by Amie Gibbons
Why had I even bothered showing my badge and asking?
Because that’s how I’d been trained. That’s what you did when you were an agent. When you were working for the government. You followed procedure, because if you didn’t, you became a jackbooted thug straight outta communist Russia.
But as a simple citizen just poking my nose into things?
I didn’t have to follow a damn rule, and the only consequence would be to me if I got caught.
And oh well if I did.
I liked this whole free-range thing.
The elevator door pinged open, and I rode up to the next floor, mind churning.
He was in room two thirty-two, way down the hall from the nurses’ desk luckily.
If I hadn’t had the badge, it wouldn’t make a difference. I could do the same things without it. And a few more, probably.
I paused at the door.
Wait, was I seriously considering leaving the FBI?
The thought smacked me like a bat to the brain, and I grabbed the door jamb for support.
Yeah.
I really was.
I didn’t realize it till now, but this entire past week had been me working as lead on a case, then me working on my powers to build them up and get myself to the place where I could do this stuff on my own.
When Daddy said there was a dead body, I hadn’t hesitated to volunteer my services.
When Karma put this at my feet, saying the psychic could do it, I’d been in shock cuz of her saying Daddy was gonna die, but I was still like, okay, let’s do this.
I was doing things on my own. Figuring them out without my team.
And yeah, I was considering leaving the FBI.
I could be a consultant. I could work cases for them on a case by case basis. I could do the same for the nest in Nashville. Hell, for other nests if I wanted to, and if the guys said those vamps were safe to be around.
It’d leave me more time to work with Carvi and learn from him.
It’d leave me time where I wasn’t filing a bunch of useless paperwork that made me curse the bureaucracy that paid me.
“Holy crap on a cracker,” I said out loud.
I really was thinking about it.
I shook my head.
Giant revelations would have to wait until after we fixed this whole spiral of unnatural balance thing or whatever.
I shook my head again.
I wasn’t thinking too clearly right now.
I walked in, and the poor man’s body was covered with a sheet. I’d seen dead bodies at crime scenes before. All the time. It was my job after all.
But somehow seeing him here like this in a hospital.
It broke my heart.
Because dying in a hospital suggested somebody could’ve saved you, and wasn’t able to. You made it to the hospital, and that was supposed to be that. You made it there alive, and they were supposed to save you.
He’d made it alive, and they’d worked on him or whatever, and he’d still died.
He was only twenty-two.
I sighed.
He was only a year younger than me, but I suddenly felt very old.
I pulled the sheet back, exposing his face.
He looked so young.
And grey.
I sniffed and grabbed his arm.
I got a flash of him losing his virginity at like thirteen.
And I thought I’d started young. Geez.
I shook my hand and said, “Okay, that was your biggest moment. Got it. Bigger than dying though?”
He didn’t answer and I grabbed his arm again, focusing on the heart attack.
I saw the same scene I had at Daddy’s headquarters. Same exact thing, only this time there were no lights or grid. Just what’d happened.
More what I’d consider a normal vision, than the ones I could control.
I needed to go deeper to do that.
I pulled out and took a deep breath, grabbing his arm again.
Nothing.
“Crap!” I hissed.
I’d done this earlier, so what was the problem?
Well, Mama always talked about writer’s block, saying it was all in the writer’s head and bullshit. There was a quote she loved by Terry Pratchett that there was no such thing as writer’s block and that was made up by people in California who couldn’t write.
Maybe the same thing applied here?
That’s what Carvi had been telling me at least. That I could do whatever I believed I could. Sometimes I’d be tired and need more juice before I could, or I’d knock myself out trying to push it, but I really could do anything.
So maybe I just needed to get some food and booze in me and try again once I’d recharged?
I wasn’t really hungry. We’d eaten pretty recently. So maybe just dessert and some alcohol?
I pulled out my phone and looked up restaurants nearby.
There was a mini-mall only a mile away with a few different chain places.
I got in my car and called Quil, told him where to meet me, and headed there.
###
“Okay,” I said as we walked outta the Thai place, Quil full of Tom Kha Gai and Pad Thai, and me of mango sake. “I…”
I stumbled into Quil and he caught my arm, pulling me against his side and holding me up.
“I am literally tipsy,” I giggled. “And ready to party in vision land. Let’s do this!”
Quil grinned down at me and opened the passenger side door for me.
I handed over the keys as he got into the driver’s seat.
Pyro inched over the top of the seat, sliding over my face and making me giggle with the softness and the tickle on my nose.
He settled in my lap and half over Quil’s in a clear demand for pets.
“Okay, baby,” I said, stroking him and scratching off spare threads. “Oh no! I forgot your box.”
Pyro pulled his phone up and started typing and handed the phone to Quil.
“Hey!” I said. “Shouldn’t that go to me?”
Quil snorted.
“He’s asking if I have anything to contain magic,” Quil said. “Do you have something special at home for these?”
