Chapter 13: How's She Cuttin'?

#60: Working with Mirka is far better than I hoped it would be, and I had high hopes. Or maybe the bar was set so low with Hyrax that anything would be a paradise.

"Watcha writing now?" Mirka asks.

I set the notebook back into my void, returning to my phone. "How much fun I'm having."

"We haven't even started our first job, you goof."

"Yeah, but having you driving me around is already an honor and a pleasure, my dear sidekick."

I recline in my seat as I listen to Mirka's litany of retorts, letting me get back to reading. 'Migration Routes,' as the story is called. There's a certain tenor to it I can't help but latch on to. The lead, Piper, has a friend with which she trades both the harsh jabs and quiet moments. It's an enviable platonic relationship, a kind of loving rivalry. A shame there's so few who I could share that kind of bond with. I'm simply too different from everyone else, I think.

I watch my hand tap away from the story and make it's way to my texts, hovering over the send button on a message to the experienced hunter who approved mine and Mirka's exclusive partnership a few weeks back. He offered to get me in touch with someone who could figure out what I was, and while I declined at the time, I find my thumbs instinctively returning to his contact.

I'm not sure why I'm only now deciding that I care, especially since the answer is almost certainly 'something entirely new and unclassified.'

Regardless, as I always do, I swipe away from the messages. It's pride at this point: I don't want to be the kind of person who caves to meaningless things like my origin or heritage. Right here, right now, is where I want to be, and not chasing lost time or fleeting possibilities.

Mirka pulls into the used bookstore's parking lot, the first site of our first mission. If you could even call it that. We've been assigned to do a handful of checkups on locals non-humans. A complete waste of time, to be certain, but I'm not going to complain about an easy job.

"All you, Lena." We decided early on that this really isn't a two person job, and it would only serve to intimidate them if we both came. Since I'm also a magical beast, it makes sense for me to do it.

The bookstore was a house, once upon a time, until rezoning sentenced it to an existence of mothballs and yellowed corners. A staircase remains directly in front of the entrance, with a printed sign in comic sans reading: 'first floor: fiction second floor: nonfiction'. I'd have assumed a bookstore would bother to capitalize their signs...

"Oh, crap."

I turn around, seeing Amber looking up at me while arranging books on shelves.

"Hey, Amber! So this is where you work?"

She looks nervous. I don't think she was told MBR would be coming, and it's not like I wear a uniform, so it's something else...

"Well... I own it, actually. Don't tell anyone, okay? I'm pretty sure Casey would start calling me bourgeoise for owning a business."

Amber has a point. Casey's pretty militant about their beliefs, and even though this is hardly the kind of capitalism they're worried about, I can imagine they wouldn't relent on the jokes and playful attacks. "No problem. What they don't know won't kill them."

"Thanks, Lena. So what brings you here?"

"While we're sharing secrets... you know I hate having my trust broken, right?"

"Right..." She's gone back to looking nervous.

I take out my MBR ID, and show it to her.

Her reaction is a mix of looking visibly sick and existential terror. Probably how I looked when MBR knocked on my door.

"Lena, what the fuck... I thought... what's happening?"

I, with a long sigh, explain the ridiculous series of events that led me to my current job. By the end, her queasiness is gone, but the fear remains.

"I didn't do anything, I don't know what you were told, but I'm just living my life..."

"I know. They have me doing pointless checkups. As far as I know, you're not on their radar."

She looks visibly relieved, though slightly hurt. "I get it... I can't believe you'd turn traitor though, Lena. I thought we were on the same page about MBR."

"Oh, we are. My last partner tried to kill me a couple weeks ago. I'm not under any illusion about this being a noble organization, but what I will say is that I like the idea of me handling situations more than I like the idea of letting deranged murderers handle them."

"That sounds like a lot of justification."

I shrug. "It probably is. Anyway, I have more people to harass. See you later tonight at Days?"

"Yeah... I guess."

I walk away from the bookstore, starting to feel a little hurt myself. Amber did a damn quick 180 on me. I would have done the same if the roles were reversed, for certain, but it still stings a little.

Mirka notices my expression instantly. "Someone you know?"

"It's Amber. Can we go to the next one instead of talking about this? You can bullshit the report later."

She nods, taking us only a few minutes away. The next location is the basement of an office building, which I descend the steps of cautiously. It's dark as hell down here. I'd flick the lights, but I imagine whoever lives here prefers them off.

