Third Time's the Charm

by K. J. Emrick

  “We’re leaving,” I tell him. “Don’t try to stop us.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Take the bitch and go. There’s a dozen just like her in every bar. Besides, we didn’t do nothing. You can’t prove I did nothing with that bitch.”

  I take half a step forward and punctuate my glare with the barrel of my gun. “Apologize, and tell her you didn’t mean it.”

  His eyes go very wide as his hands come flying up defensively. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  “Say you’re sorry,” I clarify, “for calling her a bitch.”

  “I’m sorry I called her a bitch! I didn’t mean it. Just don’t shoot me. Don’t shoot me!”

  Reaching behind me without taking my eyes off Jacob, I find Jolene’s hand. “Come on. This man isn’t going to bother you anymore. We’re leaving.”

  “Um. Yes. Okay,” she says in a small voice. “Yes, please. I want to go. I…um. Can I ask a question?”

  “Of course. You’re in control now.”

  I feel her fingers tighten around mine. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sidney Stone. I’m a private investigator.”

  “Sidney?” she asks, her voice braver with every word. “Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

  Chapter One

  I have a pretty good working relationship with the police. Well. Most of the police. That’s very important for someone in my line of work.

  And by ‘good working relationship’ what I mean is the Detroit Police Department hasn’t tried to arrest me in several months. I mean, that’s progress, right?

  My good friend Christian Caine is a detective on the force. He helps me out, when he can, by hiring me on as a consultant when his caseload gets too high. The police department has a slush fund to hire informants and private investigators like me when they need the help. In the past I’ve really appreciated the extra income. Now, thanks to Arnie Chen, I don’t really need his handouts. We still hang out but now it’s just for fun. Not that I wouldn’t still help him out if he ever asked me to. I owe him. No, it’s more than that. I love the guy.

  Not like that. It isn’t anything like that.

  This isn’t a modern-day romance novel and I sure ain’t no Charley Davidson, with apologies to Darynda Jones because I actually like reading her mystery novels in the First Grave on the Right series—when I have time to read books. Sure, her character has a boy’s name just like me, so I can certainly relate to that, but Charley’s a curvy brunette with golden eyes and a little tattoo on her shoulder blade. Me, I’m a honey-blonde with blue eyes and the lean, toned body of an ex-Marine.

  See? It’s a totally different thing. We might be about the same age and we might both have a similar affinity for sarcasm, but Charley’s married to the son of Satan and I’m comfortably single. Well. Mostly comfortable.

  Plus you’ll never see my tattoo unless I want you to. So there.

  Anyway, Chris is just coming over for dinner tonight and then to hang out to watch some movies. It’s not a date, it’s just two good friends getting together to relax and unwind. I may have bargained with my life in order to save Chris from dying—long story—but I’m not all googly eyes over him. I know he doesn’t think of me that way, either. Besides. I already have a man waiting for me at home.

  Yes. My life is just that complicated. Spend some time with me, and all you get is chaos. It’s the good kind of chaos, though. Promise.

  Home for me is a little place on the top floor of a three-story apartment building not far from Downtown Detroit. One bedroom, one bathroom, and an open area with a half-wall separating the living room from the kitchen-slash-dining room. It’s never been much, but it’s home. It’s also where I have my office. A girl’s got to cut expenses when you live in a city like Detroit. This place has been on the edge of a “renaissance” since the early 2000s. Every mayor since that time has promised it’s going to start with him. Google it, if you don’t believe me.

  Tonight, I’m not concerned about the state of the local economy. I’m not worried about my lack of progress on Mister Chen’s case. I’m not worried about finding a new job for myself either, for a change. The only thing on my mind right now is a nice pork roast and some good time with friends.

  “You sure he won’t mind cooking?” Chris asks me, and not for the first time.

