained for an hour, as it’s really difficult to mask the symptoms. That I lasted longer than an hour made them believe in the accuracy of the test. It was rather miserable.”
“How miserable?”
“I felt it the next morning, that’s for sure. Don’t try it. It’s really unpleasant. I only did it because I needed to. With my specific ability, if I rated as able to use magic at all, it would have been discovered I’m an exsanguinator. I have very few skills with other magic types, and it’s almost impossible to hide if you’re an exsanguinator during the tests. My only chance of avoiding detection was to be in the one bracket that didn’t count as a pure but lacked sufficient magic to manifest in any fashion whatsoever.”
“That makes sense. It was the only way you could hide.”
“Right.”
“I never would have thought you, of all people, could be an adept.”
“That’s what I wanted you to think, Beatrice.”
“Well, it worked. I’m just amazed anyone who could live life as an adept would want anything else.”
“Among adepts, you use, or you’re used. I fell into the used category. Maybe I’m not rolling in wealth, I can’t drive fast cars anymore, and a whole lot of other things, but those other things came at a price—one I realized I was tired of paying. So here I am. Maybe I’m not rich, maybe I can’t walk all that well, but I have a cute cat, a good job, and work I enjoy. From where I’m sitting, I’m a lot better off with my shit rating than I ever was as an adept.”
“But people have written literal books about you and your abilities.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, Beatrice. I lived for someone else. Now I live for me. That freedom is without compare.”
“But you signed a for life contract.”
On the outside, a for life contract seemed like a good deal, but it’d only taken a year or two for the shine to wear off. I missed specific things, but everything came at a price. “I was young, foolish, and as always, I put everyone else above myself. I did it for my parents. Bradley Hampton is going to discover I’m not going to be as easy to lure back into that cage, no matter how confident he is of his victory.”
“Well, this is going to be fun,” Beatrice muttered.
“If by fun, you mean a living nightmare, you’re right.”
“To say the least, I plan on bringing extra popcorn with me. I’ll need it.”
“Bring alcohol, and plan to drink right out of the bottle.”
“You know what? I just might.”
Almost two hours after leaving, Bradley returned. Bradley’s bodyguard reminded me of a bar bouncer, one who’d rolled into work while still hungover. While he wore a suit, he hadn’t bothered with any of the little things that helped a man wear one well. Not only had he forgone using a tie clip, he hadn’t set the length properly, a blind squirrel could’ve done a better job on the knot, and he wore a bulky shoulder holster announcing to the world he was armed.
I rated him as dangerous, but not due to the weapon he carried.
When guarding someone’s life, the details mattered.
“Don’t start, Janette,” Bradley warned, placing several white, plastic bags onto my coffee table. The bodyguard carried two trays of coffee, which joined the haul. Without a word, he left and closed the door behind him. A half-decent professional would’ve at least stayed by the door, but Bradley’s man thumped down the hallway and left. “Okay, now you can start.”
“Did you pick him up out of a dive, or were you just dredging the bottom of barrels for fun?”
“What about him bothers you?”
“Ask me what doesn’t bother me. The list is shorter.”
“All right. What about him doesn’t bother you?”
“Absolutely nothing. He probably uses an overpowered firearm to compensate for his inability to do the rest of his job.”
I would have been standing near the door, but not too close to the door, and keeping an eye on Beatrice as though she had a reputation of kicking half-drowned puppies. On the job, my protective streak had been several miles wide.
Some of those habits remained, and I clacked my teeth together and grumbled curses over his bodyguard’s lack of care.
Bradley laughed, checked the lids of the coffee, and put Beatrice’s usual order in front of her before selecting the chocolate hazelnut concoction and handing it to me. “As she’s allergic to nuts, I’m assuming she ordered this for you. Ren is doing what he’s doing on my orders, Janette. I wanted to see how you would react. Ren may not look like it, but I’m sure he’s having an anxiety attack or three in the car. The only reason I’m getting away with this is because I’m armed with more than my Ruger, and he’s unwisely confident in my willingness to use my various weaponry.”
I scowled at that, considering his potential options. From tear gas grenades loaded with various chemicals meant to disrupt magical abilities to disruptors in the shape of cuffs or jewelry, there were plenty of ways someone could make certain I couldn’t exsanguinate someone. The testing bracelets were technically a form of disruptor designed to rate abilities.
