Get a preview of the first two chapters of The Fast and the Furriest.
Nineteen-year-old witch Nessa Scott and her invisible cat Pim are in trouble. Nessa’s deadbeat dad skipped town owing an L.A. bail bondsman and Voodoo King big time. Only, the debt isn’t money. It’s magic and guess who Dad left as collateral? Nessa is just what the man needs: A supernatural Skip Tracer for the demons, dark wizards, and goblins leaving slime trails across his door. Like it or not, the pair’s Bounty Hunting career starts today. A spoiled young witch has been throwing curses like confetti. She’s missed her Infernal Court date and Barracuda needs her Black-Magic butt back in custody right now. Unfortunately, a couple of angry Skinwalkers and a Fallen Angel have other ideas. Welcome to the working under class, Nessa. Maybe six feet under. |
Girl's Guide to Voodoo Bounty Hunting
Book 1: The Fast and the Furriest
By Eden Crowne
Copyright 2021 by Eden Crowne. All rights reserved
Chapter 1:
A toothy ten-foot electronic fish flashed fitfully in the hot morning sun. The green neon crackled as the fish opened and closed its electronic jaws. Yellow dollar signs in the fish’s eyes blinked on and off in sync to some rhythm all their own. Below the fish, a billboard announced‘Barracuda Bail Bonds’ in bold black letters.
Nessa looked at the address scrawled across a torn scrap of paper, then the map app on her phone, and back to the note.
Yep, this was the place.
She took off her helmet, set the kickstand on her scooter and flipped open the top of an oversized wire basket attached to the scooter’s front. A gray-striped head popped out, peering up at the blinking sign. The cat, a stocky British Shorthair, hopped to the ground and settled a pair of thick-lensed black glasses more firmly in place.
Pim, full name Pim’s Cup Whiskers Rampant, winner at the 1871 Crystal Palace Cat Show, had some vision problems. He was also invisible now due to a rather unfortunate curse. Nessa could see him just fine, though almost nobody else could. She’d inherited Pim from her maternal grandmother.
He growled.
“I know,” sighed Nessa. “What the hell, Dad?”
Dead-beat dad had skipped town leaving Barracuda Bail Bonds holding a large bond. The fact Dad owed bail money came as no surprise. That he had skipped town was also not hot news. Finding out in a phone call at seven a.m. this morning he had left her, his one and only daughter, as collateral to a supernatural Bail Bondsman a couple of blocks on the wrong side of the 91 Freeway had been a bit of a shock.
Barracuda Bail Bonds was well-known among the SoCal supernatural substrata for financial aid on a swiftly tilting scale of crimes not necessarily against the great State of California.
It quickly became apparent Dad owed a supernatural debt rather than the more mundane cash sort. After the call, Nessa had thrown some clothes and cash into a backpack, grabbed Pim, and headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway as fast as the orange 50cc scooter could rev. They hadn’t gotten very far before Dad’s debt yanked her back, nearly bringing them to grief at a busy intersection in El Segundo.
Nessa pulled a heavy lock and chain out of the basket and fastened the scooter to the base of the neon sign. The chain had shock charms painted on each link. It was going to need them in this neighborhood.
She stood back, hands on hips, and looked at the neat one-story bungalow painted pale, sherbet yellow with white trim. Pim sat on his haunches, his long tail wrapped neatly around his front paws and looked with her.
It was one of only a few houses left on the street. Zoning laws must have shifted over the years. A used-car lot flanked the bail bonds office on one side, a furniture store that looked like it specialized in furniture that fell off trucks onto the 405 on the other.
She grabbed her duffel bag from the running board and slung it over her shoulder where it knocked against the faded black Old Navy backpack she always carried.
They walked up the three steps to the front porch and hesitated. A painted wooden sign was nailed at eye-level. ‘Beware,’ it said. ‘Secrets will be revealed of those who cross this threshold.’ And beneath this warning, painted in a script only the magically inclined could see was added, ‘Dark Spirit or Light, Betray My Trust at Your Peril.’
Pim turned right around and headed back to the scooter. Nessa considered how she could do the same. She had secrets built right into her DNA. Ones she could hardly bear the burden of knowing herself.
A shout of, “That door is not going to open itself!” made her jump. “Get in here young lady and bring your damn cat!”
The tether gave another yank and she gagged.
Waving Pim over, she tugged her sleeves over the bracelets circling both wrists and they stepped inside together.
A big black man with big black hair sat behind an oversized dark wooden desk directly opposite the door. He was wearing a lime green and gray geometric print shirt with an oversized collar. It was shiny. Seventies K.C. And the Sunshine Band shiny. He had a pair of violet-tinted granny glasses pushed halfway down his broad nose and he peered over them at her, his mouth turned down in a frown.
Nessa swallowed drily and looked around. The inside of the office was painted the same creamy yellow as the outside. Long rows of bleached-blond wooden blinds softened the view on the barred windows facing the street. The wooden floors were the same color as the blinds. Old style travel posters for the Caribbean brightened the walls with splashes of pink, yellow, green, and blue.
“You took your sweet time, Miss Scott,” he said gruffly.
“Um,” replied Nessa with typical articulateness.
“What’s your Familiar’s name?”
“Most people can’t see him,” she said by way of an answer.
He looked at her over his glasses, “I am not most people.”
Obviously not.
“His name is Pim, Pim’s Cup Whiskers Rampant.”
“Fine. So, Miss Scott and Mister Pim, your daddy owes me a debt which he seems to think he can run from. He cannot. You were left as collateral. As I explained on the phone several hoursago,” he said the last few words with heavy emphasis.
Okay, yeah, she tried to run and then when that was denied her, stopped for gas and maybe a leisurely coffee at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf with a fat butter croissant.
“Slavery is illegal,” she protested.
“Not in magic,” replied Barracuda clearly unimpressed. “I am collecting on your father’s Bond. Do you know what I do here?”
“Kind of…” she mumbled.
Boy, she was just sparkling with conversation this morning.
“I am licensed to chase and capture those who think they are above the laws of God and man and choose to turn aside from the path of honesty. In other words, they take my money and run.” He turned his head calling, “Ladies, could you join us please?”
There was a shuffle of sound from a connecting room. Nessa could see a couple of desks and rows of metal filing cabinets in what must be the back office.
Quite the largest women Nessa had ever seen emerged through the connecting doorway. They were identical twins and well over six feet tall. They looked to out-weigh their boss by a dozen pounds. Not that they were fat. Far from it.
The women were squeezed into identical black-leather jumpsuits that hugged every bulging muscle. And their hair! Red as a tropical sunset. Every strand was tossed and teased into an up-do that added several more inches to their already impressive intimidation factor.
They were also, Nessa was certain, only marginally human.
Barracuda gestured at the women. “Meet Pansy and Rose Marie La Rue, my Bond Enforcement agents and valued partners.”
They gave her surprisingly charming smiles.
Nessa automatically tried to smile back but her mouth muscles refused to respond. Gravity had inexplicably increased around her as the reality of Barracuda Bail Bonds sank in. Breathing was an effort. Her heart thudded against her chest.
One of them — Pansy or Rose Marie, she didn’t know who was who — walked over and held out a hand for Pim to sniff.
Well, well. They could see him too.
“Hello there, young man,” she said, her voice deep and musical with a bit of a Caribbean lilt, “aren't you just the handsomest Tom around. Yes, you are!”
Pim preened and gave the woman’s hand a head butt before turning to the side and letting her stroke him.
He was a whore for a compliment.
Were these women going to chase her dad? And if they caught him, would she still be collateral?
Those were important questions. If only her tongue wasn’t stuck to the roof of her mouth so she could ask.
“Skip Tracer, Bounty Hunter or as we say here in California, Bail Recovery Enforcement Agent, whatever you choose to call it,” Barracuda continued, “bond enforcement is a big part of this business. Pansy and Rose Marie can handle the sorry asses of all the murderers, rapists, bank robbers, and arsonists who leave slime trails across my door. However, and this is a big however, not all my clients are human. I also keep supernatural bonds for a variety of magical tribunals and demonic agencies on the books. Recently, one of my supernatural skip tracers had an unfortunate encounter with a machete.” He paused and sighed deeply. “May he rest in peace.”
The two large women sighed as well.
Brightening, he gave her an expectant look. “Your daddy’s bond came due just in time. Looks like your it.”
“I’m it what?” Nessa had lost track of the conversation somewhere around the words killers and rapists.
He grimaced. “Keep up! You, young lady, are my new supernatural skip tracer. For those special bond runners.”
“How?” she said in one strangled word for what had to be obvious to the very large Mr. Roman Barracuda.
Nessa was a scrappy five-feet-two inches tall. A hundred and ten pounds on a good week when there were regular meals. She had dark brown bra-length hair and what could best be described as regular features. Few people had a chance to see the brilliant smile and deep dimples that transformed her face.
He gave her a dispassionate up and down.
“Supernatural Skip Tracing is not based on brawn alone. You have brains, or so your father says, as well as other gifts. Powerful ones.”
She was going to protest but shut her mouth. He wasn’t wrong. She was an Elemental, a Blood Witch with control over the air. She’d inherited it from her mother’s side of the family. Among other less desirable things.
Barracuda pulled open a drawer and tossed a pair of metal handcuffs over.
“You will need these.”
She stared at the cuffs.
Pim jumped up onto the desk and batted them with his paw knocking the cuffs to the floor. He threw a feline sneer at Barracuda, laying his ears flat.
Barracuda read the expression correctly and frowned at the cat.
Pim spun around, tail high, showing the man his butt hole. A cat version of ‘Up yours!’
Barracuda rolled his eyes, “Don’t you give me attitude Mr. Pim. You’re what, Miss Scott? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”
“Nineteen.”
Barracuda tilted his chair away from his desk and adjusted his glasses.
One of the enormous women snorted.
Barracuda’s eyes shifted to them. They suddenly got busy looking around the room like they’d never noticed those colorful travel posters before.
Their boss cleared his throat noisily and shifted through the papers on his desk. He pulled out one sheet with something paper-clipped to it and frowned.
“Never mind. In the great state of California, you can get your Bounty Hunters license at eighteen.”
“No way,” Nessa protested.
“I assure you, it’s true.”
“I can’t buy alcohol but I can chase down and capture felons?”
“It’s a wonderful world,” he said with a grin.
“Isn’t there...like...a test or something?”
He nodded. “You are absolutely right. Two separate State-administered exams. I am happy to report you did wonderfully and will have copies of the certificates to prove it.”
“What about a license?”
“In California, a license is technically not necessary if you have written permission from me. Which you will. A Private Investigator’s license though goes a long way.”
Pulling at the paper clip, he tossed a driver’s license-sized card to the woman nearest him.
“Pansy, please date that appropriatly. Rose Marie, a photo if you will.”
Rose Marie tugged a cellphone from her back pocket.
“Smile!” she said before clicking a picture.
“What?” said Nessa, startled.