"Hey, whoever this is. I'm just doing a five second check in, and I'm out."

There's total silence.

"I'm not going to turn on the lights, so you don't need to worry about that. Uhh... I'm pretty sure this is the right place."

My shell's eyes, even with pupils dilated as much as they can be, don't see much behind silhouettes of still objects. A desk, a chair, some kind of machinery...

I walk into what I assume is the center of the room, towards the lone desk. The lack of information I'm being given is starting to irritate me. I'm going to have to start prodding for more. "Hey, can you please come out? I really don't want to play hide and seek."

The lights all turn on at once, flash-blinding me for a second as my pupils rapidly constrict. I blink away the floaters, looking around for whoever hit the lights.

There's a rather annoyed looking, spindly knee-high man crossing his arms impatiently. "What?" he snaps with a sneer.

"Just doing a check-in, courtesy of MBR."

"Check-in over. Leave me alone, huh?"

"No problem. Sorry for bothering you."

I start back up the stairs, until I hear him call out, "Wait a tick." I turn back around, seeing him give me a hard look. "That's it? You just drop by and leave? You people always ask a dozen questions first."

"If I had any idea of what I was supposed to be doing, I might have. They don't tell me anything."

A brief pause. "Can I have your name?"

A classic fae move, which I react to instinctively. "Nope. It's mine."

"Hah! You're funny. I'm not that kind of fairy, I swear. Do I look like I'm the forest type?"

He's right: he's just a brownie or something. Weird that he's in an office building and not a house, but that's not my business. "You don't. My name is Lena, if you need to know."

"I don't, but I appreciate it all the same. M'name's Goldbell, and now you know it whether you like it or not. What's your story, Lena? Humor me for a while, make up for your brash intrusion." He scuttles up the table with surprising speed, resting on a short pile of books. "Not a lotta people tell me their stories, they just needle me for mine."

I check the time on my phone. "Sure. I'm a magical beast, a shapeshifter of a sort."

"Nah? You're not teeming with magic, just a faint amount, so you're not anything."

"It's just a shell I made, my core's pretty small. Actually, while I'm here, did you need anything duplicated? Side benefit of my ability to produce bodies." I'm not sure why I keep offering my ability to people.

"You don't say... Can you do liquids, Lena of MBR?"

"Mhmm."

"Good! There's this expensive whiskey I love, but the guy who offered it to me stopped showing up a while back. All I got is a shot and a half left, been saving it. Do me a favor?"

I text Mirka, telling her I'm going to be an hour late because I'm helping a house spirit get drunk. Her response is an upside-down smiling emoji. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

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When I get back in Mirka's car, her mischievous smirk greets me. "You just spent an hour helping a guy you never met Are you gonna drop the sociopath thing yet?"

As it turns out, my journey of self-discovery is actually working. I promised myself I would stop being something I'm not, and after the last few months, I realized I do care a little for some people, at least. I haven't begun to unpack the trauma I've been through, but I can at least say with confidence that I'm traumatized, at least. That's something.

Maybe sociopath isn't the right term after all. I'm sure there is one, though.

I grit my teeth, before sighing to myself. "Yeah, okay. I'm not a sociopath. I'm just a heartless bitch."

Mirka takes my hand in her own. "We'll see how long that one lasts."

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She's relentless. I spent so long putting up these lovely defensive walls around my mind, and she just comes in and starts kicking them over like sandcastles. Such a waste of good repression...

One last stop, a simple apartment. Easy enough. I knock politely on the door, and wait. No reply, but I can see the lights on inside. I knock again.

And again.

And again.

"Hey, it's just a check-in. Don't even need to open the door if you don't want, just want to make sure you're alive," I say, after making sure no one is around listening.

Still no response. Great. I send a short text to Mirka, asking her to come up with me. I'm not planning on breaking in, but if she doesn't have better luck than me, I don't know what choice we'd have.

She finds her way up after a couple minutes, flipping off the out of order elevator as she arrives on the seventh floor. She's slightly winded, which is kind of endearing. A reminder of her fragility, or rather, her toughness despite it. I have no stake in the game, so to speak: if I get injured or killed, well, no big deal. For her, for anyone, taking on a high risk job like this is worthy of praise.

