A Blackmail and a Birthday
by Misti Wolanski
Smashwords Edition 1.1
Copyright 2011 by Misti Wolanski
All Rights Reserved
While waiting for her boyfriend to treat her to her first drink, Ember hears a gun. Her 21st birthday’s about to get a bit more eventful than she expected.
—
(A short story of about 3,600 words plus an excerpt from "The Corpse Cat")
ALERT: Contains mild language, violence, and drunkenness.
This is a work of fiction. People, places, and events are made up; any that aren't made up have all been processed through the shredder of the author's imagination, and therefore bear only superficial resemblance to their originals, at best.
This work is licensed in electronic format for your personal enjoyment only. That means no, you may not share this e-book by e-mail or on file-sharing sites, nor may you resell this story without authorization. Buy your friends their own copies, please. If the copy you're reading wasn't bought for your use specifically, please respect the author and delete or pay for the e-book. Thanks!
Cover Designed by Misti Wolanski
A Blackmail and a Birthday
A gun chambered a bullet, two alleys down from the club Ember had picked to celebrate her twenty-first birthday.
Ember tilted her head so she could hear better. The halogen lights in the black night hindered her eyes, but her hearing was better, anyway, out of water. Too many people chattered around her for her to tell if any speech accompanied the gun. No gunshot, not yet, not unless the gunman had a really good silencer.
Sweat beaded on the back of her neck. She'd smelled rain on the air all day but hadn't encountered a drop. The humidity made everything sticky, and everyone's skin shone from sweat. That made her nose useless, too.
Ember scanned the crowd again for Randall. He should've joined her an hour ago, to treat her to her first drink and make sure she didn't accidentally put a null ward on anyone. Last time, the victim found it funny when Ember had interrupted and nullified the victim's glamour. But Miranda was far more forgiving than even most mischievous changelings.
Randall still hadn't shown up. Probably had an emergency call make his shift go over. That was a downside to her boyfriend being a cop.
He was also a werewolf, but she tried not to hold it against him.
Ember stuck her hands in her pockets and meandered towards where she'd heard the gun. She could hear Miranda scolding her, now: You're not a fighter; You'd better stop antagonizing the werewolf unless you want his folks to eat you; You'll be dead before graduation if you keep sticking your flippers where they don't belong; Will you not grow up?!
Considering Miranda had at least a few centuries on Ember and Ember wouldn't live that long, Ember doubted Miranda would ever consider her grown up and didn't see the point in trying. She might not be all that powerful a Magik, but she was still harder to kill than a mundane. Miranda often rued telling Ember that.
Ember cocked her head to listen before peeking around the alleyway. A hood pointed a gun at a pissed-off ten-year-old girl in worn black jeans and denim jacket that didn't quite hide the Three Days Grace T-shirt. The night and shadows made Miranda's eyes feel as obsidian as they appeared, after dark. Her sweaty honey-gold skin and blue-black bobbed hair shimmered in the faint light.
The hood stepped closer, putting him under enough streetlight that Ember realized he shared Miranda's oversized pointed ears. Neither changeling was wearing glamour to soften their inhumanly sharp ears and teeth. And was that an anarchy symbol drawn all over his wifebeater and ragged jeans?
"I'm paying, I'm paying." Miranda added a few curses to her complaints and reached slowly into her jacket. She pried a wad of cash out of the inner pocket and handed it off. "The boundaries laid, and two thousands paid."
Magic tickled Ember's senses as some spell settled into place. Her nose itched. She fanned herself with her tank top to distract herself from the urge to sneeze. The self-made breeze helped against the heat, too, though Ember's little sister Brooke liked mocking her for wearing loose shirts.
"Now leave my fosters alone. And put that gun away before Lyall sniffs you out."
The hood snarled. "You'll have to grow up one of these years, Mirenka."
Miranda didn't blink, baring her sharp teeth. "Only if I want to, Byrne." It took Ember a moment to realize Miranda hadn't said 'Only if I want to burn.'
Miranda ignored the gun Byrne still held and headed for the alley entrance. Byrne fired it into her leg with a mostly-silenced bang. Ember flinched. Miranda hissed and swiftly dug the bullet out with a pocketknife. Changelings weren't exactly powerful, either, but they were tough. Chewy like squid, Randall liked teasing.
Burne grabbed Miranda's arm before she could recover and pinned her against the wall. She squirmed, scowling at him. "What you planning to do, rape me?"
Ember gasped and covered her mouth. And thanked her lucky charms that changeling hearing wasn't all that great, as far as Magiks went.
"The idea's occurred to me."
Somebody grabbed Ember from behind. She squealed and ended up pinned under a glaring human-form werewolf with a badge on his belt. Officer Randall Lyall propped himself up, driving his badge further into her hip. "What the hell are you thinking?!" he snarled.
