by Lynn Red
“Yeah, brother?” Ash said, with surprising warmth. “Whatever you need. I’m sorry to put you through this anyway.”
“My little girl—”
“I can look in on her, if that’s what you want,” Ash said.
Rex smiled, grimacing a little, and shook his head. “She’s with her grandpa. But, when I left the house, I promised... I’d bring her back an orange soda. If you don’t mind...?”
“Not at all,” Ash said, pulling out without turning on the lights or the sirens. “I’m a hell of a sucker for a cute smile.”
-3-
Lilah Jorgenson, Misfit Raccoon
Looking in the rearview, I pushed my glasses up against the top of my nose so that they almost hit my eyebrows, and then I puckered up and pretended to kiss the air. Smudged, I thought, and thought about reapplying my lipstick for a second before I just wiped it all off.
Who cares anyway? Can’t wear makeup in a jail, can’t do your hair in a jail, can’t do much of anything in a jail except show up, make sure the prisoners aren’t murdering each other and call the guards if they try.
Like that’s ever happened in the history of Jamesburg.
I adjusted my ever-present bandana, and made sure the white shock of hair that I’d had as long as she could remember was tucked underneath. Not because it made me uncomfortable or because it was something I didn’t like about myself... Okay, fine, who am I kidding? Of course it makes me uncomfortable. I’ve tried to dye it a few times, but it just kept sticking right out.
Always a shade lighter or darker than the rest of my tan-streaked-with-brown hair, it took me twenty-five years of life to stop trying so hard to make it look like the rest.
I laughed a little, thinking about that lock of white hair being a metaphor about me – always trying to fit in, but always just a shade too dark, a shade too light.
Just in time to save me from yet another mid-twenties existential crisis that I really didn’t need on the way to work, some incredibly loud power ballad thumped in the speakers of my ancient-but-still-working Hyundai. A guitar solo started up that made little goosebumps prickle up on the back of my neck.
I sang along with the sounds the guitar made, even though I didn’t know the words. It didn’t matter, not right then, not at that stop light with no one else in the car or even on the same street. The sounds coming out of me felt like they were coming straight from my heart. For a few moments, I felt free. Nothing was holding me down or holding me back. It felt exactly like I do when I paint – when my soul seems to just fly free of my body.
Then the light changed, I put my foot gently on the gas, and reality seeped back in, bit by bit. It was Friday and I was going to jail.
Not like that.
I work there.
I was doing it because I got paid, yeah, but also because it’s the only way I can help my dad. Normally, he won’t take help for anything at all, but when faced with being at the short-staffed county jail on his two nights a week off, he was happy to defer.
And it wasn’t a bad gig, either. Usually the only person in jail was Leon, the town salamander. Salamander, of course, was another way of saying drunk... even though he actually was a salamander on top of cheerfully indulging far too much most nights of the week.
I like being up at night anyway. It makes me feel closer to who I actually am. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve always been grateful that the Jorgenson family took me in, but being a raccoon in a family of hyenas can be a little... weird, sometimes.
I looked out the window at what was probably the last operating Blockbuster Video on the planet, and caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection. My black horn-rimmed glasses had slipped down a little bit. The shock of white hung over the side of my bandana, defiantly, almost daring me to put it back.
I took a deep breath, letting it out in a soft, trailing sigh.
“Nope!” I announced, out loud. “Not going down that rabbit hole. Not gonna get all mopey and self-defeating. Not gonna do it. I’m who I am and at some point, I’m going to realize that’s good enough. At some point, it’s all gonna make sense.”
The words were good to hear, even if they were coming out of my own mouth.
“Talking to myself in the car. That’s good,” I said, and then laughed, shaking my head. The phone in my purse started jingling like a sign that it was time to stop being quite so crazy-pants.
“Hey Dezzy,” I said. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” her sister Desdemona’s voice was tight and, well, very hyena-like. “You’re asking me what’s up?”
“Well... yeah?”
“Wait, you mean you really don’t know?” Desdemona asked. “Like, really?”
Seven years younger than me, Dezzy was a freshman at the local college. Oh God was she ever a freshman. Lilah smiled as her sister’s voice jittered. “What is it? Date? Hot guy in your class?”
“Oh my God,” Dezzy said in one syllable. “You’re so ridiculous! What use would I have for a hot guy? No, I got it! I got on the team!”
“Er... okay?” I was trying really hard to remember what team it was she tried out for this time. She was on most of them already – basketball, softball, whatever that thing with the net-sticks is. At least, I think she’s on all of them.
“Lacrosse,” she said.
“Huh.” I steered around a big branch in the road. “Is that the net stick thing?”
I could hear her rolling her eyes. “Yes? It’s spring, what else could it be?”
Bless her heart. I love my sister, I love her dearly, but... yeah, bless her heart.
“Soccer?” I asked, just trying to keep her talking so she’d keep me company and keep me out of my own head.
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I guess it could have been soccer. But no, it’s lacrosse, but that’s not the biggest thing.”
“There’s something bigger than sports?”
“No, not really,” she said. “But there are things almost as cool.”
“Such as?”
“Such as this new art history prof. You should audit the class or something.”
Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. I work at the county jail to pay the bills, but I quit school to paint about a year ago. I took a leisurely path to a degree I didn’t really even want, and then I figured out that the only way I was going to be happy was if I somehow made a living as a painter.
In a very uncharacteristic move, I just went for it and never looked back.
“I don’t think my old-woman constitution can handle being in a class with all you young’uns,” I said, laughing a little. “That’s actually in the student handbook. Old people have to take night classes so they don’t get migraines.”
“Yeah whatever, but listen – if you don’t come at least once, you don’t get to see Langston Graves. I don’t give the first shit about Mesopotamian architecture, but somehow he makes learning about it seem... fun?”
I turned off the road and into courthouse employee parking lot. I fished the mirror hanging card that told everyone I was supposed to be here and settled back. I had about ten minutes before I was supposed to go in, and usually sitting out front at seven in the evening let me catch a glimpse of our mayor.
Right on cue, Erik Danniken pushed open the door and held it for Isabel, his mate that I was just about jealous enough of to cry. Of course, it wasn’t jealousy because I wanted a mate. Not at all, it was just...
Okay, maybe if I’m being totally honest, that’s exactly what it is.
Erik threw his hair back and swept his hand through it, smiling back at Isabel and then nodding at me when he saw me. I nodded back, not wanting to look like a creeper.
“Lyle? You listening?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I was staring at the town alpha. Goddamn what a—”
“How do you do that? How can you change your mind four hundred times in a second? Here I thought hyenas were supposed to be distraction prone.”
“I was just thinking,” I said, not actua
lly thinking anything. I stayed quiet for a few long seconds before Dezzy cleared her throat. “Oh, sorry, I was just thinking about something. Anyway, that’s cool, glad you made the team.”
My voice was exactly one point seven million light years away. Don’t ask how I know – me being a space case is down to a science.
“You weren’t listening at all! I was telling you about this new professor, he’s really, really creepy.”
“A creepy professor? I mean, that kind of goes with the territory,” I said.
“No, no,” she protested. “Not creepy like a lecherous college professor. I mean creepy like a... uh, like a Dracula or something.”
“Dracula is a book, there’s only one Dracula.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Vampire, Dracula, same thing. Anyway, the point is, he’s really kinda... weird. He comes in and everyone gets quiet.”
That piqued my interest. “A professor walks into a classroom full of Art History 101 students, and they get... quiet? I’m not even being sarcastic anymore, that is a little strange. Did he yell at you or something? Maybe he’s just really good?”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t that. His lectures hardly make any sense. But when he comes in the room it’s like impossible to think about anything else. And also, he and Winter were in his office for a really long time the other day. She got a paper back that he’d marked up all over, and she was a little worried, so she went to talk to him. But then, they were in there for like an hour.”
“That’s... not weird at all, I mean that’s kind of what office hours are for,” I said.
“I’ve never known a professor who actually showed up during office hours,” she shot back.
“Touché,” I said, with a little laugh.
Suddenly, from behind the building, there was a burst of activity. Two men – one of them I recognized as Davis Edgewood, a huge, pale, bald-headed and honestly fairly horrific specimen. The other I didn’t, but I was immediately struck with his huge form, his tanned skin, and the huge mop of shaggy brown hair that was whipping around.
That’s when I realized that Davis Edgewood had his handcuffs wrapped around the muscle-guy’s throat, and muscle-guy was slamming his elbow into Davis’s stomach with what looked like enough force to break bricks.
“Shit, Dezzy,” I said, “I gotta go. Something’s going down at the jail.”
“A fight or something? What are you gonna do? Help?”
“No,” I said. “Just watch. But I gotta go. Bye. Tell me about Dracula later.”
With that, I just dropped my phone on the passenger seat not even bothering to end the call. Luckily, Dezzy did it for me.
My eyes were peeled so wide it sorta hurt. But still, watching this giant bash his elbow into Davis Edgewood’s midsection was absolutely enthralling.
“You fucker!” Davis screamed and his voice cracked. Even though the two of them were a couple hundred feet from me, and my windows were all closed, I heard him perfectly.
The guy I didn’t know didn’t reply, except to slam another elbow into Davis’s soft midsection.
Two hyena police ran out of the jail, two of them climbed out of their patrol cars, and then the one bear on the police force ran toward the clash. Strangely, all of the men went after the Edgewood boy. Ash – the bear officer – slammed him up against the wall. Davis Edgewood tried to thrash, but he wasn’t doing much of anything except grinding his face against the brick.
The other guy, the one I didn’t recognize, stood up and I thought I saw him smile through a busted lip. Blood ran down his face, but he never made a move, never tried to get another shot off at Davis, although he easily could have. He just stood there, absolutely still, blood trickling down the side of his mouth, and out of a wound on the side of his face covered by his mop of hair.
As for me? I just stared like a fascinated toddler.
It was all I could do, all I could manage. His t-shirt was torn to shreds, probably from the fight he’d just had. The old cowboy-style jeans he was wearing were shredded all the way up to his thighs, the tatters hanging loosely around his muscled calves.
