Nevermore

by J. C. McKenzie

  “It will be okay,” she’d told them, lying through her teeth as she hugged them. I will fix this.

  How exactly she’d fix anything was beyond her, and her thoughts and fears kept attacking her brain even with her mind on the brink of blissful sleep.

  A shadowy pulse of energy taunted her—the same energy teasing her every night since Lloth’s death. At first, she brushed it off, assuming the feeling was another symptom of her trauma from killing the previous Corvid Queen. Like the nausea, headaches and flashbacks. But now? Maybe it had more to do with being the new Corvid Queen.

  The more fatigued Raven became, the more the shadowy magic shifted and swirled inside her. This must be Lloth’s power, but what could Raven do with it? How could she wield it?

  The energy continued to dance and tease, shifting bands of light and shadow around the room to make her vision waver. A beacon of warmth radiated from the corner of the room. Each time she focused on the glowing scythe, the shifting stopped, and her mind settled.

  She lurched from the bed and stumbled toward the Scythe of Corvids. The shadow energy spiraled and danced, churning in her stomach, creating waves in her mind. With a curse, Raven reached out and gripped the cold metal shaft of the scythe.

  Everything stopped.

  Silence descended.

  The movement settled.

  Raven closed her eyes and whimpered at the calm stillness. A tear streaked down her cheek. The coolness of the tear created a path down her flushed skin. Finally. Peace.

  What now? She didn’t dare let go, but she needed to sleep. She hefted the scythe off the ground and carried it with her to the bed. The bra slid off the blade. She lay down, pulled the thin sheet over her sweaty body and the scythe and blissfully closed her eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  “I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.”

  ~ Oscar Wilde

  Raven cracked open the front door to Crawford Investigations while balancing a tray of coffee. The welcomed tang of gun oil and paper rushed over her.

  Dad looked up from the front desk. He wore a blue polo shirt today and though the desk hid his pants Raven would bet money he paired the shirt with dark gray or black pants.

  “You okay, Rayray?” Dad asked.

  Besides having to wake up well before her usual time, her mind still reeled from last night’s events. She plunked the coffee tray down on the desk and handed one to Dad—a large black coffee. Gross. “Yeah, I’m coping.”

  “Want to talk about it?” He repeated the same offer he made last night after she clammed up during the questioning round.

  Her brain was still too scrambled and frankly, they talked enough last night. “Not yet. What’s on our plate today?”

  “We got a job from workers comp.”

  Nice. These jobs tended to be straightforward, yet, entertaining. Most people thought movies and television shows depicted private investigation accurately with the PIs acting more like bounty hunters or cops, chasing down hardened criminals in the seedy underworld. In reality, most of their work came from insurance companies or jobs farmed out by Worker’s Compensation of British Columbia. At Crawford Investigations, they filled the remaining spots with cheating spouses and missing persons.

  Due to her family’s fox shifting abilities, which brought along an excellent sense of smell, and Raven’s ability to shift into a conspiracy of ravens, which allowed her to conduct aerial and long distance surveillance without the need to carry out a rolling tail, their agency, though small, had a great reputation within the industry. The insurance company jobs were the best. They paid well and on-time, the client was detached and provided factual information, and the targets were typically low risk.

  Raven returned Dad’s smile. “Perfect. What’s the job?”

  “Teacher off on a workplace injury.”

  “They suspect a fraudulent claim?”

  “Claims, as in plural.” Dad paused. “Your friend also called.”

  “Megan?” Why the hell would she call here? Was she okay? What did she need?

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Raven frowned. She didn’t have many friends outside her family. “Marcus?”

  Dad grunted. “No. Some woman named Sarah.”

  The memory of Robert’s fiancée with her big chestnut hair and flashing eyes popped into her head. “She’s not a friend.”

  “Said so on the phone. Wanted the friends and family discount.”

  “We don’t offer one of those.” Not wholly true. If Megan or Marcus came to her seeking help, she’d do the job pro bono.

  “That’s what I told her. She’s still coming in for a new client interview.”

  “Did you explain our rates?”

  “I did. Who is she?”

  “Robert’s fiancée.”

  Dad picked up the office phone in one hand and flipped open a new folder resting on the desk’s surface. He scanned the single sheet inside and punched in numbers.

  “What are you doing?” Raven took a sip of her coffee. Mmm. The creamy goodness coated her tongue and warmed her belly.

  “Cancelling.”

  Raven put her coffee down on the desk and grabbed the phone from her father.

  Dad’s eyes widened.

  She hung up the phone. “She thinks he’s cheating.”

  “I don’t care.” Dad clenched his hands. “He probably is. Not our circus, not your problem.”

  Raven nodded. “I know. But I want to nail his ass.”

  Dad opened his mouth and then shut it. He reached over, grabbed his coffee from the holder, and took a long sip.

  Raven waited for him to collect his thoughts.

  “Are you sure this is healthy?” he finally asked.

  “Probably not, but it will feel good.” She ran her fingers along the smooth surface of the desk and avoided eye contact.

  Dad sighed.

  “He deserves it.”

