By the time I wrapped up the third case, which took a staggering two months following my promotion, I came to understand a great deal more about Alec Mortan’s curse. While our quip of his life being a list of 101 ways to die remained accurate, I discovered it was less about the ways in which people could die and more about the nature of what drove people to kill each other. Society blamed passion for many deaths—murder most often occurred in the heat of the moment.
The first three cases counted, if I scraped at the surface of the mystery.
In reality, humanity harbored the capacity for violence and evil as much as we held the capacity to do good in the world. Like a spinning coin, every person could land on either face—or stand on its end in defiance of probability.
The deeper I delved into the mystery surrounding Alec Mortan and his uncanny knack for showing up where people would die—or cursed to witness humanity at its worst—the more I grew to respect the man for his indomitable will and determination to persist.
Death continued to haunt him, but after leaving my office to resume his life, he didn’t return to my precinct.
Life had taken him to the far side of Long Island to a new job, and while reports of cases involving him as a witness hit my desk from time to time, other detectives handled the questioning, giving me paperwork to file into the collection in case I found some connection leading to the source of his curse.
It amazed me how a short, frantic time could make such a difference, but I found I missed his quiet company. It took time to understand what Sariel had meant about having regrets in a way. However, I found an appreciation for what I might have gained but had chosen to lose.
I had met one man I could see attempting to form a relationship with, which offered the hope others were out there.
I also learned remaining a virgin drove the incubi and succubi involved with my life absolutely wild, as I refused their advances and enjoyed luring them to the end of their ropes. Of the people I worked with, Bailey had caught onto my ploy, and she laughed every time my status as mostly young, available, and virgin got the best of the nosy divines, demons, and others known to prowl the precinct.
I enjoyed the game, inciting the Devil and his crazy family just from living my life as I wanted rather than to their expectations.
Sometime when the summer began to creep into spring’s turf, Bailey bounced into my office armed with one of my travel mugs filled with coffee, which she presented with a flourish.
“How did your checkup go?” I asked, accepting her gift with a pleased sigh. The coffee would make whatever she needed of me easier to handle, and if she thought it would sour, the drink would be laced with some pixie dust so I could make the most of the situation.
She grinned at me and flopped onto my couch. “The tiny terrors are doing well, and I won’t have to give up the ambrosia of life until two weeks before delivery, and I get to be weaned off it this time in a sensible fashion. I also won’t be off it too long. The busybodies want them on pristine milk for the first month, then I can start exposing them through second-hand joy.”
I chuckled, as my chief’s entire family went to extremes making sure their cindercorn and her foals all made it through pregnancy without major mishap. “And how is Sam?”
“He’s strutting like a peacock as usual. He is inflicting his peacock ways on his grandfather at the moment, who was this week’s examiner of developing troublemakers known as babies.”
“I will sucker punch him in the gut if he even thinks about invading my office,” I warned her with a grin. It’d taken me a full month to realize the archangel enjoyed when the lowly cops got rowdy, so I’d taken to joining Bailey in her futile efforts to launch surprise attacks on Sariel.
“He is planning on invading your office, as he enjoys honing your self-defense and offense skills.”
“Is that what we call this? Honing my self-defense and offense skills?” I pointed at my digital board, which was all of three weeks old thanks to having successfully chucked an archangel into its predecessor. “Honestly, I’m more impressed Sariel replaced it after I broke it.”
“I’ve been trying to throw him for months without success. You nailed him on your first try after completely catching him by surprise. You earned his adoration for life with that stunt.”
“Along with an office full of feathers.” As I’d been warned I’d be entertaining a feathery foe soon, I set my coffee in its safe spot, a present from the Devil’s wife, who insisted I needed a place where my coffee would never spill. I reached into my drawer for the latest trick in my arsenal, which was a foghorn meant for a boat. I also pulled out two pairs of earplugs still in their protective packaging, and I tossed a set to Bailey. “Thank you for informing me that angels have auditory sensory organs in the vicinity of their shoulders, by the way. I have chosen my weapon in my latest attempt to prove to the archangel he sucker punched the wrong woman.”
“Are you trying to earn an invitation to a triad, Josefina? That sounds like you’re trying to apply to become the human member of a triad.”
“No. I am not confident I can handle one man. Two of them would take me to the brink and push me over. Engaging in a relatively harmless prank war with an archangel seems like a good way to test my fortitude, however. How long do I have before he shows up?”
Bailey checked her watch. “I would say no more than two minutes.”
“If I break any of my hardware this time, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure Sariel will end up replacing it with something better, and you’ve put your coffee in the safe place, so it’s fine. We all need a little excitement in our lives today. Well, you don’t need any more excitement in your life today. We have been given cadets, and Queeny has decided you are being bequeathed with a cadet. When I left, he was digging through our closet looking for a bow.”
In so many ways, moving to Manhattan had been a huge step up in life, as long as I recognized both of my bosses were a little crazy. I couldn’t even call them a few cans short of a six pack; they needed at least one can to qualify between the two of them, and I held serious doubts they could manage that much.
That Samuel, the saner of the two, searched for a bow for some poor cadet meant one thing: they’d both lost what little grasp they had on reality.
How had I become the sole bastion of sanity in our precinct?
“You owe me,” I informed my chief, and before she could argue, I put the ear plugs in, held my foghorn under my desk, and eyed the woman in challenge.
She decided wearing her ear plugs beat having her ears ringing all afternoon due to my ongoing war with an archangel.
