Zoe crouched, her knees going wide, her hands dropping in front of her lady parts, tilting her head to the left just a little as she smiled softly at the camera.
“Vulnerable, I love it,” the photographer said, which made Zoe laugh. “Yes, laugh more, you look like you’re having fun!”
Zoe stood again, placing her hands under her breasts and lifting them as she bent over, a tried and true cleavage shot.
She had lost track of time. And she didn’t care about this fact, so happy just to be in her own skin for once, not a half breed, just Zoe Goa Ramone.
And inevitably, as happens to all who forget that time exists, Zoe’s transformation took place as soon as she turned her back to the photographer, just about to bend over and give him a shot with her looking between her legs.
Zoe felt the change in her face, her teeth morphing, her ears moving from the side of her head to the top as they turned into legitimate tiger ears, the fur sprouting from her skin, her tights shifting downward as her tail began to grow.
“Is everything okay?” the photographer asked.
Zoe burst out of the room before he could figure out what the hell was going on, the tiger girl heading straight to the dressing room, covering her face as she walked past assistants, other models who were showing up for their individual shoots, more photographers and shoot coordinators.
It was torture.
Zoe was just about to push into the dressing room when the door opened on its own, a tall, blonde model stepping out, a rival of sorts. The tall blonde took one look at Zoe, made a disgusted face and then yelped as Zoe bolted past her, shouldering through the doorway and knocking the model to the side.
“You bitch!” the blond model shouted.
“Fuck off!” Zoe cried as she went for her hooded sweater and slipped it on, still in her boy shorts and high heels as she arranged for a teleporter. She kept her back to the other models in the room, all of whom were whispering to each other now, talking about her.
A teleporter appeared, her form lifting up from the ground in a way that reminded Zoe of how Dinah operated in her ghost form. The teleporter smiled at Zoe, not at all concerned with her half-transformed face.
A few seconds later and they were standing outside a fancy diner on the outskirts of Helena’s neighborhood, the diner where Sam and Ozella had said they’d be.
“Thank you,” Zoe told the teleporter before the woman slipped away, melting into the ground again.
Rather than go inside, Zoe mental messaged Sam, letting him know she was outside, ignoring his messages asking her to come in.
Zoe paced back and forth, her fists in the pockets of her hooded sweater. A few unscrupulous fellows stopped to watch the woman in a hooded sweater, tiger boy shorts and high heels pacing back and forth.
Zoe knew they were watching, at least a few of them, but she didn’t say anything.
She was relieved as shit to see Sam and Ozella come out, her ex looking over to her with a smile on his face. He is such an idiot, Zoe thought, butterflies in her stomach as she saw the hazel eyed, dark-haired man come down the steps of the diner and immediately make his way over to her.
“What happened?” Sam asked.
“Hi, Zoe,” said Ozella, her blonde hair framing her face. “We’re going to solve a murder. Want to come?”
“You’re going to do what?” Zoe asked.
“We’ll get to that. But first, what happened to you?” asked Sam, concern still on his face.
“Nothing, I…” Zoe swallowed hard. “I lost track of time. That’s all. And I transformed back during a photo shoot.” She tried to laugh at herself. “I mean, how embarrassing is that? I got the hell out of there as quickly as I could; hopefully not too many people saw me.”
“I am so sorry.” Ozella came forward and hugged Zoe, catching the tiger girl off guard. She was stiff for a moment, not expecting a hug from Ozella, but eventually she loosened up, and part of her wished that Sam would come over and hug both of them, even if that would have been hella awkward.
“I’m sorry to hear that happened,” Sam said, his hand behind his head as he scratched his fingers at the back of his crown.
“I just have to be more careful next time. But damn,” Zoe said, once Ozella had let go. “Everyone saw me. Well, not everyone, and most didn’t see my face, but some definitely saw my tail. Great. It’s my own fault, should have been wearing a watch.”
“Well, we can’t change the past, but we can do something about the future,” Ozella said. “Which is why we’re going to solve this murder.”