  “I’m not arguing that.”

  “Let’s see what information she has and go from there.”

  Dad closed the file and laced his hands together on top of it. His mouth flattened and a war of emotions battled across his face. Both he and Mom struggled to take a step back from their parenting role, but at the end of the day, though Raven lived at home again, she was an adult. Technically. As Mom put it once, if Raven was old enough to make her own decisions, she was old enough to deal with the consequences, and clean up the mess.

  That didn’t stop Raven from seeking their advice, though, and they still tried to “help” and guide. But they identified more with free-range parenting than any helicopter parent.

  Dad took another long sip of coffee. “Okay then, but promise me one thing?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If this goes sideways…if the interview brings up too many red flags, you’ll let it go?”

  “Deal.”

  The door buzzer clicked, and Sarah sauntered in as if on cue. Wearing three-inch heels and a micro-mini too short for the occasion and the weather, and a tight revealing top, Sarah resembled a walking kid’s doll. She looked good, but geez, wasn’t she cold? How did she bend?

  Dad stood—yup, dark gray pants. His gaze narrowed as he assessed Robert’s fiancée. His nose twitched.

  Yeah, she caught it, too. Sarah was some kind of shifter. Not possessing the same canny sense of smell as Dad, though, she didn’t have a hint of what type.

  “Hey, Sarah.” Raven leaned against Dad’s desk. “Any word from Robert?”

  “Oh.” She flipped her hair. “He’s back.”

  Raven resisted the urge to straighten her plain T-shirt and pull up her jeans.

  Dad pulled his shoulders back. “You could’ve called to cancel, there was no need to come all the way in.”

  Sarah turned to Dad and pinned him with a stern gaze. “I want to nail this fucker.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shot up. He glanced at Raven.

  She shrugged. Who was she to deny the woman vengeance? Sa
rah’s fiancé was back from an unknown excursion, and she wanted to hire his ex to catch him, when any PI business would do. And made sure she looked hot as hell doing it, too.

  Raven smiled. If it wasn’t for Sarah’s earlier treatment, she’d actually like this woman.

  “Okay, Miss Edwards.” Dad stepped forward and held out his hand. “My name is Terry Crawford. Why don’t we go into the conference room and you can explain how you would like us to help you?”

  The door shut, cutting off the stream of Sarah’s perfume and trapping what lingered in her trail. The fuzzy, non-descript shifter scent clung to the air.

  Dad turned to Raven. “That was interesting.”

  Her shoulders sagged. Sarah didn’t provide a lot of information, but they didn’t need much.

  “I’ll run the regular background checks,” Dad said. “We’ll see how much has changed since you dated him.”

  Raven snorted. She knew Dad investigated her friends and past boyfriends, but this was the closest he’d ever come to admitting it.

  “Let me summarize what we know,” Dad said. “On July tenth, Robert didn’t return home at the expected time. When he finally came home, days later, he claimed he worked a triple and slept at the hospital because he was too tired to drive. Sarah was suspicious but didn’t question him further. Last Wednesday night, Robert didn’t return home again. This time, Sarah went to the hospital and discovered he wasn’t on shift. When he finally graced Sarah with his appearance, he gave her the same excuse.” Dad flipped through his notes. “He appeared tired, had on the same clothes, wasn’t clean shaven, and although he smelled of a lot of different people, that’s not unusual given the nature of his job. He didn’t smell like sex.”

  “Which is the part I find odd.”

  “It’s all odd.”

  Raven drummed her fingers on her coffee cup’s lid. “He’s a neat freak. He presumably spent four days or so having an illicit affair. Surely, he would’ve showered.”

  Dad nodded.

  “And if he didn’t shower, he would’ve smelled like the other woman and their…activities.”

  Dad put his pen down. “She’s a shifter, though I’m not sure which kind. Her heightened senses should’ve picked up sexual activity. When I asked her about his appearance, behaviour and smell she was very specific in the details.”

  “She wants to nail his ass. If he smelled like another woman or sex, she would’ve mentioned it,” Raven said. Sometimes clients withheld information or lied out of embarrassment or pride, but that didn’t fit Sarah. At all. That woman was out for blood and the idea of Robert getting his come-uppance made Raven practically giddy.

  “So, if he’s not with another woman…” Dad tapped the notepad with the butt end of the pen. “What’s he doing?”

  “That’s what Sarah hired us to find out.” Raven peered over his shoulder. “Both meetings happened in the middle of the month.”

  Dad handed her a calendar.

  Raven set her coffee down and flipped through the pages to find the dates. “Both disappearances started on the second Wednesday of the month. This is the longest he’s disappeared, though.”

  “What about August and September?” Dad named the two months in between the dates.

  “Maybe those days fell in the middle of his shifts and he took them off to go wherever he goes without Sarah noticing. Or maybe she was out of town?”

  “We’ll need to confirm their schedules.” Dad flipped his notepad closed. “Ask her.”

  Raven nodded and grabbed her coffee. “I’ll arrange to go through their apartment, too.”

  “I could do it.”

