Byrd's Eye View

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Detective Rhea Florakis didn’t look up from her desk when her partner, Murphy Laramie, sat down across from her. He sighed as he settled in his seat. He leaned over and tapped his hands against the pink memo paper. He adjusted his sleeves, and then finally, he cleared his throat.

Rhea finally met Murphy’s gaze stoically. “Oh. Hi. Didn’t see you there. Could have sworn I’d been ghosted.”

“Come on,” Murphy said. “No kidding around. You know it’s me and you know I want something.”

Rhea folded her hands on top of her off-white in-take forms. Her black nail polish—the kind that reflected magical properties—shone under the florescent lights of the detective bull pen. She thought she’d have enough time before the end of her shift to complete the paperwork for the unlicensed magical paraphernalia that she’d just taken in, and then maybe have enough time to question Ciara, the head witch at this coven, if she didn’t lawyer up. She’d just put on the polish in order to accomplish these remaining tasks as safely as possible.

But Murphy wanted something. He always wanted something. “I’m not going with you to pick up a dead body. Learned my lesson the first time. You don’t need me. You need to think before you act.”

“Hey,” Murphy said, taking offense at Rhea’s reference to their first shift together when he’d nearly been sucked into a mimicry spell of the dead body in front of them. “I needed the coroner.”

“You needed the coroner’s black book of protection spells.”

“True. But he never gives those out, not without a tongue piercing afterward to ward off blabbering. Anyway, now we have the nail polish, so, the point’s moot. But because of your kindness on that first shift, I’d like to pay you back for all those tough times.”

Murphy tented his fingers. He was still in-training, technically, but he was slowly getting used to the nature of the Magical Crimes Unit. It was hard, Rhea knew, because each and damn day she found something new and enchanting that changed the way she saw the world. It was hard to arrest Ciara, when really, she wanted to buy her a drink and then skim her mind for all the esoteric knowledge she could handle.

At the very least, she wanted her birth chart.

“Have you found a good witch to give me advice?” Rhea asked. “I still want to know what the hell my Lilith rising sign means in my chart. How does it relate to everything else? And if I have a Lilith, does that mean there’s an Eve, too?”

“No idea. Not my department. But what I have is better than that.” Murphy leaned forward as if he was imparting something secret. Rhea played along, not expecting the words that came out of his mouth to affect her so profoundly. “Tonya Byrd is getting out.”

“What?”

“Tonya,” he repeated. “Mrs. Nobody.”

“I know who she is,” Rhea snapped. Her attention went to her desk drawer. She didn’t need to grab the file at the bottom to already know what it would say: Tonya Byrd, a conjurer known for manufacturing elements outside of the periodic table, was arrested for counterfeit magical goods seven years ago. Since one of those goods was a deadly weapon, she was given the highest sentence. The Crowd and Alliance Crime Unit—effectively the magical mob unit—had arrested her, not Rhea. She’d been investigating her privately for her counterfeit metals and unsanctioned metallurgy. Since that didn’t count as the biggest crime, Tonya was never charged for it. A petty theft, a misdemeanour.

Yet Rhea knew it would lead to so much more. She’d wanted Tonya for herself, to question by herself, in order to extract and record all the unheard secrets of her life of crime. When Crowd Unit had grabbed her, Rhea’s work and goals had been left out in the cold. For the past seven years, she’d been keeping tabs on Tonya. That had been easy since she’d been in the same magical jail. Each time Rhea and Murphy went to interrogate witch gangs or vampire s*x crimes they’d stop by Tonya’s cell. Rhea wanted to know where her lab was based. She wanted to know the next step of her enterprise. Surely this woman had more up her sleeves, right?

They’d gotten nowhere.

