Despite the fact that Mandrake lives in a tiny hipster apartment above his tiny hipster coffee shop, his shower is the stuff of home design magazines. It's all pretty gray tiles in varying shades and the water comes in a gentle spray from three walls and the ceiling. There's a wide bench that looks and feels like stone but is probably something much more ecologically kind. At the moment, we were testing the sturdiness of said bench. It was more than adequate.
I heard my phone ringing, but I wasn't about to answer it. Frankly, if I'd smelled smoke or seen the shadow of a guy with an axe, my priority still would have been to finish what we'd started. It had been a while for me, and we were fast approaching the pivotal moment, if you know what I mean.
Since Drake is descended from the literal god of sex, it stands to reason that he's... like... the prince of sex. Or something like that.
The point is, once he starts, no one in their right mind would stop until everyone involved had crossed the finish line.
And then, after crossing the finish line, it was all I could do to wrap his ratty old terrycloth robe around my quivering body and stagger over to the bed. I flopped down onto the mattress. Drake curled his large, powerful body around my back, and I fell into the deep, restful sleep of the sated.
Needless to say, when my phone's ringtone woke me up, I was confused and groggy. When the caller immediately called again, I was just annoyed. I rolled off the lumpy old mattress and followed the sound. My jeans had ended up on the kitchen floor. I didn't remember ever even being in the kitchen, but there they were. My phone was miraculously still in the back pocket. By the time I fished it out, the caller was ringing through for the third time.
Scowling, I glared down at the screen.
Mx. Landry.
My heart dropped.
Six months had passed since I'd taken the job at The Recovery Agency. In that time, I'd received a gazillion texts from the office manager/general agent wrangler. Texts were routine business. Calls only came when the proverbial shit had really and truly hit the fan. I pictured them on the other end of the line, beehive hairdo sprayed into immobility, on-point eye shadow gleaming over their dark eyes, beard neat and trimmed, sucking on a cigarette in annoyance as they waited for me to answer.
I swiped the green button to answer. "What's up?"
"Nick's been arrested," they croaked in their droning bullfrog voice.
"Arrested?"
"For murder."
"Murder?"
"His mother somehow found out and stepped in, and now we're involved." They drew on their cigarette and exhaled noisily. "You need to come in right away. Everyone else is already on the way."
"Everyone else?"
Instead of acknowledging my stunned parroting, they said, "Be here in fifteen minutes," and hung up.
For thirty seconds or so, I continued kneeling on the kitchen floor, staring at the black screen of my phone.
I thought of Nick's mother—the tiny woman with the enormous personality I'd once met on the other side of the world. She was obsessed with pomegranates. It was weird. In fact, I still had a couple she'd given me mixed in with some apples and oranges in a glass bowl on my kitchen counter. In six months, they'd shown no outward sign of decay and, quite honestly, I'd never given that much thought until now. I didn't know how long pomegranates normally lasted, but surely half a year was well beyond the normal expiration date. Maybe it was rotten on the inside. I should probably toss it when I got back to my place. It would be super gross to find out it was full of bugs or something.
"Livvie?" Mandrake padded into the room wearing nothing but his birthday suit. It was a lovely sight to behold. His broad shoulders tapered down to narrow hips in a glorious ripple of rock-solid muscle. He was taller than average, larger in average in every way—a fact that was hard to miss at that moment.
All at once, my thoughts snapped into sharp focus, and I realized that I needed to move it. Whatever was happening, my boss—my friend—was in big trouble, and I wasn't going to get answers by hanging out in Drake's kitchen, thinking about fruit. I jumped up and jabbed my legs into my jeans. "I've got to go. Work."
Drake pushed his long, wavy brown hair back from his face. His full bottom lip poked out like a child's. "Can't you catch the boogeyman tomorrow? It's late."
"It's literally the middle of the day. You just keep weird hours. Also, the boogeyman was caught some time ago. I think he's in a holding facility near Hoboken."
