by Diana Graves
“Yeah?” I said around a mouth full of food.
“I took the last test today. Once I get the scores and the paperwork goes through, I’ll be graduated. I’ll have my high school diploma.”
“Congratulations!” roared Damon.
“That’s fantastic,” I said a little wearily. It was great news, but the look on Katie’s face made me think twice about being all jubilant about it. School was a touchy subject for her, because after her mother’s boyfriend raped her and killed her mother, she moved in with me, a locally famous living vampire. Katie was one-hundred percent human and she came from a culture that hated non-humans like me. For living with me they saw her as a monster lover, a whore, a blasphemer, a traitor. She was bullied and ridiculed to her breaking point. And one day I smelled blood while walking down the hall. I knocked on her bedroom door. She didn’t answer. The door was locked. I broke it down and found her bleeding out on her bed. She’d cut her wrists…I almost lost her that day. Afterward, she attended school online under a fake name for her protection. School was a very touchy subject indeed.
“So, college then,” said Damon with a wide smile.
Her eyes went wide and she shook her head vigorously. “No.”
“You’d be welcomed at Mythos University,” I said. “That’s the school I went to and my mother as well. It’s a school for non-humans but I’m still friends with some of my old professors. I’m sure we can pull some strings and get you in.”
“No, Raina, Damon. I’m done with school,” Katie said.
“You need an education, Katie. You can’t expect to get a good job with just a high school education,” Damon said.
“Oh, and a degree did Raina so much good,” she said sarcastically. I scuffed in weak protest but I agreed. I had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and it was doing me no good at all. I stumbled into monster hunting, but that wasn’t something you majored in at a university.
“My degree might mean nothing to employers but I use the information I learned in college every time I find myself hunting a dangerous paranormal. All those classes on alternative history, biology, anthropology, zoology…so many ologies…” I laughed at myself. “Sometimes it’s not the goal that counts, but the knowledge you get alone the way.”
“I know you guys care about me, but I don’t want to go to school anymore. That’s my choice, isn’t it? You guys aren’t my parents.”
“Mom is like your mom,” chimed in Thomas.
“No,” Katie said with soft eyes. “She’s like my sister, but sometimes I wish…” She shook her head. “I want to do what you do, Raina.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but Damon did. “You want to be a bounty hunter?” he yelled. He dropped his fork and wiped his already clean mouth with a napkin.
“Why are you angry at me? Raina is your girlfriend and mother to your child, and she’s a bounty hunter.”
Damon stood and walked away a few paces. “It’s different,” he said with his back to us.
“How is it different?” she asked.
I stood with my plate in my hand and ushered Thomas into the living room with his food.
“Why are we leaving?” he protested.
“Because they’re fighting,” I said quietly. “And, they need space to work it out.”
“You don’t think this concerns you?” Damon asked me.
I looked at him as though he was being dense. “Of course I’m concerned. I know better than both of you the dangers of my job, but I’m not going to have this argument in front of Thomas. Our problems are not his baggage.” And with that Thomas and I left them to their squabbling.
I sat Thomas down at the coffee table and we finished our food while watching cartoons. Katie and Damon’s raised voices were faint in the background. During a commercial Thomas looked up at me with a question on his mind, but he seemed to be having trouble articulating it, so I took a jab at it.
“Are you wondering why they’re fighting?”
“No,” he said smartly. He was quite clever for an eight year old and I think I told him that far too often because he was getting cocky about it. “I know why Damon was mad. He’s scared for her. He thinks she isn’t as tough as you.”
“I want to be,” Katie said from the arched entrance to the living room. The sound of Damon slamming the front door behind him as he left for work four hours early made us all jump. Katie walked to the couch and plopped down. “Raina, I want to be like you. I want the confidence you have. I want people to respect me, to see me as an authority. I can be your apprentice. Please.”
“Katie,” I began to say softly.
