by RJ Blain
To my relief, Bradley ate two bowls of rice-filled soup without it rebelling on him, although he passed out on my couch. Ajani decided his lap would serve as her throne, and she opted to join him for a nap.
“For the record, I will kill him if my cat falls in love with him,” I announced, rather grateful Bradley’s bodyguard was off fetching people rather than listening to me contemplate murder.
Beatrice snickered. “Sure you will. Because you’ll forget how many years of bodyguard training just because your cat likes him?”
“You’re a bitch.”
“Ah, but I’m a lovable bitch.”
“You’re still a bitch.”
“Says you, bitch.”
I laughed, shook my head, and hobbled around my kitchen on my quest to restore everything to rights. Then, because I could, I dug my leftover orange chicken out of the fridge, took it to my couch, thumped down between Beatrice and the arm, and savored a bite.
My front door opened, and I raised a brow, as it hadn’t even taken Ren thirty minutes to accomplish his task. He led Bradley’s mother into my apartment with Jezabella hot on her heels. The pair locked onto me with twin expressions of utter disapproval.
His mother hadn’t changed much, although she had new gray in her hair and a few wrinkles I didn’t remember. Over the years, she must have taken to avoiding the sun along with her changed diet, as she’d gone from a somewhat pale woman to alarmingly close to porcelain.
Jezabella, on the other hand, wore a beige top with a pair of jeans, which worked wonders on her, giving her dark skin a much healthier tone compared to Bradley’s mother.
I chewed on my orange chicken, took turns looking into their eyes, and snagged another piece with my chopsticks, defiantly eating more of it.
“I warned you,” Ren said, gesturing for the pair of women to come into my apartment and closing the door behind them. “Although I hadn’t anticipated her to be after her Chinese food again quite so quickly. Janette, you can thank me later for notifying them of the situation in the car.”
“I’m just wondering how you retrieved them so quickly.”
“He texted me that my idiot son decided to try your preferred foods,” Bradley’s mother confessed. “I had our driver take us to the Met, and we walked to the cafe down the street to wait. Then we got a text about this investigator cell.”
I pointed at Bradley with my chopsticks. “He’s the culprit behind the private investigator cell. I’m just the hapless librarian who was minding her own business at home when an invasion force came in and dragged me into this.”
“Hapless librarian?” Jezabella asked, her eyes wide. “You? A librarian? You’re a librarian?”
Her incredulous tone amused me. She hadn’t changed all that much despite the years, only filling out a little. I supposed librarian was a fairly far leap from a personal bodyguard. “I’m a good librarian, too.”
“Are you capable of not being good at what you set yourself to do?” Bradley’s mother asked. “Especially disappearing?”
Once again, I gestured at Bradley with my chopsticks. “He’s the one who said not to come around until I was returned to my prime. I just did what he ordered. I just happened to do it well. It is my fault I did such a good job at it, and I absolutely refuse to be sorry for that.”
Freedom tasted a lot like orange chicken, and I had another bite to enjoy it while it lasted.
“You look fine. What’s wrong with you?”
As I had the end seat of the couch and it was my coffee table to do with as I pleased, I swallowed my hard-earned prize, set the takeout dish aside, twisted enough I could swing my leg up, and thumped my medical boot up onto the old, abused wood. Elevating the damned thing might help me some tomorrow, too. To make it clear what I dealt with, I picked up my cane and held it up. “Ask Beatrice what happens when I get stubborn and neglect to use this.”
Beatrice snorted, and she took my cane from me and used it to prod Bradley awake. “We have company, so wake up, you lazy bum.”
Without opening his eyes, Bradley grabbed one of my cushions and smacked Beatrice with it. “Go away, you literary menace.”
Entertainment deserved a good meal to go with it, so I grabbed my orange chicken and munched while observing their spat. As I expected from her, Beatrice grabbed my other cushion and went after Bradley like she meant it. Their antics disturbed my cat, and Ajani hissed before fleeing to my bedroom. “Your mother is here.”
