On the two-minute mark, the archangel popped in. He said something, which was muffled by the earplugs. I stood, pointed the foghorn at him, and let rip.
As expected, feathers flew everywhere, and the archangel abandoned my office in a flash of golden light. Smiling, I removed my ear plugs and placed everything on my desk. Bailey hooted her laughter, kicked her feet, and fell off my couch, rolling as her mirth got the best of her.
A few moments later, a rather rumpled archangel teleported back into my office. “That was evil of the highest order, and I commend you for having won that round.”
I loved how honest archangels tended to be, especially in the face of defeat. “Archangel feathers are worth at least a thousand a pop on the internet, and I have an office full of them now. All I need to do is get a statement from you about their authenticity, and I’ll have enough money to date a man for at least a week. I’ve heard men are expensive, but I wouldn’t know because I keep foisting the available men on unsuspecting co-workers.”
Sariel’s laughter chimed. “Did my brother send over some incubi again?”
When wasn’t the Devil sending over incubi for my amusement? The last batch had resulted in a lively run of the Game of Life during a break, and while I’d lost the game, I hadn’t lost any clothes—and I’d made a few suggestions on which co-workers would enjoy a visit from an incubus along with the reasons why.
At least one couple would be getting a welcome addition to their household thanks to my distribution of sex demons around the precinct.
“I do appreciate having people to play board games with during breaks.” I scooted back in my chair and opened the cabinet that held my fledgling game collection. “I almost thought about Monopoly, but I play by house rules, and I’m not sure my bosses would have appreciated fifteen hours of profanity laced play coming from my office.”
“I would have forgiven you, but Sam would sulk that he hadn’t been invited,” Bailey reported, climbing off the floor and brushing off the archangel feathers sticking to her clothes. “Shed a few extra feathers as compensation for having to deal with Lucy’s idiocy. Last week, he sent over twenty-three incubi. Then he sent over a succubus just to make certain which team Josefina bats for. We’ve determined she prefers team incubi, but she admitted team succubi offers a lot of damned fine incentives.”
“We went for a manicure and pedicure, Bailey. This is not a hint that I want to start dating succubi. Well, unless the dates are for manicures and only manicures. She’d starve within a week of being in a relationship with me, but her nails would be beautiful.”
“I feel my brother has bitten off more than he can chew, but it is so much fun watching him try to crack her shell. At the rate he sends his demons over, she will be immune to their magic by the end of the year. She will have even more resistance than you do, Bailey,” Sariel teased.
“Resist an incubus twice, and you’re flagged for life,” Bailey complained. “I have the only incubus doohickey I need in my life, and that’s that. But if you could talk to Lucy and tell him Josefina doesn’t need the attention of twenty-plus incubi a week, that would be nice. At the current pregnancy rate in this precinct, half our staff will be on paternity or maternity leave within eight months. We do not have enough cadets to cover half the precinct being out for leave due to incubi spreading the love, correcting formerly unknown conception issues, or generally helping couples become pregnant. And no, I don’t care if they were helped with permission! Do you know what I have on my hands, Sariel? I have a staffing problem on my hands, all because Uncle Lucy can’t keep his sex demons at home.”
“But everyone is so happy,” the archangel teased.
“Everyone except Josefina,” Bailey grumbled.
I stared at the pregnant cindercorn with a raised brow. “I’m very happy, thank you. I have a good job, it turns out I’m not utterly shabby at being a detective, and I’ve only had to go out four times so far this week to add new cases to my count.” Two of the cases would be easy; the evidence pointed at an obvious culprit, and all the work I’d done yesterday led towards an easy conviction. Between the camera footage, the DNA evidence, fingerprints, and everything else I’d meticulously gathered from the site, I would be closing those cases and adding them to my tally by the end of the week, assuming the results came back as expected. The other two would be tougher, and I expected the one would go into my pile of cold cases.
I had nothing except a single partial fingerprint, insufficient to narrow the pool of culprits down to something sensible, and a hair without the blasted root tissue needed to become sufficient admissible evidence. Without the tissue attached to the hair’s root, the best I could hope for was some mitochondrial DNA evidence from the interior shaft of the strand.
Mitochondrial DNA evidence wouldn’t get me the conviction I needed.
I moved my mouse so I could check the time on my computer. “Of course, that’s partially because I’m scheduled for desk work this week, as I hadn’t been informed there’d be new cadets coming in. I’ve only been taking cases when the other teams couldn’t take the calls right away.” For whatever reason, I still lacked a partner, but it worked well enough; when I went to a crime scene, an established pair went with me. They handled everything I couldn’t, and I focused on investigating.
One day, I would get a partner. One day.
Bailey grinned. “There is a cadet. One cadet. This cadet is for you. We’ve decided you’re keeping this one as a present. Thus the bow. Technically, this cadet is a while off graduation, due to a complete lack of practical experience, but he’s solid on the book smarts. Since we’re going to be losing staff like crazy in the upcoming months, Sam wanted to get cadets working with us as soon as possible. Our staffing budget is fucked, but we’re going to see if we can crank performance through cutting the number of street hours and spreading the high-stress workload. If it works out, we’ll get a better budget to work with. A safer public is a happier public, and a safe and happy public means we get a better budget.” Bailey wrinkled her nose. “Your cadet passed the knowledge portion of his exams already, so we’re going to be trying a new training system. You’ll show him the ropes, teach him how the streets work, and educate him on the general nature of detective work. You’ll be on rotation to work a patrol with your cadet once a week. We’re currently planning an eight-month trial with him before he’s issued his badge. The commissioner wants to test this method. If it works out, assuming the cadets pass the knowledge tests after two months at the academy with a minimal error rate, they’ll be assigned to a pair to get further education while in the field.”
I could see the ploy working—assuming the cadet was partnered with a knowledgeable and patient pair of cops. “We’re going to end up with a quartet if I tag along with another pair,” I pointed out.
“It’s your fault for being so efficient and just dragging out a pair when you need to investigate a crime scene. If you weren’t so damned good at it, we would have forced a partner assignment on you already,” my chief complained. “But you keep performing well, and Sam hates breaking things that aren’t broken. He’s going to cry if the cadet breaks the working system.”
Cadets could make a mess out of things in a hurry, especially if they were the kind who wanted the prestige and power of being a cop. Those tended to wash out early in our precinct.
If Samuel didn’t catch onto them, Bailey did. If by some miracle those two didn’t, the rest of us sniffed out the dangerous, unwanted behaviors and either sent them packing or kicking them back to the academy until they figured out they served the people and not the other way around.
“All right. As you don’t want Samuel to start crying, I have to evaluate and make certain this one doesn’t wash out.”
“Correct.”
“Is this a bad time to remind you that I’m a jackass with the cadets and have one of the higher washout rates? It took all of three weeks working with the cadets to figure this out.”
“If he survives you, everyone will know he is quality material.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t. “All right. Send him in, and warn him I’m tough on a good day, and he doesn’t want to see me on a bad one.”
Bailey chuckled, got up, brushed herself off, and headed for the door. “You do love making the cadets squirm.”