The two women gave their boss a snappy salute and stepped into the back office.
“We will adjust your Driver’s License to match. You also successfully completed the forty-hour police training course. And a twenty-hour insurance-approved pre-licensing class. Very diligent of you.”
Nessa felt the whole situation was spiraling into farce.
“Wait, wait,” her voice cracked. “I can’t do this. A forty-hour class? Twenty-hours for insurance? That means there are rules. Lots and lots of rules. And procedures. Legal ones. I don’t know any of them. I don’t know! Please.” Her voice had taken on a pleading tone but she didn’t care.
“As a supernatural Skip Tracer, there are no rules.”
“What about as a human bounty hunter?” she persisted. “Cops are always around when you don’t want them.”
Growing up with a magical scam artist for a father, Nessa knew that only too well. The police seemed to have a sixth sense for magical mischief.
“By working for me, you are legally in pursuit of felons. There ispaperwork and I will supply you with that before you leave here today. You must keep these papers on you at all times in case the police become involved.” He stared at her hard over his glasses, “Which they had better not. With the paperwork I mentioned, slightly adjusted for the magical sort, you have every right to apprehend them, even entering their home without a search warrant. The use of deadly force is frowned upon.”
There was a bark of laughter from the other room.
He shifted his eyes in the direction of the laugh, “Though sometimes warranted.”
There was another raucous laugh.
Pim tugged at Nessa’s sleeve. His eyes, magnified to several times their size by the thick lenses, looked as puzzled as she felt.
“I’m not a detective.”
Pim meowed.
“We are not detectives.”
“No. Mr. Pim is a werecat under a rather unfortunate invisibility curse but with his own defensive arsenal. You, too, can be lethal, Miss Scott.”
Nessa squirmed inwardly. Had her nasty secrets been revealed when she crossed the threshold? She had rather a lot for someone her age.
“Do you have a car?” he said changing the subject abruptly.
“What?” The interview was going too fast; she couldn’t keep up.
“An au-to-mo-bile.” He paused on each syllable like she was ESL or something. “A mechanical mode of transportation.”
“I have a scooter.”
Barracuda threw his hands up in the air. “A scooter? A damn scooter? How are you going to pursue felons, handcuff thugs and/or demons, or scrape up the remains of your quarry, and bring them to judgement on a damn scooter?”
Heat was building behind her eyes, spreading down her neck and shoulders into her fingers.
God damn her father. God damn this man. God damn them all.
She jumped out of her chair and slapped her hands down on his desk. “I don’t know!” she said, her voice cracking. “It was never an issue I had to consider until this moment!”
A gust of wind blew through the bungalow. Then another, stronger this time.
“I don’t know how to...” she pounded on his desk again causing her bracelets to spark. “How to do this! I am not my deadbeat father’s keeper!”
Her eyes were burning.
“I am a college student at Santa Monica Junior College,” she said. “I have a scholarship and I am going,” she slapped the desk, “to go on to University as God is my witness.”
Pansy and Rose Marie rewarded her a round of applause from the other room.
Barracuda, however, seemed unimpressed with her outburst. He gave her a look she couldn’t interpret, “Oh, we both know you are so much more than a college girl.”
Nessa’s stomach slid into her shoes.
‘So much more...’
How much did he know? About her.
The bad stuff? The worse stuff? The worst?
The wind flowed faster and one of the framed posters on the wall tumbled to the floor.
Nessa’s hair floated up from her shoulders as a spider web of shadows spun from her fingers onto the desk.
Barracuda leaned forward, watching Nessa, eyes narrowing. Opening a drawer, he pulled out a colorful string of metal amulets.
She felt the snap and crackle of energy building across the desk. A familiar shiver of electricity sparked in her palms.
Pim yowled. His fur bristled, absorbing the rogue electricity zipping around her. His claws and fangs began to lengthen.
Pansy and Rose Marie stepped out from the backroom to stand by their boss. They did not look happy.
Roman snapped his fingers.
Around her, the floor changed. Wooden planks became a black, viscous liquid. Monstrous shapes began to ooze up from the ground.
Nessa caught her breath.
The heat behind her eyes flamed.
‘Crap, crap, crap,” she chanted silently. She could not afford to lose another pair of contacts.
Despite the scary floor shift, she did not believe she was in danger from the Bail Bondsman. Like most of magical LA, she knew Barracuda was a Voodoo King. She also knew he followed Legba, the guardian of the crossroads between the living and spirit worlds. He stood on the side of righteousness. The profitable side of righteousness but, nevertheless, not the opposite.
She was just scared and freaking out. Freaking out was not good for Nessa or anyone arund her. Bad things happened.
Abruptly, she wrapped her hands over her chest, tucking them into her armpits. She forced herself to sit in the chair, close her eyes, and count backward from one hundred. Pim stayed where he was, a menacing growl rumbling in his throat.
‘Breath in, breath out,’ she told herself.
‘Breath in, breath out.’
At seventy, she opened her eyes.
The wind died with a sigh. Her hair settled around her shoulders. The snap and crackle dissipated into wherever snaps and crackles went.
Roman Barracuda’s expression had changed from fierce to one of concern. He laid the amulets on the table and made a dismissing motion to Pansy and Rose Marie. With a shrug, they returned to forging her license. At least that’s what Nessa assumed they were doing.
Pim had stopped his transformation. His fur was still bristling and his ears lay flat against his head. The cat stalked over and pushed his face right up to the big man’s. He angrily flicked his long tail and voiced a series of yowls, digging his claws into a sheaf of papers under his paws.
“If your Familiar is saying ‘damn fool,’ I agree,” Barracuda said in his deep, resonant voice. “I am used to dealing with…” he paused, “individuals of a more recalcitrant nature. That was perhaps too much information delivered too forcefully.”
“Ya’ think?” breathed Nessa.
Pansy or her twin stepped over to hand Barracuda a laminated card. Pim backed up, though he stayed on the desk, the growl still rumbling.
Barracuda pushed up his glasses, carefully looking over the card front and back before handing it to Nessa.
Nessa had no frame of reference for Bounty Hunter or P.I. licenses. The thing looked official. State Seal, serial number, office address. Nessa groaned at the photo. And she thought the one on her driver’s license was bad.
Barracuda shifted in his chair, clearing his throat. “Miss Scott, your father’s debt must be paid. The Bond has been signed in blood. The contract is valid and I can neither undo nor ignore it. My hands are tied.”
She looked up from the card to meet his eyes.
“Better to owe me than someone else,” he said more warmly. “There are far worse collectors out there. Your father understood. It’s why he came to me.”
Nessa shuddered inwardly. An image of burning houses, blinding black smoke, and cries of despair flashed in her mind’s eye. A man shaking her hard, ordering her to bring the lightning.
He was right. There were worse people to owe.
While Barracuda tugged some papers out from under Pim’s paws, Nessa mentally tallied up her current situation.
Fact one: Today she had become an indentured servant thanks to her father.
Fact two: The bond was magical. No escape from that except death.
Fact three: The Bondsmanr was a Voodoo King with monsters living in his floor.
Conclusion: Her life was even more royally screwed up than before. Given her curse, how was that even possible?
He cleared his throat, sat up straight, and shifted to all-business mode. “You have some unique talents which I believe will help you adapt to this job in no time. Yours has been, shall I say, an unconventional life?”
Nessa said nothing but sniffled several times. Her nose had started to run.
“Will I…” she took a deep breath and tried to steady her voice, “will I get paid?”
Barracuda laughed loud and long.
Nessa cringed, “I have a cat to feed.”
Pim had a sticky note on one back paw and was trying to vigorously shake it off. Nessa leaned over to pull it.
“Rent...” she started to add.
“You live with your Aunt Emerald in the little apartment above the garage. I know for a fact she does not charge you rent.”
Not exactly. Aunt Em traded Nessa’s help with her psychic scams for room and board.
Insert shaky voice, “I feel the spirit wind.”
Cue Nessa and wind charm.
Insert shaky voice again, “It carries the chill of the grave....”
Cue Nessa for temperature drop.
And so on, and so forth.
“Gas?” she pursued.
Barracuda laughed again. “I will see to it that neither you, your cat, nor your transportation starve. Though we must see about finding a car for your bond enforcement work. It is difficult to transport miscreants of a supernatural nature without a back seat and a set of iron manacles bolted to the floor.”
“Amen to that!” chorused the women from the back office.
Manacles?
Nessa swallowed again.
“Now when you capture your victim, I mean, um...quarry, do you know what to say?”
She looked at him blankly.
He gave an impatient sigh, “Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent. Say it.”
“Bail...bail recovery...”
“Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent.
She took a shaky breath, “Bail Fugitive Recovery...”
“Agent.”
“Agent. Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent.”
“Be sure you announce yourself.” Barracuda handed her a manila envelope. “Leave your duffel bag and get your skinny little scooter on over to the South Bay Cultural and Event Center in Torrance. You know where that is?”
Nessa nodded, clutching the envelope tightly to her chest, her hands trembling.
Okay, she had no idea. But the almighty Map App on her phone would find it.
“The details of the case are inside. This gal is not going to give you any trouble. Just bring her to the tribunal’s office in Redondo Beach. The address is there,” he pointed at the folder. “She’s attending a meeting. Starts at noon.”
“She’s a witch?” asked Nessa hoarsely.
“Indeed she is. A naughty one.” He shook his head making unhappy clucking sounds. “Wastin’ the time and money of her elders. Don’t let me down, Miss Scott.”
Nessa wanted to say how could she let him down when she had no idea what she was doing?
“What are you standing there for? This girl is not going to catch herself!” He shooed her off like a bug.
Nessa turned without a word and ran out of the office with Pim at her heels.
CHAPTER TWO
The South Bay Cultural and Event Center had that brutalist architecture popular in SoCal during the seventies. A gray concrete fortress where the idea of fun looked like it might be a trial by the Spanish Inquisition.
Much of Torrance felt like some sort of seventies time loop so the building fit right in.
Nessa and Pim re-locked the scooter near the event center’s parking garage. Once out of the basket, Pim indicated by clawing her ankle that he had, ‘things to say!’
No doubt.
Squatting, she shrugged off the backpack and took out his faded red plastic Speak and Spell. Cat’s vocal cords – even magical cats – are not made for human speech. Pim had six claws on his front paws, the extra one working as an opposable thumb. He could read and write and type. His paws were too awkward for most keyboards. Grandma’ Hattie had hit on the Speak and Spellback in the day. Way back. Thank god for duct tape and Double AAs.
Pim’s paws worked the simple keyboard.
“Are you out of your mind?” the female electronic voice said tonelessly.
Nessa winced. Despite the synthesizer’s lack of emotion, Pim typed with attitude.
“Rock and a hard place, kitty. You felt the tether, just like me.”
And he had. Pim was her Familiar, they would ghost each other’s feelings ‘till death do us part.’
“File. Let me see.”
