Page 166 of Drama Queen

“Fuck the formalities, Leonard, I’ve told you time and again to call me Jessica,” a woman’s voice replied. “There’s been a development.”

Of course there was. It had been hours since the little girl had been shot, more than enough time for the wheels to start turning and for people to fuck things up further.

“What now?” Leonard asked, switching the phone from one ear to the other.

“Officer Tyson Warner was the individual who was suspended pending the investigation, as per normal protocol. He shot himself ten minutes ago. It was fatal.”

A fresh wave of grief swept through the room. Some of it was because this had now escalated, and the conversation changed. Losses had occurred on both sides, which for some would mean justice had been served. While it would cool many tempers, it would only fan others. It meant the battle to make changes, to bring more understanding between the two peoples in order to forge a better path forward, was going to be that much harder. Many humans would now think the shifters no longer had something to whine about. The killer was dead, after all, so to pursue the matter further would be in bad taste.

Except that was wrong. For Charlotte, this tragedy had doubled. Not only had a little girl been killed, but a human in law enforcement, the best of the best, the ones who held the darkness at bay. That wasn’t a win for anyone, it was just more grief.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Leonard said, sympathy clear in his voice. “My condolences to his family. Do we know what happened?”

“He handed in his badge and gun, was sent home, and an appointment was made for him to see a psychologist tomorrow. Leonard, he was a rookie, just twenty-two. A full officer for less than a year. He still lived with his parents, for fuck’s sake.He came home from work, didn’t say anything about what was going on, just told them he had a headache and went up to his room. His mother went to fetch him some acetaminophen, but heard the gunshot while she was in the kitchen. She ran in to find him slumped over on his bed with half of the back of his head missing.”

“Fuck,” Leonard whispered.

“She didn’t even know he had his own gun. He didn’t have a licence for it either. Ballistics is working to see if it matches anything else on the system, given it’s an unregistered gun.”

“That poor, poor woman,” Leonard said quietly. “The father wasn’t home?”

“Oh, it gets better in terms of optics. The othermotherwasn’t home. She’d run out to get some groceries, got back to the sounds of her wife screaming from the house and called nine one one before running inside.”

Which meant if anyone went after the family, it could be interpreted as homophobia, or it could go the other way and homophobes everywhere coming out and declaring that this was what happened when you went against their deity’s laws. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t have made a difference at all, but Charlotte knew that this was just going to make things an even bigger mess. The press would have a field day with it, disregarding the pain and heartache their callous comments and one-liners would cause. All they would achieve would be to engender hate and pain on all sides.

She just wished there weren’t any sides at all. Human, shifter, lgbtq+, cis, parents, children, black, white or pink with purple polka dots. Why couldn’t everyone accept that nobody was the same as anyone else, and be happy about it? There was no such thing as ‘us’. Not really, because every group, ethnicity, religion, gender, political faction or whatever, had its outliers, and even those who were ‘in’ weren’t identical in their thoughtsand ideologies. They only had some things in common, not everything.

Hate was just stupid. In capitals.

And an exclamation mark or ten to boot — and she hated using those damn things.

Now it was her job to smooth things over, to remind people that they had things more in common than they did in opposition. All in one speech. Given by the president of her people, and listened to billions of people around the world, because she had no doubt it would be.

This one small incident would either be the flashpoint that threw their peoples into a war that would last centuries. Or it would be a Nobel moment, that changed the talking points and redirected that frenetic energy into a more fruitful outlet.

One little speech? Easy.

This speech? Not so much.

Charlotte

The call was brief,both presidents repeating previous promises to work together to ‘fix this’, like it was that simple. Like all they had to do was agree, and things would fall into place, ready for them to put on a good show.

In a way, that was exactly what was going to happen. Charlotte would write the speech of her life, Leonard would deliver it, and the wheels would be set in motion. Whether they achieved any of what they hoped for, would take time to tell. People had to get over their initial shock and gut reactions. Then the pundits would have their say. Both the White House and The Shifter Seat of Power, known more commonly as The Seat, would continue to hold smaller press conferences as more details came to light.

Like who that fucking arsehole woman was, and why the fuck she brought that kind of trouble down on a young family of shifters?

“I’m on it,” Natasha said, making her realise she’d asked that aloud.

“I need a background check on the family. Was there any indication of domestic violence, have they had trouble with thelaw before, did they even have a fucking parking ticket? I want to make sure there’s no finger pointing, when we get up there and say this is a tragedy. I don’t want it to bite me on the arse when it turns out he was in juvie, or she was done for soliciting, because you know there’s going to be enough victim blaming as it is.”

“I know someone,” James told her, picking up his phone.

“Make it legit resources,” Charlotte told them all. “I don’t want some back door stuff that’s either going to be inaccurate, or leak that we’re pulling shit in the background, when we’re not.”

“It’s legit, promise,” he assured her.

“I need someone to notify security and get them to coordinate with the humans. We need final say on the site, and then we need our people in there to oversee the set-up,” Leonard told the room in general.

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