by WL Flinn
She turned to the young woman. “So, if you are a magical, what can you do?”
Kelly looked down at a seedling at her feet. She crouched down and cupped her hands around it. Her hands glowed a soft green and the slowly the plant grew taller and flowered in front of our eyes.
“Whoa, now that is cool!” I said.
Penny and Ashe tilted their heads. “We gotta go. Company’s coming. You need to go, too if you don’t want to be involved. Be careful out there,” Ashe said as she pushed the girl towards the parking lot. “We are out of here.”
Ashe grabbed me by my sweatshirt and dragged me to the car. She pushed me into the driver’s side and told me, “Go, go, go!”
I put my spare keys in and tried to look casual as I drove my Camry out the road as police passed us on the way in. Ashe suddenly broke into hysterical laughter as the weight of the situation hit her. She held up her fist. “Pardner!” she drawled in a bad southern accent.
I fist bumped her back. “Partners”
Penny jumped up and pawed the both of us and barked happily. “I guess it is a trio.” I laughed.
I started doing research on Google and found an internet for magicals called Grimoire. I started lurking there and saw what Kelly and Pam had told me was the truth. Were magicals were getting picked on? Were the authorities not helping? While I saw nothing in the normal outlets, Grimoire was saying crimes against the magical community was the newest hate crime. Since there were no laws to protect them, the cops wouldn’t do anything to protect victims or prosecute attackers. Heck, half the time, the cops seemed to join in the persecution.
“Can you believe this stupid pandemic is still here?” Pam whined. The New Year had come and gone, and we were still wearing masks. We were still mostly locked down. If anything, it was getting worse. There were stop-gap shots to take, but there were no long-term vaccines here or on the horizon. The virus was unlike anything the scientists had seen previously. I was pretty sure that was because they weren’t used to dealing with magic, but, hey, who was I to point that out?
While we were sitting there in the bullpen, an attorney walked in to see one of my attorneys. “Hey, lady,” he called out to me. “You need to get your boss. I need to see him.” He had slicked back, dark hair. He looked like a used-car salesman in a mismatched suit and his tie had some unidentified food stains on it.
“Do you have an appointment?” I asked trying to be professional. Something about this guy just rubbed me the wrong way.
“No, I don’t have an appointment,” he said as he walked into the secretary only area and started drumming his fingers on my desk. “I am sure that you wouldn’t understand I just didn’t have time to call ahead.” He started to walk into the hallway leading to the attorneys’ offices. I jumped up and got in his way.
“Mister,” I growled, “if you don’t have an appointment, you don’t get in. And you don’t walk in without my permission.” I used my best ticked-off mother look and I stuck my finger in his face. I looked down at my arm and saw a fine covering of gray hair covering it. I quickly dropped my arm down, but I couldn’t contain my bluster. “And I know more about this office than any man ever could.” I stepped toward him and brought my finger back to his chest. “You don’t get in without an appointment.”
I eyed my fingernails which had all turned as black as my hooves. I took several breaths in through my nose to try to relax, but never broke eye contact with the guy. He smelled like cigarettes. Ick. I wanted to sneeze, but concentrated on breathing and staring at him.
Finally, he broke eye contact and turned on his heel. “Well, I never,” he said. He stomped out of the office grumbling under his breath.
Pam and the other secretary gave me a quick, woohoo and high-fived me. I surreptitiously looked at my fingernails. Yep, back to pale, flesh color. Yay, me. I took a deep breath. That was way too close.
That night I texted Ashe and asked if she wanted to go for a walk. She met me and Penny at the park. “What’s up, chica? You look frazzled.”
“I am,” I said as Penny went up to her other best friend. She tried to get Ashe to grab the tennis ball out of her mouth. Of course, she wouldn’t give up the ball. Keep away was her favorite game of all time. She would twist her head away from Ashe and then put the ball back in Ashe’s hand but not actually let it out of her mouth.
“So, what’s up?” she asked again.
