Chapter Seven

Mermaid Hair and Sea Turds

RILEY

Riley heard the sentence and jumped up from his chair, ready to protest. Magical rulings were binding, which meant he wouldn’t be able to put in a single minute of case work without involving Mila Bennet.

He was about to formally complain when Judge Templeton struck preemptively. “All sentencings are final, Chief Riley, so I suggest you lend Miss Bennet a uniform and you two get back to Swift River Elementary and get this mess sorted.” Her Honor stood up as well. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go home and enjoy a good cup of tea before a good night’s sleep,” she said, before leaving the courtroom.

Riley gritted his teeth. He couldn’t believe he was stuck with Mila, the same woman who had caused this mess. It felt like extra punishment on top of the already alarming workload he’d have to sort out before morning.

He turned to the witch, who was staring at him with a mixture of resignation and defiance.

In the end, defiance prevailed. Mila lifted her shackled wrists, and sporting the most viciously sweet smile, she asked, “Do you mind taking these off, Inquisitor?”

“I don’t have the keys,” he lied. He could’ve opened them with the skeleton key in his pocket.

With two fingers, he beckoned the Bennet sisters to follow him out of the courtroom and dropped them into the care of one of the clerical officers.

“Uncuff these two,” he barked, knowing he was acting like a total troll but unable to contain his temper. “The halos, too. This one—” He pointed at the older sister. “Is free to go, make her sign the paperwork, and send her home. This one,” Riley’s mouth automatically turned down at the corners as he focused on Mila Bennet. “Get her a civilian helper uniform and send her out front to the parking lot when she’s ready.”

“No need,” Mila protested. “If you release my broomstick from impound, I can fly myself to the school when I’m ready.”

“Miss Bennet,” Riley flared his nostrils. “You will come to the school in an official police vehicle with me. You might not be an officer of the law, but while you serve your sentence, you report to me.” He pointed at his chest with a thumb for emphasis. “Are we clear?”

She glared at him, and he was glad she was still wearing the halo blocking her thoughts, which now were sure to be a string of verbal abuse directed at him.

Mila flashed him the faux sweet smile again, “Of course, Chief Inquisitor King.”

She meant to use his title sarcastically, but the mockery in her tone didn’t help the shudder the words—coming out of her perfect cupid-bow mouth in that melodic voice—sent straight down to his tailbone.

“I’ll be waiting outside,” he informed her sternly before turning on his heel and striding out of the police station without another glance back.

Once he was out in the fresh air, far away from Mila’s intoxicating presence, if just for a little while, Riley felt relieved.

But he was still so rattled by the whole affair that he started craving a vaping wand for the first time in years. But he’d given up smoking ages ago, and he wasn’t about to start again now because of an insufferable witch with an intolerably bad attitude.

As he walked toward his squad car, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around, only to find Mila Bennet jogging up to him, her long mermaid hair bouncing with every step. “Chief King,” she said in a voice that was as sugary and sweet as before but still laced with sarcasm. “I didn’t want you to forget about me.”

He ignored the sarcasm. Riley also tried— and failed —to ignore how good she looked in the dark-blue department uniform. The blouse fit snugly against her curves—of which he would have an image imprinted in his brain forever—like a glove, accentuating her narrow waist and generous hips. And the pants clung to her long legs, outlining every perfect curve. Especially her shapely behind, he noted, as she walked past him.

Riley shook his head, trying to get rid of the captivating images that had formed in his mind. “I didn’t forget about you, Miss Bennet,” he said curtly, his tone implying there was no chance of him ever forgetting her, considering what a giant pain in his ass she was proving to be. Riley opened the passenger door to the squad car and gestured for her to enter. “Now get in.”

Mila swept into the car, swishing her hips just enough to catch Riley’s attention. He forced himself to look away, focusing on the task at hand.

He got in the car from the other side and started the engine, backing out of the police station parking lot.

“So what will we have to do tonight?” Mila asked after a few minutes on the road.

Riley gripped the wheel. It was a legitimate question, but every word coming out of that woman’s mouth set him on edge, so he replied, “For now, we will ride to the school, quietly. You’ll get your instructions once we get there.”

Mila made a derisive zipper-over-mouth gesture and didn’t speak a word. Still, her reply invaded his brain clear as day. “Got it. Me and my long, mermaid hair will keep nice and quiet.”

Riley’s eyes widened, but he kept them fixated on the road ahead. Had she heard everything he’d just thought or just the mermaid hair part? He sure hoped she hadn’t heard the part about her shapely behind, and shapely behind were probably the last words he should be thinking right now… la la la la la la la la la…

“Gargoyles, you really are a pervert,” came her telepathic rebuff. “I should definitely turn you into a toad.”

And since there was no helping it, he sent an extrasensory reply of his own. “Miss Bennet, non-consensual shapeshifting of a government official is a crime punishable with up to ten years in prison, along with the complete discharge of all magical powers.”

