The Nyte Patrol

by Alex P. Berg

  I let out a sigh, realizing I’d been holding my breath. “Is that it?”

  “Almost.” Larry pointed behind me.

  I turned at the sound of screeching metal. The bumper on my truck bent and popped, plumping as it returned to form. I raced back in time to see the scratches on the side smooth out. A fog formed around the back passenger window and the side of my door. When it lifted, the glass and side mirror were back in place, good as new.

  I blinked. “Whoa.”

  Tank make a cross with his fingers, kissed them, and lifted them to the sky. “Rest in peace, Stevie. We miss you.”

  “You know,” I said. “While we’re at it, maybe we could update the Suburban a bit. Make it a newer model. Give it some rims.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” said Larry. “Now come on. We’ve still got to drop Melondrious off.”

  I found the downtown police station on my phone and hit the road. When we arrived, Dawn exited with Melondrious in hand, but she told us to go ahead and head home without her. She’d find a ride on her own after delivering the fairy to Connors. She gave us a bit of a wink as she said that, and I think we all knew what her intentions were for the evening.

  When I pulled back up to the dilapidated house on West 21st, I couldn’t believe it was only eleven P.M. Apparently, I’d lived an eternity in five hours.

  Tank waved as he hopped out the back, duffel bag of guns in hand. Larry lingered behind, fingers tapping at the center console. He gave me an awkward glance. “So…”

  “So… what?” I said. “Please tell me we’re done for the night. I’m not sure how much more crazy I can handle.”

  “Oh, yes. We’re done. And you more than earned your keep, so no worries there. I just wanted to talk to you. About the job.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well… you did better than I expected. We hit a few hairy spots this evening, and you handled yourself well for a newbie, especially one who’s not familiar with magic and the supernatural. Not to mention your driving skills are top notch. So I guess what I’m saying is, the position’s yours if you want it.”

  I couldn’t tell if he’d insulted or complimented me. Maybe both. “I thought you’d already offered me the job.”

  “Well, sure, but it was conditional. Upon you. Being capable and whatnot.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, Larry. Whatever it is you’re not telling me, just spit it out already.”

  Larry rubbed a hand against his forehead. “Damnit. Am I that obvious? I’ve never been good at this sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Being deceitful. Not that I’ve lied to you. Not directly. I simply might’ve failed to mention that… your showing up at our doorstep wasn’t by chance.”

  “I’m guessing this has to do with that spell you cast?”

  Larry blinked. “What? Yes. How did you know?”

  “You and Dawn mentioned it when I first arrived, not to mention you were mumbling about it in the car. I’m not dumb, it simply took a while for me to accept that maybe magic spells are a real thing.”

  “So you understand, then.”

  “No. Not even remotely. I have no idea what’s going on.”

  “Right,” said Larry. “Sorry about that. As I said, I never lied to you. I need assistance with the Nyte Patrol. As you might have noticed, Dawn and Tank excel at what they do, but they lack some of the administrative and office skills our team requires, and Bill? Love him to death, but he’s hard to include in everything, being a zombie head and all. Can’t answer a phone, either. Which brings me to the help wanted ad. I had Dawn write it up and then, to make sure it attracted the right applicant, I cast a spell that would help it do just that. And lo and behold… you show up.”

  “Your spell chose me?” I said.

  “It would appear so, and no offense, but you’re not exactly who I was expecting. I mean, you’re not even one of us. A voyager of the supernatural realms. So forgive me if you caught me off guard. But I know magic well enough to understand that it sometimes works in strange and mystical ways, so I was at least willing to give you a shot, and I’ll admit that you’ve impressed me. It would seem that whatever you have to offer is what the Nyte Patrol needs.”

  “And what is that?”

  Larry shrugged. “Beats me. Apparently it’s not your supernatural talents, and it doesn’t sound like you’ve done a lot of secretarial work before. Maybe it’s your fresh perspective on life? Or something else. You have any experience leading a team of mercenaries or black ops commandos or anything like that?”