  “I know, but I think I should. I know how his brain works. If I come up empty, you can do a second pass. Besides, we have a second case.”

  “We do. Okay, I’ll do the background checks and you confirm schedules and search their apartment. Don’t wait too long.”

  Raven sat back in the plastic chair and cradled her near-empty coffee cup. “I’m not an amateur. He’s on shift tomorrow and I’m off work. I’ll go then.”

  “What do you think he’s doing?”

  Raven shrugged. “I’d say attending intensive douchebag therapy, but we both know that requires more self-awareness than Robert possesses.”

  “So, you have no idea what he’s up to?”

  “None.”

  “Then why are you smiling?”

  “You met Sarah. We’re going to find out what he’s up to and she’s going to take him down. This will be awesome.” Maybe cosmic karma was finally kicking in.

  Dad shook his head.

  Uh-oh. He normally got that look when preparing to launch into a lecture about that stupid high road.

  “So, what’s the worker’s comp case?” she asked.

  Dad smirked. “WCBC believes Kelly Clementine, a grade four teacher at Capital Hill Elementary submitted a fraudulent claim.”

  Raven downed the rest of her coffee and set the cup down. WCBC stood for Worker’s Compensation of British Columbia, a regulatory branch of the provincial government responsible for managing compensation to any employee suffering a work-related injury. A teacher submitting a fraudulent claim to the WCBC? Raven would express surprise, but this wasn’t their first teacher case. They’d investigated teachers, nurses, nuns…Delinquents came in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, orientations, identities and occupations as Raven quickly discovered when she started working for her dad. “Kelly Clementine? Is she an online adult-content vlogger in her spare time?”

  Dad looked up from the closed file in front of him. “That’s a little judgmental.”

  She shrugged.

  “Considering you go by the name Raven,” Dad said.

  Raven shut her mouth and glared.

  Dad shrugged, imitating her to perfection. Grrr.

  “What’s her claim?” she asked.

  “This time?” Dad flipped open the second folder and read the printout. “Back injury from taking down a display board.”

  “Why do they think it’s fraudulent?”

  “The employer lodged a complaint along with the required forms. This is Kelly’s fourth claim during the same school year, and she was only back at work for a week before she mysteriously hurt herself again.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “None.”

  “Camera footage?”

  “In an elementary school?”

  “Post collapse,” she explained. After the collapse of the barrier between the Mortal Realm and the Other Realms, the world had changed.

  “Good point.” Dad smirked. “But no camera footage. No one saw any of the injuries occur.”

  “Doctor?” Raven asked.

  “She went to different walk-in clinics for each injury and saw different doctors each time.”

  “Loans? Debt?”

  “Mike’s already fishing through her finances and doing a background check. We’ll know more soon.”

  Raven drummed her hands on the outside of her paper cup. “Paid leave?”

  “She used up her paid sick leave, so now she’s off on disability.”

  “Full pay?”

  “Almost. Ninety-five percent. WCBC is compensating the employer for lost wages.”

  “And they’re not investigating because…?” Raven asked, though she suspected the answer. It was generally the same each time.

  “Backlog.”

  Yup, point for Raven.

  “As always,” Dad said.

  Raven set her empty coffee cup down on the desk. “Well, we should clear this case for them pretty quickly. Seems straight forward.”

  “You know what they say about assuming?”

  She knew what response he wanted: Assume and you make an ass out of you and me. Instead, she said, “They’re premeditated disappointments?”

  Dad chuckled. “I’m putting Mike on surveillance. He’s setting up a cam, so we’ll know when she’s on the move. If you’re not working at the diner, we’ll need you.”

  Raven nodded
. With her ability to shift into a conspiracy of ravens, she could follow anyone from a safe distance, undetected. Mentally making a list of all the things she needed to do for both jobs, an uncomfortable sense of unease clawed at her gut. Between these two PI jobs, and her shifts at the diner, how in Odin’s wrinkled pecker would she find time to learn the fine art of badassery needed to assume the mantle of the Corvid Queen?

  Chapter Nine

  “Sanity is a cozy lie.”

  ~ Susan Sontag

  A hand reached out from an open bedroom door and wrapped around her wrist. Raven stopped and looked down at Mom’s pink stiletto nails reflecting under the hallway light. The tips pressed into her skin.

  “Come with me.” Mom’s no nonsense tone curled around her with more impact than her wrist grabbing. “Now.”

  “Okay…” She followed Mom into her parents’ bedroom. She had to leave soon to sit on Kelly Clementine’s place, so hopefully Mom’s pep talk wouldn’t last too long.

  Oh no. Please, don’t show me the closet. She had no desire to see Dad’s sociopathic wardrobe of polo shirts and identical pants.

  Mom stopped by the king-sized bed covered with a gray duvet. Under the soft bedroom lighting, metal gleamed in the middle of cushioned softness.

  Oooo. Shiny. Her birds perked up. At least Raven could count on one consistent thing in her life.

  “What’s that?” She padded closer, her feet sinking into the plush carpet.

  Mom turned to her. An eyebrow arched and her lips curled. “A gun.”