She put the top sheet of paper down for him to read. A picture of the witch, Fiona Garde. Fair-haired, blue eyes. Curses and distance spells her specialty. A Blood Witch of the Thirteen Families. Nessa knew about them. Every witch of merit knew about thatcoven. She and Pim kept reading. Legalese. Paragraph, paragraph. Council tribunal…blah, blah, blah… accused of killing a herd of sacred sheep with black magic spells for personal gain.
“Sheep?” Pim typed, the question obvious.
“Sacred sheep,” affirmed Nessa.
Her cell beeped an alarm. She’d set it before leaving Barracuda’s to the time of the meeting Fiona was supposed to be attending. Seemed Barracuda placed a tracking spell on bonded clients he felt might run.
So why wasn’t he tracking her father? No fool would lay out money on that man without a tracking spell and possibly a ball and chain.
A little cluster of spidery shadows appeared at her feet much like those on Barracuda’s desk. Pim sent them spinning away with the swipe of one paw and a hiss. He meowed up at her and she didn’t need the Speak and Spell to know what he said.
Barracuda wasn’t the only one with tracking spells.
Nessa asked at the reception desk where the DMA (Dark Magic Anonymous) meeting was being held. She followed the directions downstairs. They were in the Sequoia Room; second basement. She took her time checking the layout of the floor before cautiously opening the door.
A dozen or so men and women and one person in a blue furry wolf costume were sitting in a circle on folding metal chairs. Most were looking attentively at a handsome red-headed woman in a red-print wrap dress standing at a podium.
The meeting had already begun. With a shy wave at the assembled group, Nessa quietly took the nearest empty seat in the circle.
“My name is Phoebe and I am a Dark Magic addict,” said the woman at the podium.
“Hello, Phoebe,” chorused the group.
“Up yours, Phoebe,” the woman next to Nessa mumbled under her breath.
The furry wolf said nothing.
Nessa glanced at the young woman in the chair and almost laughed. Short blond hair cut in a fashionable bob, green eyes, Gucci sunglasses pushing back her side-swept bangs. She’d sat right next to Fiona What’s-Her-Name from Barracuda’s file. What were the odds?
There was another empty chair on the woman’s other side.
Hmmm.
Perhaps Fiona was not a popular member of the DMA.
Pim jumped out of Nessa’s arms to stalk around their quarry. No one could see him, she was sure, even in this gathering. His curse was pretty much all-encompassing –except when crossing the threshold of a Voodoo King it seems.
Despite Fiona’s presence, her file indicated she was not at all interested in giving up Dark Magic. If her Coven Tribunal had not ordered her to attend these meetings, she would probably be figuring out how to hex them all.
Nessa glanced curiously at the fuzzy wolf.
Not fuzzy.
Furry.
That’s it. He was a Furry. One of those cos-playing sub-tribes who dressed as anthropomorphic animals to feel social or sexy or normal. She’d heard it was also a kinky sex thing. A subculture of the subculture. Furry porn.
‘Freaks,’ she thought. Then mentally slapped herself. She ran around with an invisible werecat and could command the wind with a snap of her fingers. Who was she to call anyone a freak?
Furries came in all sorts of incarnations: dogs, cats, wolves, foxes, bears, lions, even dragons. To do this they made, purchased, or rented fur suits. A good one could cost thousands of dollars. Wolf-guy’s had to be top-of-the-line. She watched him flex his finger-paws. It looked as though the muscles in his furry arms bunched to match. Nessa was torn between ridicule and admiration for his attention to detail.
As if sensing her gaze, he turned his face in her direction and arched his brows. The wolf’s mouth opened in a wicked grin. Maybe it was just the costume’s expression but Nessa felt like a double-decker bacon sandwich at a free lunch.
Its big eyes blinked.
Whoa! Too much realism.
Pim tapped her ankle and she shifted her gaze. He gave her a ‘Now what?’ look.
Good question.
With a gurgle, her stomach slid about six inches toward her knees. She couldn’t just jump up and yell… what was she supposed to say? Bond…um… bond…agent...enforcement. No. Damn it.
She googled “California Bail Bond Agent” on her cell. Blah, blah, blah. Ah! Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent.
Right. Yell that and then handcuff witchy-witch.
Okay. Realistically, that was not happening. She’d wait until the meeting ended. Barracuda said the girl wouldn’t give her any trouble.
Nessa stole another glance at the pretty blonde. She was wearing a light turquoise argyle twin set and short pink pleated skirt. Her long legs were crossed. She was swinging one Tory Birch pink ballet flat impatiently, her features twisted into a bored frown. She’d probably had the shoes dyed to match the skirt.
Nessa was not sure about Barracuda’s assessment. This girl looked like plenty of trouble.
Pim jumped into her lap and she began stroking his back nervously.
This earned her a WTF look from the girl.
That happened a lot. She could see Pim clearly and kept forgetting to everyone else, she looked like some crazy girl petting her imaginary unicorn.
Phoebe babbled on about a spell involving the Palos Verde PTA president or something.
A couple of chairs away sat a slim, good-looking guy, brown skin, black hair with a natural wave brushed back from his forehead. Latino maybe?
Those cheekbones!
East Indian?
A bit of a mix, she decided.
He was wearing summer wool slacks in a slate gray, a deceptively simple white tee, and a deconstructed black jacket. His black loafers had to be hand sewn. Her dad might have been a scam artist but he taught her, in addition to survival skills, how to evaluate good clothes. After all, the richer the mark, the bigger the take.
His eyes drifted lazily across the room to meet hers. Chocolate brown with pupils the size of nickels. He didn’t smile but his knife-cut lips twitched ever so slightly at the corners.
This guy looked like someone who understood how to benefit from some carefully placed dark magic. Probably why he was here.
Phoebe finally wound up her story about the Palos Verde PTA and flesh-eating bacteria. Did she say she’d cursed the President and she died or did she say ‘almost died’? Who knew the PTA in the South Bay was so cutthroat?
Nessa automatically analyzed the woman’s clothes from the ground up as she walked by. Fake Jimmy Choo’s. The buckles were wrong. Silver instead of bronze and she’d bet Pim’s catnip the red Dianne von Furstenberg wrap dress was a knock-off from Nordstrom Rack. The one in Glendale on Brand. How much of a dark magic threat could she be if she was wearing knock offs?
The woman sat down and a tall man with salt and pepper hair and a soul patch goatee pointed a finger in Fiona’s direction. Group coordinator maybe?
The blond stood, groaned, and walked with a becoming sway of her narrow hips to the podium.
Tossing her hair, she said, “My name is Fiona and I, too, am a Dark Magic addict. Unlike Phoebe, I am not interested in giving it up. I killed a bunch of sheep in Topanga Canyon by mistake. So what? If my Coven Master Margaret holier-than-thou Halloranhad not laid a Geas on me to attend these stupid meetings, I would be hitting Frieda’s in the Americana with a glass of bubbly at my lips and salsa on my chin.”
‘Called it!’ Nessa thought to herself.
“Perhaps why your coven Master asked you to come?” prompted Salt-and-Pepper Hair.
“Well, there was this house,” said Fiona. “I was working a spell to get the price down. Seemed to me like a perfectly valid reason to toss a few spells.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t all,” he started to say. “The sheep...”
An older woman with gray hair interrupted, “Sheep, smeep. Where’s the house?”
“Glendale,” said Fiona. “Walking distance to the Whole Foods on Brand andTrader Joe’s,” she smirked.
Walking distance to two supermarkets? Fiona had the right to smirk.
“Shit,” said one of the men, red hair and freckles, heavyset, thick glasses, Dodgers cap. “That’s near the entrance to the 134 and not far from the 5.”
“Plus you can take Brand all the way to the 101,” added the gray-haired women. “Surface streets are so much better at rush hour.”
“How many bedrooms,” asked Salt-and-Pepper Hair.
Real Estate and freeway traffic were vital topics to LA residents. Much more important than Dark Magic confessions.
Fiona smiled, “Two bedrooms, two baths and half bath for guests. Carport, new fixtures, and appliances.”
The guy in the Dodger’s cap leaned forward eagerly, hands clenched. “How much?”
Fiona told them how much she paid versus the original asking price.
The woman with gray hair whistled, “I’d kill more than a few sheep for that.”
Salt-and-Pepper Hair’s expression said he would too, but he moved his hands in a damping down gesture trying to reassert his role as moderator. They were here, after all, to stop using Dark Magic for fun and profit.
And that’s when things got interesting.
Furry Wolf jumped to his feet. He was holding something shiny in one paw.
Good-Looking Guy pulled a gun and fired.
Everyone started screaming and Nessa mentally cursed her deadbeat dad again.
She was on her feet and running for Fiona before Good-Looking Guy had even gotten off his shot. She’d noticed the shift in Furry Wolf’s body language. The sudden tension in his legs, the alert set of his head.
So many flashbacks to life with Dad.
She plowed into the podium taking it and Fiona down. The sharp object flew over Nessa’s shoulder and embedded itself quivering in the wall.
The shot brought Furry Wolf to its knees.
Nessa grabbed Fiona’s arm and pulled her toward the door, Pim in the lead.
Fiona held back a little until Nessa said, “It’s after you!”
No more urging was needed. As they barreled through the double doors, another gunshot barked behind them.
Pim skidded to a stop by Nessa, sending Fiona sprawling as she tripped over the invisible cat.
They needed to block the door. Jam the handle and lock furry-guy inside. Nessa had spied the firehose case and extinguisher near the stairs on the way in. Deadbeat Dad had thoroughly drilled into her the need to locate escape routes and possible weapons. She did it automatically.
The door was thrown open, knocking Fiona back to her knees as she tried to pick herself up.
“Fuck!” Fiona yelled, hitting the floor with a thump.
Nessa spun around to see the guy in nice slacks, gun still in hand, turn and fire two more rounds. The screams from the Sequoia room increased in volume. He shoved the doors closed and backed up against them bracing his feet.
There was a crash as someone hit them from the other side.
Nessa smashed the glass case with her elbow and grabbed the hose on the metal reel. She pulled it out.
And out, and out. How long was this damn hose?
The guy was shoved a few inches forward and a furry hand grabbed the edge of one door. Pim jumped and took a vicious bite of the hand. The Furry howled and the hand disappeared.
Good-Looking Guy grabbed the hose, back still against the door. The two of them threaded part of the canvas through the handles and pulled it tight. The guy had more strength than her and he knotted it. There was a furious pounding from the other side.
Dark Magic Anonymous had one of the free community rooms in the far corner of the second basement. Nessa didn’t wait to see if the hose would hold. She yanked Fiona to her feet and ran in the direction of the main stairs.
Pim tossed her his glasses and bounded ahead, transforming in seconds. He was completely visible in his werecat form and Fiona squealed at his sudden appearance. The werecat was a nightmarish version of the plump grey and white striped kitty: bigger than a full-grown lynx with scythe-like teeth and claws, his stripes squished together in a muddy mix.
