CHAPTER THREE
1260 Words
Sharron MacElroy woke up sneezing in the cold air far too early than she had wanted, her breath forming large clouds of vapor as she exhaled. She had just found this pitch in the early hours of the morning, close enough to the homeless services to be useful but far enough away from the addicts and more interesting members of the homeless community; the ones that made being homeless a special kind of hell to those who dealt with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Aspergers.
With them, you were never too sure who your friends were, nor from which direction a knife or shiv might come from. She tended to stay away from people in general because of this. She’d been hurt before, the defensive scars on her arms proving testament towards that, but what she had done with her assailants in retaliation was a sight to be seen.
Sitting up, she hit her head on the small, cobbled-together, cardboard shelter she had made that morning and rubbed the dark chocolate skin of her face to try to get some of the sleep out of her eyes. Taking a small brush out of the plastic canvas grocery bag that she used as her luggage, she began to tame the kinky friz of her hair that had become wild and slightly matted in her sleep. Despite being homeless, Shannon took pride in herself enough to make herself look presentable despite the harsh and unforgiving living conditions she found herself in. Not many of her “peers” did the same.
She had been over in Winnetka Heights up until recently, posted up behind the old Buddhist Temple that was once there. It was a relatively safe place up until three days ago, when she watched a man break into the old white house and in doing so had managed to shut off all the lights in the area. Even her cheap smartphone was affected and was now effectively a paper weight. Bricked, the chips inside were fried beyond repair or prayer. She watched as a man in white flew out of the back door and tore out of the alleyway in his car. She decided to get out of the area before DPD decided that she was the culprit and toss her into an even worse predicament. Sure, jail offered three meals a day and a cot to sleep on, but she preferred to keep her freedom intact.
It was a shame, she had liked it over there. It was nice and quiet, not at all like the noise she now had to deal with from the heavy traffic at this new spot, close to Parkland Hospital. Maybe once things died down, she would go back, but that could take a couple of weeks… Until then, she would just have to deal with the extra noise even if it set off her anxiety.
She tried to remember what day of the week it was as she gathered up her meager belongings. Was it Sunday? No, Tuesday, that’s right. The Outreach building will be open and will be serving both breakfast and lunch. Sure, she really couldn't eat what they served without having to deal with the allergic reactions that followed, but calories are calories and beggars can’t be choosers. She just wished they didn't have to serve so many eggs. Her skin itched as she thought about having to eat them. At least it wasn’t as bad as the stomach pain she had to suffer through when she ate anything made with wheat.
“Maybe they’ll have potato cakes this time,” she said out loud, hoping. She knew better. They never had that available, but living in hope was better than having none at all.
***
It was late in the afternoon as the dark green Jeep pulled up to the Winnetka Heights Reliquary. Aspen had been waiting already for almost an hour for the Rígfénnid and his companions to arrive. Normally, he disliked having to call in the Fianna on cases like this, preferring to keep things “in-house,” as it were. As a general rule of thumb, anytime they are called up , a clean up crew is usually needed to follow behind them to disappear the c*****e that would be sure to come.
This case, however, had been so hard to figure out, that he felt it was necessary to call Hazel and get Rowan up here. Ovates are rare. Maybe one in every ten-thousand people had the ability to be a seer, and not many of those managed to make their way into the ranks of the Old Order, let alone the Harpers. Aspen was just lucky that there was a particularly powerful ovate in Texas not already on an assignment.
It was just a shame that he was not only one of the Fianna, but a Rígfénnid at that. He shivered to himself thinking about just how deep the blood could get in a case like this. Of all the dangerous artifacts to have been taken it had to be Nemhain’s Talon.
Aspen walked up to the Jeep as Rowan finished helping Heather and Willow out. Not a small man himself, standing at six-foot-three, it always amazed him just how much he had to look up just to meet the giant’s eyes. He had worked with Rowan many times before, but every time he stood next to him, he felt small. He wondered how Heather and Willow felt in his proximity, they being so much smaller.
“Aspen!” Willow practically tackled him in a tight hug. “Good to see you!”
He returned the hug, remembering the two weeks he had spent with her several years ago when she first arrived in Dallas. He had wanted to spend more time with her, but she hadn’t wanted to get tied down and broke it off like she had with so many others before and since.
“Likewise, hon. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”
“So, what have you got for us, cobber?” Rowan’s deep voice, despite being soft spoken, echoed in the alleyway.
“Right, on to business. Honestly, we have nothing. Other than a localized power outage that Oncor, the power company in charge of maintaining the lines out here, managed to fix just yesterday, we have nothing. The only lead we found was the corpse of the supposed thief over in the Grove. Other than that, there’s no witnesses, no video footage, not even any tracks in the snow to follow beyond the end of the alley. We’re at a loss.”
“Did you get any of the crime scene photos from the scene at the Grove?” Rowan had a serious look in his eyes as he asked.
“Sure did. Lots of blood. And it wasn’t easy to get them either. Finding another liason for the Order inside police in this area has been difficult. Foxtail is hard to replace. We have a couple of others on one of the forces here to play on the good ole boy network cops have, but they’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of juice yet.”
Aspen handed over to Rowan a large manilla envelope containing the pictures. He looked through them, wincing at the detailed picture of the coup de grace.
“Alright, let me look over the house. I need to see if I get any hits.”
Aspen waved his arm behind him inviting Rowan towards the back door.
- Writer
