If I’d thought all the crazy surrounding the fae revealing themselves to the world this week was the worst that would happen, I was about to be proved wrong. So wrong.

The eggs were cold, but they’d come out that way. I shoved them around on my plate, not really listening to anything my partner Grayson was going on about. A news story about the fae played on the TV over his shoulder, giving me something to look at that wouldn’t make him suspicious and figure out I didn’t really care about what he was saying.

The waitress, Tanya, came by and refilled our mugs, filling the air with the smell of coffee and covering up the greasy aroma the place usually reeked of. She treated us better than most of the other waitresses in the area. Grayson’s generous tips didn’t hurt.

“Jayla. Come on, what do you think?”

I jerked my gaze away from the TV anchor sharing yet another video of the craziness happening in Indiana to look my partner in the face. He gave me a frustrated scowl and looked over his shoulder to see what had my attention.

“Ah. That mess. They should keep it off the air until there’s more information. They’re just scaring people now.”

“People have a right to know what’s going on.” I gripped my coffee mug in both hands, letting the warmth seep into my muscles. The a/c blew hard enough that I wouldn’t have minded a jacket even though it was eighty degrees outside.

“Yeah. But they aren’t telling us anything new.” Grayson turned back from the TV to his plate. “Just rehashing the same videos a thousand times.”

An enormous monster made of rock tossed something at a dragon on-screen. A dragon. Insane. None of this seemed real, but apparently it was, or the department wouldn’t be shoving us through the grinder of special training on how to handle the fae.

Like they knew. It was just to make the public feel better. Like my sidearm would do anything against an ogre.

“They should just shove the fae back through one of their portals and destroy the thing,” Grayson said, sloshing his coffee around and grimacing. It was extra burned today. “But you know they won’t.”

Tanya, who was wiping down the table next to ours, leaned in. “I don’t know what they want with Earth, but it can’t be good.” She nodded at the TV. “Not if that’s how they introduced themselves.”

I couldn’t argue. Every time the story flashed back across the screen, my stomach churned. Protect and serve. How were we supposed to protect against that?

The table went quiet for a moment while Grayson shoved his biscuits and gravy into his mouth. Not a normal dish in L.A., but he’d been a transplant from the mid-west years ago and that was something he hadn’t given up. I couldn’t hold comfort food against him with the line of work we were in. The bell behind the counter dinged for an order up. Gizzards. The smell was enough to make me want to head for the car.

“You got Kenzie this weekend?” Grayson asked.

“No,” I answered. Keeping it short gave him less to pry into. Besides, if he pushed too much, I might snap back something I’d regret.

“Didn’t he have her last weekend, too?”

“It was a holiday. One of his holidays.”

Grayson grunted. “You should take him to court again. You’ll regret missing out on your little girl’s life. She’ll be going to college before long and not even know her mama.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“She’s only three. I don’t want to talk about this.” Talking about it only made me question everything in my life. If I didn’t have my daughter, at least I had my work. I stood and stretched, body aching from the old cracked booth, and dropped money on the table. The waitress hadn’t brought the bill yet, but it would be exactly the same amount as yesterday and the day before.

Not in any hurry, Grayson continued eating.

My radio crackled. “Domestic in progress at a warehouse near 9th and Hawthorn. Any units in the vicinity, please respond.”

“That’s us,” I told Grayson, then held down the talk button on my radio. “Unit 213 and unit 705 responding. ETA, seven minutes.” I kicked Grayson’s boot. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Copy, 705. Caller advised shouting coming from the warehouse, and screams.”

Grayson shoveled another bite in his mouth, looked longingly at his half-full plate, and dropped a twenty on the table. “Let’s go.”

“Be careful,” Tanya yelled after us as we left.

I waved. “Always are.” The bell above the door went wild as I muscled through.

I was already getting in the squad car by the time Grayson reached the door. Per usual, he wasn’t in any hurry. Saying something would probably just make that fact worse.

Once in the car, I started the engine and flipped on the lights, but waited until Grayson closed his door to start the sirens.

I didn’t wait for him to fumble with his seatbelt, checking for traffic and jerking the car out onto the street.

“Hey!” he said. “What’s the rush?”

“Someone could be in trouble.”

“Yeah, or much more likely, some couple got into it, they’re mad and trying to kill each other, then we’ll get there and they’ll have a common enemy and they’ll try to kill us instead. You know how this goes.”

“We don’t know that.”

“True.” He dropped his visor and checked his greying stubble for food, wiping off a bit of gravy. “But based on past experience, that’s what’s going to happen today. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred. You gotta learn when to throw your all in, and when to cool your jets a bit.”

I glanced up from the road, forcing my hands to relax on the steering wheel. “Cool my jets? How would you feel if it was T.J. in that warehouse? We treat every person like they’re our family.”

“Oh, come on. Bringing my daughter into this is low. And treating everyone like they’re family is a good way to get someone killed. Trust me, they don’t see you as family. And it’s only getting worse on the streets. I’ve been to this warehouse a hundred times in the years I’ve been on the force. Some homeless person stole some other guy’s jacket. That’s the kind of thing this call boils down to.”

I gritted my teeth as I jerked the wheel to the right, dodging an idiot in a sports car who was too important to move over for the flashing lights and then braking hard when a car in the other lane finally noticed us and swerved to get out of the way. L.A. streets. The traffic never slept. “Whatever, Grayson. If I ever get to the point I see things the way you do, I’m going to quit.”

“No, you’re not. For the same reason I never did, even when I got injured and could have left. You don’t know what else to do with your life. Protect and serve, right?”

He had me there. With Kevin taking custody over Kenzie when we’d split, I’d lost the only thing I’d had outside of work. Helping people gave me purpose. A reason to be alive, other than the one that I only saw two days every other week.

There. The warehouse. I skidded to a stop, leaving the lights on. In the background Grayson called us in on scene.

Nothing looked out of place from here. I opened the door and swung my legs out, keeping the door between me and any possible danger out of instinct. L.A. was a treacherous place, if your beat covered certain sections of town.

And mine always did. I’d learned the hard way not to assume anything about any type of call. The most benign situation could turn deadly in less time than it took a person to snap their fingers.

Grayson got out of the other side of the car. He seemed less concerned than me, but he always did. He’d seen enough in his thirty years on the force to not get too excited unless something big was going down.

“Hear that?” Grayson asked.

He had much better hearing than I did. “No.”

“Screaming, coming from inside.” Grayson pulled his weapon and stalked toward the closest door into the warehouse. As much as he hemmed and hawed about things, he cared about people.

I followed, my thick boots protecting my feet from the broken glass and needles that littered the parking lot.

We reached the door at the same time. I moved to go in first, but he gently shoved me out of the way. This had been a real fight when we’d first become partners, but he wasn’t sexist. He just thought better him than me, and though I’d never admit it I had a hard time arguing when I thought of Kenzie waiting on me to visit.

When the door opened, I could hear the screaming. This wasn’t some regular domestic. The screams made my body go cold, their unearthly tones haunting. Something was wrong here. Truly, deeply wrong.