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Chapter One
All the Emotions
Craziness has become so routine that whenever a day like today happens, it’s essentially a vacation.
It’s strange to me that my PI business feels so much like an actual business now. I have an office, defined hours—well, more a suggestion of hours—and a lot of humdrum routine to work on. It’s the humdrum part that excites me. Okay, to be technical here, it’s the opposite of excitement. Is relief the proper word here? Going to the office and spending anywhere from six to eight hours doing ordinary things is a welcome break from diving headfirst into a demon’s mouth. I’d say it feels like a vacation, but my last two attempts to take a vacation have turned into wild rides. Chaos and insanity seem to follow me wherever I go.
Then again, maybe I should be more positive.
Today is nice and relaxing in a brain-numbing sort of way. Couple of process serves, background checks, and so on. Work-wise, the most exciting thing to happen in the past few days is tracking down a deadbeat parent. It’s an unusual situation since the dad got custody and it’s the mom who’s not keeping up with the child support. Yeah, that situation happens, though it’s far from common.
Tammy was off today since she stayed up way too late with her friends last night. She doesn’t get to see them too often anymore, so I didn’t mind. Besides, she’s eighteen now. Suppose I technically could give her crap for arriving home at two in the morning with the whole ‘under my roof’ thing. No point to it since she didn’t go out drinking and came home drunk in the wee hours. She’s not exactly wild anymore. The past few years have seen her mature quite a lot. The getting home at two in the morning thing came from hanging out with her friends at one girl’s house watching movies or playing video games… something ‘uncool’ like that. Two of her high school friends now live out of state going to college and one’s in the Navy or something, home on leave for a week… so she’s got limited time to see them.
Anyway, I’ve done enough office work for the day. Time to go home. Hey it’s not quite five yet, but I am the boss. Maybe I could give myself a disapproving stare in the mirror for cutting out early. Nah. Not worth the effort to walk to the little bathroom. And yeah, I can see myself in the mirror again, thank God.
At least my commute home is short… home is a few seconds and a single candle flame away.
Yeah, yeah. Great cosmic power shouldn’t be abused for such mundane things as commuting home from work. Whatever. I used it to get here earlier today so the car’s at home. No real choice now. To be fair, yeah I suppose I could pop wings and fly home. Teleportation is a little easier to keep secret.
I appear just inside my front door, which is basically in my living room, and stop short at the scene playing out in front of me.
Tammy and Paxton are on the sofa, okay. That’s normal.
Except Paxton’s bawling her eyes out. That is not normal. She’s face-first in a pillow in an overly stereotypical teen drama meltdown pose. Crying is not exactly uncommon for her. Kiddo is an eleven on the emotional scale. The tricky part is figuring out if she’s crying like that because something serious happened or she’s having an overreaction to something a normal person would have simply felt ‘a little bummed out’ over. Judging by the ‘oh come on’ expression on Tammy’s face, I decide not to panic.
“What happened?” I ask while approaching, one eyebrow raised.
Tammy gestures at the television, presently showing credits from the end of a movie. I don’t recognize what movie it is based on the credits, so I continue giving her a quizzical stare.
“We just watched The Last Unicorn,” says Tammy in a tone as if saying that alone should totally explain everything.
Maybe I should hand in my girl card. I never watched that movie. Good chance this was also Tammy’s first time seeing it. She wasn’t exactly into ‘girly’ things as a kid. She totally gets that from me, by the way. I was kind of a tomboy.
Tammy notices my oblivious expression and decides to explain more. “Pax is heartbroken the unicorn and the prince couldn’t be together at the end.” Tammy pats her sister’s shoulder.
Uh oh. Now I understand why that might’ve hit a nerve. She and I both thought what she had with Renae was one of those once-in-a-million ‘meet as kids and end up growing old together’ situations. Somehow, they ended up deciding to just be friends. There might be an unspoken ‘for now’ at the end of that. Of course, it could just be my rose-colored glasses and too many Hallmark movies. Really, how many people meet as kids and end up as that elderly couple on the news who died within a day of each other in their nineties? Romantic, yes. Realistic? Not so much. She’s thirteen… for a few more days. I shouldn’t expect any ‘relationship’ she has at this age to last. It’s not like anyone could fake her out, too. She can read people’s emotions. I guess the two of them were just really close friends and they got confused, mistaking it for romantic love.
Who knows? She seems to be handling it well and there isn’t any bizarre mood in the air whenever Renae is around. Yes, the girl still comes over to hang out sometimes… though it’s no longer an everyday thing.
“It’s so sad!” blurts Paxton.
Tammy nudges her. “She saved all of her kind. Besides… unicorns and humans aren’t supposed to fall in love like that. It would never work. She wasn’t really a human.”
Paxton pushes herself up to sit, wiping her eyes. “It’s still sad.”
“Oh, hey, I need to ask you.” I smile, hoping a change of topic will distract her. “You’ve got an important day coming up real soon. What do you want to do?”
“Huh?” Paxton sniffles. “What do you mean?”
“Your birthday.” I set my hands on my hips, still smiling. “You only get to turn fourteen once. What do you want to do for it? Party? No party? Go somewhere? Stay home?”
Kiddo’s expression brightens in an instant. “Can I just invite a couple friends from school over and we have a small party here? We don’t have to go out or anything. I’m a bit old for Chuck E. Cheese’s now.”
“And too young for a girl’s night out at the bar,” adds Tammy.
“So are you.” I wink at her.
Tammy laughs.