  The elevator dings to let us out on the third floor, and I punch him in his shoulder playfully. His biceps are like rock, and the guy only works out about twice a month. Jerk. “Yes, Chris. I’m sure Harry doesn’t mind doing the cooking. He’s actually really good at it.”

  “I mean, I’m an extra mouth to feed and I always feel like I’m putting the guy out.”

  I look up into his hazel eyes, into that broad face with its strong jaw and high cheekbones and chocolate brown skin tone. His expression of worry for how much work Harry might be putting into tonight’s dinner is almost comical. “Chris, this guy is a genie. All he does is snap his fingers or tug his earlobe and poof, there’s dinner. I’m hoping for some of that amazing coffee that he makes, too.”

  “Yeah, I do like his coffee.”

  The way he says it is the same way a kid will tell you they still like Jell-O even after finding out it’s made from cow and pig bones. Yeah it’s still delicious, but…ew. His nose is wrinkled, and his eyes are maybe a little wider than usual. I can’t blame him, I guess. I mean, it took me a while to get used to Harry. The fact that he creates this amazing Turkish coffee out of thin air is…well, it’s freaking amazing if you ask me. But Chris only just found out about this a few weeks ago. It takes time for some people to accept something this amazing.

  For a girl like me who always sees her future rushing at her, maybe all this paranormal stuff comes a little easier. I know weird things exist. I know ‘normal’ is all in how you look at it. I also know that there’s supernatural things out there that you didn’t learn about in school. I guess nothing can surprise me anymore.

  Like Mister Chen, for instance. Normal people don’t have eyes that can burst into flame. Whatever he is, he definitely fits squarely into the ‘supernatural’ category.

  “Hey.” Chris snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Sid. Where’d you go?”

  “What? Oh. Uh, sorry. I was just thinking about a, um, case of mine.”

  He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans while we walk down the hallway to my apartment. “Must be some case. You looked like you were a million miles away there for a second.”

  When he’s working at his job as a detective with the Detroit Police Department, Chris is always dressed in a suit and a tie. That’s the professional side of him. He only puts on things like jeans and that sweater shirt under his brown trucker jacket when he’s off duty and kicking around with friends. Like me.

  He’s off duty now, but he’s always a cop, and there’s things about my life I can’t tell him.

  I haven’t told him about Mister Chen, or the job he has me doing of looking for a statue that was stolen from hm. It’s not because he’s some sort of paranormal entity who scares the living crap out of me—although it’s mostly that. It’s also because Chen is one of the biggest names in underworld crime here in Detroit. I know Chris well enough to know his cop principles would get all twisted up in a bunch if he knew I was working for a crook.

  Hey, I’m a good person, but like I said, I’m not the police. I have my reasons for agreeing to work for Chen.

  “It’s just something I’m working on,” is what I decide to tell him, imitating him by pushing my hands down into the pockets of my khakis. “No shop talk when we’re just hanging out, remember? That’s our rule.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. This is just another normal night out with a good friend and her genie.”

  “He’s not my property, Chris. I don’t own him. He’s my friend, just like you.”

  “Right. That’s what I meant. Cut me some slack, okay? This is a learning curve for me. There isn’t exactly a Ted Talk I ca
n watch to understand all this.”

  We laugh, because he always makes me laugh with just the right thing to say. I don’t think he’s even trying to be funny half of the time. He’s just being him. It would be nice if more guys could figure out how to do that. Maybe then I’d date more.

  Somewhere in that tangle of thoughts I have a flash of my neighbor opening her door across the hall, standing there, glaring in my direction.

  When I look up, there she is. Standing, and glaring. Mrs. Peggerly is a nice enough woman on her better days. At least, she’s never given me any problems. Her face usually wrinkles up with a smile and a friendly greeting. Her gray eyes usually sparkle with humor and a bit of gossip from around the neighborhood that she’s just dying to share.

