style="font-size:15px;"> I shrugged, pretending I didn’t care about school anyway. “Yeah, cool, whatever. I’ll talk to you later.”
I felt her eyes on me as I walked out. It’s not that I’m not grateful to IPCA. I am. They’re the only family I have, and things are better here than they had been in the foster system. But I’ve been working full-time since I was eight, and sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I get bored. And sometimes all I want, more than anything else in the world, is to go on a freaking date.
I went back to my unit. I had a pretty nice setup. A small kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and the main room with my awesome TV. The white walls in my bedroom had long since been covered. One was dedicated to posters of bands and movies I liked. Another was draped with an awesome hot pink and black leopard-spotted curtain. A third wall was my canvas. I wouldn’t call myself an artist, but I had fun painting whatever came to mind—sometimes nothing more than just splashes of color—and changing it when I got bored. The paint was probably two inches thicker now than when I moved in.
I pulled on my favorite pair of pajamas and undid my thick braid. Somehow microwaving dinner and watching a movie won out over doing homework. I must have drifted off to sleep at some point, or maybe I was half asleep, I don’t know. But I’m sure I was dreaming, because I kept hearing a strange voice, almost singing. “Eyes like streams of melting snow, cold with the things she does not know.” Over and over again, that line, in the most haunting way. It was as if the voice was pulling me, calling to me. I wanted to answer. Just as I was ready to call out, another alarm jarred me awake.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and reached over to check my vid screen for an announcement of what was going on. I pulled the screen up, but all it showed was a flashing red WARNING. Lots of help there. I pulled on my robe, grabbed Tasey, and poked my head outside. I knew alarm procedure called for me to stay in, but I wanted to figure out what was going on, and now.
I ran down the empty hallways; strobe lights were going off to warn any paranormals that couldn’t hear the alarm, although you could feel the dang thing it was so loud. Reaching Raquel’s door, I palmed it. That’s the nice thing about being me—all access, all the time. I ducked inside; she was at her desk, calmly rifling through some folders.
“Raquel,” I panted. “What’s up?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” She looked up at me and smiled. Or rather, the thing wearing Raquel’s face looked up at me and smiled. Raquel’s face shimmered over—What? I couldn’t describe it. It was somehow featureless, with eyes the color of water. If it hadn’t been wearing Raquel’s face, it would be like it wasn’t there at all.
I forced a smile to mask my terror. “Woke me up from the freakiest dream.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got some work to do. Why don’t you scoot along?” It went back to the files.
“Sure, as long as you don’t need me.” Turning toward the door, I casually walked closer to the desk. “Oh, Raquel?”
“Hmm?”
I flicked Tasey onto her highest level. “You dropped this.” The thing wearing Raquel’s face looked up as I lunged forward and jabbed it in the chest with the Taser. Its water eyes opened briefly in shock before it collapsed to the ground.
Horrified, I made my way around the desk. I had heard of things that could eat a person alive and wear her skin. The idea gave even me nightmares sometimes, and my life was populated by nightmares. “Please, not Raquel,” I whispered, trying not to throw up. Raquel melted away, leaving the strangest thing I had ever seen. Which, given my job, is saying a lot.
My eyes couldn’t seem to focus on the creature. They kept slipping down its sides, unable to find anything to hold on to. It wasn’t invisible, exactly, but it was as close as a physical being can be. Imagine trying to walk up an eighty-degree incline covered in six inches of ice. That’s what trying to look at this guy was like.
I was pretty sure it was a guy, at least. He kinda wasn’t wearing any clothes, and I was grateful that he’d collapsed in such a way as to cover himself. I was at a loss for what to do next when the door slid open and the real Raquel rushed in, followed by two security guards.
“He didn’t eat you!” I threw my arms around her, on the verge of tears.
The guards rushed by us, and Raquel patted me stiffly on the back. “No, she didn’t eat me. She just punched me very hard in the face.”
“It’s a guy,” I said.
“What is it?” she asked. We walked over to look at him. The guards stared down, perplexed. One scratched his head. Big guy, a hulking French werewolf named Jacques. Werewolves are a bit subtler to see than vampires. If the moon isn’t full, the only thing that gives them away to me is their eyes. Whatever color they seem to be to other people, I can always see the yellow wolf eyes underneath. Most werewolves are pretty decent people. And, since they’re extra strong all the time, we take a lot of them on as security. Of course, during full moons they’re on complete lockdown.
Jacques shrugged. “I have never seen anything like it.” He, too, was struggling to focus on the inert form.
The other guard, a normal human, shook his head.
“How did he get in?” I asked Raquel.
“She—he—it was wearing Denise.”
“Denise from zombie duty?” Denise was a werewolf whose main job was zombie cleanup. I never went on zombie missions—no glamours, so anyone could do it. Plus they weren’t ever hard to pinpoint, although agents had a heck of a time covering it up with the terrified locals. Just another service of IPCA: keeping the world blissfully unaware that most of the supernatural beings of myth are, in fact, real.
“Yes. It—it as Denise—called for a pickup. The zombie was a false alarm. I saw them as they came out of the faerie door. Denise turned and knocked Fehl, the faerie, back through. I pushed my panic button and went to confront her when she punched me and grabbed my communicator.”
“How did he know where your office was?”
“She—he—ran into Jacques and pretended to be dizzy, asked for help getting here.”
Jacques shuffled his feet, embarrassed. “How should we neuter it?”
He wasn’t talking about literally neutering it. Yuck. “Neuter” is just our little term for rendering a paranormal harmless. Werewolves get tracking bracelets with massive amounts of sedatives set automatically for the full moons. Vamps get the holy water bracelets. Faeries are easy once you know their true names, since they have to obey whatever you tell them to do when you use it at the start of your command. Well, easyish, since they always seem to find little ways to work around their strict boundaries. Never underestimate faerie ingenuity for deliberately misinterpreting commands.
Raquel frowned. “I don’t know. Just use the standard volt/sedative combo. When we know more about what it is, we’ll find something with more finesse.”
Jacques pulled out an ankle tracker. He looked hesitant to touch the thing and shook his head. “I can barely see it. Where is the leg?”
