Chapter 10

Me:We're having a family meeting tomorrow at 7. Fox just harvested eight eggplants, so we're having an Italian themed eggplant dinner. Don't let anything make you miss this meeting so I'm not forced to send Fox and Bellamy to hunt you down.

I send that to the entire family.

Daddy's Waifu: We'll be there. I love eggplant!

Daddy: I have gifts!

Me: I love gifts! Are they shiny?

Daddy: So shiny.

Me: I'll make eggplant rollatini and an extra eggplant lasagna that you can put in your freezer.

Daddy's Waifu: This is why you're my favorite kid.

Daddy: Happy wife. Happy life.

Evil Son-in-Law (aka Santanos): Does this have anything to do with the ruckus Dakota caused when you visited him this morning?

Me: We will not discuss the topic until we're all behind wards and not being spied on by Big Brother.

Evil Gnome (aka Gregory): We will have to leave all our devices in a different building or I can bring a signal scrambler.

Pupper: What is a signal scrambler question mark oh shoot no don't

Edovard was probably trying to use his text-to-speech and accidentally sent the message instead of searching google.

Evil Eye Candy (aka Hassan): I've got this one.

Evil Gnome: I've put the "family" (hurk) dinner on the calendar.

Evil Son-in-Law: He's adapting so much more quickly than any of us thought he would.

Evil Gnome: *middle finger*

Evil Son-in-Law: If I wasn't in the middle of a meeting with Clive, I would already be naked, my dear.

FuckFace (aka Darcy): Since I'm not part of your weird family, I won't be available for dinner tomorrow or any other night for the foreseeable future. I do have a life that doesn't revolve around every Foxily emergency, you know.

Future Husband Even If I Have To Buy The Ring Myself: Your presence is required.

I immediately edit Fox's name to Future Husband in my phone because it's not his fault that someone stole our ring.

Our First Child: Actually, yeah. You have to come.

FuckFace: How dire is it that you require my presence, Red?

Our First Child: I'd consider summoning you, but I wouldn't.

FuckFace: I'll be there blood willing and the creek don't rise.

Someone is going to have to explain to me how a person older than Fox sounds like he's a native of the foothills of the Ozarks even in text messages, because the more I get to know Darcy, the less that fucker makes sense, and I am, unfortunately, completely intrigued.

I look up from the family conversation, switching to the thread for the people in the same space as me. Bellamy is sitting on the sofa with Ace. Their heads are bent together and they're talking like they've been friends for years. Bellamy's face is full of happiness. I don't think I've ever seen him so keen about someone. I really like seeing him like this.

Ace is leaning against Akile's knees. My bestie is taking up half the couch, reclining with his knees up to support Ace and reading one of the other books from my shelf of spicy ‘cest. That one is pure uncle-nephew smut. It's a good read for making yourself horny, which I warned him would happen before he picked it up. He decided to read it in the company of others, so if he's uncomfortably hard, that's on him. He could be reading in his room.

That's right, I have officially assigned him and Ace their own rooms in our home. I haven't told Ace yet; I think it's ok to wait until we unleash the universal neutral force before telling him he's my little brother now. That's how besties work, right? They share sibling responsibility? That's what the media tells me, so that's what I'm going with.

"I promise I am not lying." Bellamy's declaration draws my attention back to him.

Ace shakes his head. "That doesn't sound possible."

"I swear to you it happens every time," Bellamy insists.

Akile looks up from his book. "What happens?"

Ace turns to explain over his shoulder. "He says that trans shifters take on the physical sex characteristics of their gender identity. I've never heard of this."

Akile shrugs. "I don't usually pay attention to the weres."

"It only happens in their shifted form, and it only happens if the trans person becomes a shifter. Luna wolves who transition don't shift into the physical sex characteristics of their gender, but trans werewolves do," Bellamy adds. "There are studies on the phenomenon you can read about. The magic seems to take into account the person shifting. So, a trans man who becomes a werewolf would shift into a wolfman with a penile appendage. It's not a penis, it just looks like one. The studies say it's an enlargement of the clitoris to look like a penis, but physically it looks the same as a cis-wolfman's appendage. The same thing doesn't happen to cisgender female werewolves."