Misjudging a jump, he smacked into the railing.
Sadly, his eyesight did not improve with the transformation. A reliable way to keep his glasses on in this alternate form had so far eluded them.
On the landing of the first basement stairs, Pim yowled a war cry. A second ferocious howl answered from above.
Crap, there were more.
Pim launched himself up the stairs.
Furious yowls and howls and the smack of bodies echoed down the stairwell. Nessa held Fiona back and crouched low on the step.
“What did you do,” she panted at Fiona, “to those sheep?”
Fiona waved her hand, “Oh that. Like I said, about the house. I needed two things.” She counted off on her fingers. “One, for the price to come down. Two, to remove the person in front of me in the buying queue. The houses on either side sort of burned down along with the trees in the house I wanted. Front andback yard. Bang! Price drop. Then the buyer in front of me almost drowned.”
Nessa gave her an appropriately appalled look.
“In a bathtub, okay? He didn’t die. And it was just a little coma. He’s blinking his eyes now and everything. His stupid wife broke her own legs when she slipped on the water. Not my fault, as I told the Coven Tribunal. But I got the house,” she said triumphantly. “And so what if I worked a spell? I was tired of renting. Unfortunately, I had to off-load a shitload of Dark Magic. You know, making sure it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass.”
Nessa understood only too well. What goes around comes around in magic -- unless you re-route the energy onto someone or something else. No need to blacken your soul unnecessarily. Except, magic had a way of sneaking around the corner and knocking you flat anyway. Her mother a lesson in point.
“I didn’t realize the backwash from those spells would require quite that much chaos,” continued Fiona, obviously unrepentant. “The Council pointed out in addition to the sheep I caused a landslide in Topanga Canyon. The road was blocked for days. I, in turn, said they could hardly blame me for infrastructure flaws by the California Department of Highways.”
The howls above them grew louder. Nessa’s skin began to itch and a gust of wind swirled up the stairwell.
“They weren’t just any sheep,” said Good-Looking Guy, “they were sacred Navajo sheep.”
“In Topanga freaking canyon!” snapped Fiona. “Navajos live in Arizona.”
“Seems not all of them,” said the guy.
“And what’s it to you, anyway?” she demanded.
Nessa began to edge her way up the stairs, the sounds of battle receding a little.
She heard the guy say, “I represent the Council of Thirteen Families.”
“You’re here for me?” squeaked Fiona, pushing up against Nessa.
Nessa shrugged her back. “Get in line, dude. I am here for her! Roman Barracuda sent me.”
“Not her,” said the guy, “the assassins. The Shaman who cared for the sheep expected the Tribunal would let you off with a slap on the wrist and he was out for blood. My superiors felt he was going to call a vendetta on you. An unlicensed one. I came here expecting an attack.”
“By Furries?” asked Nessa.
He looked up at her with a rueful smile, “No, I will admit that was a surprise.”
“Sheep!” said Fiona meaningfully, “They were just sheep! It’s not that big a crime.”
“It was to the Shaman,” he said.
Nessa ignored the sheep. “So you’re a cop?”
He drew his bros together in a frown line. “Not really...”
“Do you have a badge,” demanded Nessa.
“Well, yeah.”
“Let me see some I.D. Because I don’t know if I believe you.”
With a look like he was humoring her, the guy pulled out a small brown leather billfold and flipped it open. There was a California PI license and another badge written in, she looked closer, Latin.
Nessa’s Latin was limited to her Grandmother’s spells she’d memorized and Vene Vidi Vinci.Deadbeat Dad’s favorite thing to say after a successful scam: I came, I saw, I conquered.
“Is it real? Because those are easy to fake.” She should know. Barracuda just made one for her.
“Of course it’s real.” He put it back in his pants pocket.
“So you’re a Witch Cop.”
“I am not a Witch Cop,” he protested.
“You have a badge, you’re a witch, and you shot the blue Furry. You are so definitely a Witch Cop.”
Fiona made a sound of exasperation. “Are you here to protect me?”
“Nope. Here to bring justice if they succeededin killing you. I didn’t really expect you to get out of the way.” He pointed with his chin at Nessa. “You are fast. The Furry had a poison hex on a knife ready to go when you tackled the sheep-killer and hightailed it out of the room. I went ahead and shot him anyway. Intent is almost as good as after the fact.”
“Didn’t help,” Nessa scoffed.
“Yeah, kind of thought that hollow point would slow it down.”
“Who cares. Why is Barracuda after me?” Fiona demanded.
“Keep your voice down!” Nessa hissed. “Bond or bail thing. You missed some kind of witchy trial date.”
“That’s next week!” Fiona protested shrilly.
“Shhh! Monday. The tribunal stuff was Monday. Today is Wednesday.”
The girl’s jaw fell. “You are shitting me.” She grabbed her phone, tapping at the screen.
It had gone quiet up above. Encouraged by the silence, Nessa edged cautiously up the next set of stairs. A green Furry tiger costume was sprawled on the upper landing. Pim straddled it, his mouth around the tiger’s throat.
The Furry lay unmoving, paws held stiffly in front. Nessa could see the black spells circling each, ready to throw.
Nessa moved closer. Pim snarled, his jaw closing slightly on its throat. He was waiting for Nessa’s orders. Even with his bad eyesight, he could smell it was her.
Nessa stared at the deep gouges and bloody tears on the tiger’s arms and chest and across one side of its face.
She could clearly see the fur was attached to skin and the skin was part of a body. A body of flesh and blood.
The Furry tiger was not a costume at all.
“What the hell?” she said out loud.
Shifters, despite what movies would have you believe, are not common. The energy needed to transform from human to animal is enormous and generally fatal after a few years. True Were creatures were already animals, like Pim. Magical ones that most assumed originated in the Fae lands. Or maybe Hell.
The magical transformation was built into their DNA. Effortless. As if they just switched places. The Werewolves she’d met had been wolves that could shift into people. Not the other way around.
But how could a costume come to life?
Fiona pushed closer. “Fuck me!” She raised her phone.
“Are you taking pictures?” Nessa demanded.
“It’s an Instagram moment,” she replied, nonchalantly clicking away.
“Evidence, idiot,” snapped Nessa, shoving the phone down.
Fiona did an eye roll to express her ‘so don’t care’ feelings.
Good-Looking Guy had his gun out. “Why isn’t he moving? He’s not dead, I can see him breathing.”
“Poison,” Nessa answered curtly, shrugging out of her backpack and zipping it open.
Magical evolution had made up for Pim’s smaller size by giving the werecat a secret weapon. Both hind legs had poison sacks with a small extendable claw that injected paralyzing nerve toxin into his attacker. It wouldn’t kill but did render them powerless for a time.
She pulled out a bottle of water and a bag of salt. Nessa never went anywhere without a bag of sea salt.
She poured a hefty amount of salt into the water and gave it a vigorous shake. Twisting off the cap she splashed it over the Furry’s paws. The toxin had strangled its voice but the creature gave a hissing moan as the saltwater burned away the magic.
Throwing the salt and water back in the backpack, she took the handcuffs out of her pocket and held them out to Good-Looking Guy.
“What?” he said blankly.
Nessa rolled her eyes, “Cuff his hands to the railing. Pim,” she ordered, “let him go.”
Good-Looking Guy seemed reluctant to touch the tiger and she couldn’t blame him. There were weird vibes coming off this thing.
She leaned over and strained to shove the tiger closer to the railing. Between them, with no help from Fiona, they got his wrists cuffed around the metal. Nessa took the left wrist; Good-Looking Guy the right.
“Why don’t you just kill it?” Fiona asked in a bored voice and waving a hand negligently in its direction.
“A dead body means cops,” explained Nessa. “Crime Scene guys. Evidence. Like your stupid photos. Evidence is bad. This way, only the Furry explains how it got chained to the railing. Kind of doubt our names will come up.”
The tiger had a lot of mass. Pim’s poison probably might not hold much longer.
A loud crash accompanied by an unearthly howl echoed from the second basement.
Furry Number One must have gotten through the door.
Time to go.
Nessa was already moving up the stairs.
At the first basement landing, she hesitated, then skipped ahead a few steps, looked around the bend and up to the main floor.
Several figures at the next landing stared back. A dog, a cat, a bear. Furries.
Fiona and the guy peeked over her shoulder.
“How many of these bastards are there?” said Fiona.
“Those must have been some really terrific sheep,” Nessa muttered.
This floor should mirror the one underneath. That meant there was an emergency exit onto the fire stairs at the end of the first basement corridor.
“Come on,” she said, pushing past them and down the uniformly beige hallway, her footsteps muffled on the industrial-grade carpeting. “Pim can’t handle three. We’ll try the fire exit.”
“Who’s Pim,” shouted Fiona, running after Nessa.
“My cat,” she said over her shoulder, pointing at the werecat.
The itching escalated unbearably on Nessa’s skin as she pulled energy from the air. Little electrical shocks zipped up and down her spine, working their way through her shoulders and into her hands. She didn’t fight them.
A gust of wind rushed ahead, ripping papers from a bulletin board and tossing a stack of pamphlets off a side table.
Pim abruptly stopped and spun around, ears flattened to his head. His lips curled back over his fangs.
Fiona and the guy ran for the fire door but Nessa stopped with Pim.
Blue Wolf stepped onto the landing.
Nessa reached to her waist and ran a thumb over one of the silver charms on her summoning belt. Heat sparked into her hand. She mentally blew on the embers of that fire, letting them flare.
Extending her left hand, she moved her thumb to the next charm on the belt, an embroidered sigil. With an incantation that seared her lips as she spoke, she summoned the wind.
Air whooshedback along the hallway, a whirling dervish that circled wildly around her and Pim. They braced themselves against the pull of Elemental energy.
Blue Wolf came straight at her, teeth bared. He ran on two legs but moved with the feral grace and power of a wild animal.
The Wolf was so close she could see his nostrils flare. Nessa breathed in deeply. She held the air for a heartbeat, then whistled it out.
At the same time, she raised her arms and brought her bracelets together with a swift hard motion. They were not gold or silver or brass. They were inlaid with flint. Once, twice, and a spark.
She spoke the true name of the lightning and with the spark, ignited the chaotic energy circling her.
The lightning strike hit with an explosive crack, flinging the beast up to the ceiling in a blinding flash of light. He smashed into the dated acoustic tile panels. A dozen cracked and fell to the floor. The whirlwind grabbed hold as the Wolf fell, just as she told it to, hurtling him back to the main stairwell and out of sight.
A couple of sprinklers in the ceiling started to spray water. Nessa knew from her dad that a burst of heat did not automatically set off the entire fire prevention system in a building.
Nessa ran to the emergency exit and pushed through with Pim.
The others were already two flights up.
“Thanks for waiting, jerks!” she shouted, taking the metal stairs two at a time.
Their lead hadn’t done them much good.
Fiona was pushing frantically against the handle of the emergency door to the first floor. “Open, damn it!” she shouted.