"Ow."
Randall snorted. He hauled her up, shoved her behind him, and turned to face the threat by the time Ember remembered Byrne and Miranda.
Randall glanced at the gun and shifted to draw attention to the badge he wore at his hip despite his bland civvies: T-shirt, jeans, work boots. "You want me to pull mundane law into this? Because I could just go the Magik route and eat you, instead."
Byrne gulped his reply and stalked off. Miranda watched Byrne leave before turning her frown on Randall. "I had that."
"Before or after he threatened to rape you?" Ember asked.
Miranda rolled her eyes, muttering "Children!" She scowled at the two of them. "If you must know, he's my husband."
Randall's smile wasn't friendly, which kept Ember on her guard. "Husbands can rape their wives, too."
Miranda's lips pursed. "That isn't the same."
"It's exactly the same. You forget that I know more of your kind than Ember does, changeling. You follow the old ways, rape only counting when it's unlawful seduction, and marriages being arranged in childhood. Whichever changeling matures first harasses the spouse's fosters until the other lets herself grow up."
"Or until the wife pays her husband two grand to let her stay a kid?" Ember asked.
Randall blinked, then turned his cool stare back on Miranda. Miranda scowled, crossed her arms, and raised her chin. "Try it, wolf boy. Just try it. I'm so not in the mood."
His smile was all predator. "Sure you are."
Miranda bared her mouthful of fangs and took a step forward. "You calling me a liar, pup?!"
Randall shrugged. "You're in a foul mood and itching for a fight. You don't want to admit you'd love a scrap right now, fine. But don't expect me not to notice." He tapped his nose, took Ember by the upper arm, and headed back towards the club.
Miranda's muttered reply made Ember's ears burn. Another cop might've arrested the changeling on disorderly conduct then and there. Randall just shook his head and ignored it.
The club wasn't really cooler than the sticky heat outside, but at least there were fans, if you were tall enough. Or had a werewolf boyfriend who could put you on his shoulders and still walk through the crowd.
Ember enjoyed the sensation of being taller than everyone else and made a mental note to ask him to carry her more often. "Should you have your badge out?"
"Probably not." But Randall didn't put it away as he headed to the bar.
She felt a little sorry for whoever his boss was supposed to be. Randall's department put up with a lot of crap from him, because Miami had so much influx and so few Magiks willing to work with the mundane police force. Ember's experience with werewolves was mostly limited to a pack that tried to eat her the year before, but she got the impression that Randall was unusual for his kind. Something about him not having a pack.
Randall helped her down off his shoulders, holding her close and letting his hands slide for far longer than necessary. She smirked back at him. His hazel eyes turned to amber, and he was comfortably warm despite the muggy heat. And his mouth tasted like sweat and pine and gator… Gator?
Ember pulled back from their kiss, frowning. "You ate a gator today?"
"It attacked a child."
Ember hid her smile against Randall's chest. Usually, she did the rescuing, and he grumbled about it while he stitched her back up. He'd met her thanks to her civilian rescues, though, so he didn't chew her out about them too much. Her adoptive parents were worse when they got on one of their 'All Magiks are demons or demon-possessed' rants.
Randall leaned back and gently pushed her away on the shoulder so she'd turn to face the bar. "So it's your twenty-first birthday. What first? Strawberry daiquiris are popular with girls."
"I'm allergic to strawberries," Ember retorted, though she wasn't. "I'll have a mudslide."
From his quirked lips, Randall easily remembered the times he'd found her clothed in mud and her sealskin after a gator rescue. "You know that's coffee, not chocolate, right?"
"I'm allergic to chocolate," Ember replied, honestly this time.
He shrugged and ordered her a mudslide. It didn't taste like she expected, but that was mostly because Ember hadn't realized what people meant when they said alcohol burned. She coughed. "Ow."
Randall playfully hit her arm. "No pain, no gain."
Ember stuck her tongue out at him. "I'll remember that, next time a gator takes a chunk outta me."
Randall's eyes flashed amber, and he growled. He knew she'd go swimming no matter what he did, though, so he didn't bother to forbid her to play gator bait.
A strawberry daiquiri followed the mudslide, and he let her taste his own two drinks. She liked the whiskey more than the beer, but it was a toss-up about if she liked the whiskey or the strawberry daiquiri more. Warmth coiled inside her, and she fanned herself with her nicely loose tank.
Ember turned away from the bar and stumbled. The world spun slowly to catch up to her. "Oh! Um. Hm. I should sit down."
She would've plopped where she stood, but Randall grabbed her from behind to hoist her up. "No, not here," he murmured in her ear. "Over there, against the wall. There's a booth. See?"
Ember didn't. She squinted, but there was too much glare against the dark.
He sighed, his chest rumbling at her back. "Come on. Let's go sit."
