“By Magorah, Sunaya. What do you want?” she demanded, her eyes glimmering with annoyance. “It’s barely midmorning!” Jaguars were notoriously nocturnal, so for Mafiela it was like I’d come knocking at seven in the morning.
“Oh I’m sorry, did I disturb your beauty sleep?” I snapped, raking her with a sneer. I couldn’t help it – everything about the woman set me on edge. “I know how much you need it.” It was a lie of course – Mafiela was beautiful, with her sharp cheekbones, thickly-lashed eyes and generous mouth.
A flush spread across those sharp cheekbones, and she peeled back her lips to snarl at me, fangs exposed. “I don’t have to take this kind of abuse from you. If you don’t have anything important to say, you can leave.” She made to shut the door.
“Oh stop it.” I stuck my boot on the brass threshold, preventing her from closing the door. “I’m here because a threat was made against your family recently.”
Mafiela’s eyes flashed. “A threat? What kind of threat?”
“It was a little vague,” I admitted, shoving my hands into my pockets. “But I got a phone call last night from someone telling me that if I didn’t drop an investigation, that they would come after my family.” I curled my lips back into a sneer of my own. “They hung up the phone before I had a chance to tell them I don’t have a family.”
“Hmph.” Mafiela turned her nose up at me. “Well if you think I’m going to thank you for delivering the warning, you can think again. After all, it’s your fault if we’re being threatened in the first place.”
“Oh gee, I didn’t think of that. Thanks for bestowing such great wisdom upon me by pointing it out.”
Mafiela snarled at me. “You always were such a smart-ass.”
“Yeah, and you always were a crotchety old puss.” I sneered at her.
“How dare you!” Mafiela’s cheeks mottled, her yellow eyes blazing. “Get off my property, you ungrateful kit! And don’t come back. I don’t want you or your filthy magic anywhere near my clan.”
“Oh don’t worry,” I snapped, tossing my head. “I have no intention of setting foot into the cesspit you call a home ever again. Enjoy the rest of your day, Chieftain Baine.”
Fuming, I hopped down the porch steps and got back on my bike, wanting to put as much distance between myself and that horrid house as possible. By Magorah, but couldn’t the woman at least pretend to be civil? And people wondered where I got my bitchiness from. Shaking my head, I urged my bike down the hill and toward the Shifter Courier’s offices, which were only a few minutes away. I doubted the editor would be any more cooperative than my aunt, but I was a lot more confident I would actually get something productive done by visiting him.
The Shifter Courier looked a lot more dilapidated than the round, pristine white structure that housed the Herald in Maintown. It was a tall, narrow rectangular building, maybe five stories high, but each of those stories was small, maybe one and a half times the size of my one-bedroom apartment. The ornate molding that lined the facade of the building was crumbling in places, and the windows were filthy, several of them even boarded up. Guess they really had fallen on hard times.
I walked into the lobby, which didn’t look much better than the outside – there were framed newspapers from the Courier’s better days hanging from the walls, but the white paint behind them was flaking off in places, and the grey carpet beneath my feet was threadbare. A female rabbit shifter sat behind a rickety looking reception desk, her slender fingers tapping away at a typewriter. Her powder-blue eyes widened at my approach.
“H-hello,” she stammered, tucking a wisp of pale brown hair behind her ear. I pegged her as a new hire, and gathered she probably wasn’t used to visitors. “How can I help you?” Her small, rounded nose twitched nervously, and I imagined that if she was in beast form her whiskers would be quivering.
“My name is Sunaya Baine, and I’m with the Enforcer’s Guild.” I held up my wrist so that she could see my bracelet. “I need to speak with your Chief Editor.”
“Oh.” The receptionist bit her lip, exposing two large front teeth – a common rabbit shifter characteristic, even in human form. “I’m not sure he’s available.”
“Well if he’s not, he needs to make himself available.” I tried to curb the annoyance in my voice, wanting to take pity on her, but I wasn’t going to let this rabbity female turn me away – I needed answers. “You do know that if he refuses to speak to me that’s considered obstruction of justice, and I’m within my rights to arrest him and take him with me to the Enforcer’s Guild for questioning. I’m sure your boss wouldn’t want that, would he?”
“No!” she squeaked, her eyes widening. “No, of course not. Let me just tell him you’re here. One moment.”