Lollypops, Part 2

First things first:

We promised you the links to the place where you can order signed print copies of Sanctuary: the Blue Willow independent bookstore in Houston. Here is the preorder for Sanctuary and here is the zoom link for the release week Q&A event on Saturday August 3rd which will be hosted by Blue Willow.

You don’t have to buy a copy to attend the zoom. Please note that POD books are expensive, and that Sanctuary is a novella. Blue Willow is a small independent book store, so there is a bit of a mark up. The books will have a book plate, a fancy sticker, with our signature.

The next item on the agenda: congratulations, Sarah P. You are our Kinsmen winner!

Sarah P’s comment: I’d check out the food and shopping, then do a hike in the trippy forest, maybe check out the Adra festival.

Mod R will be reaching out by email as well.

Now then. Back to the foul smelling dwellings and pizza-eating dogs.

I slipped into the building. Our office had started as a wedding pavilion, and we’d remodeled it into a long hallway with individual rooms branching off on both sides. The door of Catalina’s office stood open, and I heard her voice. It had a measured, slow cadence. My sister was controlling her temper.

“…As I’ve said, Mr. Rivas, your wife is alive and well.”

Hmm. Judging by that tone, she could use some back up.

And she wasn’t in her office like I first thought. She was across the hallway in the conference room, which meant she wanted to be able to exit the room quickly if things went sour. In her office, she would’ve had to get around the desk to reach the door, while in the conference room, the client would sit toward the back of the room.

“I’ve paid your ridiculous fee!” the man growled.

Our fees were not ridiculous. They were carefully calculated and reasonable, considering the level of the service we provided. How dare you?

“Your retainer has been refunded. Your wife is an adult, Mr. Rivas. You hired us to find her because, as you’ve indicated during our initial meeting, you worried about her well-being. I’m here to assure you that she is safe and unharmed. She simply doesn’t want to be found.”

I stopped just before the glass wall of the conference room. As agitated as he sounded, barging in on the meeting could escalate things. The shades hiding the windows of the room were down, and I couldn’t see anything.

Honestly, Catalina, would it have killed you to prep the room?

A woman’s voice floated down – my sister must’ve turned on one of the monitors.

“I’m perfectly fine, Estevo. I know what you want, and I don’t have it. I threw it away.”

Threw what away? The wedding band? The engagement ring? Some priceless family heirloom?

 “The marriage is over. My lawyers will reach out. Don’t look for me.”

A citizen of United States had a right to abandon their life and walk away. However, a decision like that carried certain financial and legal ramifications, especially if minor children were involved or if the person who wanted to vanish was contractually obligated to remain available, like a soldier enlisted in the military, for example. But fundamentally, disappearing wasn’t against the law.

“What did she promise you?” Rivas demanded.

Probably nothing. The Baylor Investigative Agency had only three rules: we didn’t break the law, we stayed bought once hired, and we had to be able to look our reflection in the eye. It wasn’t a matter of taking a bribe. My sister must’ve determined that Mrs. Rivas was in imminent danger from her husband. The last rule always trumped the previous two.

“Our business is concluded. We regret that we are unable to assist you further.” Catalina appeared in the doorway of the conference room. “Good-bye, Mr. Rivas.”

“I don’t think so.” His voice turned cold.

Okay, change of plans. Now was the perfect time to barge in.

Magic contracted in the conference room like a spring being compressed. A hopper.  Shit.

Catalina tried to dash out into the hallway. She made it two and a half steps before the magic burst, and she hurtled through the air, straight at me.

We collided. The impact swept me off my feet.

A monstrous shape swirled with a kaleidoscope of colors in my mind, and I grabbed a dark brown shade and yanked it to myself, trying to reinforce my body. My back smashed into the wall next to the door.

Ow. Not quite fast enough.

My sister landed on top of me in a heap of arms and legs.

Ow, ow.

A dark-haired man in his forties stepped out of the conference room.

I shoved Catalina off of me into the break room to our left and scrambled after her. We flattened ourselves on both sides of the glass wall facing the hallway.

Hoppers were bad news. They compressed the space around them, launching either themselves or their chosen objects through it. A high caliber hopper could cover short distances very quickly and if they were a Prime, they could hop through solid walls.

Rivas didn’t launch anything at us. He strode into Catalina’s office instead.

Something thudded. An alarming sound of shattered glass followed.

Catalina got that scary look on her face that usually meant her patience had run dry. 

“That asshole is ransacking my office, looking for something to point him to the location of his estranged wife.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

I leaned out. Rivas was rummaging through Catalina’s desk. A pair of charming pink cat-eared headphones perched on his head.

“He put your headphones on,” I reported.

“Damn it.”

Normally she would just sing him out, but the headphones put a new wrinkle in that plan.

I stuck my head out again. Magic compressed. Something shot at me from Catalina’s office, shattering the bullet-resistant glass wall on the way. I ducked, and a big Yankee candle, in a jar with a glass lid, whistled through the doorway between Catalina and me and exploded against the far wall, spraying glass shards all over. Oh, the irony.