“Yes, I heard her attempt to scold you. Why are you eating death in a takeout container again? I can smell it.”
“One day, I will have you trained so you, too, can enjoy death in a takeout container. I’ll start you with mild spice and work you up to the jewels of the culinary world. I’ll even try to ease you into it so you won’t attempt to run me out of milk. Did you run me out of milk?”
“I did. I’ll replace it.”
I sighed over the fate of my poor, abused milk. “I want whole milk, not that watered down nonsense that’s weird white garbage pretending to be milk.”
“I’ll make sure I get you whole milk.”
“You idiot,” Bradley’s mother scolded. “You had milk?”
“Mom, try one bite of her lunch. Just one. Hell, go sniff it. I thought I’d be manly and ate several whole pieces. If she can do it, I can do it, right? Wrong. I somehow survived. It took three glasses of milk and some sugar to make my mouth stop spontaneously combusting, but I survived. I’ve been told I’ll have restored taste buds in a few weeks.”
“I’m impressed you’re conscious. Once the milk has its way with you, you tend to pass right out for the day. I don’t miss the episodes, but I do miss the blessed silence,” she replied, and shaking her head, she inspected my apartment, exploring through the living room and poking her head into my bathroom and bedroom. “You have a lovely cat. Is she a girl? I hope she’s a girl. She’s far too pretty to be a boy. What is her name? She’s on your pillow. Is she supposed to be there?”
“She is a girl. She is my fluffy feline goddess, and I am her servant. She goes where she pleases.” I smiled that she was on my pillow, a good sign Ajani would cuddle up with me at bedtime despite the circumstances that’d driven her to take shelter in the bedroom. “She even comes to work with me, though she’ll spend some nights at the library. Usually, she decides if she comes home with me unless it’s Friday. She stays here over the weekends.”
“I see. But doesn’t her fur get onto your bed?”
“Her fur gets onto everything I own. It’s a small price to pay. I clean up after her once a week, although I do her litter box daily.” Mostly, I cleaned up her fur on bad days when I couldn’t move around much, using a brush to get the fur out of the carpet, cleaning my bedding, and using a lint roller on my clothes. With the painkillers, I’d likely have fewer days I’d have no choice to clean up her fur, and I’d be able to get the job done in a quarter of the time. “Her name is Ajani, and she’s a stray I picked up off the streets as a kitten.”
“I see. There was nobody around to tell you no.”
“I do enjoy that part of my retirement, yes. I’m not a fan of the reason for my retirement, but I’m already beyond how far I’d been told I’d recover, so that’s something.”
“Ren spent the time coming here filling us in on your foot.” Bradley’s mother eyed my medical boot. “What happens if you take that off?”
“It doesn’t end well. The boot is why I can walk reliably. My ankle generally collapses at its whim within a few steps. It also hurts like hell. The boot stabilizes it and keeps the weight off the more damaged parts of my foot. I can’t afford the next stage of surgery for it yet.”
“I can afford it,” Bradley’s mother replied in a tone allowing no argument.
I’d argue with her anyway, even if she believed I had no grounds for putting up a fight over the costs of my operation. I understood why she felt as she did, as I was the reason her son had been the only survivor of the crash to emerge relatively unscathed
. “By the time I’ve completed the next stage of rehabilitation, I’ll be able to afford the operation.” I pointed at my boot with my chopsticks in the approximate location of the primary arch. “This whole part is a bloody mess; the ligaments aren’t doing their job, so that’s a major point of failure. They need to be tightened.” I gestured to my toes. “I’ve learned the hard way your toes serve a purpose, and if they are all busted, good luck walking. They’re all busted. They’ll be fixed last, because without the rest of the foot working, why bother with the toes? I’ve been told I should shut up and be grateful I have toes at all. Which I am, of course. The first batch of doctors did a good job making sure I kept all of my various body parts still attached, with the exception of my spleen. I’m a bit of a guinea pig for that, because I needed a transplant. I emerged from that experimental surgery without complication as far as anyone can tell.”
