“Toro toro, you little bitch!” I scream at him, taunting him with the call that a bullfighter uses.
Judge O’Vine’s eyes fill with indignant fire, and satisfaction floods me.
Yes, get mad, get even, extend my sentence...please!
I lift my hands to mock his curved horns, but I’m side-tackled by a guard before I can take another step. The impact knocks the wind out of me, which also makes it impossible to scream more offensive shit at the judge. I had a goodYour mother was bred in a barn, and your father was ridden by cowboysready at the tip of my tongue, but I’m forced to choke it down and gasp for air instead as I’m carried out of the room.
No! This can’t be how it goes down!
I scramble to get out of the guard’s hold, but it’s solid, and the magical cuffs around my wrists, ankles, and tail make it impossible to shift into my cockatrice. The door closes behind me, and my chance at pissing off Judge O’Vine so he’ll throw the book at me slips out of my fingers. I pull in deep breaths and fume at my luck.
Okay. Time to change tactics.
I immediately begin to look for ways to solve the problem. So they won’t lock me up and throw away the key...yet. I’ll just have to figure out a way in prison to change their minds. That shouldn’t be too hard.
I hope.
2
It takes about an hour for me to get booked into Nightmare Penitentiary’s system. Someone keeps hacking into the jail’s systems and deleting my file, so they have to put everything in manually so that I can be transferred. Alpha Bowen and his annoying attempts to thwart what’s about to happen will soon be in my past.
The booking officers versus my arresting officers aren’t so different, except the arresting officers at least offered me coffee. These jerkoffs just ignore me when I tell them I could do with a caffeine kick.
Rude.
I sit at a desk with an overweight ghoul who has a very distinct lisp, waiting while he enters everything into the computer. He grumbles with every offense he has to add to my rap sheet. I guess all cops hate doing paperwork.
When he’s finished filing all my charges, he leads me to a room where I change into my new Nightmare Penitentiary uniform which consists of a very drab gray ensemble. The guard points me to the lined wall that clearly displays height measurements. I get a little spring in my step.
“Oh, another mugshot!” I start running my fingers through my colorful hair. “How do I look?” I ask, my lips a little duckish as I pose for him.
He levels me with a look. “Like a convict,” he says dryly.
“But like a cool, hip convict? A pretty convict? Or like an understated,she’s probably a really good person beneath that pile of convictionsconvict?”
“Are you for fucking real?”
I would admit that yes, I am, but instead, I decide to close my mouth because I don’t think Officer Ghoul is in a very friendly mood.
“Heels against the line. Stand up straight. Hold this,” he says, pushing the placard at me.
I grab it and turn it around so I can read it. “Look at that, it has my name on it and everything.”
I get in position and straighten my new uniform shirt, but I frown down at the gray color. With a thought, I use my shifter ability to change its color. It’s a rare gift for my kind, and it does have its limits. Certain things have to have contact with me longer in order to change. Like shoes or really bad kissers.
For some reason, I can only shift my hair and tail feathers into shades of orange, yellow, or red. I suspect those tones are my natural color spectrum, so it restricts what I can do, but I love those colors, so I don’t feel restricted. Oddly enough, I can’t change my eye color at all. They’re a bright emerald green, and they always have been.
When I look down once again, the uniform is now a lovely lemon yellow. “There. That’s better.”
“No.”
My brows pull together. “But—”
“No.”
“It’s just that the gray—”
“No,” he says for a third time.