  Of course, that was before I had to shoot at a bad guy through my apartment door. The blast went through my walls, across the hallway, and poked several small holes in the wall on her side which did not sit well with her at all. I’d had my shotgun loaded with birdshot at the time so when the pellets reached her side, they had already expended most of their energy. The building super covered the worst of it with a little epoxy and some paint, and you’d never even know it happened, but she’s still mad at me. I remember her screaming at me the day after it happened, going on and on about how I could have killed her. I tried to explain to her that no, I could not have killed her, because birdshot doesn’t have that kind of punch-through power, and that’s exactly why I use it for home defense in the first place. The city of Detroit has no problem with it, I pointed out.

  She didn’t want to hear it.

  So I smile at her now, all sugary sweet, and give her a little wave with my fingers. “Hi, Mrs. Peggerly. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  She actually huffs at me, and storms back into her apartment, slamming the door with more bang than I would have thought a woman her age could manage.

  “Wo-o-ow,” Chris drawls in disbelief. “Some people just can’t let things go, can they?”

  See? He always knows just the right thing to say.

  Above my door, my business sign hangs from its metal rod. “Stone Investigations” it says. Simple and easy to see. Never know when someone’s going to need help. That survived the blast from my shotgun without a scratch. Which is another sore point with Mrs. Peggerly.

  My apartment isn’t locked. I used to lock it all the time, with the deadbolt in place for good measure. You can’t be too careful when you live in a city. When you live anywhere, actually, but especially not in a place like Detroit that has routinely been ranked among the country’s top three most dangerous places to live. In 2017, two hundred and sixty-seven people were murdered here. You don’t just go leaving your home unprotected in a place like this.

  Unless you have a genie waiting for you at home.

  As soon as we’re inside, Chris and I can smell the mouthwatering aroma of roast pork, roast potatoes, and steamed vegetables, and cutting through it all is the nutty tang of coffee like you’ve never had in your life. Harry makes the absolute best Turkish coffee in traditional copper pots. It’s a whole process that starts with cold water and ends with him serving it steaming hot with white foam on top. He’s spoiled me for regular coffee, I can tell you that.

  “Greetings, my lady!” my genie friends booms out loudly in a sonorous, smooth Middle Eastern accent. His heavy arms sweep out wide, and his smile could light up the North Pole at midnight on Christmas Eve. He’s a big guy, looming nearly seven feet tall, barrel chested and bulky with muscle in all the right places—all the right places—and he can fill a room with his presence without even trying.

  I’m lucky to count him as my friend.

  “Harry, you always know right when to put the coffee on the table.” There are three small cups waiting for us, one to a place setting, and I can see the steam rising off each one. “Still hot? Nice!”

  “As I have told you, my lady, I always know when you are near.” Then his smile slips, and his arms drop to his sides, as his eyes slide over to Chris. “And I see our company is here.”

  Chris is staring at him. He always does, every time he comes over. That doesn’t stop him from feeling peeved at the tone in Harry’s words. “Yeah, I’m here. I was invited, just like you knew I was.”

  “How nice for you,” Harry mutters before turning his back to put the finishing touches on the dinner.

  Chris sighs in a way that makes it obvious he’s got more to say, but he’s saving it for later. He’s got a thousand different kinds of sighs and each one is just as expressive as words. I’ve seen him in enough situations to pretty much know one from the other.

  I know where he’s coming from this time. I decided to let Chris in on the big secret of Harris the genie—Harry for short—because I thought it would make it easier to have both of my best friends be able to talk to each other. Chris had picked up on how weird my life was getting. He’s not stupid, and when I began doing things like zipping halfway across the city in a matter of seconds, he got suspicious.

  As it turns out, things have never really clicked for these two. They’re always pushing on each other, like little boys in a schoolyard trying to prove who’s tougher. Seriously, I don’t know why they think they have to show off around me so much. I’ve come this close to telling them both to put their rulers away maybe a dozen times, because nobody wants to see that measuring contest…

  But an image of just how big twelve inches is pops into my head. Ahem. Some things are better left unsaid.

