Page 55 of A Subtle Scar
“If you’re ready, we can go. We shouldn’t let Chandler think he’ll ever have to go through an entire workday alone again.”
Ronny brightened. “Right. Do you think he’ll be grateful for that? Lucy never mentioned what his Nelly did in gratitude when Lucy started following him around and aided him in the crime solving.”
“Whatever it was, I’m sure our boyfriend will do better.”
I held out my hand for Ronny to take, but this time around we clasped forearms and nodded at one another. We both knew our boyfriend would do so much better than the Devil’s, and telling Lucy about it would be so fucking satisfying.
Chapter Fourteen
Whenhedroppedmeoff outside the police station in order to find the human murderer or murderers, I was left with the realization that Hermes was not as vapid and shallow as I’d always thought.
I pushed open the glass doors to the foyer. “He definitely has a nice ass,” I said as I walked inside, taking my time to look at all the humans, who were busy with their work. Just one brief human life, and still, they were all of them constantly doing things, like the officer behind the front desk answering the telephone or the pair of equally uniformed officers carrying boxes with files on top of them.
I was on my way to the elevators when the realization hit me. Their busyness, their desire to leave a mark, a sign, a piece of themself behind through the work they did was what made humans those vibrant, interesting creatures. I had thought them lovely for being all different before, but that deep-rooted desire of theirs, that I had missed, even though the ships and planes and trains I so enjoyed were an expression of that desire.
I got on the elevator, joining the officer who was wearing normal people clothes and looked down on myself as the elevator doors closed.
I wore a vintage vest, which I had bought some fifty years ago, and it had been vintage then too. The seamster who had made it was likely dead, yet their work remained.
“That’s why he’s doing it!” I said maybe a little bit too loudly.
“What?” the officer said. She looked a little tired, that one, and her eyeshadow was too dark for her.
I shrugged. “Oh, my boyfriend. He is working so much because he wants to leave something of himself in the world. Or rather, he wants to change the world just a little bit by making it safer for all the other humans.”
She looked at me like Hermes had looked at me back in that village all those years ago when I had reminded him the teenage witch was in no way required to render any favors toward Hermes.
“Uh-huh. Sure. It’s a police thing. We all want other people to be safe.”
I nodded. “I have to say, it would be a lot easier if gods did that for you.”
The officer cocked her head. “Are you…a writer browsing ideas for a dystopian novel or something? My brother is dating a writer, and he says they talk to themselves and come up with the oddest non-sequiturs ever.”
“I could write things,” I said. “But why would gods guarding human welfare be dystopian? There would be no murder.”
She snorted. “Yeah, there would be. I mean, if life were black and white, I’d be with you on the wholelet some god king rule us. Maybe. But there are shades, you know. Nature does her best work on a spectrum. Just look at anybad guy” —she used air quotes for that— “and how some of them have become martyrs for a cause or how cult leaders got their followers to do any manner of stuff.” She waved the file she was holding. “Or how a spouse will return to her asshole husband, say she loves him only for the asshole to beat her into a coma a week after the fact.”
I looked at the file. If that was what was in there and if the officer was working on transporting that husband to jail in a burlap sack, it explained why she looked so tired. Exhausted.
“I’m very sorry,” I said. Then I shook my head. “I suppose that’s why the Dragon Mother only ever tells us to mingle and be kind.”
The officer sighed. “Well, bless you doing your story research here.” The elevator stopped. “This is me. And when you write your dystopian thing or whatever it is, remember that there really are decent people out there.”
I nodded. “I know that. My boyfriend is one of them,” I said, and I knew it was more a Hermes thing, but I couldn’t keep myself from puffing my chest out just a little.
The officer gave me a kind smile.
The elevator doors closed and took me to the murder department, which was at the end of a hallway decorated with photos of detectives that meant nothing to me. Instead, I paid attention to the people around me.
Less wore uniforms here. I’d talked with a good many of the officers here last night when Chandler had been looking through his files, but I’d not asked about that. Maybe I would, today. Maybe I could find out how they had tried and succeeded in leaving a mark.
But that had to come later. Chandler had to come first, especially after last night. I didn’t think that Hermes had fully seen or realized how stunned with emotion and pain Chandler had been, how much he had needed the distraction and care we had provided, but also the release.
I entered through the glass door to the open floor office and walked inside. A few of the officers greeted me with a nod which I returned while I looked through the glass wall of the office Chandler had been in last night.
I didn’t see him sitting at the table and reading like he had been, but there was a cup of coffee, steam curling upward from the liquid.
“—and the weirdest was the marionette binding. If you’re ready to head to the morgue, I’ll let Detective Rice know to meet us there.”
