The sound of an unfamiliar male voice woke me from a fitful sleep. I cracked an eye open to see a man standing above me, his slim form draped in a long, khaki coat. Though it was dark in the jail at this time of night, my sharp eyes were able to pick out the porkpie hat clutched in his left hand, his slicked-back dirty blond hair, and his horn-rimmed glasses, the last of which sparked a memory.
You’re a reporter, I wanted to say, but then I remembered that I was in my panther form. Yawning, I stretched, my claws producing a scraping sound as they gouged into the concrete floor. The human took a nervous step back, clearly not a fan of my sharp implements. To amuse myself, I rose up on my hind legs, hooking my paws through the bars of my cell as I met his gaze. His eyes widened as his back clanged into the cell bars behind him.
“Y-you are Sunaya Baine, aren’t you?”
Satisfied at the tremor in the man’s voice – I never was much of a fan of reporters – I nosed my clothes into the shadowy portion of my cell and changed back into human form. His sigh of relief and the scent of fresh sweat rolling from his pores were telling – this man was afraid of shifters in general, not just me.
“I am Sunaya Baine,” I said once I’d pulled my clothes back on and stepped back into the dim light. I leaned against the bars and looped my hands through them lazily, affecting a pose of nonchalance. He eyed my hands warily, as if he expected me to claw him at any second, and I found myself annoyed at his skittishness. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yes,” he said, drawing his air of professionalism back around him. He pulled out a notepad and a pen from one of the pockets of his greatcoat and looked up at me with a polite smile over his glasses, his pen poised. “My name is Hanley Fintz, and I’m a journalist for the Herald. I heard about your unfortunate predicament, and would like to interview you.”
I arched a brow. “Bit late for interviews, don’t you think?” Not that I knew what time it was, since Brin and Nila had stripped my body of anything actually useful, such as my watch. The fuckers had even taken my Enforcer bracelet, the symbol of authority I’d worked so hard to earn. But judging by the fact that the lights down here were still dimmed, it must be night above ground.
The reporter shrugged. “From what my sources tell me, your hearing is set for early this morning. Since they’re likely to rule against you, I have to take what opportunities I can get to talk with you before it’s too late.”
In other words, this schmuck had bribed one of the guards upstairs to let him into the jail cell so he could interview me. Did absolutely no one understand the meaning of ‘work ethic’ anymore? Pressing my lips together, I eyed the reporter distastefully, not sure that he didn’t deserve a beating just as much as the guard upstairs, though unlike the guard he was just doing his job.
A long silence stretched. Eventually Fintz cleared his throat. “Come now, surely you can tell me something,” he coaxed. “I would like to paint you in the most positive light possible, which is not very hard. If you have to die, at least you can die a martyr in the fight against the oppressive mages who rule us.”
His voice was low and urgent, infused with passion. But the hungry way he eyed me seemed less sincere. Releasing the bars, I took a step back, holding my hands up defensively.
“Look,” I told him. “If you want to paint me as a martyr or a hero or whatever after I’m six feet under, that’s your business. But I’m not dead yet, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop looking at me like some vulture waiting for me to gasp my last breath, so you can swoop down and start feasting on me.”
The man recoiled a little, his pointy nose twitching. “Well that’s vulgar.”
“Yeah, well you know what else is vulgar?” I leaned against the bars again to pin him with an accusing stare. “The fact that nobody in this town seems to give a damn about all the shifters who are dying of silver poisoning. If you really wanted a juicy story, you’d be investigating that, starting with my mentor’s murder, not trying to prod me for bullshit quotes about standing up to the system.”
“I would love nothing more than to investigate these poisonings you speak of,” Hanley said sulkily. “But unfortunately, Mr. Yantz decides who and what I investigate and what stories are printed, and he is simply not interested in publishing that story.”
“Of course not.” I bared my fangs in disgust. Petros Yantz, the CEO and Chief Editor of the Herald, had turned the once-prestigious paper into little more than a glorified gossip rag. He was one of the primary reasons I detested reporters. “Why don’t you go and tell your boss to fuck off for me, before I find a reason to break out of this cell and come harass him in the middle of the night.”