“You’ve now mentioned a murder twice without any details. Please explain.”
“So it’s like this,” Sam started to say, instantly catching Zoe up on what Ozella and Sam had discussed during brunch.
He told her about the waiter, how his wife was murdered by an exemplar named Jimmy Vela, and how they had used Ozella’s notebook to figure this out. He also explained that they didn’t know his exact location, but they’d been told to go to a place called the Blue Lagoon, which was where they were heading now.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something else?” Zoe asked. “I don’t know, like training?”
“This is kind of part of our training,” Sam assured her. “Besides, if this works, there may be some other things we can do.”
“Oh, and I figured out a way that Sam can eat,” Ozella chimed in. Realizing her voice was a little loud, Ozella glanced down at her feet, her cheeks turning red as she continued her explanation. “Tonight, we are going to make Sam an amazing dinner.”
“We?” Zoe asked. “And why would we do that when Helena can just order the best chef in Centralia to come to her home to cook something?”
“She does have a point…” Sam said, instantly capitulating when Ozella gave him a sad look. “But I’d rather have your food instead. Yeah, I stand by that.”
Ozella nodded. “We will have Sam use his power-up on his vision, and then we will blindfold him. So he can eat in peace.”
“Have you ever tried eating blindfolded?” Zoe asked.
“Crap,” Sam said. “She’s right. It might be a little hard. Unless…”
“Unless?” Zoe asked.
“Unless one of us feeds him.”
Zoe laughed at Ozella’s suggestion. “No, no, that’s not how this is going to play out.”
“I can feed him, or we could have Dinah feed him. Well, she may be a bit too wild to do something like that.”
“I could just enhance my sense of touch,” Sam suggested. “That could work.”
“But it might make eating really strange when you’re holding the fork and the knife,” Ozella said, in a tone that sounded like they had already had this conversation.
“I know, but it’s worth a shot, right?”
“What if we just got some earplugs and blocked your sense of hearing?” Zoe asked.
“I thought about that too,” said Sam, “but I’ve used earplugs before, and I know that they make a little bit of noise when your jaw moves. And that noise will be amplified. We also talked about enhancing my sense of taste, but that may be too much too.”
“Too much?” Zoe asked. “It could be orgasmic.”
“Yes, maybe…” Sam said with some hesitation in his voice. “Then again, it could be like my sense of smell, meaning I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it because I would just know everything about the food I was eating. Where the beef came from, what the cow’s life was like before it was slaughtered, that sort of thing.”
“That does sound a little bad,” Zoe said. “Worth a shot though, right?”
“We’ll test all the options,” Ozella assured them. “But I’m pretty sure it’ll be sight that we go with, because we can just block that off with a blindfold. Although, thinking about it now, touch may work too. Either way, we are getting some food in you,” she told Sam, beaming at him.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Zoe added. “You definitely are starting to lose some weight, and you weren’t exactly a big g
uy to begin with.”
“Thanks?” Sam asked.
“You’re welcome,” Zoe said, giving him a playful look, one of her tiger ears bending ever so slightly. “Anyway, let’s go solve this stupid murder. And then we will see what Helena has figured out from her board meeting. Who’s calling the teleporter?”
“I’ll call one,” Ozella said, “or we could use Lance…”
“Let’s not use Lance for now,” Zoe said. “I saw enough of that weird fuck yesterday.”
***
“We probably should get some masks,” Zoe said as they appeared in front of the restaurant known as Blue Lagoon. “I’m not going to say that wearing boy shorts and high heels will draw attention, but yeah, I’m standing out more than even I would like at the moment.”
From the looks of the place, Blue Lagoon was a restaurant dedicated to Eastern Province food, which from what Sam had experienced consisted mostly of potatoes and carrots.
Meat too, lots of hearty dishes.
“Not a bad idea,” Sam said, looking around. Once he didn’t see a clothing store within the immediate vicinity, he fired off a mental message to a telepathic service which instantly let him know that there was a store two blocks west.
“Found one?” Zoe asked as Sam turned to the west.