Banging hard with both fists, the guy yelled, “Help! Open the door!”
“What about the door outside?” She pushed at the emergency door opposite to no effect.
“Locked,” said the guy.
Nessa heard raised voices from the other side of the hallway door, sounds maybe of an argument. Abruptly, they swung open.
A couple of Furries, a brown and white Beagle and a Tabby Cat, stood in the doorway.
“Gotcha’!"they shouted.
Book 1: The Fast and the Furriest
By Eden Crowne
Copyright 2021 by Eden Crowne. All rights reserved
Chapter 1:
A toothy ten-foot electronic fish flashed fitfully in the hot morning sun. The green neon crackled as the fish opened and closed its electronic jaws. Yellow dollar signs in the fish’s eyes blinked on and off in sync to some rhythm all their own. Below the fish, a billboard announced‘Barracuda Bail Bonds’ in bold black letters.
Nessa looked at the address scrawled across a torn scrap of paper, then the map app on her phone, and back to the note.
Yep, this was the place.
She took off her helmet, set the kickstand on her scooter and flipped open the top of an oversized wire basket attached to the scooter’s front. A gray-striped head popped out, peering up at the blinking sign. The cat, a stocky British Shorthair, hopped to the ground and settled a pair of thick-lensed black glasses more firmly in place.
Pim, full name Pim’s Cup Whiskers Rampant, winner at the 1871 Crystal Palace Cat Show, had some vision problems. He was also invisible now due to a rather unfortunate curse. Nessa could see him just fine, though almost nobody else could. She’d inherited Pim from her maternal grandmother.
He growled.
“I know,” sighed Nessa. “What the hell, Dad?”
Dead-beat dad had skipped town leaving Barracuda Bail Bonds holding a large bond. The fact Dad owed bail money came as no surprise. That he had skipped town was also not hot news. Finding out in a phone call at seven a.m. this morning he had left her, his one and only daughter, as collateral to a supernatural Bail Bondsman a couple of blocks on the wrong side of the 91 Freeway had been a bit of a shock.
Barracuda Bail Bonds was well-known among the SoCal supernatural substrata for financial aid on a swiftly tilting scale of crimes not necessarily against the great State of California.
It quickly became apparent Dad owed a supernatural debt rather than the more mundane cash sort. After the call, Nessa had thrown some clothes and cash into a backpack, grabbed Pim, and headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway as fast as the orange 50cc scooter could rev. They hadn’t gotten very far before Dad’s debt yanked her back, nearly bringing them to grief at a busy intersection in El Segundo.
Nessa pulled a heavy lock and chain out of the basket and fastened the scooter to the base of the neon sign. The chain had shock charms painted on each link. It was going to need them in this neighborhood.
She stood back, hands on hips, and looked at the neat one-story bungalow painted pale, sherbet yellow with white trim. Pim sat on his haunches, his long tail wrapped neatly around his front paws and looked with her.
It was one of only a few houses left on the street. Zoning laws must have shifted over the years. A used-car lot flanked the bail bonds office on one side, a furniture store that looked like it specialized in furniture that fell off trucks onto the 405 on the other.
She grabbed her duffel bag from the running board and slung it over her shoulder where it knocked against the faded black Old Navy backpack she always carried.
They walked up the three steps to the front porch and hesitated. A painted wooden sign was nailed at eye-level. ‘Beware,’ it said. ‘Secrets will be revealed of those who cross this threshold.’ And beneath this warning, painted in a script only the magically inclined could see was added, ‘Dark Spirit or Light, Betray My Trust at Your Peril.’
Pim turned right around and headed back to the scooter. Nessa considered how she could do the same. She had secrets built right into her DNA. Ones she could hardly bear the burden of knowing herself.
A shout of, “That door is not going to open itself!” made her jump. “Get in here young lady and bring your damn cat!”
The tether gave another yank and she gagged.
Waving Pim over, she tugged her sleeves over the bracelets circling both wrists and they stepped inside together.
A big black man with big black hair sat behind an oversized dark wooden desk directly opposite the door. He was wearing a lime green and gray geometric print shirt with an oversized collar. It was shiny. Seventies K.C. And the Sunshine Band shiny. He had a pair of violet-tinted granny glasses pushed halfway down his broad nose and he peered over them at her, his mouth turned down in a frown.
Nessa swallowed drily and looked around. The inside of the office was painted the same creamy yellow as the outside. Long rows of bleached-blond wooden blinds softened the view on the barred windows facing the street. The wooden floors were the same color as the blinds. Old style travel posters for the Caribbean brightened the walls with splashes of pink, yellow, green, and blue.
“You took your sweet time, Miss Scott,” he said gruffly.
“Um,” replied Nessa with typical articulateness.
“What’s your Familiar’s name?”
“Most people can’t see him,” she said by way of an answer.
He looked at her over his glasses, “I am not most people.”
Obviously not.
“His name is Pim, Pim’s Cup Whiskers Rampant.”
“Fine. So, Miss Scott and Mister Pim, your daddy owes me a debt which he seems to think he can run from. He cannot. You were left as collateral. As I explained on the phone several hoursago,” he said the last few words with heavy emphasis.
Okay, yeah, she tried to run and then when that was denied her, stopped for gas and maybe a leisurely coffee at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf with a fat butter croissant.
“Slavery is illegal,” she protested.
“Not in magic,” replied Barracuda clearly unimpressed. “I am collecting on your father’s Bond. Do you know what I do here?”
“Kind of…” she mumbled.
Boy, she was just sparkling with conversation this morning.
“I am licensed to chase and capture those who think they are above the laws of God and man and choose to turn aside from the path of honesty. In other words, they take my money and run.” He turned his head calling, “Ladies, could you join us please?”
There was a shuffle of sound from a connecting room. Nessa could see a couple of desks and rows of metal filing cabinets in what must be the back office.
Quite the largest women Nessa had ever seen emerged through the connecting doorway. They were identical twins and well over six feet tall. They looked to out-weigh their boss by a dozen pounds. Not that they were fat. Far from it.
The women were squeezed into identical black-leather jumpsuits that hugged every bulging muscle. And their hair! Red as a tropical sunset. Every strand was tossed and teased into an up-do that added several more inches to their already impressive intimidation factor.
They were also, Nessa was certain, only marginally human.
Barracuda gestured at the women. “Meet Pansy and Rose Marie La Rue, my Bond Enforcement agents and valued partners.”
They gave her surprisingly charming smiles.
Nessa automatically tried to smile back but her mouth muscles refused to respond. Gravity had inexplicably increased around her as the reality of Barracuda Bail Bonds sank in. Breathing was an effort. Her heart thudded against her chest.
One of them — Pansy or Rose Marie, she didn’t know who was who — walked over and held out a hand for Pim to sniff.
Well, well. They could see him too.
“Hello there, young man,” she said, her voice deep and musical with a bit of a Caribbean lilt, “aren't you just the handsomest Tom around. Yes, you are!”
Pim preened and gave the woman’s hand a head butt before turning to the side and letting her stroke him.
He was a whore for a compliment.
Were these women going to chase her dad? And if they caught him, would she still be collateral?
Those were important questions. If only her tongue wasn’t stuck to the roof of her mouth so she could ask.
“Skip Tracer, Bounty Hunter or as we say here in California, Bail Recovery Enforcement Agent, whatever you choose to call it,” Barracuda continued, “bond enforcement is a big part of this business. Pansy and Rose Marie can handle the sorry asses of all the murderers, rapists, bank robbers, and arsonists who leave slime trails across my door. However, and this is a big however, not all my clients are human. I also keep supernatural bonds for a variety of magical tribunals and demonic agencies on the books. Recently, one of my supernatural skip tracers had an unfortunate encounter with a machete.” He paused and sighed deeply. “May he rest in peace.”
The two large women sighed as well.
Brightening, he gave her an expectant look. “Your daddy’s bond came due just in time. Looks like your it.”
“I’m it what?” Nessa had lost track of the conversation somewhere around the words killers and rapists.
He grimaced. “Keep up! You, young lady, are my new supernatural skip tracer. For those special bond runners.”
“How?” she said in one strangled word for what had to be obvious to the very large Mr. Roman Barracuda.
Nessa was a scrappy five-feet-two inches tall. A hundred and ten pounds on a good week when there were regular meals. She had dark brown bra-length hair and what could best be described as regular features. Few people had a chance to see the brilliant smile and deep dimples that transformed her face.
He gave her a dispassionate up and down.
“Supernatural Skip Tracing is not based on brawn alone. You have brains, or so your father says, as well as other gifts. Powerful ones.”
She was going to protest but shut her mouth. He wasn’t wrong. She was an Elemental, a Blood Witch with control over the air. She’d inherited it from her mother’s side of the family. Among other less desirable things.
Barracuda pulled open a drawer and tossed a pair of metal handcuffs over.
“You will need these.”
She stared at the cuffs.
Pim jumped up onto the desk and batted them with his paw knocking the cuffs to the floor. He threw a feline sneer at Barracuda, laying his ears flat.
Barracuda read the expression correctly and frowned at the cat.
Pim spun around, tail high, showing the man his butt hole. A cat version of ‘Up yours!’
Barracuda rolled his eyes, “Don’t you give me attitude Mr. Pim. You’re what, Miss Scott? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”
“Nineteen.”
Barracuda tilted his chair away from his desk and adjusted his glasses.
One of the enormous women snorted.
Barracuda’s eyes shifted to them. They suddenly got busy looking around the room like they’d never noticed those colorful travel posters before.
Their boss cleared his throat noisily and shifted through the papers on his desk. He pulled out one sheet with something paper-clipped to it and frowned.
“Never mind. In the great state of California, you can get your Bounty Hunters license at eighteen.”
“No way,” Nessa protested.
“I assure you, it’s true.”
“I can’t buy alcohol but I can chase down and capture felons?”
“It’s a wonderful world,” he said with a grin.
“Isn’t there...like...a test or something?”
He nodded. “You are absolutely right. Two separate State-administered exams. I am happy to report you did wonderfully and will have copies of the certificates to prove it.”
“What about a license?”
“In California, a license is technically not necessary if you have written permission from me. Which you will. A Private Investigator’s license though goes a long way.”
Pulling at the paper clip, he tossed a driver’s license-sized card to the woman nearest him.
“Pansy, please date that appropriatly. Rose Marie, a photo if you will.”
Rose Marie tugged a cellphone from her back pocket.
“Smile!” she said before clicking a picture.
“What?” said Nessa, startled.
The two women gave their boss a snappy salute and stepped into the back office.
“We will adjust your Driver’s License to match. You also successfully completed the forty-hour police training course. And a twenty-hour insurance-approved pre-licensing class. Very diligent of you.”
Nessa felt the whole situation was spiraling into farce.
“Wait, wait,” her voice cracked. “I can’t do this. A forty-hour class? Twenty-hours for insurance? That means there are rules. Lots and lots of rules. And procedures. Legal ones. I don’t know any of them. I don’t know! Please.” Her voice had taken on a pleading tone but she didn’t care.
