Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
“Grandma!”
She shrugged. “The angle of approach wasn’t good. The Brick is wider than the door, so it’s hard to hit it right.”
“You drove the Brick into the house! And you didn’t even break the door.”
“How was I supposed to know she’d spent the money on ballistic resistant plate steel?”
“I deserve to have nice things, I work hard, and safety is important to me!”
“I was not consulted about said ramming,” Leon said. “I had to dive out of the way and hit my head on this stupid coffee table.”
Argh! I wished I could growl but it would just freak everyone out.
“Where is the child now?”
“It’s not a child,” Grandma Frida said.
Leon passed me a framed photograph. In it, Kent and Sandra held a white Persian cat.
“That’s the name of the cat,” Leon informed me. “Little Girl.”
I turned to Kent. “Why did your wife hide in the panic room?”
Kent waved his arms. “Clint called and screamed at me that Sandra is a scammer, and she bankrupted his bakery. Patrick from the winery had called him, and Clint checked his accounts. I logged into our bank to see if there were any weird deposits and I found that we are broke. It’s worse than broke, we are in debt! Our personal credit lines are maxed out. Our mortgage hasn’t been paid since August. When I confronted her, she kidnapped my baby and ran into the panic room and now she’s threatening to hurt her!”
“Everything was fine until you decided to go digging! I gave you everything, and you just couldn’t leave it alone. Why can’t you believe me, Kent?”
“You stole from our friends! Everyone knows. Clint and Patrick called everybody! Everyone hates us.”
“I made their businesses. Every single one of them was failing until I helped them. They owe me.”
Kent looked at me. “I just want my cat back.”
“Okay.” I walked up to the door. “Mrs. Mills, this is silly. You can’t stay in the panic room forever.”
“Yes, I can.”
“What would you like to happen?” I asked. “What would it take to get you to come out?”
“I want you all to go away. And I want everyone to apologize to me for lying about me. I want Patrick to come here and tell me how sorry he is that he made everyone mad at me.”
Denial was a terrible thing.
I tried for my business voice. “Mrs. Mills, that’s not realistic. You embezzled a significant amount of money. That’s an irrefutable fact provable by financial records and bank statements. No amount of apologies will make it go away.”
“What do you people want from me? I do everything. Do you want my blood, is that it? Do you want a blood sacrifice?”
“Nobody wants that. We want you to be healthy and uninjured. Why don’t you come out and we can talk about it? I’m sure you were under a great deal of stress. We all make mistakes. As you said, maybe it is all a misunderstanding.”
Kent rolled his eyes. Leon made money counting gestures.
“You know what I think?” Sandra asked, a vicious note in her voice. “I think you’re a conniving little bitch. You can tell that bastard that I will break every bone in his piece of shit cat’s body. He loves her more than me anyway.”
Who wouldn’t? I looked at the door. It seemed standard: solid, with a wheel that rotated, and probably multiple steel bars that secured it when the wheel was turned. Once she locked it from the inside, the wheel wouldn’t move.
“Leon, call Sgt. Munoz and let him know that we are about to have an incident. I need all of you to leave the building and not peek. I want to have a private conversation with Sandra.”
They looked at me.
“Do you want her out of that room or not?” I made shooing motions with my hands. “Go on.”
“I want to…” Kent started.
“Please leave. Your baby is counting on you.”
I watched the three of them walk out of the building. The thing about metamorphosis mages was that everyone thought we were one trick ponies. We turned into monsters and sometimes went nuts. But there was more to it. So much more.
I pulled on my magic. It tried to bury me like an avalanche, a glowing mess of rainbow colors, churning together. I picked just one, the dark red one, and let it fill me. The blood-red shadow of the Beast that was my other form filled my mind, colossal, shaggy, with eyes that glowed pure white.
“You wouldn’t really hurt a little cat, would you?” I stretched my shoulders.
“Watch me!”
“Have it your way.”
I gripped the wheel and strained. In my head the Beast roared. Metal snapped with a sharp clang inside the door. The wheel gave with a grinding noise, the bars slid back, and I yanked the door open.
Sandra Mills stared at me with freaked out eyes. She was white and thin, in her early thirties, with salon-dyed blonde hair and too much foundation that was two shades too yellow for her skin tone. Her sweatpants and an over-sized T-shirt hung on her bony shoulders. She clutched a white cat to her.