“Angela, you really can’t do this to me.” Should I get down on my knees? I was so desperate, I wasn’t above begging.
“Why? What happened there, Essie? Were you in some kind of trouble I should know about?” her eyes narrowed, but she wasn’t yelling.
I think she liked me . . . kind of. The way a mother would like an annoying spastic two year old who belonged to someone else.
“No, not exactly,” I hedged. “It’s just that . . . ”
“Weres are disappearing and turning up dead. Considering no one knows of our existence besides other supernaturals we have a problem. Furthermore, it seems like humans might be involved.”
My stomach lurched and I grabbed Angela’s office chair for balance. “Locals are missing?” I choked out. My Grandma Bobby Sue was still there, but I’d heard from her last night. She’d harangued me about getting my belly button pierced. Why I’d put that on Instagram was beyond me. I was gonna hear about that one for the next eighty years or so.
“Not missing—dead. Check the folder,” Angela said and poured me a shot of whiskey.
With trembling hands I opened the folder. This had to be a joke. I felt ill. I’d gone to high school with Frankie Mac and Jenny Packer. Jenny was as cute as a button and was the cashier at the Piggly Wiggly. Frankie Mac had been the head cheerleader and cheated on every test since the fourth grade. Oh my god, Debbie Swink? Debbie Swink had been voted most likely to succeed and could do a double backwards flip off the high dive. She’d busted her head open countless times before she’d perfected it. Her mom was sure she’d go to the Olympics.
“I know these girls,” I whispered.
“Knew. You knew them. They all were taking classes at the modeling agency.”
“What modeling agency? There’s no modeling agency in Hung Island.” I sifted through the rest of the folder with a knot the size of a cantaloupe in my stomach. More names and faces I recognized. Sandy Moongie? Wait a minute.
“Um, not to speak ill of the dead, but Sandy Moongie was the size of a barn . . . she was modeling?”
“Worked the reception desk.” Angela shook her head and dropped down on the couch.
“This doesn’t seem that complicated. It’s fairly black and white. Whoever is running the modeling agency is the perp.”
“The modeling agency is Council sponsored.”
I digested that nugget in silence for a moment.
“And the council is running a modeling agency, why?”
“Word is that we’re heading towards revealing ourselves to the humans and they’re trying to find the most attractive representatives to do so.”
“That’s a joke, right?” What kind of dumb ass plan was that?
“I wish it was.” Angela picked up my shot and downed it. “I’m getting to old for this shit,” she muttered and refilled the shot glass, thought better of it and just swigged from the bottle.
“Is the council aware that I’m going in?”
“What do you think?”
“I think they’re old and stupid and send in dispensable agents like me to clean up their shit shows,” I grumbled.
“Smart girl.”
“Who else knows about this? Clark? Jones?”
“They know,” she said wearily. “They’re checking out agencies in New York and Miami.”
“Isn’t it conflict of interest to send me where I know everyone?”
“It is, but you’ll be able to infiltrate and get in faster that way. Besides no one has disappeared from the other agencies yet.”
There was one piece I still didn’t understand. “How are humans involved?”
She sighed and her head dropped back on to her broad shoulders. “Humans are running the agency.”
It took a lot to render me silent, like learning my Grandma had been a stripper in her youth and that all male Werewolves were hung like horses . . . but this was horrific.
“Who in the hell thought that was a good idea? My god, half the female Weres I know sprout tails when flash bulbs go off. We won’t have to come out, they can just run billboards of hot girls with hairy appendages coming out of their asses.”
“It’s all part of the Grand Plan. If the humans see how wonderful and attractive we are the issue of knowingly living along side of us will be moot.”
Again. Speechless.
“When are Council elections?” It was time to vote some of those turd knockers out.
“Essie.” Angela rolled her eyes and took another swig. “There are no elections. They’re appointed and serve for life.”
“I knew that,” I mumbled. Skipping Were History class was coming back to bite me in the ass.