How they made it to the empty booth was a bit fuzzy. Ember grabbed a lucid moment with both hands and clung for dear life. "I'm such a lightweight."
"That isn't a bad thing, Em." He pressed a cool glass into her hand. "Drink some water. It'll help."
It would help avoid a hangover later, he meant. She blindly gulped it down while the world did another slow spin. "I think I'm a one drink kinda girl."
"We'll know that for the future, then."
Ember enjoyed the rare sensation of Randall actually letting her lean on him. "You smell good."
Randall put his nose to her neck and took a long whiff. "So do you," he rumbled.
"Sweat. Pine. Gator," she told him what he smelled like.
"Sweat. Sawgrass. Sugar cane." He laughed a little. "You've been swimming in the Everglades, again."
Ember shrugged. "It's relaxing. When gators aren't trying to munch-munch me."
"There are other ways to relax." His fingers danced up her thigh. Ember shivered, wishing she'd worn a skirt instead of shorts.
She laughed breathily. "My father would kill you." Wouldn't go over well with the congregation, to have the already-odd daughter knocked up.
Randall didn't blink. "He's welcome to try."
Ember's fuzzy world narrowed into her boyfriend's touch and taste, which wasn't too much for her addled brain to handle. She heard something click. Randall stiffened and slowly leaned away from her to face that sound. She bit back a whimper.
Ember blinked and squinted and still wasn't sure what was going on. She hated club lighting. The glint off that metal barrel was so bright—
Oh. Gun. Ember giggled.
Randall gave her an odd glance and pulled away altogether, keeping himself between her and the gun. "I suggest you put that away."
"Or what, pup? Your pack will eat me?" Byrne's grin showed his changeling-sharp teeth. "That's right. You don't have a pack. You're Independent, like your girlfriend there."
Ember often wished she'd taken Magiks 101 in college, but she'd decided the risk of the teacher being something that might want to kill her made up for the benefit of learning about what she was. Selkies weren't popular, for some reason that nobody would tell her.
Randall wasn't impressed by Byrne's threat. "You're pointing a gun at a cop, in a public place, threatening his girlfriend. And you're deriding my intelligence?"
"That's a silencer," Ember pointed out, and hiccupped.
"Thank you, Ember." He sounded more tolerant than grateful, and she realized she was probably drunk. Aw, dang. That was why he'd pulled away.
Something else shimmered blue nearby. Ember tilted her head and squinted at it, no longer listening to the threats and insults that passed between the werewolf cop and changeling hood. Miranda's bluish-black hair?
Miranda slipped her way through the crowd towards them. Miranda had lost her jacket somewhere and looked a bit scratched up. A bruise was forming on her left eye.
But without skipping a beat, Miranda jumped onto their table beside Randall and landed in a crouch, giving Ember a good view of the changeling's ankle-high boots with the shiny silver zipper. "Pretty boots." Miranda's hiss at Byrne stopped prematurely, and the two changelings blinked at Ember.
Randall moved then. He yanked the gun from Byrne's hand with werewolf strength—Ember heard bones crack—and slammed him down against the table. "You raise a finger against my girlfriend again, and I will eat it."
"Police brutality!"
Byrne's yell was hilarious, though Ember couldn't put her finger on why.
"You try that lawsuit," Randall suggested, completely calm. "See how far it goes against the force's token werewolf. Especially when the trial reveals that you're a boggart."
"Riddikulus!" Ember giggled. Miranda snorted.
"Mir, please keep Em company while I handle this."
"Sure thing," Miranda promised, and she slid into the booth across from Ember. "So. How much did you drink?"
"I'm a lightweight," Ember announced.
Miranda nodded. "I can see that, sealgirl."
"I'm a sea lion, not a seal."
"Only because you were born in a tropical climate, Em. Your selkie parent or grandparent was probably a seal."
"Seals have blubber." Ember snickered. "Blub—blub—flubber! They flub in their blubber!"
Miranda shrugged and pressed a glass Ember didn't remember seeing a minute ago into Ember's hand. "Drink some more water, sweetie."
"I think I'm drunk."
"And the water will keep you from regretting it in the morning. Now drink."
Ember obeyed Miranda like she usually did. "What happened to…?" She waved at Miranda's face.
The changeling's expression confessed her age like her apparently ten-year-old body didn't. "I played target practice with a gargoyle."
"Oh." Ember nodded and enjoyed the bobbing sensation so much that she kept it going. "Your fosters okay with that?"
Miranda raised both eyebrows. "My fosters let me do what I want. They know what I am."
Ember sniffed. "Thought changelings weren't supposed to tell nobody."
"I prefer not breaking my fosters' hearts when I leave unannounced," Miranda commented, eyes narrowing at Randall he returned. "You tested?"