  His mention of a team brought me back to practice, and that in turn drew a dark cloud over my head. “No. Nothing like that. Look, Larry, I think you’re going to have to accept the fact that maybe your spell picked the wrong girl.”

  The wizard shook his head, sending his unwashed locks dancing. “After what I saw tonight, I’d say that’s highly improbable. Besides, my magic rarely fails me. So what do you say? Same time tomorrow? We’ve still got to procure that tome for Romanov, after all.”

  I surprised myself by actually considering the offer. On one hand, I couldn’t imagine going back to fluid dynamics and heat transfer lectures after coming to grips with a world fundamentally different than I’d always presumed it to be. On the other hand, I’d never been shot at attending class or going to softball practice.

  “Honestly, I don’t know, Larry. I’m going to have to think about it. See how things shake out.”

  He opened the door and hopped out. “Well, don’t think about it too long. Romanov offered a hefty bonus if we could locate the book within seventy-two hours. And we share bonuses equally around here—even the junior partners.”

  He shut the door and waved. I nodded and started the laborious process of trying to turn around.

  12

  The buzzing of my alarm clock forced me to crack my eyes. I hit the snooze button on my phone and blinked a few times, trying to get my bearings. Morning sunshine streamed through the window of my dorm room. Obviously, I’d made it home, but I didn’t totally remember how. My brain felt fuzzy, like I’d drank too much, and the events of last night had that indistinct haziness to them of a bad dream.

  I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, clicking to one of the local news stations. A chipper anchorwoman sat next to a handsome middle-aged man, smiling as she talked. “—but while the second annual Central Texas Veteran’s Association Ride for the Kids was ongoing, a fire broke out at the Blind Pig Pub on Sixth. Firefighters responded immediately, and while the damage to the bar was minimal, it did delay the end of the charity ride by a good forty-five minutes. Nonetheless, the ride was a success, raising over twenty-five thousand dollars for charity. I just love it when the community gets together to do something special for the kids, don’t you Jim?”

  “Absolutely, Veronica,” said the anchorman. “I wish I could take part in that ride myself, but it’s hard when we have to get up so early to report the news. Now here’s Tom with the weather.”

  The broadcast switched to a young man in a navy suit in front of a map of central Texas. “Thanks guys. It’s shaping up to be a warmer than average day, with patches of rain across the hill country, but before we get to the forecast, believe it or not we had a bizarre weather phenomenon that took some Austin residents by surprise last night. It’s called a Southerly Norther, strange as that may sound. It’s when a gust of warm southern air mixes with cool air near the ground leading to higher than normal releases of marsh gas. When that marsh gas rises, it shimmers in the light of the full moon and can lead to some strange sightings. In fact, it was this shimmering marsh gas playing off a weather balloon that led some folks in downtown Austin into thinking they’d spotted a UFO. Can you believe it? Anyway, current temperatures are in the low fifties, but as the day goes on—”

  “A weather balloon? Marsh gas?” I said. “That doesn’t even make any sense!”

  My door creaked. Tanya walked in, her
wet hair hanging to her collarbone, with a towel around her midsection and a smaller one over her shoulder. “Hey, Lexie. You snuck back in late last night. Do anything fun?”

  I turned off the TV. “Not really. In fact, I kind of had the craziest fucking night ever.”

  Tanya sat on her bed, drying her hair with the smaller towel. “Did you drop acid? I did that once. Not a good idea.”

  “No, there weren’t any drugs involved.” I thought about Melondrious and the fairy cocaine. “Well, not really.”

  “What then? Boy drama?”

  I shook my head. “No. Though I did meet this guy at the library. He was kind of cute, if really awkward.”

  “So what made the night so crazy?”

  “Well, uh… it’s hard to say. I met this guy, Larry. He’s like an… entrepreneur, I guess you’d say. And this chick Dawn, who’s a total badass, and her friend Tank, who I still don’t have a good read on. And we had an adventure together. At the library. And at this janky bar on the east side.”