Somehow, Davis Edgewood managed to thrash hard enough to get away from the police holding him. He lunged, wildly, at the un-cuffed man, who remained absolutely still until the last second.
Just as Davis’s head was about to collide with the stranger’s chin, the muscled-up man turned almost imperceptibly, but it was just enough to throw Davis off balance. The big, pasty bear fell in a heap, squalling and yelling and just generally carrying on.
All the while, the giant stranger just watched him. There was a look of amusement on his face, and something that I think was approaching pity. Pity, I thought. After what that nasty Edgewood bear did to him? You’d have to have a spine made out of fiberglass to pity someone like that.
And through it all, I couldn’t take my eyes off that huge chest that flexed every time its owner took a breath. I couldn’t pull my gaze off his dark, amber colored eyes that I could only see because of my overly-intense focus. I rolled the window down slightly and inhaled.
A lot of the time, I get pretty irritated at being able to smell every damn thing in the world, but for once, I was really glad to be downwind of someone. His scent was hard and spicy, like a mixture of work, sweat, asphalt, leather, and cologne that had slowly worn off over the course of a day.
Look over here! I wanted to cry out. I wanted to see him full on in the face, hell, I wanted to see him full on in my face. But, bears being bears – and at his size, there’s no way he was anything else – he just stared straight ahead, fixated on whatever he was fixated on.
I imagined those ruby red lips locked on mine, I imagined his hands painting hot tracks up my back. I started shivering thinking about the way it’d feel to wrap my arms around his huge neck and let him carry me away, let him...
Breaking my increasingly intense and comically inappropriate fantasy, he took a step away from Davis Edgewood when the hyenas and Ash stepped over to the heaped-up body but then, made absolutely no other move until they’d collected Davis, and carried him inside.
Why isn’t he doing anything? Why isn’t he, like, trying to get away?
I mean, I guess it would be sort of pointless, since there probably aren’t a lot of hideouts in Jamesburg, but jail isn’t usually the sort of thing you just wait around for someone to drag of into.
Unless, of course, this guy wasn’t exactly normal.
Just looking at him told me that. He wasn’t some average, run of the mill, Jamesburg shifter. There was something different about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, exactly.
From the doorway, someone beckoned him and he walked out of sight. But, I swear in the last split-second before he disappeared around the corner, he turned to me and melted me with those eyes.
Just the thought of him staring back at me was enough to put butterflies in my stomach.
And then, he was gone. Off to jail, presumably.
“Ugh,” I grunted. “Good god, Lilah, you have got it bad.”
-4-
Rex
Rex turned the picture around in his hand, studying the image in the dingy, fading light of his cell. His little girl’s dark blue eyes stared up at him, her ears stuck out from the side of her head. They were almost buried in her shaggy, wavy, brown hair. The hair was straight from him, but those eyes? The eyes belonged to his lost mate.
He grunted a laugh and smiled. Even sitting on an old, wooden, jailhouse bench, looking at her grin made him feel warm from head to toe.
In the back of his mind, the vague thought that one of the guards would be coming for him any second flashed. Not for any important reason – Jamesburg’s only court was held at night, owing to the judge’s... aversion to the sun.
Rex’s life had been a whirlwind. Army service, falling in love, moving away, it all happened so fast. And then it was all punctuated by losing his mate when their cub was only two.
In a way, he thought as he looked
at the picture, his dad getting older and needing the help was a good thing. Leena would be happier here anyway. Without her mother to watch her, she needed something. Needed someone. Especially when Rex was away.
The last time he’d gone was on a year-long deployment, and when he came back, the fact that he and his daughter were alone in the world hit him square in the chest. He decided right then and there that he wasn’t going to wallow. He wasn’t going to let his anger at the world ruin him.
If nothing else, he was going to stay strong for his little girl, even if that meant spending the rest of his life without a mate; without someone to hold his hand or to curl up with at night. He hated thinking that way, but there it was. If his loneliness meant that his cub’s heart was never broken again? He’d shoulder the burden without a second thought.
He looked out of his cell, down the hallway where he could barely make out the clock in the main office of the Jamesburg county lockup. Half-past eight.
Down the hall, three cells removed, Davis Edgewood was still roaring and banging around and screeching every so often. How long can he manage that until he knocks himself out?
Rex turned Leena’s picture over again. “Love You Daddy,” was written on the back in her sloppily earnest six-year-old handwriting. Between this picture and the dog tags he kept meaning to take off but just couldn’t bring himself to remove, he felt strangely secure, oddly at peace.
The door creaked down the way from his cell.
I really should’ve listened. Shouldn’t have gone out after those Edgewoods. He rubbed his temples, running the tip of a finger around the tattoos circling his eyes. No, he thought, no I did exactly what I had to do. Either he or his brother would have done something really stupid.
The Edgewoods were the cause of all the problems at home. If they weren’t turning over Papa Lee’s stills, they were sugaring truck gas tanks, or dumping concrete all over corn mash. And then, when Davis Edgewood said something about his little girl... well, Rex was normally calm, cool, almost hauntingly so. But, thinly veiled threats about his cub? That was a sore spot you really didn’t want to stick your finger in. Davis Edgewood learned that the hard way.