“As a supernatural Skip Tracer, there are no rules.”
“What about as a human bounty hunter?” she persisted. “Cops are always around when you don’t want them.”
Growing up with a magical scam artist for a father, Nessa knew that only too well. The police seemed to have a sixth sense for magical mischief.
“By working for me, you are legally in pursuit of felons. There ispaperwork and I will supply you with that before you leave here today. You must keep these papers on you at all times in case the police become involved.” He stared at her hard over his glasses, “Which they had better not. With the paperwork I mentioned, slightly adjusted for the magical sort, you have every right to apprehend them, even entering their home without a search warrant. The use of deadly force is frowned upon.”
There was a bark of laughter from the other room.
He shifted his eyes in the direction of the laugh, “Though sometimes warranted.”
There was another raucous laugh.
Pim tugged at Nessa’s sleeve. His eyes, magnified to several times their size by the thick lenses, looked as puzzled as she felt.
“I’m not a detective.”
Pim meowed.
“We are not detectives.”
“No. Mr. Pim is a werecat under a rather unfortunate invisibility curse but with his own defensive arsenal. You, too, can be lethal, Miss Scott.”
Nessa squirmed inwardly. Had her nasty secrets been revealed when she crossed the threshold? She had rather a lot for someone her age.
“Do you have a car?” he said changing the subject abruptly.
“What?” The interview was going too fast; she couldn’t keep up.
“An au-to-mo-bile.” He paused on each syllable like she was ESL or something. “A mechanical mode of transportation.”
“I have a scooter.”
Barracuda threw his hands up in the air. “A scooter? A damn scooter? How are you going to pursue felons, handcuff thugs and/or demons, or scrape up the remains of your quarry, and bring them to judgement on a damn scooter?”
Heat was building behind her eyes, spreading down her neck and shoulders into her fingers.
God damn her father. God damn this man. God damn them all.
She jumped out of her chair and slapped her hands down on his desk. “I don’t know!” she said, her voice cracking. “It was never an issue I had to consider until this moment!”
A gust of wind blew through the bungalow. Then another, stronger this time.
“I don’t know how to...” she pounded on his desk again causing her bracelets to spark. “How to do this! I am not my deadbeat father’s keeper!”
Her eyes were burning.
“I am a college student at Santa Monica Junior College,” she said. “I have a scholarship and I am going,” she slapped the desk, “to go on to University as God is my witness.”
Pansy and Rose Marie rewarded her a round of applause from the other room.
Barracuda, however, seemed unimpressed with her outburst. He gave her a look she couldn’t interpret, “Oh, we both know you are so much more than a college girl.”
Nessa’s stomach slid into her shoes.
‘So much more...’
How much did he know? About her.
The bad stuff? The worse stuff? The worst?
The wind flowed faster and one of the framed posters on the wall tumbled to the floor.
Nessa’s hair floated up from her shoulders as a spider web of shadows spun from her fingers onto the desk.
Barracuda leaned forward, watching Nessa, eyes narrowing. Opening a drawer, he pulled out a colorful string of metal amulets.
She felt the snap and crackle of energy building across the desk. A familiar shiver of electricity sparked in her palms.
Pim yowled. His fur bristled, absorbing the rogue electricity zipping around her. His claws and fangs began to lengthen.
Pansy and Rose Marie stepped out from the backroom to stand by their boss. They did not look happy.
Roman snapped his fingers.
Around her, the floor changed. Wooden planks became a black, viscous liquid. Monstrous shapes began to ooze up from the ground.
Nessa caught her breath.
The heat behind her eyes flamed.
‘Crap, crap, crap,” she chanted silently. She could not afford to lose another pair of contacts.
Despite the scary floor shift, she did not believe she was in danger from the Bail Bondsman. Like most of magical LA, she knew Barracuda was a Voodoo King. She also knew he followed Legba, the guardian of the crossroads between the living and spirit worlds. He stood on the side of righteousness. The profitable side of righteousness but, nevertheless, not the opposite.
She was just scared and freaking out. Freaking out was not good for Nessa or anyone arund her. Bad things happened.
Abruptly, she wrapped her hands over her chest, tucking them into her armpits. She forced herself to sit in the chair, close her eyes, and count backward from one hundred. Pim stayed where he was, a menacing growl rumbling in his throat.
‘Breath in, breath out,’ she told herself.
‘Breath in, breath out.’
At seventy, she opened her eyes.
The wind died with a sigh. Her hair settled around her shoulders. The snap and crackle dissipated into wherever snaps and crackles went.
Roman Barracuda’s expression had changed from fierce to one of concern. He laid the amulets on the table and made a dismissing motion to Pansy and Rose Marie. With a shrug, they returned to forging her license. At least that’s what Nessa assumed they were doing.
Pim had stopped his transformation. His fur was still bristling and his ears lay flat against his head. The cat stalked over and pushed his face right up to the big man’s. He angrily flicked his long tail and voiced a series of yowls, digging his claws into a sheaf of papers under his paws.
“If your Familiar is saying ‘damn fool,’ I agree,” Barracuda said in his deep, resonant voice. “I am used to dealing with…” he paused, “individuals of a more recalcitrant nature. That was perhaps too much information delivered too forcefully.”
“Ya’ think?” breathed Nessa.
Pansy or her twin stepped over to hand Barracuda a laminated card. Pim backed up, though he stayed on the desk, the growl still rumbling.
Barracuda pushed up his glasses, carefully looking over the card front and back before handing it to Nessa.
Nessa had no frame of reference for Bounty Hunter or P.I. licenses. The thing looked official. State Seal, serial number, office address. Nessa groaned at the photo. And she thought the one on her driver’s license was bad.
Barracuda shifted in his chair, clearing his throat. “Miss Scott, your father’s debt must be paid. The Bond has been signed in blood. The contract is valid and I can neither undo nor ignore it. My hands are tied.”
She looked up from the card to meet his eyes.
“Better to owe me than someone else,” he said more warmly. “There are far worse collectors out there. Your father understood. It’s why he came to me.”
Nessa shuddered inwardly. An image of burning houses, blinding black smoke, and cries of despair flashed in her mind’s eye. A man shaking her hard, ordering her to bring the lightning.
He was right. There were worse people to owe.
While Barracuda tugged some papers out from under Pim’s paws, Nessa mentally tallied up her current situation.
Fact one: Today she had become an indentured servant thanks to her father.
Fact two: The bond was magical. No escape from that except death.
Fact three: The Bondsmanr was a Voodoo King with monsters living in his floor.
Conclusion: Her life was even more royally screwed up than before. Given her curse, how was that even possible?
He cleared his throat, sat up straight, and shifted to all-business mode. “You have some unique talents which I believe will help you adapt to this job in no time. Yours has been, shall I say, an unconventional life?”
Nessa said nothing but sniffled several times. Her nose had started to run.
“Will I…” she took a deep breath and tried to steady her voice, “will I get paid?”
Barracuda laughed loud and long.
Nessa cringed, “I have a cat to feed.”
Pim had a sticky note on one back paw and was trying to vigorously shake it off. Nessa leaned over to pull it.
“Rent...” she started to add.
“You live with your Aunt Emerald in the little apartment above the garage. I know for a fact she does not charge you rent.”
Not exactly. Aunt Em traded Nessa’s help with her psychic scams for room and board.
Insert shaky voice, “I feel the spirit wind.”
Cue Nessa and wind charm.
Insert shaky voice again, “It carries the chill of the grave....”
Cue Nessa for temperature drop.
And so on, and so forth.
“Gas?” she pursued.
Barracuda laughed again. “I will see to it that neither you, your cat, nor your transportation starve. Though we must see about finding a car for your bond enforcement work. It is difficult to transport miscreants of a supernatural nature without a back seat and a set of iron manacles bolted to the floor.”
“Amen to that!” chorused the women from the back office.
Manacles?
Nessa swallowed again.
“Now when you capture your victim, I mean, um...quarry, do you know what to say?”
She looked at him blankly.
He gave an impatient sigh, “Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent. Say it.”
“Bail...bail recovery...”
“Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent.
She took a shaky breath, “Bail Fugitive Recovery...”
“Agent.”
“Agent. Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent.”
“Be sure you announce yourself.” Barracuda handed her a manila envelope. “Leave your duffel bag and get your skinny little scooter on over to the South Bay Cultural and Event Center in Torrance. You know where that is?”
Nessa nodded, clutching the envelope tightly to her chest, her hands trembling.
Okay, she had no idea. But the almighty Map App on her phone would find it.
“The details of the case are inside. This gal is not going to give you any trouble. Just bring her to the tribunal’s office in Redondo Beach. The address is there,” he pointed at the folder. “She’s attending a meeting. Starts at noon.”
“She’s a witch?” asked Nessa hoarsely.
“Indeed she is. A naughty one.” He shook his head making unhappy clucking sounds. “Wastin’ the time and money of her elders. Don’t let me down, Miss Scott.”
Nessa wanted to say how could she let him down when she had no idea what she was doing?
“What are you standing there for? This girl is not going to catch herself!” He shooed her off like a bug.
Nessa turned without a word and ran out of the office with Pim at her heels.
CHAPTER TWO
The South Bay Cultural and Event Center had that brutalist architecture popular in SoCal during the seventies. A gray concrete fortress where the idea of fun looked like it might be a trial by the Spanish Inquisition.
Much of Torrance felt like some sort of seventies time loop so the building fit right in.
Nessa and Pim re-locked the scooter near the event center’s parking garage. Once out of the basket, Pim indicated by clawing her ankle that he had, ‘things to say!’
No doubt.
Squatting, she shrugged off the backpack and took out his faded red plastic Speak and Spell. Cat’s vocal cords – even magical cats – are not made for human speech. Pim had six claws on his front paws, the extra one working as an opposable thumb. He could read and write and type. His paws were too awkward for most keyboards. Grandma’ Hattie had hit on the Speak and Spellback in the day. Way back. Thank god for duct tape and Double AAs.
Pim’s paws worked the simple keyboard.
“Are you out of your mind?” the female electronic voice said tonelessly.
Nessa winced. Despite the synthesizer’s lack of emotion, Pim typed with attitude.
“Rock and a hard place, kitty. You felt the tether, just like me.”
And he had. Pim was her Familiar, they would ghost each other’s feelings ‘till death do us part.’
“File. Let me see.”
She put the top sheet of paper down for him to read. A picture of the witch, Fiona Garde. Fair-haired, blue eyes. Curses and distance spells her specialty. A Blood Witch of the Thirteen Families. Nessa knew about them. Every witch of merit knew about thatcoven. She and Pim kept reading. Legalese. Paragraph, paragraph. Council tribunal…blah, blah, blah… accused of killing a herd of sacred sheep with black magic spells for personal gain.
“Sheep?” Pim typed, the question obvious.