“He found the closet,” Catalina squeezed out. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Let’s not be hasty.” Subduing him was warranted. Killing would mean litigation and damages.

“That’s the Beach Walk. I can tell by the color. You can’t buy it, it’s no longer on sale. Do you know how much that damn candle cost?”

Another candle missile thudded into the wall next to the first. If one of those hit her or me, we’d be lucky if we made it to the hospital. He was actually trying to kill us.

“One more, and I will end you!” Catalina called out.

“Stop throwing the candles, you bastard! They are seasonal!”

“Tell me where she is, and I will leave!” he yelled.

Oh no. Leaving was no longer an option. “You will leave here in handcuffs or a bag. Your choice!”

Putting things into perspective never hurt.

The door was right there. Technically, we could escape or call for backup. But neither of us would do it. We couldn’t allow him to punk us in our own office. Borrowing another aspect of my metamorphosis form so soon would wipe me out. I would need a nap quickly after, so if something went wrong, Catalina would be by herself.

A third candle streaked between us and smashed into the wall. Thud!

“I’ll feather him out and you shoot him,” Catalina said.

“With what gun?”

“The gun in your purse.” She pointed at my purse lying by the front door.

“I don’t have it.”

Thud!

“What? You always have a gun.”

“I took it out because I babysat Arthur yesterday. He knows I keep lollypops in my purse.”

“Since when?”

“Since forever! The last time he found the Hellcat and was disassembling it in mid-air in two seconds. I can’t let a five-year-old have access to my gun. You saw that repeating crossbow he built out of garbage. He will turn my Hellcat into a world-ending death ray.”

Thud!

“He can’t make a death ray. There is no such thing, and he doesn’t have the parts for it.”

Sometimes she was so literal, it hurt. “He took apart a doorbell and made a taser!”

My sister made big eyes at me. “Are you telling me you went into the city without a gun?”

“Of course not! It’s in my glove compartment. I had court today, so I didn’t put it back in my purse.”

Thud!

“Vernon case?”

“Yes. I testified for the prosecution and then his mother pulled some kind of nasty worm from under her clothes and threw it at me.”

I fucking hated summoners. Hated them. Every single one. They reached into the arcane realm, knowing nothing about it, and yanked creatures out, and then the rest of us suffered the consequences.

Thud!

“Is that what happened to your clothes?” Catalina asked.

The memory of the pallid four-foot leech flying through the air at me popped in my head like a soap bubble. I’d caught it just before it landed on me, and the feeling of its wrinkled slimy flesh against my fingers was so disgusting, I gagged and tasted the coffee from that morning in my mouth, and then its maw opened large enough to swallow a basketball, like some pit studied with teeth…

“It vomited stomach bile all over me.”

I had to strangle it. I stood at the witness stand, in my nice outfit, in the middle of testifying against a man who defrauded hundreds of investors and then killed a woman to cover it up, and I squeezed the life out of a revolting arcane tape worm so it wouldn’t injure anyone else while it sprayed foul smelling slime at me.

Fuck it.

I yanked the red glow into myself and lunged into the doorway. The next candle hurtled through the air like a pink grenade. I caught it and launched it back. Here, have some Juicy Watermelon.

The candle smashed into Rivas’s chest. He folded in half and went down.

Catalina stared at me.

“What?”

“Sometimes I wonder about you.”

“I wonder about you all the time. I’ve had a very hard day.” I marched into her office, picked up Rivas by his foot, and dragged him into the hallway over broken glass. “I got vomited on, I killed a creature with my hands, my dog had diarrhea, I got thrown into the wall… I just wanted some candles. That was all.”

It took about thirty minutes to wrap Rivas up and turn him over to Houston PD. By the end of it, I was over the candles. I was over everything.

“Fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of damage,” I told Catalina.

She stopped surveying her ruined office and looked at me. “Seems high.”

“I’m going to replace all this broken glass with ballistic-resistant polycarbonite. Please don’t argue with me. I know you think it looks cheap, but  it’s clear that the glass-clad version isn’t cutting it.”

Catalina raised her hands in the air.

I sighed, walked over to the candle closet, and grabbed three candles at random. “Look on the bright side. You have room to shop.”

Catalina grimaced.

I headed for the door and stopped. “Hey. What was it that she threw away?”

“Mrs. Rivas?”

“Mhm.”

Catalina reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a small key. 

“Bank safety deposit box?”

“Yep. Houston Federal Credit Union,” she said.

“What’s in there?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She just said she didn’t want anything to do with it.” Catalina gave me a small smile. “Do you want it?”

“No. I want to swim in my pool and drink a mojito.”

“Are you sure?” She practically sang that out.

“I’m sure.”

I went to the broken door, made a U turn, came back, swiped the key from her fingers, and headed to the front door.  Catalina’s melodious laugh floated behind me.

So I was curious. Sue me.