Dealing with Beatrice’s nut allergies would buy me some time to think about how he might be armed. “You’re allergic to nuts? I’ve been making you buy me your version of poison? Tell me no next time, Beatrice.”
“While I’m allergic to nuts, I am not that allergic to nuts, and buying you a coffee or two will not kill me, I promise. I see you’ve done your homework, Bradley.”
“It’s necessary. Well, Janette? Are you going to test me?”
“No. I’m going to drink my coffee, and if you did anything to it, I’ll consider it.”
Bradley pulled out three prescription bottles from his jacket pocket and gave them a rattle. “I lost almost an hour of my day getting you these.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are they, how did you get them, and why?”
“Two are painkillers. The other is a modified beta blocker. In the dose you’ll be taking, it serves as an anti-anxiety medication. I expect my presence in your apartment is going to induce all sorts of fun anxiety, or so I was warned when I spoke to the doc about the situation. You have it as a prescription because it also reverses damage done to magical abilities due to unnecessary disruption, injury, or disuse. It will help your body heal both physically and magically. It will, hopefully, allow you to be in the same room with me for extended periods of time without wanting to kill me because of the anxiety problems the doctor seemed convinced you’ll suffer through for a few weeks.”
Well, after I got over my severe case of irritated, it wouldn’t surprise me if I did develop anxiety of some form, as I had a lot to lose and nothing to gain. “Fair.”
“You will be on the beta blocker for three weeks, after which you will go in for a proper evaluation to see if you have done any lasting damage to yourself being an idiot. While on the beta blocker, you will be expected to practice for one hour a day to help revitalize your ability. I’ll provide the supplies for your use, but you’ll want to start slowly. I’ve already called a butcher for excessive blood for you to work with, and I’ll bring it over each morning. The doctor I spoke with recommended you do your exercises first thing after you wake up. We’re starting you with a pint tomorrow morning, then we’ll increase the volume by a pint daily.”
I took a sip of the coffee and glared at him. “I was going to try to learn some other type of damned magic trick.”
“You can still do that, although your aptitude is limited. What type do you want to study?”
Beatrice sucked in a breath. “Oh.”
I shot a glare at her, wondering what the woman had thought up.
“What’s on your mind, Beatrice?” Bradley asked, and his pleasant tone hid a sharp edge.
Someone needed to tell him he couldn’t be a
jackass all the damned time, especially not to my sometimes friend and best enemy. I’d get around to it, but I wanted to hear what she had to say, too.
“Janette’s pretty pacifistic.”
I choked on my coffee, and a laugh bubbled out of me. I set it down so I wouldn’t spill it, and I beat my leg with my fist. “You’re killing me here, Beatrice. I am not a pacifist. I’m about as far from pacifist as I can get without actually punching assholes whenever they annoy me. Trust me on this, I think about it often.”
“Well, you act like you are. Take Ajani for example.”
Huh. Maybe I’d been better at masking my feelings than I’d thought.
At the sound of her name, my cat came running. She jumped onto my lap, settled in, and purred. I reached over, grabbed her brush, and began my duties to my feline goddess. “All right, so maybe it was a little excessive I took her to my job interview, but I couldn’t just leave her out there to die in the storm. Look at her. You couldn’t ditch her, either.”
“She is wickedly cute, I will give you that. I would not have been able to say no to her in mostly drowned kitten format. Anyone with a grain of compassion wouldn’t have left her out there.”
Bradley considered my cat, and he shrugged. “I couldn’t leave her, either. I made Ren stop and pick up a stray dog the other week when we were coming back from a trip. I ruined a suit with that stunt, too. But admittedly, I took the animal to the shelter and paid for its vet bills rather than keeping it.”
Since when would he have done such a thing? “Did you contract rabies? That sounds like a good way to contract rabies.”
“Says the woman who brought home a possibly rabid animal,” he countered.
“Are you rabid, Ajani?” I cooed to my cat, rewarding her with more brushing. “You’re a most vicious and rabid beast, and I love you very much.”
My most vicious and rabid beast writhed from joy on my lap and tried to cuddle with the brush, one of her many tactics to make certain it took me longer to attend to her needs. As always, I caved to her ploy, wiggling the brush for her so she’d hunt it before resuming my sacred duties.