Update
The scene was pretty full of content today. I think it came out well, though it could be one of the clunkier bits to edit when I go through the revision process. Only time will tell, but for a first draft and with the perspective of having just finished writing it, I'm happy with it.
Current Word Count: 42,548
Scene of the Day
“Lugus Investigations. How may I help you?” a bright,
airy voice chirped from the phone.
“Morn’, Jess.”
“Oh, hey, Morg! You’re up pretty early.”
“Unfortunately. We’ve got a job.”
“Since when?” Jessica returned, seeming annoyed.
I could almost see her flipping through her desk
calendar through the phone.
Unfortunately, I was too tired and irritated to find the
usual amusement in her slight OCD traits.
“Since a Camarilla ghoul took someone out at the Zodiac.”
A small gasp sounded.
A short string of Japanese that I couldn’t even begin to
translate, but still blushed at, quickly followed it up.
“-what the hell kind of idiot would do that!?” she
finished.
“That’s what I said,” I agreed easily.
“Wait. The Zodiac? At this time of the day? Were you
already there, or-”
“Stop. Innuendo at me later.”
She snorted at that, taking my unusually low patience
with the stride that only our more-years-than-I-cared-to-admit friendship could
give her.
“I need you too look into a Cassandra and a Janet.
They’re both in some affiliation with Jason Coldwell, and at least Cassie, our
killer, has ties to the Camarilla.”
She gave a slight murmur of agreement, before keys began
rapidly clicking in the background.
“No problem. I’ll get working on… wait. Did you say
Jason Coldwell?” she asked, the typing stopping dead.
My stomach tightened at her tone, feeling the suspicion
that this case wasn’t about to get any simpler.
“Yep. Why? You know ‘im?”
“You could say
that… Do you have your laptop with you?”
“In the car. Why?”
“I’m emailing you now,” she murmured as the clicking
picked up again. “Sensitive info.”
“Wait. If it’s tha’ kind of info, better ta’ do it in
person. Meet at Marcus’s?”
“I’ll be there. You catch me up, and I’ll try to not
give you too bad an aneurism.”
“On my way,” I said in way of parting.
“How can she stand being up at this hour?” Collin
grumbled.
He’d gotten much more awake and less brogue-ful after a
heaping draught of his “wake the hell up, stupid” potion.
The brew had a nasty tendency to make you feel like
you’d been slapped in the face with a moving cold shower, in my experience, so
him not being any more chipper wasn’t surprising.
I wasn’t much better, though I’d managed to catch a few
extra hours of sleep in the time it took him to make his potion, during which
time my wounds had sealed.
“Ah, ya’ know Jess,” I shrugged. “Prob’ly been up fer a
while. Good on ‘er, I say. I’d be so far in the red I’d ferget whut black
looked like, if she wasn’ like tha’.”
“Don’t know about that. I mean, you’re such a people
person, I’m sure you’d manage, especially with how well you handle the
mornings,” he laughed.
“Like you’re better?” I quipped, arcing a brow in
challenge.
“Oh, I’m definitely worse. Some of the time, anyway. So,
breakfast at Marcus’s?”
I just went for the door, hearing him follow me out the
door.
The closer we got, though, the worse my entire being
tensed.
None of my cases were pretty, and over the years, I’d
gotten used to the idea that I wasn’t in the business of getting good luck or
clean solutions.
My number of healers on call, with very lucrative tabs
in my name, could testify to that fact.
But the cases that gave me the sense of foreboding that
I had as we pulled into the parking lot were usually the kind I regretted
taking on.
Though it wasn’t exactly a choice, on that particular
case, if I wanted to avoid the neutral zone being considered unsafe.
With a jerk of the head, I pulled myself back to the
world around me and got out of the car.
Marcus’s Grill was a nice, quiet little place to eat
that I’d found when I first moved into Arkham.
The food was fantastic, the prices were pretty damn
cheap, and, most conveniently, it was located directly across the street from
my office.
My empty stomach immediately made itself known with a
growl, as soon as the smells inside hit me.
Looking around, I found a head of familiar, pale
strawberry-blonde hair rising over a booth at the very back.
Together, we slid in across from Jessica.
Her bright, ocean-blue eyes watched us with the kind of
glow that only the manic, stomach-twisting energy of morning people could
achieve.
“Well, good morning to you, Morgana.”
Clearly, our drive over had given her enough time to
clear her head, since she seemed much less skittish than her voice had made me
think she would be.
“And Collin,”
she added with a smirk that made me red to the roots of my hair.
“Mornin’,” he sighed before grabbing a menu.
“So… first thing’s first, I guess. Early morning or late
night?”
“Sorry, can’t divulge state secrets on an empty
stomach,” he returned easily with a grin.
It only got bigger when I elbowed him in the stomach.
