Our search proved that the visitors/thieves took nothing else and the three listening devices they left behind were child’s play for JoJo to find and dismantle. She was also able to remotely scramble FireWind’s laptop the moment someone opened it, a tech program I had never heard of and that she had probably developed. The crime scene and blood cleanup would take a lot longer.
Long after the end of our shift, Margot, Occam, and I typed up our reports. I finished early and, for reasons I didn’t fully understand, beyond intuition, I wandered into Margot’s cubby. I waited at the door until she typed in her report and spun in her chair to face me fully. She didn’t speak. Her dark eyes simply waited, watching me.
“I’d like to be nosy,” I said.
Margot snorted softly. “Girl, you are always nosy.”
“Why are you so unhappy?”
Margot didn’t jerk or flinch, but shock crossed her face. I thought she wouldn’t answer, but she laced her fingers across her flat belly and tilted her head. The head tilt was a very catlike gesture.
“I was a nonwitch in a witch family. I was a black child in advanced classes, with a bunch of white children. They weren’t all racists and bullies, but the ones who weren’t were too frightened to stand up for me. I was in advanced classes in prelaw at Yale, and in the top twenty percent of my class, when a white boy, the top linebacker of Harvard Crimson, decided he wanted to try a piece of dark meat. I put him flat on his back, dislocated his elbow, and ended his football career.”
“Good,” I said.
“I was sent packing for that offense. I finished my degree at a state school. Went into the FBI. On my first rookie case I stated that the defendant was innocent. When I was proved right and the case had to be started over, my truth sense came to light. I was promoted quickly, as much for my truth sense as my other abilities.”
“That sounds like a good thing?”
“No. I was feared by my coworkers, hated by my trainer, who had staked his career on the defendant I proved innocent.”
“Margot, why are you telling me this?”
Distinctly, she said, “I have never fit in. Not anywhere.”
“You fit in here better than I do. You’re a werecat, like the others.”
Margot stood, gathered her things, and walked away, down the hall and through the doors to the stairwell.
“That didn’t go as planned?” Occam asked from his cubby nearby.
“No. She’s lonely.”
“I know. Let’s go home.”
Together we left the bloody scene, but the office wasn’t closed. Though there were no open cases requiring overnight activity, and HQ could have been closed, Rick and JoJo volunteered to remain behind to oversee CSI and cleanup. We drove off, leaving the second floor fully lit and manned by tired and irritated techs wearing sky blue unis, with a construction crew waiting in the parking lot to replace the doors.
* * *
We were halfway home when I had an idea. I told my car to call Occam and said, “We’uns got an hour. Mind if we go to Ming’s? Providing LaFleur or FireWind approves? I got a question I wanna ask Cai.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” my cat-man asked. “I mean, considering they just attacked us?”
“I can’t think of a better time.”
He was silent as the road passed under us. “Nell, suga’? Why not?”
I could almost see his expression, amusement in the sound.
“I’ll call HQ,” I said. I ended the call and told the car to call Unit Eighteen’s headquarters. I asked Jo to speak with whomever was still there and in charge, and was connected to Rick LaFleur.
“Nell?” he asked. I liked that about Rick. He often used first names instead of the formal last names required by FireWind.
“Permission to ride by Ming’s and speak to Cai?”
Rick asked, “Why now?”
“Ming will be doing MOC things, probably well fed since the attack and the fight. Cai will be in charge of security. I’d like to see if he’ll talk to me. Maybe let me see the Blood Tarot again.”