  Tanya smiled. “I was wondering when booze would enter the picture.”

  “No. I didn’t drink. At all. Trust me, it’s really hard to explain.” I grabbed my phone. I had sixteen unread messages and a couple voicemails. Most of them were from my teammate Heather, but there were others from the rest of the softball girls as well. Social media would probably be a war zone. I turned it off, not wanting to deal with it.

  Tanya was still looking at me when I glanced up from my phone. “You doing okay, girl? You seemed like you were kind of in a bad place yesterday, and then you just ran off.”

  “I’m okay.” I stood up and threw on clothes from a pile that I thought was clean. “I had a rough day, and I didn’t want to talk about it. And now with everything that happened last night… Never mind. It’ll all be fine, I’m sure.”

  That was a lie, of course. I didn’t know any such thing, either about softball or about what I’d gotten myself into with the Nyte patrol.

  I grabbed my book bag. “I’ve gotta go. See you later.”

  Tanya waved, and I headed out. Given that I had afternoon practice, I’d always scheduled as many classes as I could in the morning. Most of the time it didn’t bother me, but today as I sat through back to back lectures on engineering mechanics and differential equations, I found I couldn’t concentrate one whit on the subject matter. It wasn’t because I was tired, though I did find myself yawning more frequently than normal. Rather, I couldn’t force myself to care about free body diagrams or whatever the integral of f(x) plus y was.

  Strangely enough, it wasn’t the lunacy of having driven a flying Suburban hopped up on magical crack with a bunch of people I’d just met riding alongside me, one of them unloading clip after clip of assault rifle rounds at angry bikers, that got me. Rather it was the potential aftermath of my outburst at yesterday’s softball practice that camped in the front of my mind. I couldn’t help it. Angels and demons and goblins and witches might exist, but they’d never bothered me until yesterday. Softball on the other hand was my life—or at least it had been until I’d thoroughly screwed the pooch.

  Through sheer force of will, I dragged myself through the classes. When they were over, I headed to the lobby on the main floor of the mechanical engineering building, found a free table, and hunkered down to do some homework. I was severely behind, mostly because I’d spent the previous evening chauffeuring people and fighting off bikers. I told myself it might have to become routine—not the high speed chases, but the middle of the day homework. I didn’t see where else I’d be able to fit it in.

  An eleven o’clock lunch came and went, followed by my noon lab and more homework. The clock ticked toward afternoon practice, but I stayed at my table, working through chapter seven of my thermodynamics textbook, all the while telling myself I could get in a few more of the end of chapter problem sets before I had to leave. Then a few more. And a few more. Before I knew it, practice had started, and I was still sitting in the lobby. I hadn’t forgotten to leave, though. I’d made a choice to stay, if not a conscious one, and I hated myself for it.

  I’d never considered myself a coward, yet there I was, rooted to my chair, refusing to answer my phone, not even having checked my email in the past twenty-four hours. All because I couldn’t face the reality of what I’d done, the crap storm I’d kicked off through my arrogance and pride and shitty attitude. And if dealing with my own self-inflicted problems wasn’t bad enough, a freaking wizard had cast a magic spell that picked me out of thin air to come help him. Me. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate. Not to mention that I couldn’t imagine how I could be of help to anyone at the moment. I couldn’t even keep my own life from falling apart.

  I sighed and rested my head on my textbook.

  Eventually, I gave up, packed up my stuff, and headed back to my dorm for dinner. I didn’t grab anything fancy at the first floor cafe. Just a sandwich and a chopped salad, the latter of which probably could’ve sufficed. For once I wasn’t ravenous, in part because I’d skipped practice. Also because the pit in my stomach left little room for anything else.

  I’d finished my sandwich and was picking my way through the chopped vegetables when the chair across from me screeched. I looked up to see Heather taking a seat across from me.

