“Yeah.” I said goodbye to Jack and hung up the phone then stared off into the distance for a while. This wasn’t going to be an easy case to solve, and I knew I had a limited amount of time to do it, too.
Chapter 4
A couple of hours later, Willow showed up with a large pizza in her hands.
“Hey!” I greeted her warmly, taking the box from her and placing it on the counter in the tiny kitchen. I grabbed a couple of plates from the cupboard and handed them to her. “Thanks for coming over.”
“No problem. You know, when someone invites you over for pizza, they usually don’t mean you have to be the one to get it.”
I laughed. “Yeah, well, I was already settled here. Besides, you’re a Healer, you can afford to pay the big bucks.”
“That’s true,” Willow replied, grabbing herself a beer from my fridge and settling down on the couch. “And boy did pizza sound good after the day I’ve had.”
“What kind of hijinks have the paranormals of the world gotten up to this time?”
“Well, there were two young witches that were playing around with magic trying to make chocolate lava cake because their moms said they couldn’t have any dessert until after dinner. Only, they somehow messed up the chocolate part of the spell and created a miniature volcano in their backyard. They set a tree on fire and burned their faces pretty badly. Luckily with some pain killers and healing balms, they’ll be as good as new in no time, but I don’t think they’re going to be using magic to cook again anytime soon.”
“Oh no!” I said. “That’s awful.”
“It wasn’t fun to deal with that first thing,” Willow agreed. “Luckily, everything else was just ridiculous. There was a couple who were trying some new stuff in bed using magic, only he got a little bit too enthusiastic and they ended up stuck together in a… compromising position.”
I burst out into laughter. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I was. They were mortified. Completely understandable, of course.”
“I’m mortified just listening to this story.”
“Of course, once they left it was joke central.”
“I can imagine.”
“The last crazy patient of the day was a wizard who had accidentally transformed his arms into wings. And it couldn’t have just been regular Stellar’s Jay wings or something. No, it had to be albatross wings. So he had a wingspan of about eight feet, and every time he tried to motion with his hands at all, the wings would open up and flatten anything nearby. He took out a cart full of potions at one point and about six different potions landed all over the poor Assistant Healer standing next to it. Two of the potions had a bad reaction and the Assistant Healer turned invisible. A regular spell wouldn’t undo it, and it took the best potion maker in the hospital four hours to find a potion to reverse it.”
“Wow, you do deserve all this pizza,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s a crazier day than mine where I was followed around by a ghost cloud before creating a clone of myself to get him off my trail and managing to destroy him.”
“I think we both deserve this pizza. And maybe a drink or fifty.”
“I’ll toast to that,” I said with a laugh, settling in on the couch next to my friend. “But I can’t get too plastered tonight. I have a new client who thinks someone is trying to kill him, and I’m going to spend tomorrow trying to stay one step ahead of this paranormal.”
“Oh, do tell.”
I recounted the whole story to Willow, who frowned when I was finished. “That’s too bad about Andrei. I saw the Trattoria menu up on their door the other day, and I was looking forward to eating there. If he’s the kind of vampire who uses slurs about shifters though, I’m not going to be giving him any of my money.”
“Agreed,” I replied. “I was disappointed, too. I’d love another good Italian place in town.”
“So what’s your plan to tackle this?”
“I think tomorrow I’m going to visit Rudoldir at work. I want to see who he interacts with, see if there’s anyone there who obviously hates him but he’s oblivious to it. I think it’s probably something related to his job. He sounds like the world’s most boring elf outside of work. Well, and at work, but he doesn’t seem to interact with a lot of paranormals outside the office. And besides, being an elf, most of the paranormals he would know would also be elves, in which case he wouldn’t be able to sense their rage.”
“Right,” Willow said. “So whoever’s trying to kill him can’t be an elf. It could be a hitman, but I doubt they’d be so angry. They’re professionals; they don’t care who they kill.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I thought maybe the hitman would have to rile himself up, but you’re right. It’s unlikely. So it has to be something related to his job.”
“Well, I hope you find the wannabe killer.”
“Me too. I figure it’s probably not going to be too long before they try again, so I want to have this solved by tomorrow.”
My phone started ringing in the middle of the night, jarring me awake.
“What the?” I muttered sleepily, rolling over and hitting my nightstand repeatedly with my hand, trying to find the phone. Eventually I grabbed it and answered, not bothering to check who it was.
Even if it was a telemarketer calling in the middle of the night, I wanted to find out their name so I could go strangle them in person.
But no, it was Jack.
“Hey, are you awake?”
“You’re the Enforcer, you should be able to figure it out based on the time.” What time even was it? Two, three in the morning?
“Your life is crazy enough that I don’t assume anything when it comes to you.”
“Well, I’m asleep, like a normal person. At least, I was asleep.