I relax as she walks over, charmed by her taciturn expression. "Hey there, beautiful. You come here often?"

Her mask of impartiality breaks into a smile that quickly resolves into a forced frown. "Shush, we're on... Jesus, is that smell coming from you?"

"Smell?" I sniff the air a bit. "I thought that was just blood."

"Yeah. That is blood. Is it your's?"

"Oh. Oh shit. It isn't." I had completely forgotten blood isn't a normal thing to smell. To me, it's always been the smell of Shirai's surgery...

Mirka tries the door handle, finding it locked. "Damn it. Move, I'm gonna kick the door down."

I raise an eyebrow at her, to which she gets the hint and lets me kick it down instead. She draws a taser and follows me inside. The smell is much stronger, far more than anything besides a corpse would have.

Before we can split up, the source of the smell reveals itself: a big lump of fur that at first glance I assumed was a pile of coats in a pool of dried blood that's soaked into and spread through the carpet. The figure is curled in on itself, head tucked into its chest.

Holy shit.

Mirka and I both reach for out phones, before exchanging a glance.

"Obviously," I say, "we can't call MBR yet."

"We sure as hell aren't calling Shirai instead."

We know each other scarily well for only having met a couple months back. "He's not going to sweep this under the rug."

"MBR won't either... probably."

There's a short period of tension, before Mirka relents. "Thirty minutes, then I call MBR."

"You're the best. You pick where we eat tonight," I joke, calling my friend. He picks up almost immediately.

"Heyyyyy! Lena! How's it going? Been a few weeks since you last stopped by! How's Mirka? Is she there?" Something's got him excited.

"She is! Actually, could you come to us this time? And would you mind doing a super quick magical beast autopsy for us?"

There's a brief pause, followed by indistinct rattling.

"Shirai?"

"Sorry, just packing! Send the address, and don't touch it yet!"

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Shirai arrives with a large backpack and a small cooler. He dramatically rubs his hands together when he sees the dead furry creature. "So, why'd you kill the guy, Lena?"

I snort. He has a pretty warped sense of humor. "Actually, this is MBR business. We're partners in reverse-crime. And before you ask, Mirka already made sure there's no records of Melo."

"Reverse-crime?" Mirka asks with a relenting smile. "Don't you mean 'law?'"

Shirai laughs, opening up the cooler and setting a small portion of Melo in a jar of ice water on the ground.

"Aww, travel-sized Melo! Is she sapient at that size?" I ask, waving at the jar.

"Kinda. Mostly just here to observe so she can relay it back to herself."

I nod along, watching Mirka trying to understand. "Mimi, Melo can be split and recombined. Every part of of Melo is still Melo, though."

"...Mimi?" Her face turns a little red.

"I thought it was cute, anyway."

Shirai works diligently, slipping his gloves on and carefully prodding at the the body. He doesn't seem bothered in the least by me being in MBR, which I really appreciate.

"You aren't disrupting the crime scene, right?" Mirka asks, watching his movements intently.

He shakes his head. "Pretty much my entire job is crime scenes, silly. I know what coroners and CSI are looking for. Like the suspiciously ritual looking knife in our dogman's gut. Dead for maybe... six or eight hours. Surprised none of the neighbors said anything by now."

"What do you know about it?" Mirka asks. For once, I know more than her. Strange that a cop somehow never got the memo about them, though.

"We are in Michigan," Shirai responds. "Second highest population of dogmen in the USA, after Alaska, though those are more of their own species than related to the Great Lakes ones. Unless you mean the knife, in which case, yeah... probably a cult, or at least pretending to be cult-y."

Mirka leans down to see for herself. "You know a lot about dogmen."

"Well, duh. I know enough about their anatomy and culture just through osmosis. You know, there's a half-joke about magical beasts. There's five kinds... actually, Lena, can I have your permission to tell this joke?"

I nod, smiling already. I know the exact thing he's going to say.

"Righty-o. There's five kinds of magical beasts: animals, humans, homebodies, prostitutes, and criminals. It's crude, but it gets the point across. If you look like a bipedal dog, you don't get hired, you don't go to school, and you don't get apartments without paying way more than you should. You're not an animal, you can't sell yourself as a human, so you really only have the last three options."

Mirka looks uncomfortable, but doesn't disagree. "Judging by the fifty takeout menus..."