He squinted at me, not sure whether I was teasing.
"It's kind of an emergency. Nick's in trouble. Do you know where my bra is?"
He crossed to the living area, pulled my bra out from under the sofa, and tossed it to me.
"Besides," I continued as I slipped my arms through the straps. "It's almost time for you to go back down to the shop and open up again, anyway."
"I've been thinking I should hire someone. Maybe a couple of people. If I had employees, I could actually take a day off. Maybe more than one. I could have a real vacation, just like a grownup."
This was big news from Mr. I-Want-To-Do-It-All-Myself, but I didn't have time to think about it. "That's probably a good idea. Even God took a day off at the end of the week."
"You could come with me, you know. We could declare our love on white sand beaches."
"We've been declaring our love for twenty years," I reminded him. It had all started on the playground in fifth grade.
He leaned a naked hip against edge of the counter. "I know the commitment thing didn't work for us before, but we could try again. Plus, you've always wanted to travel. Tell me you don't want to lie on a white sand beach."
"Of course I do, but this isn't the white sand beach kind of love and you know it." I hopped on one foot, trying to get my sneaker on.
"What is white sand beach love?"
I evaded the question by questioning him. "Do you really want me and just me? The two of us growing old together and forsaking all others? Weren't you at some kind of sorority party last week?" I found the torn remains of my Grateful Dead tee-shirt and held them up for Drake's inspection.
He grinned. "Yes, but I didn't rip a single sorority girl's shirt. There was flimsy pair of shorts, that might have been torn though."
Hoping for exactly what I'd gotten from Mandrake-the-serial-shirt-ripper, I'd come prepared with a fresh shirt in my bag. I dug it out and pulled it over my damp, shaggy, black and pink hair. "I really gotta run." With a kiss and a promise to call him later, I was out the door and down the steps to the street.
Since I'd been earning a higher income over the past several months, I'd made significant headway on my student debt. I'd upgraded my furniture and bought myself a few much longed-for clothing pieces. But dropping thousands of dollars on a new vehicle still felt excessive. Having a stash in the bank gave me such a delicious new sense of security I didn't want to let it go. Luckily, my 2006 Chevy Aveo coughed to life the third time I turned the key. I patted the dashboard. "Good job, Maybell. I never doubted you for a second."
***
Fourteen minutes after hanging up with Mx. Landry, I turned into the Walmart parking lot. I pulled around behind the building and the shiny silver garage door rolled up to admit me into The Recovery Agency's underground parking garage.
I parked my blue rattletrap among the sea of sleek black company vehicles, rode the elevator down several levels, passed through security, and followed Mx. Landry to the conference room. Every recovery agent I knew was seated at the table along with the meanest looking dude I'd ever laid eyes on. He had close-cropped salt and pepper hair—heavy on the salt—and a neanderthal brow ridge. He wore a black suit and a blacker scowl, and by way of greeting asked, "You're human?"
I sat in the only chair left—the one that shrieked every time its occupant shifted. "Yes, sir."
Benji sat to my left with her long dark braid and her tight black clothes and her boobs as big as my head. She gave me a hint of a smile. Scoob sat to my right. She looked more like Shaggy to me with her floppy auburn hair and baggy, shapeless clothes. Her long knobbly knuckled fingers tapped a rapid cadence on the arm of her chair. She smelled slightly like fried chicken and she was not human, though I wasn't entirely sure what she was. Stud was a werewolf who looked like a vampire, all pale skin and dark circles beneath his eyes. Rider was a vampire who looked like a werewolf. He had an abundance of hair everywhere and beady black eyes that darted about in constant fear and suspicion. Directly across the table, Moose glowered. Moose was human, but on the cave dweller end of the spectrum. His bald head gleamed under the fluorescent lights like a well-polished bowling ball.
"Is that everyone?" Big Scary Guy asked.
"Yes," Mx. Landry said. They tapped a pencil against a yellow legal pad.
