“Remind me to check in today to see where he is with this ordinance business. I’d never imagine someone like her with some creature like that. Have you ever seen one?”
“Of course not! I don’t even like the spiders that get into the house!”
Both women giggled, and her hands balled into fists. Of course.Anzan. She wasn’t sure why she’d assumed the gossip about them would have been contained to her street.
“My Rixli is in the anthropology club at the high school, and she said a full grownfull-grown male can be up to fifteen feet tall. Can you believe it?! How does he even fit in her house?”
“That’s not the only thing making me wonder how it fits.”
The two women devolved into giggles once more. Ladybug was uncertain of their joke, but was angry that she and Anzan were at the center of it at all.Ignorance, plain and simple. To add insult to injury, they didn’t even know what they were talking about.Ignorant and factually incorrect, to boot.When standing, he was only maybe a foot taller than an orc or an ogre. Fortunately, her family home was possessed of high ceilings and plenty of space. Shehadalways worried about him banging his head on a beam up in the attic, but these women certainly didn’t need to know that. Her skin prickled again as the amphibious couple shuffled to the seats against the side wall. It was her turn to step up to the small window.
Now or never. Are you a mouse, or a witch?
“G-good morning.” She tried to keep her voice sunny and light, not that she’d ever managed to master the art of sounding sunny a single time before. “I-I’m here to make a copy of my business license, um, and leave one on file for the Makers’ Mart.”
She swallowed hard, annoyed at herself for stammering.Authricia would have had these two ninnies cowering in their sensible shoes. Be more like her!She had no idea which of the two speakers now stood before her. Reptilian, her dark green scales fading to blush as they moved down her chin, with a short red bob. She looked like the type that would have a daughter named Rixli, Ladybug decided. Retrieving her form, she slid it beneath the window.
The reptilian woman winced, pulling an apologetic face. “Oh, I’m afraid we won’t be able to do that. You can’t just make a copy. It has to be notarized as well, dear.”
Ladybug blinked. Sheknewshe could have simply scanned the form and emailed it. She’d read that part several times on the website. “Oh, um . . . Are you sure? Because I thought I was able to submit it online as well? And that wouldn’t be a notarized copy, so . . . do you think you could double check?”
The smile the woman gave her never touched her jewel-like eyes. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, dear. We won’t be able to take this today unless it’s notarized.” A little shrug, the pretense of helpfulness dropping a bit. “And if you’re not on file before the end of the business week, I’m afraid you won’t be able to set up a table at this week’s market.”
They weren’t planning on starting the table until the first week of the following month anyway, but her stomach flipped at the thought of all their hard work, all for naught. She didn’t want to have to tell Holt she’d mucked up the one thing he’d put her in charge of.
Call Jack.
The voice in her head did not belong to her, but she understood immediately that this was Holt, again.So much for breaking the news to him. She wondered how long he’d been following her, how many days a week he did this. Every time she left the house? Influencing her thoughts, planting ideas in her mind? It was discomfiting to consider . . . but this time, she was inclined to let him.
Do it in front of them.
She was wrong. Her Great Aunt Authricia was a lion, and she could never aspire to even a tenth of Authricia’s roar. A cat, though . . . the pettiness of a common garden cat might well be within her wheelhouse, if she allowed that other version of herself, the one Holt seemed to singularly invoke, to take control.
They’re not talking about you because of you. They’re gossiping abouthim, about Anzan, and it’s likely not anything nice. They can say whatever they want about you, but they don’t get to slander him.There was a buzz beneath her skin, like an electrical current, and it churned her blood. Anger she scarcely recognized welled within her. Holding the reptilian woman’s eye, Ladybug pulled her phone from her bag, scrolling to Jack Hemming’s number, smiling when the receptionist picked up.
“Jack Hemming, please . . . Hi Rhonda,” she greeted the longtime personal assistant after the call was transferred, watching the smile completely drop from the reptilian woman’s face. “Um, this is Elizabeth Brackenbridge. I-I don’t have an appointment, but I needed to get something notarized. Do you think —“
She was cut off by the woman on the other end of the phone, a she-wolf who had worked for Jack since she and Trapp had been at school together.
“Oh, you never need an appointment, dear. You know he’ll always make time for you. Whatever you need, bring it on in. If he’s not available, I’m authorized as well, I’ll have my stamp ready.”
“Oh, that’s perfect.” Ladybug beamed at the women on the other side of the little window at Rhonda’s warm response, wishing she’d put the call on speakerphone.That’s maybe a bit too far.“I’m just up the street, I’ll see you in a few minutes. Thanks, Rhonda.”
The pretense of friendliness had dropped completely, and the reptilian woman was scowling as she listened and watched as Ladybug called the most powerful man in town.The Hemmings and the Brackenbridges have always been friends, and they’d all do well to remember it. Perhaps allowing Holt in her head wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
“Well, I’ll just be taking this,” she smiled as serenely as she could, as she pulled her business license back across the counter, “and I’ll be back in a few minutes. Jack’s office is just up the street.”
Her pulse was jumping as she exited City Hall, adrenaline flooding her system, making her want to run pell-mell down Main Street. She was unsurprised when a black cat pulled out of the shadows of the building, falling into step beside her.
“You should’ve seen the look on her face,” Ladybug told him, glad there were no other passersby around to see her conversing with the cat. “Um, thanks for that. I wouldn’t have thought to call him.”
The cat abruptly turned into an alley they passed, stepping out again in his human skin and falling into step beside her.
“Don’t forget you have this card in your back pocket.” Holt’s voice was uncharacteristically serious. “You really need to start playing it a bit more often. You have the ear of the most influential werewolf in the area, the most powerful man in town, and there is quite literally nothing he would deny you.”
She rolled her eyes in response to Holt’s words, and he huffed.
“You don’t even realize what an asset this is. If you would ask that man for a favor, he would bend himself into a pretzel to make it happen. He’s not particularly a fan ofmine, however, so I wouldn’t go mentioning our current partnership, but . . . Don’t forget that Jack is on your side, is all I’m saying.”