“No!” she interrupted me. “I’ve been a prisoner in my own weak body for all my life. I was too weak to fight Jed as he beat and raped me for years, too weak to take the bullies at school. I need this; I want this more than anything. I want to fight with you. For two years I’ve been watching you grow stronger, and it’s not just what’s in your blood. You’re brave. I want that.”
I closed my eyes for a long moment and licked my dry lips. “Why don’t you get up stairs and brush your teeth?” I told Thomas. He slowly stood and made his way out of the room with exaggerated poor posture. He was sulking. Obviously he didn’t want to go, but he knew better than to fuss with me.
I got off the floor and sat beside Katie on the couch. “There are very few things in life that we get to choose for ourselves. We don’t get to pick our parents or who they bring into our lives. We don’t get to pick what we are, but we can pick who we love and who we are. If you want to be a bounty hunter, I’d rather you learn it from me than anyone else.”
Katie smiled up at me with red rimmed eyes. She’d thought I’d fight her, and for her safety I truly wanted to. But I knew unwavering determination when I saw it. If I refused her she’d find someone else to teach her, and most hunters didn’t have the principles I had. Most monster hunters took any mark that came their way. Mark stands for Mandated Right to Kill. More specifically it means that any paranormal creature can be sentenced to death without a trial or notification. And it is unbelievably easy for a paranormal to become marked. Any human can go to any court and request any non-human be marked for any reason. Piss off the wrong human, and you could wake up to a gun in your face. It’s easy cash for a low life bounty hunter. But, I didn’t play by their rules. I only took marks that were legitimate; big bad monsters hurting innocent people.
“I will take you on as my apprentice, but here are my terms. You have to go to school at Mythos University. You have to take at least two classes a quarter. And, until you’ve taken some combat training you can only accompany me on research and appraisals. Most of what I do is investigation and I don’t take any case on face value.”
She was still smiling when she said, “Agreed!”
A BAD CALL
IT WAS ONLY seven at night when my cell phone rang. Thomas, Katie and I were cuddled on the couch watching a funny television show. Thomas was closest to my phone (on the table beside the couch) so he handed it to me. The name on the screen usually preceded bad news. I reluctantly took it out of his small hands. I stood as I pressed the screen to accept the call, and left the room.
“Hey,” I said.
“Raina, its Fillips,” came a resonate voice from a small woman…small but tough as nails.
“I know Detective. Is this a business call?” I asked and then I bit the sides of my cheeks and took a deep breath. My vampire fangs sank into the meat of my cheek with ease, and I cursed myself as blood filled my mouth. Old habits die hard. I swallowed the blood and the flesh of my inner cheek healed well and fast, thanks to the vampirism.
“I’m sorry, I know you just worked a case in Bellingham, but something’s come up. We’re in a pretty bad situation up here. You’re not the only bounty hunter I’ve called in on this.”
“How bad is it that you need all your men and multiple hired guns?”
There was silence for a time and then she finally said, “People are dying, Raina. I
t’s not the way people are dying; it’s the numbers and the frequency, and the fact that we can’t keep this under wraps any longer. We’ve tried every damn trick in the book to keep what’s happening out of the evening news, but too many have died, far too many.”
“Wait. What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want to tell you, Raina. I need to show you and the other hunters. You need to see it to understand the gravity of our situation. Can you meet me at the office in two hours?” And then it was my turn to be silent for a moment. “Raina?”
“Yeah, I can meet you at the Justice Center at nine.” I took a deep breath and then I asked, “Will Ruy be there?”
“He’s retired, but I did call him in. He wouldn’t give me a definite answer as to if he was going to show up or not. What happened between the two of you anyway? One day he’s your mentor and the next he won’t have anything to do with you.”
“My brother killed some people he cared about and I refused to hunt and kill him.” It wasn’t exactly true. That’s just what I could tell her without risking myself being marked. What I couldn’t tell her was that Nick killed those people to protect me, and then Alistair and I helped Nick escape to the Canadian wilderness, killing several bounty hunters in the process.
“That must make the upcoming wedding very awkward. Though, what’s a wedding without a little drama?”