“I don’t think I can keep working at the State’s Attorney’s Office,” I confessed. “I almost lost it today with a defense attorney. My arm fuzzed out and everything. That could have been a big problem.”
“No way. Did you at least put him in his place?” she looked over with a devilish smile.
I grinned. “I sure did. He won’t be treating me like that again.”
Quick as lightning, Ashe grabbed the ball from Penny and threw it towards the trees. Penny barked happily and charged after it.
“Why doesn’t she ever talk to us when we are ‘normal’?” she asked.
“I have been wondering that too. I have thought to her and spoken to her, and nothing. It is like she is a normal dog.”
Penny came up with her ball in her mouth. She growled playfully and wiggled her head for Ashe to try and get the ball again. Ashe obliged her and threw the ball again.
Ashe looked at me. “I have an idea, but I don’t know if you would consider it. I don’t know how we could afford it. But I have been thinking on it for a while. You know I was forced to leave the sheriff’s office after I got sick. If you are thinking you are going to have to leave, I think we should become private eyes.”
I am sure Ashe could tell I thought she was crazy. Here I was 44 years old. I couldn’t just up and leave my job. I had kids to raise and protect. But there was just something about the idea.
“Look,” she said before I could even talk her out of it, “I think we can figure out what we are doing. I have contacts on the cop side. You have dealt with the legal side. But, um,” she faltered as she dug her toe in the ground and looked down. “I really want to help people like us. Not the normal types. They can go anywhere. I want to help us magicals or whatever you want to call us.”
“Are you out of your ever-loving mind?” I sputtered. “First of all, how would we support ourselves? Second, we don’t know anything about being PIs. Third, I am sure we would have to get licenses or something. And fourth, and this is the biggest, how do we even market to people like us? It isn’t like there is a Google advertising for supernaturals or magicals, is there? I mean, I have been reading Grimoire, but that is all I have found.”
My mind was going at a hundred miles an hour. I freaking loved this idea! I wouldn’t have to worry about getting hairy in front of anyone. We could set our own hours. Heck, we would be supernatural entrepreneurs. Ashe must have seen me processing the idea. I could see her relax as I thought about it. She could tell I wasn’t going to flip out on her.
“Kahlua and Cream,” I mumbled.
She looked confused. “What?”
“Kahlua and Cream…that can be our agency name. You are dark and mysterious and I am gray and drab. Plus, if you are around us too long you start feeling a little punch drunk.”
“So, you think we can do it?” she said, her eyes sparkling in the dark. I nodded my head. She grabbed me up in a big hug. “Pardner!”
Penny jumped up and pawed the both of us and barked happily. “I guess we’re still a trio.” I laughed.
Two weeks later, after my obligatory notice, I said goodbye to Pam and the rest of the crew. Part of me would miss them. I managed to keep calm, cool and collected through the goodbyes until Pam fist-bumped me. Tears in her eyes, she said, “I will miss you. I understand you need time to recover and get your life back. But maybe you will come back?” she asked hopefully.
I fist-bumped her back and just smiled. There was no way I could come back while people didn’t trust magicals.
On Monday, I woke up and didn’t know what to do with myself. We had d
ecided with the Sickness there was no reason to open a real office. So we got a phone number that rang on our cell phones. We had put ads on the Grimoire and some word of mouth.
So, needing something to do with my time I got up and walked into the kids’ bathroom. The smell of urine immediately knocked me over. “Rusty!” I yelled. “You need to flush the toilet after you use it.” I don’t know how many times in 16 years I had to say that. What was it with boys? “And work on your aim!” I yelled as I saw the dried puddles around the john. “Ugh, boys.”
I set to work scrubbing the toilet and then moving to shower. SallyAnn’s hair products were everywhere. I don’t know how she figured out what she was going to wash her hair with on any particular day. “Jeez, I need to steal some of her product.” I looked down. “SallyAnn, you need to clean the hair filter if you ever want it to drain.”