"Homebody. Lotta web designers, artists, and remote data workers are non-humans. It's easier than scaring the shit out of people by walking into a grocery store." He sighs after taking a picture of the knife, and the dogman's face. "I'll send the pictures to the Pack. If anyone would know, it's them." He doesn't look thrilled, but sends a text out anyway.

I'm not excited either, and for good reason. The Great Lake Pack is half support-system for the various dogmen in the area, half magical beast mafia. I'd consider them a necessary evil, but I doubt Mirka sees the 'necessary' part. They can admittedly get pretty brutal, when they have to.

Shirai packs up his equipment and girlfriend. "I'll let you know as soon as Cú Ganduine gets back to me."

"Who..?"

"Pack leader for Detroit. Well, everything east of Lansing, really. And yes, I have his phone number. We're pretty good friends. I have a small scar on my ear from when I was up like five hundred bucks in a game of blackjack and made a joke about dogs playing poker... sorry, off topic."

I can't help myself. Shirai only rambles like this when he's in a particularly good mood. "What's got you so happy?"

He turns bright red. "Ahh. Umm. Well, you see..." He glances over at the cooler, making sure Melo is closed off inside. "Let's just say I'm spending a lot of money on having a guy enchant an engagement ring to be resistant to salt water corrosion."

"Oh my god! Shirai!" I excitedly hug him, careful not to squeeze too hard. Hugs have been slowly growing on me lately.

He returns the hug. "Keep it down! It won't be ready for a while, and if you let it slip to Melo I'll never forgive you." He laughs, but his eyes don't.

Mirka, meanwhile, seems fixated on the fact we're celebrating three feet from a recent murder victim. There's a certain solace in that when I'm with Shirai, I'm never the weirdest person in a room.

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#61 Corpses don't bother me whatsoever. I think I've simply consumed too many to see them as former people, instead of just a mundane object, or a puppet.

#62 I can feel happy for other people. Like Shirai's engagement.

#63 There's a beauty in human fragility that I genuinely appreciate, but don't envy.

#64 I'm not a sociopath, and I'm probably not evil. I'm simply jaded, to put it politely.

#65 I wish Mirka was holding me right now.

I quickly cross off that last one, my mind was wandering too much as I watch the MBR forensics team cast their little spells and whatever. One of them, an older man whose spellbook floats in front of him, approaches both myself and Mirka.

"You must be Mirka," he says with a polite nod to her. "And that makes you Lena." He refrains from nodding at me.

Mirka tersely smiles. "Yep. You are?"

"You can call me Kestrel."

I crack a smile. "So close to being called Merlin, huh?"

He snort-laughs, in that impossible to fake way, the dour mood shattered in a second. "Yeah, so close. Did either of you two see anything odd? I'm getting a very faint trace residue of a second magical... something."

"Oh, for sure. Friend of mine stopped by. Yes, it's probably against a million kinds of protocol-"

"-but you can't trust MBR to treat a non-human victim properly. I understand the hesitation, believe me. Don't worry, my job isn't pretending to be a cop. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't anything to worry about." He winks at me.

He really knows how to put me at ease. "Kestrel, right? I thought only hunters got codenames."

"Hunters and forensics. Fae get very particular about burial customs. Trust me, it's for the best. Speaking of hunters, you two lucked out."

"Why's that?"

"Typical policy is to limit the number of hunters on any given job. That means you two are going to be the ones tracking down the murderer, and that's the kind of thing that gets you on the fast-track to a promotion. I've been in MBR for a long time. I've seen it happen over and over. By the way, is your friend who visited... well, are they a plant?"

"Nope." Algae aren't plants, so this isn't a lie, right?

"Ahh well, thanks for humoring me. Feel free to keep having your friend drop by first. Whoever it is, they're very professional."

I like this guy. Mirka seems to, as well.

"Oh," Mirka asks, "I guess you're the one to ask if you know what we should be doing next."

"Right now? Waiting on Ingver in the Ritual Division to determine what's going on with the knife, and trying to find out anyone who knew the victim. His name was Grumley, no last name. Worked as web developer, moonlighted as an escort when work was scarce."

I nod, watching Mirka write it down. "Maybe this time, they'll actually send me the case files."

Kestrel cocks his head. "You haven't been getting them? You're checking the app, right?"

Mirka and I ask a question simultaneously: "What app?"