I nodded.
“I forgot it,” I said. “I can’t believe I forgot it. He needs to be scratched about once a week and we keep them in the box.”
“I can spell something to use to contain them,” Quil said, “but I think we could use them. If that’s okay with you, Pyro?”
Pyro nodded his top half and his tassels flew as he typed.
He handed me the phone after a moment and I paused in the scratches to make my eyes focus enough to read it.
How much had I had to drink?
“He says if you know how to work it,” I said. “We haven’t done anything with them since neither of us knows how to work magic like that. You do, soooo. It’s really too bad I forgot the box now.”
I scratched Pyro as Quil drove us back to the hospital, taking the loose threads off him.
“How do you do this, baby?” I asked. “Seems to me you just make magic.”
He wrote out a text and showed me again. “I do,” I read out loud. “I take stuff out of this world and it gets converted into magic. I literally poop magic. Why do you think my last owner kept me?”
My stomach curled and I sniffed and pulled my carpet into a hug, sending the threads all over me and the car.
Pyro wrapped his top around me, hugging me back like a magic snuggie.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I said. “I don’t want to use you like that.”
He pulled back, shaking his top third like a head and bopped me with a tassel on mine.
“Hey!” I said.
He pulled up his phone, tassels flying with the dexterity of fingers.
No really, he could type as fast as me after he’d taken online typing lessons.
He handed it over and it said in all caps that I wasn’t using him. He was giving me parts he pooped out that could be useful to me.
“And you made a mess,” he typed back.
I sighed. “Yeah. I’ll gather those up. Quil, you know what to do with these?”
“I think we need to figure out the exact… I guess you’d call it composition, of the magic, before we try to make a spell with it, but… I’m not sure how to do that.”
“Is it hard?”
He shook his head. “Just nothing I ever studied, since I can’t see magic down to the chemical level like that. Someone who could, like a psychic, could see what it was, and we could go from there.”
“Magic on the chemical level?” I asked. “You make it sound so scientific.”
“It is,” he said, shrugging. “Magic follows rules, has a structure, different types do different things and have different properties, just like elements in the natural world.”
“And who do we know who does this science stuff all the time and just happened to come with us?”
I grinned.
Maybe AB could come with me when I started my own agency.
Whoa!
Where did that come from?
For one, I hadn’t decided to actually leave the FBI. I was just considering it. And for two, AB had a job. She was a doctor in cancer research.
Then again, she probably wouldn’t mind doing a little extra on the side since magical studies were her hobby anyway.
Was I really planning this?
“What are you thinking about so hard, sweets?” Quil asked.
“Leaving the FBI and starting my own detective agency,” I said.
“What!”
His big expressive face stayed facing forward, but I could see the shock in the side part of the eye I could see widening and his mouth falling open.
I grinned. “Kinda hit me earlier when I was finding the guy in the hospital. He wasn’t hard to find, cuz I just thought about it and got a vision, and the woman I asked wouldn’t help after I showed her my badge, and it just occurred to me that I don’t need them, and I can still be a consultant, and do good, without having to follow their rules, do their paperwork, or be in the same building as Grant.”
The time my mouth dropped.
“I actually didn’t realize that was part of my reasoning until I just said it,” I said, staring down at Pyro as he helped me gather the threads off the bottom of the car and piled them up on my skirt.
Quil didn’t say anything and I finally looked at him.
“Don’t do anything rash,” he said. “I would love it if you went off on your own. And I think if you’re not quite ready, you are with help from me and Carvi. But, if you’re just doing this because of Grant, don’t. You joined the FBI for more than just investigating. You wanted to work your way up, make a difference on a greater level. Think about it, that’s all I’m saying.”
I nodded.
He had a point.
And I’d forgotten that was one of the reasons I’d joined.
But… but could I really expect to work my way up and do anything to change anything?
It was no secret that big government moved with the speed of a narcoleptic turtle, and no matter what happened in any given election, that wasn’t changing. The bureaucracy ruled, regardless of what happened in politics.
And I hated that.
It wasn’t right that people who weren’t elected could affect peoples’ lives like that.
But, would I be in some position to make a difference if I stayed there? Could I expect to change even one agency? If so, what would I do different?
I sighed.
This was too much thinking after a bottle of sake.
Or maybe I was thinking because of the sake.
It cleared out the BS, that was for sure.
Or maybe it just took out a few factors and left the ones the lesser brain cared about.
The hind brain, I think it’s called.
And my hind brain wanted to stay the hell away from Grant and not have to deal with him, unless I could have him.
Because I really, really wanted to have him.
To be under him. To bite him. To make him mine.
I flushed with sudden arousal and looked over at Quil.
What about Quil? Did this mean I wanted to leave him?
He parked the car in a far corner of the hospital’s dark parking lot and turned to look at me.
More blood flushed to my groin and I grinned.