"I'm going to have to look this up, because if that's true, it's awesome. I bet it gives such trans euphoria for those weres." Ace smiles happily as if the imagined joy for his trans siblings is his own.

I don't know anything about werewolves, but maybe Ace can figure out a way to do that for himself if he wants it.

It"sweird waking up on my own for the second day in a row. I'm on a month-long vacation from my work as Fox's Harbinger, but I'm still surprised when I wake up naturally instead of waking to a text message letting me know that I have to be somewhere in a couple of hours.

I roll over, but Fox is already out of bed. A glance at our en suite tells me he's already showered for the day, and the pile of laundry on the chair we keep next to our dresser so he doesn't have to fold his clothes looks like it's slightly smaller now than when we went to bed. My man is up and about and has been for—I reach for my phone and unplug it from the charger—at least three hours. Fox is an early riser and it's late morning.

There's a text waiting for me on my phone, which means that Fox turned my phone to silent when he got up. I usually keep my phone's ringer on so I don't accidentally miss any messages, but Fox thinks I deserve to sleep uninterrupted if he's available for urgent messages.

Ace: The friends have made a list of possible Avatars, and we decided that the best person to check them out is you. Your instincts about people will help cross them off the list.

Me: My instincts think Darcy is your best bet.

Ace: And we trust that, but we still have to give you other options. Plus, you're still looking for an Arbiter, and these are also candidates for that position as well.

Me: If the role of Arbiter is usually fulfilled by cherubs and their non-cherub descendants, then shouldn't we be looking at you and the friends?

Ace: We all plan to become Arbiters when we grow up, but you're looking for someone who's already an adult and fits into your family like Bellamy and Edovard do.

Me: Ok. That's valid. I'll let Fox know that we're going to be meeting new people today.

Ace: You might ask Hassan to accompany you. Some of these people aren't in the area.

Hassan is capable of opening portals, which is illegal, but he works for the Avatar of Evil so, no one really expects him to be law-abiding. He's also not exactly a big fan of Bellamy. My son once slit his throat, and Hassan bears the scar of that. We haven't told Edovard that Bellamy did that, and for some reason neither have either of Edovard's boyfriends.

Me: We'll figure it out. Send me the list.

Ace: Incoming. See you later!

I open the spreadsheet he sends me.

What the fuck? There's more than a hundred and fifty names on this list. I don"t even know a hundred and fifty people. Where did he get the names on this list?

They're arranged by region, and one of the first names on the list is Tala Sunderland, the Luna wolf that we didn't kill even though he took the bounty on Bellamy to abduct him and deliver him to Jamie Gordon, the evil councilor guy who tortured Bellamy. Every time I think of that guy I wish we could've killed him twice.

Well, Fox did say that he was a true neutral, so I guess it makes sense that he should be in the running, but the name just below his is Jo Silva, and I'm pretty sure that's a girl I met in middle school who did my homework for me in exchange for me hanging around so she could tell her parents that she had friends.

I think that made us actual friends, but she was insistent that I was just a paid actor. She wrote my homework left handed so it looked like I wrote it. Honestly, her off-hand writing was better than my main hand writing, so even if our teachers suspected she was doing the work, they didn't say anything.

This is going to be a weird couple of days, I can already tell.

The spreadsheet had morethan columns for names and addresses, it also had a column for warrants and bounties. The first name on our list is a girl who once donated her hoodie to me when I was cold and shivering on a street corner deciding if I should go panhandle on a busier street corner or find a library to take shelter in. She gave me her hoodie, took me to breakfast, and paid for me to have a motel room.

Then she hooked up with the guy in the next room over (who'd been waiting for her) and stole his clothes, wallet, and car. I heard later that she went straight to his house, seduced his son and wife, and ransacked his house. It sounds like a taboo romance, doesn"t it? Well, if there is one like that, I haven't read it.

Anywho. There's a bounty out for Samantha Broughton, and when we arrive at her approximate location—an apartment complex surrounding a well-maintained park—she's there with a bat, beating some guy who's already on the ground and unconscious or maybe dead, screaming with primal rage with every swing.

