As I left the police station I noticed it had gotten dark, cloaking the downtown district in a blanket of dark sky with neon lights like bright holes in the blanket. I reached into my pocket, took out my smoker and added some pepper leaves into it. As I lit it and inhaled deeply I felt myself calm down; at least it quieted the voices in my head.

I had asked Fraza once if it was possible to be cured of the voices. She had replied with a long story, hoping I would lose interest; not that I did. With a look of sorrow and concern, she had asked, “Do you really want to get rid of them?”

“I wouldn’t mind it; they get on my nerves,” I’d said.

Her lower lip trembled before she replied. “The only way to get rid of the voice is to remove the initial curse.” That was all she said, and I hadn’t fully understood what it meant, but by her reaction I knew it meant something bad

I opened my car door and checked the back seat; something I’ve done ever since Rikku popped up back there. The inside of the vehicle was cold; it seemed to be turning winter already. I inhaled from the smoker deeply and closed my eyes as I let the smoke trail out of my mouth, knowing the pepper leaf smoke always looked like it was dancing in the air. When I first started smoking the leaf, it had amazed me how serene the smoke looked, how elegant. In some way it always reminded me of a woman in a nightclub; sashaying seductively, aware that she is being watched, lusted after.

I started the car and drove out of the parking garage into the streets of New Billingham. The town had settled back into her old ways, even though it had taken some time. The looming civil war had been around for a long time after I had stopped Matthias. Those past events had made it clear to me that we were just playthings for the gods; something that should have made me angry, but for some reason didn’t.

I had myself been used as a chess piece in that sick and twisted game; for that matter, I still had a queen piece in play. It seemed fitting to me; I had died in a car crash, the same way a chess player sometimes must surrender his queen to get a pawn to the other end of the board, as the only way to get her back.

The city was now in what I thought of as her shifting time; the decent people would rush home leaving the streets open for the freaks that roamed her alleys after dark. In the demon territory it was the time the gargoyles would come out of their daytime stone slumbers. Of course, there were other creatures scurrying about in the dark, but the gargoyles made up the majority.

I hadn’t seen Fraza in a while, but the case of the six murdered girls had had me on edge from the moment I was hired. In a way I had blamed myself for some of those girls who had died; I had turned down some please-my-daughteris-missing-you-have-to-help-me cases, thinking I was too good for them. After all, I had saved the city, so why should I be bothered with a chasing after some girl who had probably just run off with a lover?

But when the Police Chief had rung me and told me they were hiring me I had jumped at it. If only I had taken those cases, helped those desperate mothers; perhaps I could have saved some of those girls. It was why I needed to find this seventh girl. It was my chance for retribution, my chance to look the world in her eyes again and say, “See, I saved one of them; I did my best.”

I parked my car in front of Fraza’s home and walked in. She greeted me with frizzy hair, her tail slumped down and looking like she hadn’t slept for days. As I got closer to her I knew she certainly hadn’t showered in days; she smelled bad, but I was glad I was with her again. I fought the urge to kiss her cheek; instead sat down at her kitchen table and looked at her

“Night terrors?” I asked. She shrugged and picked up a mug with trembling hands, stared at words on it. The world’s #1 mom. It had been a present from me to her when she had told me she was carrying a child. My child. The miscarriage had taken a lot out of her and I sometimes wondered if she would ever get over it. It had been a rough time for her; first she lost her mother to Lord Baphomet’s game, and then she lost her own baby.

“You know I have thought about just throwing it away, but I can’t bring myself to do it,” she said, her eyes sad.

“Hey, come on now, hun. Don’t be like that, we will get things to work out just fine,” I said, trying my best to reassure her.

