I’d been right about nobody else wanting to help her. Most folks averted their eyes, as though being old and unable to walk was somehow contagious.
Fuckers.
I’d learned early on if I couldn’t be bothered to do the right thing, I sure as hell couldn’t trust someone else to do it. That got me in trouble, although my kind of trouble tended to involve me losing friends and pissing my brother off because I tended to speak my opinion at precisely the wrong time.
Too bad, so sad.
Not.
My brother sulked in his cage, and I cracked open the lid and slipped my hand inside. “Don’t you dare bite me again, you little shit.”
Jonas kept his teeth to himself, and I pet his head. While rodents weren’t my thing unless I was hunting and wanted a crunchy snack, he had a decent coat, although he’d never match my pristine spots. If he’d been a little more like me rather than like Mom and Dad, the transformative wouldn’t have been a big deal. I could shake them off through shifting to one of my other forms. My strange magic broke some of the CDC’s precious rules, just like they couldn’t figure out why I could shapeshift without the lycanthropy virus.
The CDC really didn’t like when people broke their precious rules. I really didn’t like that an organization best known for questionable containment of infectious diseases had full reign over all things magical, including regulations on the one damned recreational drug I could use without wanting to kill somebody when the high wore off.
Yeah, I’d have one hell of a record if the coppers ever figured out I wasn’t shy about experimenting with things I shouldn’t. Pixie dust would remain my favorite hit, as who didn’t like a great high with no downer?
My wallet hated the price of pixie dust, so I went without more often than not. When I ran as a snow leopard, I went for my second-favorite substance, although I would never admit to anyone I liked catnip more than pixie dust.
Pixie dust couldn’t beat a catnip-induced nap.
A cop emerged through the steel door barring the station entry from the rest of place, and I sighed my resignation. As nobody else was in the waiting area, he was likely about to make more of a mess of my day. Old, tired men didn’t like dealing with crazy young chicks who lived in a questionable part of town, especially when they happened to have a sibling with a rap sheet.
Jonas drove me nuts sometimes.
“Miss Esmaranda?”
I gave my brother a final pat and removed my hand from his container, secured the lid, and rose from my seat. “I’m Miss Esmaranda.”
“Come with me.”
Lovely. Not only did I have the old, grumpy white dude, he’d left his manners at home. Why did I always get the jerks?
Then again, to be fair, my request for divine intervention led to a lot of expense and paperwork—and once the angel verified my brother had been forced to consume a transformative, I wouldn’t be the one saddled with the bill.
Victims didn’t pay the bills for the angels. The bills became the problem of the guilty, something I wasn’t. My brother held responsibility for his fair share of crimes, but I’d had a gun held to my head and been forced to watch him pay the piper.
Angels considered things like that when issuing their verdicts, or so I’d been told.
Stirring the cop’s ire would land me into trouble, so I went along with him without a peep. A woman won wars by picking her battles, and if I wanted to tango with the cop, I’d have to bide my time, mince words, and otherwise avoid giving him a reason to give me a hard time.
He led me through a maze of corridors, through a cubicle farm loaded with coppers, and into a small room with the kind of dinky chairs that would make my ass go numb within five minutes. He gestured to one, and aware they made the damned things as uncomfortable as possible to encourage people to tell them the truth faster, I checked it for thumb tacks or other painful things before easing my weight onto it.
Yep, I gave it five minutes before I’d regret coming to the station at all.
“I was told your brother has been transformed into a chipmunk?”
I plunked my brother onto the steel table. He squeaked a protest and waved a furry little fist at me. “This is Jonas. He’s my brother, at least when he’s not a pint-sized pest out to chew up everything we own. He seems to still understand English. I don’t speak chipmunk, but if he bites the shit out of my hand again, I’m spanking the little fucker.” I showed the cop where he’d gotten a hold of me. “At least it stopped bleeding.”
Well, for the most part.
“Please start from the very beginning, ma’am. What happened, and why do you believe your brother is now a chipmunk?”
“He took out a loan from a mafia shark, and I guess he didn’t pay it back. The sharks came over to the house, put a gun to my head, and shoved a vial of liquid down Jonas’s throat. He became a chipmunk. This chipmunk, to be specific. Those damned goons threw him at me, and that’s when I discovered he was able and willing to bite the shit out of me. I shoved him into a shoebox, took him to the nearby pet store, got him a cage, and then came here. One of the sharks came back to my property, but I’ve got a concealed carry permit, so I told him to get the hell off my lawn before I fed him to my grass. He wisely left.”
“You pulled a gun on someone?”
“After him and his buddies broke into my house and held a gun to my head, you better fucking believe I pulled a gun on someone. He was on my property, and his cockwomble, asshole friends just turned my brother into a fucking chipmunk. What was I supposed to do? Gasp, put my hand to my mouth, and bless their fucking hearts? Men like that don’t come to a house like mine without bringing more trouble. I’ve had enough trouble for one day.”
“She speaks the truth,” a masculine voice announced from behind me.
“Jesus fucking Christ on a goddamned cracker!” I screeched, jumping to my feet and whirling around. The angel’s lack of a head bothered me far less than his nudity, lack of clothes, and rather noticeable lack of genitalia of any sort. His wings, white banded with blue, added a splash of color to his otherwise pale countenance. “At least put some nipples on if you’re just going to leave your chest out like that!”
Why did the angel have no nipples? What had happened to his head? What had happened to his poor dick?
Over the years, I’d learned to recognize stunned silence when I heard it, and I realized I’d rendered an angel speechless right along with the cop.
Oh, right. The rules.
I reviewed each one in my head, determined I’d broken all three of them in one fell swoop, and shrugged. “Well, I guess that blows any chance of you helping my brother, doesn’t it?”
Maybe I could carve nipples onto the angel, since I’d already gone straight over the line of decency into pure blasphemy.
“Please do not carve nipples onto my chest, Miss Esmaranda. As for your other thoughts, it is not a matter of chance. It is not something we are permitted to do. Your brother is as he is, for he is paying a consequence for his actions. While there is power in prayer, this would be an unanswered prayer. I cannot help you with that request.”
Well, shit. “Can you at least tell the cops I’m not lying about those assholes showing up at my house, putting a gun to my head, and forcing me to watch my brother get turned into a rodent?”