Bellamy runs ahead as soon as he's out of the taxi and catches her bat, tearing it from her grip. She turns, attacking with more screams, and he puts her on the grass, pinning her down with a boot on her sternum and a gun in her face.

She stops struggling and screaming pretty fast.

Fox and I join Bellamy as soon as she's under control.

"Who the fuck are you?" she demands, eyes bouncing between the three of us.

I bend closer so she can see my face, and her expression changes to immediate recognition. "Oh hey! I remember you." She takes in my designer label clothes (I'm wearing the clothes Santanos doesn't know he gave me), and she smirks. "Looks like you're doing pretty good for yourself. Congratulations, blondie."

That's what she called me because I couldn't tell her my name.

"What's up with Tweedledee and Tweedledum?" she asks, indicating Bellamy and Fox.

I press my lips together and shake my head at her. She has seven different bounties on her from the depot and four contracts from various human sources. I'm fairly certain she balances as neutral because she does things like give the clothes off her back to strangers in need and donates most of what she steals to charities like Partners in Health that pour money into healthcare for people in need. She's responsible for saving actual lives, and here she is beating some poor guy to death too.

I look over at the person she was killing—yeah, he's totally dead. She's a true neutral, but her neutrality is too focused to be adequate for being the avatar.

I point to Fox, grab his hand and kiss it.

She gives him a second look, grimaces, and then shrugs. "To each their own, I guess."

I point to Bellamy and smile. It's a mean smile.

Samantha runs her eyes over him from face to the danger end of his gun. "Yeah, ok. I can get how having muscle with skill would be useful."

See. She gets the gist of what I'm communicating, and this is why I like her.

I point to the guy she killed and straighten, pushing Bellamy's gun aside so he'll stand down. She takes the hand I offer her, and I pull her up. She's about half a foot shorter than me, but she's dense and almost pulls me off balance when she rises. "Yeah, so that fucker agreed to pay me fifty for a blowie, and then after I spit his splooge out tried to stiff me. I mighta overreacted."

Considering he's not recognizable anymore? Yeah maybe a little.

I wince at her and shake my head.

She shrugs. "A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

I reach out and pat her blood spattered shoulder, nodding in sympathy. He didn't deserve to die over fifty bucks, but for people like her, fifty bucks might be the difference between life and death, so… I get it.

"Anyway, there a reason you came ‘round, or you here by chance? Because I gotta jet. Got me a date with a capitalist who's gonna pay for a new hospital in Peru. He doesn't know it yet, but last week he wasn't too careful about his pin numbers, if you know what I mean."

Bellamy sighs beside me, so I pet his beard, shushing him.

He shakes his head at me. "Is the dead fuck a human or non-human?" he asks, because he knows me so well.

Oh wait, she might not know about non-humans.

She looks down at the remains and shrugs. "I don't usually pay attention to that kind of thing when I'm trying to make a quick buck."

"We'll see if the gargoyles want to clean up," he tells her. "Good luck with the hospital thing."

She smiles widely at him. "Thanks. I've been working on getting that hospital funded for like three weeks. Almost there!" She shimmies a little in excitement and salutes me with two fingers. "Nice seeing you again, blondie. Don't be a stranger!"

With that, she jogs off, waving over her shoulder.

"We should probably clear her bounties," Bellamy suggests as Fox whistles for our invisible gargoyle friends to come eat the body.

I smile broadly at him, sending him a quick, Good idea, as the gargoyles descend to take care of the mess. How did you know she knew about the supernatural community?

Bellamy touches a spot on his cheek where Samantha has a beauty mark. "That freckle is a tattoo that the companions graduating from an elite school in Hell get upon completing their training. She's probably the child of nobility. Not an heiress; the nobles of Hell send their third children to trade schools."

Are we talking companion as in a professional escort?

"Yes," Bellamy nods as the gargoyles disappear again, leaving a clean crime scene.

Well. I don't know what to say about that, but it does explain her methods.

I cross her off the list. One down, a hundred and fifty three more to go.