  Ahem.

  “Smells great, Harry,” I tell him, intentionally changing the subject. “Um. The food, I mean. The food smells good. Let’s eat.”

  I kick my sneakers off and step around the half wall that separates the entryway from the kitchen area. The living room finishes off the rest of the short open space out here, before you get to the hallway that leads to my bathroom and bedroom, and that’s all there is to the whole apartment. No room for a pool table, plenty of room to kick back on the sofa later and watch a movie with Chris and Harry. After we eat, of course. I’m starving.

  Harry served us all, loading our plates with slices of pork drenched in gravy and sides of red potatoes and whole green beans. That “Kiss The Cook” apron of his looks comically small tied around his strapping physique but he loves it, so I don’t say anything. At least he started wearing more modern clothes than the ones he showed up wearing when he first appeared in my apartment. A vest and baggy gold pants will never, ever come back in style. Thankfully I’ve talked him into cargo pants and a polo shirt that has some kind of crest logo over his heart. I couldn’t talk him out of those hoop earrings, though, or those copper wrist cuffs with the intricate designs drawn into the metal. His long black hair is luxurious and flows down to his shoulders now that he keeps it loose, instead of bound up in a topknot.

  My biggest accomplishment was getting him to stop putting black guyliner around his eyes. After explaining to him what it meant to be ‘Goth,’ he decided the deep brown of his skin looked better au natural. I agree with him. He is a gorgeous man, who happens to have magic powers, and who I happen to live with.

  I think you can see why it took me so long to tell Chris about Harry.

  “How’s my goldfish?” I ask him after several wonderful bites of food. “Did he give you any trouble?”

  “None at all,” he answers without missing a beat. “I fed him and took him for a walk this afternoon.”

  The fork in Chris’s hand pauses on the way to his mouth. He looks from Harry, to me. “You took the goldfish…for a walk. You guys are joking, right?”

  I glance over at Harry, both of us chewing our food with silent little smirks. I break down and start laughing first. “Told you he’d fall for it. Walking a goldfish? Dear God, Chris, how do you think Harry would do that? Pull Spot’s fishbowl around the block on a string?”

  Now Harry’s laughing too, putting his fork down to slap his hand against the edge of the table with great humor. Spot is a great fish. I’ve had him for
going on ten years now, which is just about as long as a fish can live in captivity, and I know he can do anything any other fish could. The one thing he can’t do is walk.

  “Well, I didn’t know,” Chris says defensively, which only makes the whole thing funnier.

  I try to hold it in but my eyes start watering and the food I just swallowed is stuck in my throat and to avoid doing a spit take right here at the table I have to reach for my coffee cup and swallow back half of it even as it scalds my tongue.

  “Oh, Chris. Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris. Dude, you are too much!”

  “Perhaps,” Harry jokes, “Chris would like me to walk a potted plant for him? After I am finished walking your goldfish, of course. Oh, and the couch. And the refrigerator.”

  My laughter was almost under control until he said that. “Refrigerator! Oh, wow! I haven’t heard that one in forever. Excuse me, sir, is your refrigerator running? Well you better go catch it!”

  That’s a kid’s joke from forever ago, and when Chris hears it, he starts laughing with me, finally. I lean over, and take his hand in mine, and hold on for dear life as the laughter takes my breath away. It feels good. It feels really, really good.

  Harry, for his part, just looks confused. They didn’t have things like refrigerators back in the late twentieth century, B.C., back when he was still a human being. Before he was turned into the genie he is today.

  “I’ll explain it to you later, big guy,” I promise.

  “Hmm. I should hope so.” He leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “The joke was supposed to be on Chris for thinking I walked a fish, not on me.”

  “For all I knew,” Chris says, twirling his fork in a circle, “walking your pet fish was something magical beings do.”

  “People of Magic,” I explain to Chris. “That’s what we call someone who is magically endowed.”