She looked at me with eyes alight with fire and anger and for a moment I was afraid she would throw the mug at my head and then tear it off. She shook her head and sat down. “That bloodsucking assistant of yours kept calling, asking where you were. I told her I had no idea, but she kept calling. What is her problem?”

smiled. “Well, she is a biter,” I replied. Realizing what I had said I quickly continued, “Not in the normal vampiric way, I mean.” I spotted the slightest hint of a smile on Fraza’s face as she got up again and walked around the kitchen. “Know what? If you take a shower I’ll make us some dinner. You do have food here, right?” She looked at me and shrugged, but I pressed on. “You know, I could also order out. You still like the sacrificial lamb drenched in virgin blood on a bed of sacred hallowed ground?”

She shook her head, finally cracking a smile. “That won’t be necessary,” she replied.

“Okay. But Fraza, hun, please take the shower; you stink,” I said.

She sighed and nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”  

I hated seeing her like this, fragile and not at all like the strong woman I had fallen for that night in the bar. I knew she was still the same blue-skinned demon I had spent so many days in bed with. As soon as I heard her get under the pouring water of the shower I got up and looked through her cabinets. She had been taking lousy care of herself; her cabinets were full of half-eaten cans that brimmed with mold and fungus. It made me feel bad to see them; I had neglected Fraza in the moment she had needed me the most. After a little searching I found an unopened can of tomato soup and a half-moldy loaf of bread. The moldy part I cut off and tossed away as I moistened the other part and tossed it into the oven.  

  By the time the soup was boiling and the aroma mixed with the moldy stink of the kitchen, I felt Fraza behind me; her body was still wet as she hugged me and kissed my neck. “I’ve missed you, babe. How are you?” she asked me, in a clearer voice. It seemed the shower had done her some good.

I shook my head. “I don’t want you to worry about my problems; I can take care of myself.”  

 She sat down. “Sure, nothing can phase the great Tara Duluc, savior of the fucking city,” she growled. I shook my head and placed a bowl of soup and a part of the loaf of bread in front of her. She just looked at me as I sat down with my own food. “If you don’t tell me what is happening with you, how can I understand what you are doing, Tara?” she continued. She was right, of course. I hated it when she was right like this.  

 I sighed. “The case still isn’t over,” I said.  

 I felt her eyes on me. “But you caught the guy; he was executed today, wasn’t he? Or did some senator pardon him at the last moment?”

For some reason I found her question humorous. It had certainly happened before some human senator sometimes pardoning a criminal at the eleventh hour. I shook my head. “No, though it might have been better if that had happened. The murderer said there is a seventh girl out there, just seconds before they executed him.”   

 The spoon in her hand was close to her mouth and tipped slightly, making dripping soup on the table. “What the hell was wrong with that man?” she asked.   

 “I don’t know. I think to him it was all just a game.” She nodded. She understood what I had meant, but I didn’t want to discuss this case anymore; not today, not with her. She needed me and I had dug myself in deep with this one. “Look, hun, just let us be us for tonight, shall we?” I asked as she dipped her bread in the soup.   

 She shrugged and looked at me. “Are you sure you want to be yourself? I had a lot of fun being you yesterday.” She smiled as she said that. I was glad to see her act more like her old self, but I still could see the underlying sadness in her. I couldn’t begin to understand how she felt; it was a different type of loss that had bound us closer together. She had lost her mother and I had lost Dragon, perhaps my only true friend. It had hurt so much when I saw him hanging there in his home. Shivers still ran down my spine when I thought about it.   

 Fraza snapped her fingers. “Hey, hello? I asked you something,” she said, sounding rather annoyed. 

“I’m sorry, what did you ask me?”

She sighed in exasperation. “Are you going in to your office in the morning?”

“Yes, just a quick drop by. Kendra will take care of most of the other cases as I’m still working on this one,” I replied.

Fraza got up from the table with her empty soup bowl. “Do tell her that I do not like to be called all the time. Which means you should let her know what you are doing,” she said, sounding irritated again. I nodded in agreement. I quickly finished my soup and bread; it tasted awful, but it was food. 

Next Chapter: Fraza