“Not that embarrassing me isn’ always a blast, but I want ta’ know what kinda’ fresh Hell I’m
wadin’ waist deep inta’ this time. What’s the word on Coldwell?”
With a shudder, Jess grabbed a small manila folder from
the briefcase I hadn’t noticed on her seat.
“He’s… We’ll go with well
known. Among certain circles of humans… Very despicable circles, I think,
personally,” she added before sliding it across.
When I flipped the folder open to see what secrets it
held, I felt myself paling.
“Problem?” Collin asked.
Though he seemed uninterested, his hand was tensed white
around the menu, and the other curled around my waist.
“This is legit?” I asked, really hoping it wasn’t.
“Card carrying member. He was making a name for himself,
before his death.”
Sighing, I pressed my fingers to my temples, hoping to
stay the quickly rising headache.
“Okay… So, speculate wit’ me here. What the hell’s a
bloody monster hunter doin’ in a
fekin’ all-supernaturals club?”
That was what I called them, anyway.
The organization handled supernatural problems, and
saved lots of lives in the process.
Really, on paper, what they did and what I did were
pretty similar.
In practice, though, they were really just a bunch of
homicidal humans with way too much time and knowledge of the Umbramundus and
its many creatures for their own good.
Generally, the ones that got noticed were people who’d
left various religious institutions so they could murder supernaturals, good
and bad alike, to their twisted little hearts’ content.
He hadn’t struck me as particularly holy, but his inner
ranting had probably been a bit of a clue.
It’d felt more like the clubgoers had annoyed him,
rather than make him homicidal.
If the file was right, though, he had a number of times
being the official prime suspect on his record.
Reading between the lines as I went through the case
reports, the victims were all supernaturals.
“Jason Coldwell was a lawyer who was vying for some
legislations that’ve been rumored for a while. Lots of legalese that reads like
there’re some people who know about us, and want to put us in some kind of
registration.”
Jess pushed the folder down, and tapped on a piece of
paper with a lot of redactions in blocky, black bars.
“But the general human populace isn’ big on the idea of
the Umbra bein’ a thing. Well, outta’ Arkham, anyway,” I corrected.
“Hence his problem.”
Sighing, I moved through the rap sheet again.
“Useless clods. How the hell’d he never get convicted on
any a’ this?”
“He was probably a good lawyer,” Collin guessed.
Looking at the file, he picked up a sheet and scanned
through it.
“That’s about what it comes down to. And he had a lot of money from an inheritance. Bought
his way into them looking the other way.”
“Anythin’ on the inheritance?”
Collin nodded, sliding the paper so it rested between
us.
“Parents both made it big, died died horribly, and the
money fell to the next of kin.”
My eyes widened at the crime scene photo Jess had attached.
Both people in it looked like they’d been mauled by a
vicious pack of animals.
Inside their townhouse.
“Vamps?”
“Or Lycans,” Jess added. “Definitely no normal animals,
though.”
“And thus a serial supernatural killer’s born,” Collin
quipped.
“Pretty much. He witnessed it, according to some
reports, but that didn’t go so well, if the psych eval’s’re any indication.”
I frowned at the papers laid out before me.
Jessica was very good
at what she did, but building a full dossier in less than half an hour was more
than even she could do.
“Hey, Jess,” I started, trying to be conversational.
“I keep track of them. Not just him, but anyone who goes
around killing us,” she cut in before I could ask.
“And here I thought you
were the detective,” Collin laughed with a nudge at my hip.
“Next best thing to field work. Have to keep myself busy
when I’m not working the books,” she mused.
“This is good work,” I commended. “What else do we
have?”
“He wanted
funding to start up a program, for the good of humankind. He was very vocal about the idea that nonhumans
with intelligence should be captured and turned into pincushions, for science.
How do Fae fly, how witches can manipulate reality-”
“How vamps heal. Yeah, I know the idea,” I interrupted.
None of them seemed to notice the way my hands were
shaking, and I was grateful for that.
The idea of what Coldwell was trying to start really didn’t agree well with my mostly
faery blood.
My own experiences in Ireland made me agree even less.
“You’ve heard of this before?” Collin guessed.
“There’re some groups back home that really didn’t think the Courts’ denizens
should exist alongside the good human
folk. Fek!”
Several patrons turned at the exclamation, and they all
turned just as quickly away when my hair started floating like a wave of fire.
“I wouldn’ta’ been dragged inta’ this if I’d known he
was with tha’ lot.”
“So if they’re basically a gang, does that mean that
stupid damned ghoul just turned my neutral zone into a turf war?” Collin
growled.
“No, Coldwell was killed in retaliation by the ghoul.
Dumped ‘er bloody Mistress. Stupid arse was playin’ at whatever ‘is endgame was
by gettin’ with a Cam vamp.”
Groaning, I let my head fall to the table as my heart
raced.
I really, from the deepest part of my soul, hated when
my intuition was right…
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