In the passenger seat, Mila crossed her arms over her chest. “Then I’ll turn you into something so little they will never find you.” A moment of blessed silence and then, “I bet no one would even miss you.”

“Said the single woman brewing a love potion of desperation on Christmas Eve.”

Her indignant gasp gave him a little satisfaction.

“You’re a truly despicable wizard. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Why,” he scoffed sarcastically in his head, “you deeply wound my heart, Miss Bennet.”

“You probably have no heart. Actually, a toad would be too much of a superior life form for you. I should turn you into something more basic, like a sea cucumber. They have no hearts and you already resemble a turd, anyway.”

Riley almost chuckled out loud at that but caught himself just in time before replying in his head. “They also have no ears, which would spare me having to listen to all this incessant babble.”

“You’re not listening to me with your ears, so… Yes! That’s what I’ll do. I’ll turn you into a sea turd and then place you in a pretty bowl on my windowsill and sing Taylor Swift’s songs in my head at the top of my lungs just to torture you all day long.”

Riley couldn’t help the smile this time. That was a pretty scary means of torture.

“You bet,” she replied, still not uttering a word. “I’m a scary witch. Scarily fun. Boo-hoo.”

He was still smiling when he asked, “Why is it you can hear every single one of my thoughts, but I can’t hear yours?”

“Well, if you stopped broadcasting every single one of those thoughts around like they were Christmas songs and you a radio station this time of the year, I wouldn’t have to listen to them.”

“And how do I stop broadcasting what I’m thinking?”

She turned to stare at him now. He sensed the movement but still kept his eyes trained on the dark, icy road until her voice invaded his mind again. “Careful, Chief King, that just sounded an awful lot like you were asking for my help.”

Silence, a real one, followed, until Mila spoke again. “It takes patience and lots of practice.”

“Where did you get all that practice?”

“I shared a room with my sister for sixteen years. If we didn’t want to be in each other’s heads all the time, we had to learn how to shield our minds.”

Riley nodded. “I don’t have any siblings, but perhaps—” He cut himself short and clenched his teeth together. He really needed to stop transmitting his thoughts before they turned into billboards shouting at her to read every last one of his secrets.

Riley didn’t expect to be able to shut off his mind like a tap, even so, he was happy to try. He could think about other things anyway, boring stuff like the DMV office or the mound of paperwork waiting for him on his desk, or…

Wait, why couldn’t she hear him while she was in the bathroom at her house?

“You’d just stunned me, jackass.”

Oh, right.

“Technically, I didn’t stun you,” he replied. “Morales did. I only use stunning as a last resort. But Morales is still a recruit. He made a rookie mistake. He got scared.”

“Scared of what? Me taking a nap in the bathtub?”

“It was the cucumbers.” Riley mentally chuckled. “I don’t know what kind of dark magic he thought you were trying to put him under.”

“The cucumbers?” Her melodic laugh resounded in his head. It was a song on the wind. It stirred the leaves on the ground and iced his spine. At that moment, Riley King thought he understood for the first time the allure of a siren song.

“Gargoyles, you really have a thing for mermaids. Is it just me? Or did the kink start as a child as you watched Ariel in her lilac bra? No, wait, with you, I bet it was Splash that did it. Am I right?”

So, it was back to thinking about boring stuff like the increased number of traffic congestions on the Interstate, or how much snow they’d get this winter, or that rumor that Donatello Malatesta was trying to nab himself a Deputy Chief position just because he’d arrived to work before the sun came up this morning. What else, what else? The rock-hard mattress they’d delivered to his house and which he still hadn’t gotten used to. Mattress, bed, sex… no, no, no… bad, backtrack, think about spiders, gross, unsexy spiders—

“Ew. Whatever you do, please don’t think about spiders. They gross me out.”

Okay, so singing it was. “Come to me, in the night, under the full moon’s light…”

“Please, not that song either.”

“What song would you like?”

“Something more beachy.”

No way. The beach reminded him too much of the delicious coconut scent of her hair that had taken over the entire cabin of the car.

“Why, thank you. It’s my coconut-scented shampoo.” Sarcastic mental scoff. “You caught me in the middle of a bubble bath earlier. And I think you actually wanted to say the delicious coconut scent of my loooong mermaid hair…” She sent him a mental wink.

He was doomed. She could hear every little thing. The only solution was to keep as far away from the witch next to him as he could.

“Suits me just fine.” Mila scoffed in his head again.

Thank gargoyles they were almost at the school now. Riley recited The Laws of Magic: A Guide to the Many Uses of Wizarding Powers in his head for the rest of the journey until they finally turned into the school’s parking lot.

Riley got out of the car and inhaled a breath of cold winter air, hoping it would clear the last bits of her intoxicating scent out of his brain. Magical sentence or not, he needed to keep the witch out of his way. Well, he’d just have to stick her on disrememberance duty and be done with it.

“I heard that. Mean.”