  13

  Heather was a typical Texan beauty, with a perfect smile, blonde hair, and legs that stretched for miles. She pitched the meanest curveball I’d ever come across, which was both great for our team and for me personally as I got to practice off it all the time. She was a lot more girly than I was, preferring skirts to shorts and romantic comedies to superhero flicks, but despite our differences, she was far and away my best friend on the team. She didn’t flash me her pearly white smile today, though. She gave me a curt nod instead. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  Heather didn’t bring any food. She stared at me as I prodded some lettuce with a battered fork. “Missed you at practice today.”

  “Yeah, I, uh… got caught up in some classwork.”

  “Didn’t respond to any of my texts, either.”

  “I told you, I was busy. I had a lot of studying to do.”

  “And I’m guessing you were busy studying last night, too, when I tried calling you like three times.”

  I didn’t say anything. Trying to explain the sequence of events that had enveloped me wasn’t likely to help my case.

  “Damnit, Lexie, just talk to me. Of all the people on the team, I’m probably the only one who’s not pissed at you, but if you keep treating me like this, trust me, I can change my mind in a hurry.”

  I put my fork down and looked up. “What do you want me to say, Heather?”

  “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on. You’ve never shut me out before. Why are you doing it now?”

  I groaned. “Ugh. I’m sorry. It’s not intentional, I promise. But the last few weeks have just… sucked, okay? I feel like everything I’ve worked so hard for is slipping out of my fingers, and I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

  Heather’s face softened. “Have you talked to Coach K about any of it?”

  “I had a meeting with Mitch Grady.” He was the university’s sports psychologist for the student athletes.

  “Well, that’s a start. But you need to bring Coach K into the conversation—especially after yesterday.”

  “Right. That’ll be easy. I’ll just call her up and be like, Hey Coach, sorry I went totally mental the other day and dropped an f-bomb and said you pulling me from the starting lineup is total bullshit. Oh, and sorry for going medieval on that Gatorade jug and nearly taking Janie Nguyen’s head off in the process, even though that part was totally an accident and nobody’s going to believe me it wasn’t on purpose.”

  Heather tilted her head. “So it wasn’t on purpose?”

  “No. Of course not. Christ, even you think I was trying to kill her?”

  “Not kill her. But come on, Lexie. You two have been butting heads
since the fall.”

  I put my head in my hands. “God. This is a disaster, Heather. How did this happen?”

  “You almost fracturing Janie Nguyen’s orbital bone?”

  “Me getting benched for a freshman! I was batting three-fifty last year, and this season everything’s gone to shit.”

  Heather leaned across the table and rested her hand on my forearm. “Look, Lexie, don’t beat yourself up over it. Everyone has ups and downs. You’ll work through it. Besides, your shoulder surgery is clearly still affecting your swing.”

  I shook my head. “That’s an excuse. I’ve been playing like crap, and it doesn’t matter if it’s because of my shoulder or because I’m stressed from my course work or who knows what else. Crap play is crap play.”

  Heather didn’t flinch. “You’re right. So do something about it.”

  I blinked. “Wow. Way to have my back. You’re supposed to tell me I’m wrong, that I’m playing great but not seeing it.”

  “Lexie, I’m your friend and probably your biggest advocate on the team, but me blowing smoke up your ass isn’t going to do you a damn bit of good. I’m going to tell it to you like it is, and yeah, you need to play better. I mean, honestly, I was afraid you’d be blind to it, and I’d have to walk you through it.”

  “Of course I’m aware of it! How couldn’t I be?”

  Heather frowned. “If you know you’re not performing to expectations, then why are you surprised you got pulled from the starting lineup?”

  “Because I’m not some scrub benchwarmer, I’m the damn co-captain, that’s why!”

  The words flew out thick and hot, and I instantly regretted them. I shouldn’t have raised my voice. Not at Heather.

  Heather’s lips tightened. “Lexie, when you’re healthy and dialed in, you’re the best hitter on the team, but you know that has nothing to do with you being selected as co-captain. The girls voted you in because of who you are. Because of what you’ve meant to the team. And to be perfectly honest, it’s kind of hard to lead when you’re being a petty bitch who won’t even come to practice.”