The transplanted spleen could be a problem, as science hadn’t yet determined how magic formed and developed in the body. More specifically, would the experimental spleen transplant result in a change to my rating? Most days, I didn’t even think about my new spleen, although I was grateful for it.
I’d become the first human transplant candidate because I was an exsanguinator and could filter my own damned blood of impurities if needed, including aged red blood cells no longer capable of performing their function of oxygenating my body. The spleen’s other purpose, which involved maintaining my immune system, made me doubly grateful for the transplant.
I could fix my blood. I had trouble with my immune system. All-in-all, my new spleen did a great job, and I blamed a lot of other things for why I’d get sick every now and then, including the strain of hobbling around on a dud foot, not eating as well as I should, and otherwise running myself into the ground.
Bradley’s mother frowned. “Yes, there were a lot of notes about your replacement spleen. Have you had to use your magic to filter your blood?”
I shook my head. “I have a prescription to go along with some orders to do morning practices to warm back up to using my magic at its full strength. To maintain my current rating, I’ve had to take certain cares so I could pass the examination.”
“You painted your nails,” Bradley muttered, wrinkling his nose. “I can’t believe you painted your damned nails during the examination. Not only did you paint your nails, you didn’t want to ruin them, so you extended the testing period so they could dry.”
“It worked, so there.”
“You were always exceptional at falsifying rating examinations,” Bradley’s mother conceded. “I have seen your employment record, and I’m aware of some of the more unique training methods used. I paid for them, after all.”
“Those methods, for the record, suck. I also resent that some asshole murdered an idiot senator on the steps of my library.”
“I see your dislike of Senator Godrin has not eased.”
“Well, yeah. He’d be happy to see people like me chucked off a bridge and drowned right along with my parents. I take that sort of thing personally. That said? I hate murder far more than I ever hated him, so I’m on board to help locate his killer. I’m also a prime scapegoat for the killing, although I don’t think I could do the type of cranial damage he experienced—or sever a brainstem. I have other methods of killing people.”
Bradley’s mother stepped out of the entry into my bedroom and explored my kitchen, peeking into my fridge and clucking her tongue, likely at the presence of meat and eggs. “How would you have killed him?”
“Massive intracranial hemorrhage, of course. In the appropriate portion of the brain to cause instant death. It’s along the same lines of what actually killed him, from my understanding of the situation, but with a lesser-tuned control over blood flow. If I’m aiming for humane, I must be precise in how to kill someone. Otherwise, I just prevent blood from exiting the heart. That’s simple enough to do, and a ruptured heart will kill you fairly quickly. Separating the aortic valve from the heart through excessive blood pressure is also effective. Essentially, I can separate the aortic valve from either the heart or the aorta itself by concentrating blood in the region and applying pressure until the cell tissue ruptures. At that point, hemorrhaging occurs fairly quickly. I have many other ways I can kill someone. If I don’t want someone to realize I’m the cause of death, I might create a blood clot in the appropriate area. Clots can happen to anybody, and it’s difficult to detect if an exsanguinator is responsible for the clot.” To add to the illusion I’d misplaced or otherwise lost my last fuck, I smiled.
Bradley’s mother glared at her son. “This is what you get for wanting a nurse.”
I had never made it to the nurse stage of things, but I refused to show that the jab stung.
“She’d make an excellent nurse. With some rehab to her foot, she could be a librarian by day and a nurse by night.”
“That would leave her with exactly zero time for any other pursuits, including investigating a certain murder.”
“You’re still refusing to say his name, aren’t you?”
“He was a twat. I don’t want to say his name. It makes me feel dirty.”
Bradley sighed. “He had his good sides.”
“Oh?”
I observed the mother-son dispute with interest, nibbling at my orange chicken and wondering why the hell I’d invited a war into my home. Jezabella stayed near the door and fidgeted, something I’d remember her doing from the day she’d been brought into the Hampton household.