“Yeah, but you know what? Let’s just take our chances. We go in there, and see if we can sniff up some info, and then we go wherever it takes us next,” Sam told her. “Who knows if we’ll actually need masks or not.”
“We have to make sure it actually works, even if Sam and I are quite certain that our information is legit,” Ozella told Zoe.
“Got it.” Zoe looked up at the restaurant's sign. “Is it too early to start drinking? Because I could use a drink.”
“We should not be drinking on the job,” Ozella reminded her.
“It’s just a little wine,” said Zoe. “Okay, okay, don’t look at me like that. I know you two already ate, but I’m a little hungry. So how about I order a…” Zoe bit her lip for a minute. “What do they have in the Eastern Province? Meat pies? Something like that. I will order a meat pie, and you two can poke around, or whatever it is you plan to do. Let’s hope this isn’t a waste of time. But if it is, at least I’ll be well-fed.”
“Good idea,” Sam said as he entered the restaurant. The place was empty aside from a single couple in the corner, an older man with a younger woman.
The three took a seat and a waitress came over, a thin lady with bad skin. She had unique eyes though, a turquoise color Sam had never seen before. Without looking at a menu, Zoe ordered a meat pie, and the woman nodded, asking what they would like to drink. Zoe and Ozella both ordered tea, Sam water.
“See anything?” Zoe asked.
“I kind of don’t know what we’re supposed to be looking for,” Sam said. He sat across from the two, Ozella already digging in her backpack for her book, Zoe adjusting her weight to make room for her tail.
“Having a tail is such a pain in the ass,” she said.
Sam snorted.
“That wasn’t supposed to be funny,” Zoe told him.
“Well you have to admit…” Ozella opened her Book of Known Variables and turned again to a blank page. “Should I ask it something?”
“I still don’t understand how this works,” Zoe said.
“Ozella writes a question, and the answer appears before her,” Sam said, pointing at his eyes. “But we can’t see the answer.”
“But the answers can be vague, right?”
“That’s exactly why we are here,” Sam said, looking around the dusty restaurant. Maybe ‘dusty’ wasn’t the right word for it, but it did look like it could use a good scrubbing, some varnish on the wood floors, possibly remodeling unless they were going for the old pub look.
“Then that’s simple,” said Zoe. “Ask, ‘why Blue Lagoon?’ See what it says.”
“Already did. How about I ask if this guy, Jimmy Vela, works here or something,” Ozella said as she scribbled down the question. She looked up at Sam for a moment, past him.
“Yes?” Sam asked. He was growing tired of having to ask Ozella for whatever it was she was seeing. He figured by now she would just tell him, but no, she always waited to be asked.
“It says he used to work here.”
“Okay,” said Sam. “That’s a great start.”
His nostrils flared as he took a deep breath in, a crapload of images coming to him all at once. He saw the history of the restaurant, the family that had originally started it, how they had fallen on hard times, how the restaurant was now a front for…
“I don’t like the look you’re giving us,” Zoe said.
“This place is a front for Eastern Province spies,” Sam said under his breath.
“Yes, pies, and I ordered one,” Zoe said.
“Not pies, spies.”
“A front?”
“It serves as a meeting place, and there are also safehouses and other equipment stored in the basement.”
“Amazing,” Ozella said, her eyes going wide. “I always found the spying networks in Centralia to be interesting. They’re all over the place, all the other countries are spying here, and they have all sorts of foreign agents doing various jobs. But it’s happening right under our noses, and we don’t know anything about it.”
“Your teas, and water,” the waitress said as she approached the table and set them down.
As soon as she left, Ozella nodded over at her. “Also, I probably should tell you, the waitress is dating this guy.”
“The guy we’re looking for?” Zoe asked, lowering her tea from her lips.
“That’s right, I see it on her stat sheet.”
“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” Sam asked.
“I’m presented with a lot of information, it takes a moment to look through all of it and if I don’t focus on it, it goes away. But now that we’ve connected this Jimmy Vela guy to this restaurant, and now that we know she’s dating him, it should make finding him a lot easier.”