Nope. Definitely didn’t want to get rid of him.
I just wanted both of them.
Was there any reason I couldn’t have that?
Yeah, my front brain said. Because Grant doesn’t want you. He made that real fucking clear.
Wow, my front brain had a potty mouth.
“Sweets?” Quil asked.
I shook my head. “Just thinking.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I can smell what you’re thinking.”
I blushed and licked my lips. “Alcohol. Just so much alcohol.”
“In vino veritas,” he said.
I giggled. “I think that’s true. I think I’ve hit on one truth tonight at least. I want to leave the FBI because of Grant, but I have other reasons to go, and stay, and I don’t think he should play a role in that decision.”
“Then don’t decide,” Quil said. “You can always leave later. Don’t decide anything until you’ve processed this whole thing with Grant.”
I nodded. “You are so smart.”
“Well, I have had a few hundred years to figure things out. And I know you.”
Pyro dropped the last of the escaped threads on my skirt and grabbed his phone, typing something as I put the pile of threads in the center console so we wouldn’t lose them.
Wonder if they’ll do anything to the car?
Pyro held up his phone and I read out loud, “Don’t even think about it, you two. We’ve got to save Bill, and I’m in the car, so that’s just icky.”
“Oh, we’d never do anything in front of you, baby,” I said, slapping him lightly. “Are you all scratched?”
He wiggled and nodded after a moment, putting up a tassel and wiggling it back and forth like he was saying mostly.
I grabbed him and kissed his soft cloth. “I love you, baby.”
He hugged me, the I love you too obvious.
“You okay hanging in the car?” I asked.
He stared at me in the eyeless way he had down pat and shook his top very slowly.
“What are we supposed to do with you?” I asked.
He typed and held up his phone, “Roll me up and take me in a bag. I’m not leaving you unless we’re sure nothing can get to you, or I have to, to make sure nothing’s going to get you, like when I went flying with Quil.”
“You babble like me, baby,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Okay. But won’t you be uncomfortable all rolled or folded up?”
He shrugged again.
That was a yes.
I sighed. “Silly baby. Okay, you can go, but I don’t think my bag is big enough.”
Pyro slid into the back seat and held up a giant tote as I turned.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
Pyro typed, “I brought it so you wouldn’t have an excuse to leave me behind.”
I made a face.
My baby was too smart for his own good sometimes.
Quil chuckled and it made me flush again.
I wanted to make good use of the alcohol high I had going on right now.
But we had more pressing issues.
Like really big ones.
No time for play. Right.
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, Pyro, get in, and we’ll go back in there.”
Pyro rolled himself up and tucked himself into the bag, having to curve his roll into a circle to fit in the bag.
“That can’t be comfortable,” I said. “Baby, are you sure?”
He held up a tassel and pulled some threads down in what was either a thumbs-up or a bird.
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I honestly couldn’t tell which.
“That better be a thumbs-up, baby,” I said.
He switched some tassels down in a very obvious thumbs up and I growled. “That was rude then.”
He dropped the tassel and wiggled a bit, probably trying to get settled.
I shook my head. “I’d never talk to my mama that way.”
He didn’t move.
I put his cell phone in, laying it on top but next to his showing tassel just in case he needed to say something and wanted to be discrete.
“Maybe I should get one of those dog-carrying purses so people would just think he was a little dog when he moved,” I said. “But then they’d want to see the little dog, right?”
Quil chuckled again and got out, running around the car to open my door.
I got out as he grabbed the bag full of Pyro and we shut the doors, locking them.
Another reason to bring Pyro was to make sure he wasn’t going to get kidnapped from the car. It wasn’t like I brought him out often and just left him lying around. And he did look like an expensive object that could be stolen and sold for a pretty penny.
Not that a thief would get anything but a nasty surprise when Pyro lifted him up ten or twenty feet and dropped him.
A broken leg usually teaches petty thieves not to do that again.
At least, I’d hope so.
My brain really did bounce all over the place when I’d been drinking, didn’t it?
We walked into the hospital, going straight to the elevator and the boy’s room.
He was still there, and Quil closed the door, ready on watch just in case anyone tried to come in while I was doing my thing.
I set up my incense, though I hadn’t needed its help for normal visions for a while now, and focused on the boy. On his heart attack. On seeing what’d caused it.
My phone rang.
“Oh, come on!” I said, pulling it outta my jacket pocket.
It was Carvi.
“Hello?” I said, keeping my opinions on his little intermission to myself.
Though I really wanted to give him what for for leaving me when we had work to do.
“Oh, somebody feeling testy, lea?” Carvi asked.
“Again, there’s that mind reading thing,” I said. “We’ve got a serious case, and you ran off to play.”
“I needed the boost,” he said. “I’m still feeling pretty weak, and you need to learn how to do things on your own. And since you’re not here, I’m guessing the lesson took.”