“You can relax, Jezabella. You’d kick my ass in a fight unless you’re trying to take my lunch from me.”
That caught the young woman’s attention, and she stared at me with wide eyes. “How’d you con him into drinking milk?”
“I didn’t con him into doing anything. He’s the one who decided he wanted to buy me two lunches, thinking he could actually handle spicy food without having had it before.”
“Wow.” Jezabella eyed Bradley. “You’re an idiot.”
Time had done her a lot of good, and I grinned at her open lack of respect for my ex-boss. “How’d they get you to actually say what you think?”
“Tears.”
Ah. Jezabella hated watching anyone cry because it made her cry, and once she started, she struggled to stop. “Well, that was ruthless.”
“I know, right? How’d you like parole?”
“It has its perks. My cat is one of those perks. I also set my own bedtime, eat whatever I want, and beyond the risk of a rogue stack trying to get me, work is usually safe and quiet unless the risk of paper cuts worries you.”
“Not particularly.”
“The certifications can be a bit of a bear, but if you’re smart, can read, and come up with a reason other than you like books as your reason for wanting to become a librarian, the job options are decent.”
“You’re not supposed to tell candidates that part, Janette,” Beatrice complained. “The bookworms will end up wanting to read all day.”
“Acquisitions, Beatrice.”
“Not every librarian gets to work in acquisitions.”
I missed my days working in acquisitions, and I turned my saddest stare onto my fellow librarian. “You could tell Mr. Tawnlen I should be moved to acquisitions again. I got to read books all day, and I ordered a very healthy mix of the ones I liked and that would be useful for our patrons. I was amazing at acquisitions.”
“You pushed your branch’s budget, and you got away with it because you’re insufferable.”
“And?”
“You won’t be able to be as effective investigating if you’re in acquisitions. You need to be able to observe the patrons, especially any patrons who might also be politicians.”
As arguing would be stupid, I shoved another piece of orange chicken into my mouth and sulked over the situation.
Beatrice laughed at me. “You’re invisible to most politicians, Janette, which is perfect for what we need. If we can get Mrs. Hampton to play as our legal advice and con
vince Miss Jezabella to work as our cleaner, it’s just a matter of bringing the others on board.”
“I do happen to have my JD. I got bored,” Bradley’s mother admitted. “I really dislike becoming bored.”
“You got bored so you got a law degree?” I blurted. “Do you know what normal people do when bored?”
“How would you know? You are not normal by any stretch of the imagination.”
Wow. Bradley’s mother meant business. “Okay, so I use a cane. That’s fine. That’s a little weird, but it’s not on the same scale as getting a legal degree because you’re bored.”
“Says the woman who has five hundred different issues of car magazines under her bed.”
“You counted them? Now that is weird. They add up. I got one subscription, and then I saw a subscription for another one, and then I had twenty subscriptions coming every month for different car magazines, and I had to put them somewhere. That’s not weird. It’s practical. What else was I going to put under the bed? Where else would I put my magazines, for that matter?”
“Bookcases, Janette. They exist. You could have asked for one. You could have asked for two. You even could have asked for three. You didn’t have to hide your magazine collection under your bed like they’re contraband.”
“Why were you under the bed counting my magazines?”
“I didn’t count them while under your bed. I removed them first. I even dusted them before putting them back, lest the son cry I wrecked your room. I was bored.”
“I haven’t read a car magazine in years,” I admitted. “I am guilty of following the races, though.”
“Please don’t. When you read car magazines, my idiot son buys cars.”
Bradley scowled. “Why am I being brought into this?”
“You taught her bad habits and enabled her. You encouraged that magazine habit, and you work an excessive number of hours paying for that damned car of yours. I know how much you spend on gas, oil changes, and tires, and I’ll be nice and not mention the engine trouble you’ve been having.”
“My foot doesn’t like tiny cars with no space, Bradley. If you ever want me to get into a vehicle with you, you need to put that car away, give it some love and cuddles and the best spot in your garage, and drive something sensible with room for my cane, my bag, and my cat.”