“Sacred sheep,” affirmed Nessa.
Her cell beeped an alarm. She’d set it before leaving Barracuda’s to the time of the meeting Fiona was supposed to be attending. Seemed Barracuda placed a tracking spell on bonded clients he felt might run.
So why wasn’t he tracking her father? No fool would lay out money on that man without a tracking spell and possibly a ball and chain.
A little cluster of spidery shadows appeared at her feet much like those on Barracuda’s desk. Pim sent them spinning away with the swipe of one paw and a hiss. He meowed up at her and she didn’t need the Speak and Spell to know what he said.
Barracuda wasn’t the only one with tracking spells.
Nessa asked at the reception desk where the DMA (Dark Magic Anonymous) meeting was being held. She followed the directions downstairs. They were in the Sequoia Room; second basement. She took her time checking the layout of the floor before cautiously opening the door.
A dozen or so men and women and one person in a blue furry wolf costume were sitting in a circle on folding metal chairs. Most were looking attentively at a handsome red-headed woman in a red-print wrap dress standing at a podium.
The meeting had already begun. With a shy wave at the assembled group, Nessa quietly took the nearest empty seat in the circle.
“My name is Phoebe and I am a Dark Magic addict,” said the woman at the podium.
“Hello, Phoebe,” chorused the group.
“Up yours, Phoebe,” the woman next to Nessa mumbled under her breath.
The furry wolf said nothing.
Nessa glanced at the young woman in the chair and almost laughed. Short blond hair cut in a fashionable bob, green eyes, Gucci sunglasses pushing back her side-swept bangs. She’d sat right next to Fiona What’s-Her-Name from Barracuda’s file. What were the odds?
There was another empty chair on the woman’s other side.
Hmmm.
Perhaps Fiona was not a popular member of the DMA.
Pim jumped out of Nessa’s arms to stalk around their quarry. No one could see him, she was sure, even in this gathering. His curse was pretty much all-encompassing –except when crossing the threshold of a Voodoo King it seems.
Despite Fiona’s presence, her file indicated she was not at all interested in giving up Dark Magic. If her Coven Tribunal had not ordered her to attend these meetings, she would probably be figuring out how to hex them all.
Nessa glanced curiously at the fuzzy wolf.
Not fuzzy.
Furry.
That’s it. He was a Furry. One of those cos-playing sub-tribes who dressed as anthropomorphic animals to feel social or sexy or normal. She’d heard it was also a kinky sex thing. A subculture of the subculture. Furry porn.
‘Freaks,’ she thought. Then mentally slapped herself. She ran around with an invisible werecat and could command the wind with a snap of her fingers. Who was she to call anyone a freak?
Furries came in all sorts of incarnations: dogs, cats, wolves, foxes, bears, lions, even dragons. To do this they made, purchased, or rented fur suits. A good one could cost thousands of dollars. Wolf-guy’s had to be top-of-the-line. She watched him flex his finger-paws. It looked as though the muscles in his furry arms bunched to match. Nessa was torn between ridicule and admiration for his attention to detail.
As if sensing her gaze, he turned his face in her direction and arched his brows. The wolf’s mouth opened in a wicked grin. Maybe it was just the costume’s expression but Nessa felt like a double-decker bacon sandwich at a free lunch.
Its big eyes blinked.
Whoa! Too much realism.
Pim tapped her ankle and she shifted her gaze. He gave her a ‘Now what?’ look.
Good question.
With a gurgle, her stomach slid about six inches toward her knees. She couldn’t just jump up and yell… what was she supposed to say? Bond…um… bond…agent...enforcement. No. Damn it.
She googled “California Bail Bond Agent” on her cell. Blah, blah, blah. Ah! Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent.
Right. Yell that and then handcuff witchy-witch.
Okay. Realistically, that was not happening. She’d wait until the meeting ended. Barracuda said the girl wouldn’t give her any trouble.
Nessa stole another glance at the pretty blonde. She was wearing a light turquoise argyle twin set and short pink pleated skirt. Her long legs were crossed. She was swinging one Tory Birch pink ballet flat impatiently, her features twisted into a bored frown. She’d probably had the shoes dyed to match the skirt.
Nessa was not sure about Barracuda’s assessment. This girl looked like plenty of trouble.
Pim jumped into her lap and she began stroking his back nervously.
This earned her a WTF look from the girl.
That happened a lot. She could see Pim clearly and kept forgetting to everyone else, she looked like some crazy girl petting her imaginary unicorn.
Phoebe babbled on about a spell involving the Palos Verde PTA president or something.
A couple of chairs away sat a slim, good-looking guy, brown skin, black hair with a natural wave brushed back from his forehead. Latino maybe?
Those cheekbones!
East Indian?
A bit of a mix, she decided.
He was wearing summer wool slacks in a slate gray, a deceptively simple white tee, and a deconstructed black jacket. His black loafers had to be hand sewn. Her dad might have been a scam artist but he taught her, in addition to survival skills, how to evaluate good clothes. After all, the richer the mark, the bigger the take.
His eyes drifted lazily across the room to meet hers. Chocolate brown with pupils the size of nickels. He didn’t smile but his knife-cut lips twitched ever so slightly at the corners.
This guy looked like someone who understood how to benefit from some carefully placed dark magic. Probably why he was here.
Phoebe finally wound up her story about the Palos Verde PTA and flesh-eating bacteria. Did she say she’d cursed the President and she died or did she say ‘almost died’? Who knew the PTA in the South Bay was so cutthroat?
Nessa automatically analyzed the woman’s clothes from the ground up as she walked by. Fake Jimmy Choo’s. The buckles were wrong. Silver instead of bronze and she’d bet Pim’s catnip the red Dianne von Furstenberg wrap dress was a knock-off from Nordstrom Rack. The one in Glendale on Brand. How much of a dark magic threat could she be if she was wearing knock offs?
The woman sat down and a tall man with salt and pepper hair and a soul patch goatee pointed a finger in Fiona’s direction. Group coordinator maybe?
The blond stood, groaned, and walked with a becoming sway of her narrow hips to the podium.
Tossing her hair, she said, “My name is Fiona and I, too, am a Dark Magic addict. Unlike Phoebe, I am not interested in giving it up. I killed a bunch of sheep in Topanga Canyon by mistake. So what? If my Coven Master Margaret holier-than-thou Halloranhad not laid a Geas on me to attend these stupid meetings, I would be hitting Frieda’s in the Americana with a glass of bubbly at my lips and salsa on my chin.”
‘Called it!’ Nessa thought to herself.
“Perhaps why your coven Master asked you to come?” prompted Salt-and-Pepper Hair.
“Well, there was this house,” said Fiona. “I was working a spell to get the price down. Seemed to me like a perfectly valid reason to toss a few spells.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t all,” he started to say. “The sheep...”
An older woman with gray hair interrupted, “Sheep, smeep. Where’s the house?”
“Glendale,” said Fiona. “Walking distance to the Whole Foods on Brand andTrader Joe’s,” she smirked.
Walking distance to two supermarkets? Fiona had the right to smirk.
“Shit,” said one of the men, red hair and freckles, heavyset, thick glasses, Dodgers cap. “That’s near the entrance to the 134 and not far from the 5.”
“Plus you can take Brand all the way to the 101,” added the gray-haired women. “Surface streets are so much better at rush hour.”
“How many bedrooms,” asked Salt-and-Pepper Hair.
Real Estate and freeway traffic were vital topics to LA residents. Much more important than Dark Magic confessions.
Fiona smiled, “Two bedrooms, two baths and half bath for guests. Carport, new fixtures, and appliances.”
The guy in the Dodger’s cap leaned forward eagerly, hands clenched. “How much?”
Fiona told them how much she paid versus the original asking price.
The woman with gray hair whistled, “I’d kill more than a few sheep for that.”
Salt-and-Pepper Hair’s expression said he would too, but he moved his hands in a damping down gesture trying to reassert his role as moderator. They were here, after all, to stop using Dark Magic for fun and profit.
And that’s when things got interesting.
Furry Wolf jumped to his feet. He was holding something shiny in one paw.
Good-Looking Guy pulled a gun and fired.
Everyone started screaming and Nessa mentally cursed her deadbeat dad again.
She was on her feet and running for Fiona before Good-Looking Guy had even gotten off his shot. She’d noticed the shift in Furry Wolf’s body language. The sudden tension in his legs, the alert set of his head.
So many flashbacks to life with Dad.
She plowed into the podium taking it and Fiona down. The sharp object flew over Nessa’s shoulder and embedded itself quivering in the wall.
The shot brought Furry Wolf to its knees.
Nessa grabbed Fiona’s arm and pulled her toward the door, Pim in the lead.
Fiona held back a little until Nessa said, “It’s after you!”
No more urging was needed. As they barreled through the double doors, another gunshot barked behind them.
Pim skidded to a stop by Nessa, sending Fiona sprawling as she tripped over the invisible cat.
They needed to block the door. Jam the handle and lock furry-guy inside. Nessa had spied the firehose case and extinguisher near the stairs on the way in. Deadbeat Dad had thoroughly drilled into her the need to locate escape routes and possible weapons. She did it automatically.
The door was thrown open, knocking Fiona back to her knees as she tried to pick herself up.
“Fuck!” Fiona yelled, hitting the floor with a thump.
Nessa spun around to see the guy in nice slacks, gun still in hand, turn and fire two more rounds. The screams from the Sequoia room increased in volume. He shoved the doors closed and backed up against them bracing his feet.
There was a crash as someone hit them from the other side.
Nessa smashed the glass case with her elbow and grabbed the hose on the metal reel. She pulled it out.
And out, and out. How long was this damn hose?
The guy was shoved a few inches forward and a furry hand grabbed the edge of one door. Pim jumped and took a vicious bite of the hand. The Furry howled and the hand disappeared.
Good-Looking Guy grabbed the hose, back still against the door. The two of them threaded part of the canvas through the handles and pulled it tight. The guy had more strength than her and he knotted it. There was a furious pounding from the other side.
Dark Magic Anonymous had one of the free community rooms in the far corner of the second basement. Nessa didn’t wait to see if the hose would hold. She yanked Fiona to her feet and ran in the direction of the main stairs.
Pim tossed her his glasses and bounded ahead, transforming in seconds. He was completely visible in his werecat form and Fiona squealed at his sudden appearance. The werecat was a nightmarish version of the plump grey and white striped kitty: bigger than a full-grown lynx with scythe-like teeth and claws, his stripes squished together in a muddy mix.
Misjudging a jump, he smacked into the railing.
Sadly, his eyesight did not improve with the transformation. A reliable way to keep his glasses on in this alternate form had so far eluded them.
On the landing of the first basement stairs, Pim yowled a war cry. A second ferocious howl answered from above.
Crap, there were more.
Pim launched himself up the stairs.
Furious yowls and howls and the smack of bodies echoed down the stairwell. Nessa held Fiona back and crouched low on the step.
