Page 1 of Magic and Mayhem

Chapter 1

Talon

“Driving all over the fucking mountains just to ask random fucking insane people if they’d happened to see a truck full of gold just lying around where it didn’t belong.” I couldn’t stop grumbling as I drove around the curve in the mountain because it’d been a long-ass fucking day. “Because that makes perfect sense and that’s how police work is done when everyone knows everyone else.”

Sure it fucking was.

And no, the idiots I worked with in the sheriff’s office didn’t know everyone in the entire goddamned Blue Ridge Mountains—but it sure felt like I’d been driving over the whole fucking thing.

Just go around and ask nicely. It’s time you met a few more of the locals, buddy.

“There is no way I’m still in the right state, much less the same fucking county where I actually work.” But fuck if anyone would actually point out the goddamned boundaries. “Butnooo, it’s all very normal.”

Bullshit.

Nothing about the job worked like it did anywhere else in the fucking US, and the only boundaries seemed to be where the aliens stopped and the normal clueless variety of humans were actually living. That got more and more obvious every time I turned around because the FBI didn’t casually make phone calls asking local sheriffs to poke around for missed armored trucks.

“Stupid old men with glowing eyes.” That was not an eye condition no matter what everyone tried to make it out to be.

Well, you know, people don’t like to talk about conditions…it’s rude to ask. We ain’t nosy like you city people.

Coming from fuckingRaleighdidn’t make anyonecity people, and the glowing eyes thing was not a fucking condition that came with hoarding tendencies and a bad temper.

I just wasn’t sure what it was.

“Stupid idiot cops who want a change of pace and something new to tackle deserve to be the butt of fate’s jokes and end up having to argue with aliens about the number of cars they were collecting on their property and if they’d happened to add an armored truck to their list of new acquisitions.”

Fucker was hiding something and it wasn’t just whatever fucking planet he came from. Aliens didn’t seem to lie any better than regular humans and he was up to something.

“Of course, searching his fucking hoard of junk is out of the question because that would be rude.” I’d somehow stumbled into the craziest fucking job ever.

But it was in a pretty area.

And it came with free housing.

And no one seemed to actually commit any regular crimes…the closest we got to that was a cute little kleptomaniac who couldn’t stop stealing five-dollar watches from the local version of the dollar store because they were sparkly.

“So it could be worse.” Maybe? “Where the fuck am I?”

Glancing down at the phone I’d been issued, which was just about the only tech in the entire fucking department, I realized I was coming up on my turn and slowed down.

We do things differently around here, buddy. Don’t worry. We really don’t need computers and that fancy shit.

“That’s fucking bullshit too.” But since I was also supposed to be pretending I hadn’t seen my asshole boss kill three fucking coffee makers just by touching them, it probably made sense.

Whatever kind of alien he was clearly didn’t play well with electronics.

He even had a goddamned rotary phone.

It’d only taken me about twenty-four hours to realize I’d been hired because I could use Earth tech without making smoke explode out of it, and I could handle talking to the outside world without sounding like I was from fucking Mars.

I should’ve realized something was up when I found out it paid better than any police job I’d ever seen.

“Idiot.”

But I was a well-paid idiot and even had a badass pension plan.

And I didn’t mind going to get the money for the watches anymore. That guy was cute and always very confused about how he’d ended up with the gaudy things. If there’d been a spark between us, I’d have asked him out, klepto or not, but he just seemed sweet and friendly.

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