“Do you think she’ll tell us where he is?” Sam asked.
“Maybe,” said Zoe. “Then again, when you were my boyfriend, had some weirdos come into a restaurant I was working at and asked where you were, I would have told them to fuck off.”
“Do we really look like weirdos?”
Zoe looked from Sam to Ozella. “Do you want me to be honest? And that’s without mentioning myself. You saw I was wearing booty shorts and heels, right?”
“I think they’re kind of cute,” Ozella told her. “But I prefer skirts. Booty shorts under skirts, but you have to leave something for the imagination.”
“All you seem to have are schoolgirl uniforms,” Zoe said flatly. “And there is plenty left for the imagination, including my cooch. Sorry. Too vulgar.”
Sam snorted and shook his head at his ex. She sure had a way with words.
“Maybe I should get some new clothing,” Ozella said. “But the tops are comfortable, and the skirts allow my legs to move more.”
“I think you both look fine,” Sam said. “Damn, I guess that came out wrong, didn’t it?” he asked, after they both gave him a funny look.
“Anyway,” said Zoe, “we’re here, so we might as well let me finish my lunch, and then get to sleuthing. Did you guys hear that first part?”
“About finishing your lunch?” Ozella asked.
“Listening skills plus one,” Zoe said, cocking her head at Ozella. “Sorry, I’m starving, and I get bitchy when I’m hungry. Before we get ourselves banned from a restaurant for threatening a waitress, I would like to eat.”
“Is that what we’re planning to do?” Sam asked.
“What’s wrong with an innocent threat?”
“No, let’s not go about it that way, Zoe,” Sam said. “Damn, I wish Helena were here. She could just hypnotize the waitress into giving us the information that we need.”
“I can probably get it out of her, or at least some of it.”
�
�Again,” Sam told Zoe, who was showing him one of her claws. “We don’t need the Eastern Province spies, or whoever else is using this place, to be coming after us once we’ve infiltrated one of their secret locations. You know what I’m trying to say here, right?”
“Fine…” she moaned.
“We could just lie to her,” Ozella said. “Just tell her that you’re an old friend or something, and you’re looking for him.”
“Not a bad idea,” Sam said. “Who’s the best liar?”
“I am,” Zoe said with finality. “When you lie, I’m guessing your cheeks turn red,” she told Ozella.
“Guilty as charged.”
“And when you lie, you can’t make eye contact,” Zoe told Sam.
“Yes I can,” he said, looking away.
“Such amateurs,” Zoe said taking a sip of her tea. “I’ll handle everything, eat, and then we will go find this guy and get him to the nearest police station. How’s that? They can use the telepath to figure out whatever crime he committed.”
“What if he doesn’t consent?”
“Good point,” Zoe said. “We will probably have to find some evidence as well, or at least a confession. Damn, maybe we do need Helena for that part. Well, we can always call her once we find him.”
“Yeah,” said Sam, “I’m sure she would come for something like this.”
“Maybe,” Zoe said, trying not to sound sarcastic but failing miserably, “she is a pretty important woman.”
Eventually, Zoe’s meat pie came, and she smiled up at the waitress, telling her she looked familiar.
“I don’t believe I’ve seen you before,” the waitress said coldly.
“Oh yeah, my face?” Zoe asked. “I try to cover it up when I go out. Hard, I know, right? Anyway… Hey, wait a minute, you’re Jimmy’s girl, aren’t you?”
“You know Jimmy?” the waitress asked, her turquoise eyes softening.
“I definitely know Jimmy. And I have something for him, or better, he has something for me, long story.”
“Jimmy’s not doing that anymore,” the waitress started to say, backing away.
One sniff and Sam could tell that her boyfriend used to be a drug dealer. Sam didn’t know how this was connected to killing the wife of their waiter at the previous diner, but he had a feeling it was somehow related. “No, nothing like that,” Sam interrupted. “She owes him some money. Well, it is from that time, but yeah.”
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