“What did you do,” she panted at Fiona, “to those sheep?”
Fiona waved her hand, “Oh that. Like I said, about the house. I needed two things.” She counted off on her fingers. “One, for the price to come down. Two, to remove the person in front of me in the buying queue. The houses on either side sort of burned down along with the trees in the house I wanted. Front andback yard. Bang! Price drop. Then the buyer in front of me almost drowned.”
Nessa gave her an appropriately appalled look.
“In a bathtub, okay? He didn’t die. And it was just a little coma. He’s blinking his eyes now and everything. His stupid wife broke her own legs when she slipped on the water. Not my fault, as I told the Coven Tribunal. But I got the house,” she said triumphantly. “And so what if I worked a spell? I was tired of renting. Unfortunately, I had to off-load a shitload of Dark Magic. You know, making sure it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass.”
Nessa understood only too well. What goes around comes around in magic -- unless you re-route the energy onto someone or something else. No need to blacken your soul unnecessarily. Except, magic had a way of sneaking around the corner and knocking you flat anyway. Her mother a lesson in point.
“I didn’t realize the backwash from those spells would require quite that much chaos,” continued Fiona, obviously unrepentant. “The Council pointed out in addition to the sheep I caused a landslide in Topanga Canyon. The road was blocked for days. I, in turn, said they could hardly blame me for infrastructure flaws by the California Department of Highways.”
The howls above them grew louder. Nessa’s skin began to itch and a gust of wind swirled up the stairwell.
“They weren’t just any sheep,” said Good-Looking Guy, “they were sacred Navajo sheep.”
“In Topanga freaking canyon!” snapped Fiona. “Navajos live in Arizona.”
“Seems not all of them,” said the guy.
“And what’s it to you, anyway?” she demanded.
Nessa began to edge her way up the stairs, the sounds of battle receding a little.
She heard the guy say, “I represent the Council of Thirteen Families.”
“You’re here for me?” squeaked Fiona, pushing up against Nessa.
Nessa shrugged her back. “Get in line, dude. I am here for her! Roman Barracuda sent me.”
“Not her,” said the guy, “the assassins. The Shaman who cared for the sheep expected the Tribunal would let you off with a slap on the wrist and he was out for blood. My superiors felt he was going to call a vendetta on you. An unlicensed one. I came here expecting an attack.”
“By Furries?” asked Nessa.
He looked up at her with a rueful smile, “No, I will admit that was a surprise.”
“Sheep!” said Fiona meaningfully, “They were just sheep! It’s not that big a crime.”
“It was to the Shaman,” he said.
Nessa ignored the sheep. “So you’re a cop?”
He drew his bros together in a frown line. “Not really...”
“Do you have a badge,” demanded Nessa.
“Well, yeah.”
“Let me see some I.D. Because I don’t know if I believe you.”
With a look like he was humoring her, the guy pulled out a small brown leather billfold and flipped it open. There was a California PI license and another badge written in, she looked closer, Latin.
Nessa’s Latin was limited to her Grandmother’s spells she’d memorized and Vene Vidi Vinci.Deadbeat Dad’s favorite thing to say after a successful scam: I came, I saw, I conquered.
“Is it real? Because those are easy to fake.” She should know. Barracuda just made one for her.
“Of course it’s real.” He put it back in his pants pocket.
“So you’re a Witch Cop.”
“I am not a Witch Cop,” he protested.
“You have a badge, you’re a witch, and you shot the blue Furry. You are so definitely a Witch Cop.”
Fiona made a sound of exasperation. “Are you here to protect me?”
“Nope. Here to bring justice if they succeededin killing you. I didn’t really expect you to get out of the way.” He pointed with his chin at Nessa. “You are fast. The Furry had a poison hex on a knife ready to go when you tackled the sheep-killer and hightailed it out of the room. I went ahead and shot him anyway. Intent is almost as good as after the fact.”
“Didn’t help,” Nessa scoffed.
“Yeah, kind of thought that hollow point would slow it down.”
“Who cares. Why is Barracuda after me?” Fiona demanded.
“Keep your voice down!” Nessa hissed. “Bond or bail thing. You missed some kind of witchy trial date.”
“That’s next week!” Fiona protested shrilly.
“Shhh! Monday. The tribunal stuff was Monday. Today is Wednesday.”
The girl’s jaw fell. “You are shitting me.” She grabbed her phone, tapping at the screen.
It had gone quiet up above. Encouraged by the silence, Nessa edged cautiously up the next set of stairs. A green Furry tiger costume was sprawled on the upper landing. Pim straddled it, his mouth around the tiger’s throat.
The Furry lay unmoving, paws held stiffly in front. Nessa could see the black spells circling each, ready to throw.
Nessa moved closer. Pim snarled, his jaw closing slightly on its throat. He was waiting for Nessa’s orders. Even with his bad eyesight, he could smell it was her.
Nessa stared at the deep gouges and bloody tears on the tiger’s arms and chest and across one side of its face.
She could clearly see the fur was attached to skin and the skin was part of a body. A body of flesh and blood.
The Furry tiger was not a costume at all.
“What the hell?” she said out loud.
Shifters, despite what movies would have you believe, are not common. The energy needed to transform from human to animal is enormous and generally fatal after a few years. True Were creatures were already animals, like Pim. Magical ones that most assumed originated in the Fae lands. Or maybe Hell.
The magical transformation was built into their DNA. Effortless. As if they just switched places. The Werewolves she’d met had been wolves that could shift into people. Not the other way around.
But how could a costume come to life?
Fiona pushed closer. “Fuck me!” She raised her phone.
“Are you taking pictures?” Nessa demanded.
“It’s an Instagram moment,” she replied, nonchalantly clicking away.
“Evidence, idiot,” snapped Nessa, shoving the phone down.
Fiona did an eye roll to express her ‘so don’t care’ feelings.
Good-Looking Guy had his gun out. “Why isn’t he moving? He’s not dead, I can see him breathing.”
“Poison,” Nessa answered curtly, shrugging out of her backpack and zipping it open.
Magical evolution had made up for Pim’s smaller size by giving the werecat a secret weapon. Both hind legs had poison sacks with a small extendable claw that injected paralyzing nerve toxin into his attacker. It wouldn’t kill but did render them powerless for a time.
She pulled out a bottle of water and a bag of salt. Nessa never went anywhere without a bag of sea salt.
She poured a hefty amount of salt into the water and gave it a vigorous shake. Twisting off the cap she splashed it over the Furry’s paws. The toxin had strangled its voice but the creature gave a hissing moan as the saltwater burned away the magic.
Throwing the salt and water back in the backpack, she took the handcuffs out of her pocket and held them out to Good-Looking Guy.
“What?” he said blankly.
Nessa rolled her eyes, “Cuff his hands to the railing. Pim,” she ordered, “let him go.”
Good-Looking Guy seemed reluctant to touch the tiger and she couldn’t blame him. There were weird vibes coming off this thing.
She leaned over and strained to shove the tiger closer to the railing. Between them, with no help from Fiona, they got his wrists cuffed around the metal. Nessa took the left wrist; Good-Looking Guy the right.
“Why don’t you just kill it?” Fiona asked in a bored voice and waving a hand negligently in its direction.
“A dead body means cops,” explained Nessa. “Crime Scene guys. Evidence. Like your stupid photos. Evidence is bad. This way, only the Furry explains how it got chained to the railing. Kind of doubt our names will come up.”
The tiger had a lot of mass. Pim’s poison probably might not hold much longer.
A loud crash accompanied by an unearthly howl echoed from the second basement.
Furry Number One must have gotten through the door.
Time to go.
Nessa was already moving up the stairs.
At the first basement landing, she hesitated, then skipped ahead a few steps, looked around the bend and up to the main floor.
Several figures at the next landing stared back. A dog, a cat, a bear. Furries.
Fiona and the guy peeked over her shoulder.
“How many of these bastards are there?” said Fiona.
“Those must have been some really terrific sheep,” Nessa muttered.
This floor should mirror the one underneath. That meant there was an emergency exit onto the fire stairs at the end of the first basement corridor.
“Come on,” she said, pushing past them and down the uniformly beige hallway, her footsteps muffled on the industrial-grade carpeting. “Pim can’t handle three. We’ll try the fire exit.”
“Who’s Pim,” shouted Fiona, running after Nessa.
“My cat,” she said over her shoulder, pointing at the werecat.
The itching escalated unbearably on Nessa’s skin as she pulled energy from the air. Little electrical shocks zipped up and down her spine, working their way through her shoulders and into her hands. She didn’t fight them.
A gust of wind rushed ahead, ripping papers from a bulletin board and tossing a stack of pamphlets off a side table.
Pim abruptly stopped and spun around, ears flattened to his head. His lips curled back over his fangs.
Fiona and the guy ran for the fire door but Nessa stopped with Pim.
Blue Wolf stepped onto the landing.
Nessa reached to her waist and ran a thumb over one of the silver charms on her summoning belt. Heat sparked into her hand. She mentally blew on the embers of that fire, letting them flare.
Extending her left hand, she moved her thumb to the next charm on the belt, an embroidered sigil. With an incantation that seared her lips as she spoke, she summoned the wind.
Air whooshedback along the hallway, a whirling dervish that circled wildly around her and Pim. They braced themselves against the pull of Elemental energy.
Blue Wolf came straight at her, teeth bared. He ran on two legs but moved with the feral grace and power of a wild animal.
The Wolf was so close she could see his nostrils flare. Nessa breathed in deeply. She held the air for a heartbeat, then whistled it out.
At the same time, she raised her arms and brought her bracelets together with a swift hard motion. They were not gold or silver or brass. They were inlaid with flint. Once, twice, and a spark.
She spoke the true name of the lightning and with the spark, ignited the chaotic energy circling her.
The lightning strike hit with an explosive crack, flinging the beast up to the ceiling in a blinding flash of light. He smashed into the dated acoustic tile panels. A dozen cracked and fell to the floor. The whirlwind grabbed hold as the Wolf fell, just as she told it to, hurtling him back to the main stairwell and out of sight.
A couple of sprinklers in the ceiling started to spray water. Nessa knew from her dad that a burst of heat did not automatically set off the entire fire prevention system in a building.
Nessa ran to the emergency exit and pushed through with Pim.
The others were already two flights up.
“Thanks for waiting, jerks!” she shouted, taking the metal stairs two at a time.
Their lead hadn’t done them much good.
Fiona was pushing frantically against the handle of the emergency door to the first floor. “Open, damn it!” she shouted.
Banging hard with both fists, the guy yelled, “Help! Open the door!”
“What about the door outside?” She pushed at the emergency door opposite to no effect.
“Locked,” said the guy.
Nessa heard raised voices from the other side of the hallway door, sounds maybe of an argument. Abruptly, they swung open.
A couple of Furries, a brown and white Beagle and a Tabby Cat, stood in the doorway.
“Gotcha’!"they shouted.