Both the kids grumbled something about it being better to have a mom who was at the office than at home. Penny came in the bathroom. Like you have any room to talk. Have you looked in your shower lately?
I looked over at her in shock. “You spoke to me,” I whispered. “What’s up with that?”
Penny looked at me, I think you are becoming more one with your magic, she said into my head. It is easier to talk to you now, but it still takes a lot of energy if you aren’t shifted.
I rubbed her ears. “I am glad to hear that we can talk,” I said softly. “You are a good dog.”
Penny gave me a quick woof and ambled out of the bathroom. I put in my earbuds and turned up the tunes. I put on favorite jam at the moment, for King and Country’s “Together” and started singing too loudly for our small house, but, hey, it’s my jam. Rusty came stomping in, “Mom,” he said grumpily, “I am trying to study.”
“Yes, son,” I said patting him on the jaw. “I will try to be quieter.”
“You can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” he said sullenly. I laughed quietly. Rusty was so serious. But he was a good kid. Plus he was a great student. I couldn’t really say much. Penny must have heard my thoughts. She walked up to him with her tennis ball in her mouth. He went to grab it and she turned her head so he missed. She did her signature growl around the ball which came out as a woowoo. Her tail wagged her whole body. Rusty smile and tried to grab the ball again as they walked back to the dining room table.
Ashe gave me a call. “We have our first case,” she said excitedly. “Be here about eight tonight.” She wouldn’t tell me about the case, but I was psyched. It was probably a lost dog or something equally as not important, but it was ours. So I was ready.
I walked out and told the kids. “I have to meet Ashe tonight. We have our first case.” SallyAnn came running over to me and gave me a big hug.
“That’s awesome mom! What is it?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Ashe is sneaky like that,” I told her. “It is probably something like finding a practical joker or a lost dog, but that is okay.”
“Well, we are proud of you, Mom,” she said as she gave me another big squeeze. Rusty looked up from his book. “Good job, Mom,” he said as his eyes returned back to his calculus.
At seven-thirty p.m. I grabbed Penny up and told the kids I would be out late to not wait up for me.
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” Rusty said rubbing on Penny. “You watch out for Mom, girl.”
SallyAnn laughed. “She is a golden retriever, you know. She can offer a thug her tennis ball maybe.”
I ruffled Penny’s ears and we jumped into my trusty Camry.
When we got to Ashe’s place, she was waiting for us at the door. “It seems people have already heard about us,” she grinned. We walked into her place.
“So, what do we have?” I asked. “Do we really have someone who is going to pay us?”
She walked over to the sofa and gracefully sat down and curled her legs under her. She patted the sofa and Penny jumped up next to her. “I think we are already in over our heads.” She looked at me with her big, brown eyes. “I was approached by a woman, Kathy, whose sixteen-year-old daughter is missing. Before you ask, she went to the cops, and they gave her the run around. They told her she was probably a runaway or she would just come back or whatever.”
I looked at her and shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “As a teen she is a vulnerable person. They should want to watch out for her.”
Ashe picked at an invisible thread on the sofa. “They asked Kathy if her daughter was a stinking magic user. When she said yes, they started blowing her off.”
I gave her a blank look. “But she is a teenage girl. How could they not care?”
Ashe nodded her head. “They are ignoring her. She has nowhere to go.”
“How long has it been?” Anger boiled in me. There was already a pit growing in my stomach. More than twenty-four to forty-eight hours and we both knew it was too late.
Ashe handed me a picture of a thin, black teen. She had her in braids down to her shoulders. “It has been a week.”
“A week!” I screeched. I jumped off the sofa and started pacing in front of the sofa. I chewed on my lip. Hair popped out on my arms. “That is forever in the life of a kidnap, if that is what this is. You know that. This is crazy. She is probably dead by now.”
Ashe looked at me. “I told the mom most of that. I told her the truth, if her daughter was a runaway, it might be safer for her than if she was taken.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “The mom has no one. Her daughter has no one.”