“Wedding?”
“Yeah, your mom and Ruy. —You didn’t know? They didn’t tell you? Shit.”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t. Ruy and I weren’t on speaking terms, but Mom and I were slowly rebuilding our relationship. I thought she wanted me to be a part of her life again, but I guess I was mistaken. “I’ll be there at nine.”
“Okay, see you then.”
“We’re going to the Justice Center at nine?” I heard Katie ask.
I turned to find her in the doorway. She looked eager. I took a deep breath and slid my phone into the tiny pocket of my black yoga pants. “I am.”
“You have to take me with you.”
“No, I need someone to stay home with Thomas.”
“No, you need to keep your word. This is an appraisal and I get to come. We can drop Thomas off at Aunt Fauna’s or your mom’s house on our way.”
I looked to the floor because I was beaten and I knew it. I looked back up at her and I could tell she knew it, too. Damn it.
“Okay, but you have to make the calls to see who can watch Thomas for the night, because we aren’t going to get home until the early morning hours.” Calls to the Justice Center were never over with quickly…
Katie almost jumped with joy and dashed off to presumably call Fauna and my mother. I shook my head and climbed the stairs to my bedroom. It was just a meeting about a case and there was no real danger, but I still wasn’t going completely unarmed. I trusted Detective Fillips and many of her people. Under her command, working with the Ethereal Investigation Department or EI was mostly pleasant. They were in charge of policing all crimes committed by and against non-humans. Originally EI was a scapegoat, a way for state leaders to appear as if they had a handle on the recent rise of nonhumans in the Pacific Northwest. Thankfully though, the department evolved into something almost legitimate. I say almost because it was still a place bad little police officers are sent to as a final reprimand before termination, which meant there was always police officers that didn’t want to be there, that had a beef with their assignment and took it out on the rest of us. But, all in all, it wasn’t a bad department, and if it were just stupid cops giving us a hard time, I’d say we could go without any major precautions taken, but there would be other bounty hunters there. I didn’t trust other hunters, not in the least. They tended to be racist chauvinistic assholes. Arriving on my own was going to be fun enough, but with barely legal Katie by my side…well, let’s just say a barrel of monkeys got nothing on my night.
The Justice Center in Seattle had metal detectors, so guns and knives were out of the question. Not that I could shoot worth a damn. But I had other means of protection, undetectable means. Magic. I couldn’t do much as a witch myself, but I belonged to an extremely talented family. In fact my aunt and mother owned a magical shop together called, The Natural Kitchen. Mom had a terrific talent for creating wonderful culinary magical master pieces, and Fauna made the most effective potions, spells and charms I’d ever experienced. I kept plenty of her works in stock.
I made my way across the spacious dark room to my closet and pulled a large plastic safe out and set it on the bed ever so gingerly. The safe held almost every magical item I owned. It was my aunt’s idea. She said that it wasn’t smart to keep magical items just lying about with young ones in the house. I agreed. The lock on the safe was enchanted so that only my kiss would open it. As my lips touched cold metal I heard the lock unlatch.
I kept many things in the safe, including my book of shadows written in my made-up language. I couldn’t perform magic very well, but what little I knew was there. A locket my brother gave me sat snugly in a black velvet jewelry case. He’d stolen it from my mother, who was given it by the Goddess that brought me back to life when I was a baby. It was because of her that I was a demigoddess and the locket was meant to be mine, so Nick’s thievery was easily forgiven, but I didn’t wear it. When I did, my ability to control the living minds around me was amplified to an overwhelming extent. No, it was best kept safe for now. I pushed aside my wand, curvy cherry wood with amethyst attached to its tip. It had been a gift from my uncle Robert many years ago, but it was useless to me. I didn’t have enough magic in me to make it work.
