“Okay. Did Chief Quinn give you a phone for work yet?”
“Yes, but it’s in storage with my personal belongings. I thought it’d be wise to avoid ruining my phone on my first day.”
Good call. “Use the phone on the wall, call Mr. Chief Quinn, and ask him to send someone who is familiar with practitioner magic to review this before we proceed. The last thing we need is setting off some trap playing around with magic we don’t understand.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Alec obeyed, and after referring to the extension list posted beside the phone, he used the end of his stylus to tap the numbers on the phone. “Hey, Samuel? It’s Alec, and we found something fishy in the evidence.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t snicker at the man’s ruthlessly used pun.
“It is not an actual fish in this specific case.” The man grinned and winked at me. “When I scale it down to the bare minimum, there is a box with a practitioner working on it. Otherwise, we would have already tackled this task.”
Oh, hell. If Alec leveled any one of those wordplays at Bailey, she’d lose her mind. Not only would she lose her mind, she’d go out of the way to make sure he never left our precinct.
The more painful the pun or zinger, the more she loved it.
“She’s staring at me. Why do you ask?”
Right. Our boss had matchmaking tendencies almost as bad as any angel, and I would need to remind Alec he was under no obligation to form any relationships with anyone unless he wanted to. Shaking my head at the insanity, I set aside the box and pulled out the next item.
Grabbing a live and angry hagfish had not been in my plans, and with a shriek, I flung the slime-producing eel-like creature across the room, where it hit the wall with a sickening splat. It stuck and began a slow, squishing descent towards the floor.
“I think we may have located the source of the slime, sir. It is approximately a foot long and resembles some form of strange eel.”
“It’s a hagfish,” I informed him in a whisper, staring at my gloved hands, which had at least an inch of the slime clinging to the plastic. Between the gloves and the other protective clothing, I’d avoided getting any of it on my skin. “I need to be decontaminated, and if you could tell my boss I think I am done for today, that would be appreciated.”
“I think Josefina has reached her general tolerance for slime, as she has a rather amazing amount of it all over her hands. She requests a decontamination. I also think she may want to go home, judging from additional commentary.” Alec hesitated before saying, “He says you can’t go home early. Once you’re decontaminated, he has to hover protectively while Bailey makes you coffee and profusely apologizes.”
While I expected something along those lines, I sighed and glared at the hagfish, which continued its extended journey down the wall to the floor, adding to the slime problem. “He wants me to go to the hospital just in case, doesn’t he?”
“If it makes you feel better, he is expecting me to be checked, too.”
It didn’t, as I would have preferred neither one of us needing to be checked over due to exposure to abused wildlife involved with a murder case. “He’s going to need a bucket for the hagfish. And a mop.”
“He’s already called for the CDC. He is also questioning where the hagfish came from, as there were no hagfish when the box was packed.”
“It’s just yet another mystery that needs to be solved,” I complained. “When I was promoted, nobody warned me about the hazards of actively solving mysteries, Alec. I was not given full disclosure!”
“But were you given an appropriate paycheck?” he countered.
“Right now, it’s questionable.”
Alec chuckled and said, “Instead of sending her home, how about a raise? Because I don’t think anyone makes enough to deal with the caustic slime of a possibly undead hagfish.”
Was the fish an undead fish? I eyed it warily, wondering if hagfish could come back from the dead. I questioned how it was still alive.
It wiggled on its otherwise languid journey to the tiled floor.
“It could be an undead hagfish,” I conceded. “And if it is, I am definitely not paid enough for this and request a raise. I will accept my raise in a form of the best pixie dust we stock and some new board games for my collection. Since this is something Lucifer would come up with just to torment me, he can pay for it.”
Laughing, Alec relayed my commentary. “He says he is coming down with our resident hazardous materials expert. She’s changing into her fur coat now. The other expert, who will purify us using the fires of heaven and hell, apparently, will be here within twenty minutes unless we start showing symptoms.”
“What the hell does he mean by showing symptoms? Of insanity? Being in this room is a symptom of insanity.” I inhaled, counted to ten, and exhaled. “Okay, I feel better now.”
“Understood, sir.” Alec hung up the phone. “We are to stay near the door but remain in the room unless the hagfish makes any dangerous moves, in which case we sneak out of the room and lock it in until someone deals with it. As for symptoms, I think he means burning and itching.”
Thanks to frequent exposure to incubi who enjoyed testing my limits, I often suffered from a different sort of burning itch, and my preferred candidate for the removal of said itch had taken the idea of joining the force seriously.
I needed some time to think about the various fraternization rules, which mostly boiled down to avoiding personal conflicts from interfering with work, attending mandatory couples therapy, and otherwise spending an excessive amount of time with my potential partner.