Penny pushed her head under Ashe’s hand and looked at her with her own brown eyes. I’m in, she said.
“Hey, you talked,” Ashe said.
Ashe was with me when I got the notice the administrators of the Grimoire group had finally accepted my request to join. They sent me a log in and said I could now join in and have fun.
She sat on the corner of my desk. Her right hand tapping on the papers covering the surface. “Okay, we need to make a profile,” she said. “I think we should go with something similar to our vic.” She dropped her eyes. She crumpled a piece of paper. “Can I be honest? I can’t be tough like a television cop. I can’t call her a vic. That little girl is Beth. “She picked up the picture of the smiling teen. “I am sorry. I guess I am not as tough as I thought.” I saw her cross herself.
Relieved beyond measure, I looked up at her. “Oh my God, I thought it was just me. I couldn’t take calling her a vic. She is just a little girl. And thinking about her mom just makes me want to cry. I think about what if my own kids were to go missing…” Tears welled up in my eyes.
“Okay,” Ashe said. “So, it is decided we aren’t going to be like the cops. We are going to be ourselves. Beth isn’t a vic, but bad guys are still perps for perpetrators.”
“Or just dicks, for bad guys,” I said as I started to type. “So, who is our profile of? I am not sure two forty-something women are going to pique their interests.”
“Hey, I am still thirty eight for several more years,” Ashe said off-handedly. She looked around. “Don’t hate me,” she began. The smile wiped from my face. She was looking directly at a picture of SallyAnn. “I am not saying to use her. I am just saying we make a profile based off of her. That way if we need a picture, we can provide one that they won’t find on a stock photo bank.”
All my mama bear instincts screamed to say no, but as I looked at the picture of Beth, my heart broke. Reluctantly I typed in I was a thirteen-year-old girl. “What is my screen name?” I asked Ashe. I didn’t want to use anything that sounded remotely like me. “Ooh, Fiery Opal since you said can heat things up with your hands and it makes your hands light up pretty,” she said.
I looked at her. “Well clearly someone was thinking ahead,” as I typed furiously. “OK, it wants to know if I know of other magical people.” We looked at each other. There are so many reasons they could be asking that and none of them were good.
“Hmmm,” she said. “I think we should say we don’t know anyone. That way we will sound mo
re like bait. Maybe at the last minute we can invite a friend.”
I typed in what she said and used SallyAnn’s height and weight. When all the questions were answered I pushed the send button before I could back out. I hated using her information. I am pretty sure I just signed up for worst mother of the year.
My stomach barely even had time to develop heartburn when the notification came up “we” had a message. Ashe and I looked at each other. Why did it feel like I was a school kid out behind the school with a cigarette? I stared at the keyboard. “Ay, chica! Just hit the button!” Ashe said reaching over and hit the mouse.
A new box opened. “Hey Fiery! Cool handle. Are you new here? I am like the moderator, Balric. If you need anything, let me know. I know it can be a little intimidating here. There are some weirdos. So watch out. Click below to access the Grimoire special rooms.”
I clicked below and there were tons of separate rooms to enter. There was one specifically for teens. I entered and looked through the list of people that had been there. Thankfully Beth had written her handle down. I wasn’t a hacker yet, but I could see where I would need to develop my skills or find myself a teenager. Teenagers knew everything.
“Beth was a member.” Ashe pointed to her handle MoverandShaker. The looked at the threads she had been part of. One of them mentioned a party at City Place the day before Beth was taken. “Well that’s suspicious. There is no way it isn’t related,” Ashe said.
“It has to be related. But what do we do? It’s not like we can go meet anyone and pass as teenagers.” Ashe looked at us. “We clearly aren’t going to be a thirteen-years-old.”
The computer dinged with a new notification. The message popped up. “Hey ur cute. R u new here?”
I started typing out an answer and Ashe rolled her eyes. “No grammar. No spelling.” She pushed my rolling chair over with her hip and clicked on the profile.