The wand had been resting on a tin full of tissue paper and many different sorts of potions in crystal vials. I delicately lifted a crystal vial from the tin and gazed through it. The pink fluid had a sparkle to it, tiny snake scales. It was a potion Fauna had designed to enhance a person’s confidence while also sending out the pheromone for dominance. It made dealing with macho-nacho bigots a whole lot easier. I kept it on hand for times like these; times when lives were on the line, but people with ego and ignorance issues might slow things down for my sake. To them my presence was a bigger problem than the monster. This potion helped keep priorities straight. But there was just enough for one person and it had to be Katie who drank it. Thomas was right. Katie was weak. I was tormented throughout my life, surrounded by people who hated me because of what I was. It made me stronger, but hate for hate’s sake was new to her. There was no way she could handle the kind of anger that would come from the other hunters. She was young, a woman and she was with me. Those were three strikes against her right off the bat. No, she needed them to respect her and she needed to have confidence in herself. There was just one problem. How was I to get Katie to drink it? She wasn’t hostile toward magic any longer; she accepted it as another beautiful part of her god’s world, another facet of His magnificence. No, the problem laid in how I would explain to her that she needed this because she was too fragile to deal with the brute arrogance of our fellow bounty hunters.
“Raina!” I heard Katie call out from the hallway. She was standing in the doorway moments later. “Fauna’s on a date with some guy she met online,” she said with a grim face.
“Yikes,” I said, closing my safe. I bent down and kissed the lock again to lock it back up.
“Is that where you keep all your witch stuff?” she asked with her eyes locked on the safe. “Will I learn magic?”
“I guess I could teach you what I know. I probably have just as much magic as you.” I set the vial down on the bed and set the safe back in my closet. “So, did you get a hold of my mom?” I asked her as I closed the closet door.
Katie walked farther into my room, her eyes on the vial on the bed. She sat on the bed and looked up at me. “What’s this?”
I looked down, grabbing up seconds like dying little treasures as I raced for better words. I couldn’t find any. I picked up the tiny vial. “It’s just a potion. It helps with concentration and memory. I thought yo
u should, uh, use it during training to help you retain what you learn.” Lies, lies, all lies!
Katie looked skeptic, but she put her hand out after a moment’s thought. “Sure, that sounds practical.” She carefully took the cork out and sniffed it. “Wow,” she exclaimed. “What’s in it?”
“It’s kind of rude to ask a witch what’s in her potion—for future reference. But, anyway, I don’t know. That’s Fauna’s design. All I can tell by the look and taste are snake scales, vinegar, cinnamon, wolfs bane and a few drops of blueberry juice, but there’s more than that. I just can’t put my finger on it.” Her lip was curled in disgust. “Oh, just drink it. It’s not going to kill you.”
Her eye brows went up, eyes wide, but she shrugged her shoulders, pinched her nose and down the hatch the potion went. She dropped the empty vial on the bed and put her head in her hands, trying not to gag. “Oh, God!”
“My mom makes magic tasty, Fauna just makes it effective.”
“Shit,” she retched.
I snapped my fingers when I remembered why else I came upstairs. I was wearing light house clothes, while the October wind and rain beat against the windows. I turned to my closet again and pulled out a thick sweater and jeans, and I undressed and redressed while Katie gagged and went on and on about the taste of Fauna’s potion; so bitter, so rancid, so god awful!
“So, you got a hold of my mom, right?” I asked again while I brushed my hair. I saw less and less of the sun these days, thanks to my job, and my once deep auburn hair was now looking more brown than red. I’d also learned to keep it shorter. Long hair was a work hazard waiting to happen when one wrestles with ogres or trolls or fairies for that matter. FYI, fairies are the worst! Before, I kept my hair short in the back and almost to my knees in the front, with short neat bangs. My hair hadn’t changed so much. I just cut the front bit. What used to reach past my thighs now only fell just past my shoulders.
“Yes,” Katie said firmly. I turned around and found her standing very straight, and I shook my head with a small smile. The spell was doing its magic. I could feel myself relaxing, giving into her leadership. I had to remind myself that that was just the pheromones talking. “She said that she would watch Thomas tonight.”