"Fine. I'm Officer Price from The Organization, Special Taskforce. I know this agency has a reputation for getting up to funny business."
I smothered a smirk.
Big Scary Guy glared at me.
I bit my lip.
"At The Organization, we do things by the book. All the time. Period. No exceptions. The rules we follow keep a delicate balance on this planet and we will not break any of them for anyone, ever. No matter who their adoptive mother is. Is that clear?"
Mx. Landry's pencil snapped in half. The rest of us gazed up at him like obedient school children, but no one answered.
"Is that clear?" he bellowed.
I jumped. My chair squeaked.
Murmurs of, "Yes, sir," rippled through the room.
"Fine. Here's what we know. Your employer, Nicolai Adamos, was discovered at the scene of the murder of the siren, Aglaope."
Everyone stiffened. Mx. Landry made a weird little wheezing noise. I looked around, trying to figure out what the big deal was. Didn't we already know this information?
Benji caught my eye. "He didn't tell us who it was. The sirens are thousands of years old. They're immortal."
"Not immortal after all, it seems," the man at the head of the table said. "Aglaope was decapitated, and that ended her life."
"Nick wouldn't do that," I said.
Price glared at me. "Agent Nowicki, is it?"
"That's right." I did everything in my power to keep a neutral expression. Probably, I failed, but dammit, I tried.
"Hmm."
Well, what the hell did that mean?
"We understand the work you all do here is important and we don't want to disrupt your day-to-day operations. However, we will need two of you to team up and go investigate the murder scene. Adamos will be tried, as is his legal right, of course, and we want to make sure all our I's are dotted and our T's are crossed before that trial begins. Please collect every piece of evidence you can find and report back directly to me as soon as possible."
Benji leaned forward with her magnificent, sculpted forearms on the table. "You make it sound as if you're already certain Nick committed this crime."
"We are." Price's heavy brows inched upward.
"So much for innocent until proven guilty," Scoob muttered.
Price rolled his eyes as if the very notion was ridiculous. "Agent Nowicki, you're on the case. Who among the rest of you has a current assignment to trace a fugitive who has skipped bail on level two or higher charges?"
Benji, Scoob, Stud, and Rider all raised a hand. It had been a busy couple of weeks. Spring fever, according to Mx. Landry.
"Fine. Then you and you," he pointed to Moose and me, "need to get your asses to Joseph Benny's estate and get it done."
Rider gulped audibly. "Joseph Benny? The billionaire?"
"That's the one. I'm sure you understand why it's a matter of utmost importance we get this settled as soon as possible. The press is going to be all over any kind of controversy attached to Benny and press is exactly what our community does not need now or ever."
I met Moose's gaze across the table. We didn't often operate on the same wavelength, but at that moment, I knew our thoughts were simpatico. Nick didn't murder anyone, not without a good reason anyway, and it was up to us to prove him innocent.
"Wait," I said.
If looks could kill, Price's would have done me in. "What is it?"
"The Organization is this vast international government-type-thing, right?" I never did nail down the specifics of non-human government, but I had the general idea. "So why are you asking us to investigate our own boss? This isn't even what we do. We find people, not evidence. Don't you have your own investigators?"
"We do."
"Hold on, now. She's got a fair point." It might have been the first time Moose took my side in an argument of any kind.
Price's nose twitched like he smelled a fart. "We're sending you in because, while I have no idea what Nicolai Adamos would do to my team, I'm reasonably certain he won't kill any of you. There are additional factors as well, that are none of your concern."
"Additional factors like Hawwa making calls?" Scoob asked in her soft, unassuming voice.
Price gritted his teeth and didn't answer, which was answer enough for me.
"What if Nick really has lost his mind and he actually does kill Moose and me?" I asked, just to be a pain in Price's posterior.
"Then The Organization is not out any investigators of actual value. Which is why it's a good idea to send you."
Oof. That was cold. Round one, Price.