At least, nowhere on paper.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Rhea said. Her heart pounded as she opened the file and looked at the mug shot of Tonya. Her most obvious feature was one that Rhea didn’t even see anymore: Tonya’s missing eye. She had a glass one that gave her a red glow when she’d been caught, but it had soon been retrieved as a weapon and replaced with an eye-patch in lock-up. Each and every visit, Rhea had spent less and less time concerned with the obvious flaw, and regarded every other aspect of Tonya. Her blonde hair was matted and dyed purple at the edges, which had soon faded in her jail cell. Her teeth were long and narrow, blindingly white, and so she seemed to smile all the time. The joy at her own capture seemed anathematic. It was like she wanted to be in confinement. It was like she wanted to do this to Rhea. Her stomach quivered a bit before she turned to Murphy. “It says here that she won’t be released for another few months”

“Exactly. Just when our statute of limitations expires.”

Rhea made a face. This was not their case. This was her case. But since Murphy had vital information, she played along. “It is. If she’s out now, for whatever reason, does that mean we are able to pursue her? We can arrest her for our crimes.”

“Even if it expires in two weeks?”

“Yes. It only counts from the moment of arrest. Especially for magical crimes.” Rhea smiled as she closed the file. She discarded the rest of her paperwork, knowing that Ciara and the rest of the Magical Crimes Unit’s cases would have to wait. “What prison is she being released from? Is there transport there and back?”

Murphy let out a series of unsure noises. “Um. I just. I heard it on the TV and—”

“The TV?”

“Yes. She’s being released alongside several other prisoners. Here.” Murphy had taken out his police issued magical device with a screen. The liquid crystal moved to form yet another image of Tonya in a pink jumpsuit, next to three other women in pink jumpsuits to mark their magical crimes and level of danger. The woman behind her was a head taller than her, had long hair in two braids that fell down her chest, and a scar on her right cheek. The woman beside her was tall, red-haired, and dimly familiar.

“That’s Samantha Deep,” Rhea said, suddenly remembering the Madame arrested for conspiracy to commit b********y as she regularly tried to put on a s*x show between shifters and humans. “Why is she there? I thought she had at least fifteen years?”

Before Murphy could answer—and no doubt butcher the response—a newscaster narrated from his device. An outbreak of flu had made living conditions unsafe in Cotton Lawn Jail. “Doctors are still tracing the origin of the epidemic. Meanwhile, the women on cell block D are being given compassionate release, as their block is overrun and they have tested negative for the virus. Outrage at this decision is already being felt by the governs of the Neon City. What do you think, viewers? Should a prisoner’s safety be put above our own public safety? Call the number at the bottom of the screen and we will hear some news straight from your own lips.”

Murphy put his phone away as the number ran across. Rhea let out a low laugh. “Oh, the crazies are going to come out for that. There will be at least three hours of calls.”

“And here, too, since we’re one off from their live number.” Murphy gestured to the phone on his desk just as it rang. He winced and then looked at Rhea. “Should I answer it?”

“No. Once you start, there will be no relief. Only in seeking knowledge do we truly understand who we are and what we can do…”

Rhea let the line that was not hers linger. It was Tonya’s. Their first meeting in prison, behind glass, Rhea had told Tonya she’d been hunting her for years. And you still didn’t find me? Well, you couldn’t have done all that work without finding yourself in the process, Tonya had said. When Rhea had disagreed, and said they were nothing alike, Tonya had only smiled again. That’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart. We are made of the same earth, the same sky, and the same magical compounds that I manipulate. You may not possess magic, and I may not ever really, truly, without external assistance—but we know things. We know a lot, and it is only in seeking knowledge that we truly understand who we are and what we can do. If she was the more romantic type, she would have fallen in love with Tonya right there. Instead, her heart already devoted, she’d taken the line as a koan and meditated on it for years. That way, this process of waiting was made that much easier.

A phone ringing on her desk knocked Rhea from her reverie. She looked at Murphy who ran a hand through his hair. “What should we do?”

“You damn well know exactly what we should do.” Rhea stood. She checked her sidepiece and made sure the protection sigils were fresh. “We are going to that release, and we are getting what we truly deserve.”