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We checked with a few neighbors. All of them slammed doors in our faces. Seems Grumley wasn't popular with humans.

As such, the drive home was fairly quiet. While I remained mostly unbothered, our best leads being immediately shut down dampened Mirka's spirit. That is, until Shirai messaged me as we pulled into the parking garage.

Scam Likely: I saw a really cool looking stray dog near my office. You should come by right now and check it out.

"Shirai has the Pack guy at his clinic."

"Thank God, I was totally out of ideas." Mirka throws the car in reverse, and starts returning down the direction we came from.

The Pack guy, who I hope is anyone except Cú Ganduine himself, is waiting for us. Being a magical beast criminal makes you doubly in peril: both from police, and from MBR. I know for certain this guy isn't going to be happy to see us, but if it's the leader of the magical beast criminals... Maybe I could convince him to only rip me apart and leave Mirka alone.

Either way, we park a block or so from Shirai's clinic, and hesitantly approach. The clinic is probably the only enclosed space I feel safe in, and I'm a little worried about tainting the security I feel there by putting Shirai and Mirka in a bad position.

We descend down the storm door stairs, seeing the main operating theater empty. I hesitantly walk forward, ready for a fight, peering into every room until all that's left is the lounge room. The room with Melo's very fragile tank in it, of course.

I hype myself up, prepared for the worst, and open the door.

Inside, in front of Melo and Shirai, a massive, seven foot high humanoid canine monster waits. He's less like what you'd imagine a werewolf to be, and more like a grayish black dog on his hind legs. He has opposable thumbs on its front paws, though holds his arms close to its body like an animal on its hind legs would. The face is a wolf-like snout with large eyes that reveal very little white, with a thick, hairless scar that circles his entire neck. He's wearing clothing, surprisingly, a custom fit pair of cargo shorts and a white t-shirt that reads "I DON'T BARK" in dark yellow text.

Upon seeing us, he strides over with surprisingly elegance, immediately pushing his snout towards Mirka. Instinctively, I reach out a hand to catch his face, to which he pulls back.

"Aye, my fault, I'm actin' the maggot. How's she cuttin'?" He says in a thick Irish accent, taking a couple steps back.

I don't sleep. I've never even been unconscious. But right now, looking at the massive dogman speaking complete gibberish in a possibly exaggerated Irish accent while my best friend and the algae he's going to propose to are watching in amusement behind him... I'm fairly certain this is what dreaming is like.

"Hey," Mirka says, extending an arm. "I'm Meerkat, from MBR."

"Grand. M'name's Cú Ganduine, good meeting ya." He doesn't shake her hand, but nods respectfully at it. "And you, cailín?" he asks, looking at me.

The hell kind of name is Cailín? "My name's Lena." More pressingly, it's the leader of the Pack. I've never met him, but I've heard plenty.

"Lena, nice name for a nice lass. Sure look, Grumley's been shanked. Was a dryshite, but the fella didn't deserve that. You two are on the case, aye?"

I'm having a lot of trouble getting over what I'm seeing, so I let Mirka handle it.

"Yeah, Cú, we-"

"Cú Ganduine," he corrects, still affable. "One name, not two."

"Sorry, Cú Ganduine."

"Ah, g'way outta that, no harm done. Tell me, lass, weren't you a cop way back?"

"Uhh..."

He laughs in short huffs. "Seems like a yes. Hoping there's no bad blood."

"No, none, we're just trying to figure out what happened."

"I know. That knife used is a tool's tool. Used by those poachers masquerading as a cult. You know, the feckin' Ember Scions or some shite." The dogman drops on all fours and shakes his while body in irritation, as though the idea itself gave him fleas.

I ask, "Can I have a little more detail Ember Scions?"

Cú Ganduine stays on the ground, seemingly equally comfortable. "You have all day? They're a cult, says that magic is the domain of man, and we beasties are a perversion of it. Says they get stronger by doing a ritual and sacrificing us. Shite, the lot of it, but the idea of murdering beasties seems to draw people in anyway."

Jesus, that's grim. "Okay. Evil cult murdered a magical beast. Looks like we have our lead, right, Mirka?"

She slowly nods, but doesn't seem as enthusiastic as she did before. There's more going on here that she isn't telling me, but as a master of keeping secrets myself, I won't pry.

At least, not yet.