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Wrong Person, Wrong Place

May30

“I’m telling you, I’m innoc — I didn’t do it!  You’ve got the wrong girl. Definitely the wrong girl!”

Caroline had broken countless laws in the last decade and bent probably twice that many — mostly variations in grift, fraud, and outright theft — and had never been caught.  A great many times, her victims were too embarrassed to report her. Sometimes, they didn’t even realize that they’d been ripped off until she was long gone. The rest of the time…

Well, she was very good at covering her tracks.

That was what made this so freaking frustrating.  

She banged on the bars again.  “Oy! You’re barking up the wrong tree.  I’m telling you, I didn’t kill him!”

“Pipe down in there.  You’ll get your chance to tell it to the ADA and we’ll see what she has to say.  But you were in his apartment…”

“He left the key for me!  Look, if you give me my phone, I can show you the e-mail chain.”

“No phones for prisoners.  Besides,” the officer sneered, “why would someone like him give you his keys?”

He was wealthy, in a grunge sort of way, Caroline had to admit.  “He’s my cousin… distant cousin on my mother’s side.”

The thing was, that was even true.  The whole thing was the truth.

“I’ve heard that before.”  The officer snorted at her.  “Look, save it for the DA.”

She was going about this all wrong.  Caroline looked at the officer. The officer looked at her.  With a long sigh, Caroline “gave in.”

She wasn’t good at truth.  On the other hand, lies…

“Look, I probably shouldn’t tell you this.  I could get in a lot of trouble. But that guy, Ted Mariner.  There’s a reason I was in his apartment…”

As the officer leaned forward, Caroline knew her hours in the jail cell were numbered.  Now, to get rid of those fingerprints….

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Written to Inspector Caracal‘s prompt. Loosely based on a Changeling: the Dreaming character I never really got to play…

First 2/3 of May on Patreon

May29

Posts marked * are free for all to read. 

Stories
Lost Niece – Lilac woke up in the middle of the night with a strange feeling of loss and, at the same time, like something had just made her stronger.
The Expectant Wood Chapter 23 — A Lesson in Plants – She nibbled on the nutmeat, finding it as described. “You really are quite good at plants.”
Run – a trunk story – “Run.” Sona grabbed Ree’s hand and, matching actions to words, began running. 

Reposts
Two Concurrent Stories of Zenobia *
Family Magic Revealed  * Demifiction written in the Aunt Family by  dialecticdreamer, back in 2014.
Kingmaker Cake *

Map: Kael’s Tower

Misc. And Meta
Mer-May and Tarot *
The Aunt Family House & Victorian Awesomeness *
Aunt Family Tree-in-Progress *

Bonus
With a Cage * It started with a cage, the way such things do. It was a very nice cage, as such things go…

Purchase Negotiation 11: Fun

May29

First: Purchased: Negotiation
Previous: What You Like

💰

Eleven

“Cool.”  Sylviane slid down to the ground and landed, knees bent, before hopping up to grab  the bar right in front of him. “You’re kind of fun.”

“I’m – I’m glad.”  He was fun? Well, he looked at her thoughtfully. “Do I get to pretend to be drunk? That’s almost as fun as being drunk.”

She snorted, pleased.  “As long as you don’t mind me slapping you if you get too carried away with the whole thing.”

“Heck, I might even like it.”  Wait, what was he saying? Well, it was too late to take it back now.

“Oh, really?”  She raised her eyebrows at him.  “I think you’re going to be fun.”

“You said I already was fun.” Continue reading →

Edally Story 4 – Making “Friends”

May29

Book 2, Chapters 1-6: Denedien

“Now class.” Instructor Dainanan leaned forward, smiling.  “While this is a class mainly on theory, we are always going to have some practice involved.  So each of you has a small piece of linen and several colors of embroidery thread. We no longer know exactly how the ancients wove aether into their outfits, but what we do know is how they sometimes put codes and meanings into their embroidery.  Work in small teams, come up with a code, and see if you can work in something that your teammates can read.”

Denedien looked at his school-assigned teammates and stifled a sigh.  They were nice people. They were even clever people. Uzharrienie was even quite pretty.  Kivsi was very entertaining. But they had absolutely no interest in the finer things in life. Continue reading →

Spoils of War VII: Hostile

May28

First: Spoils of War I: Surrender
Previous: Trail

Nikol was beginning to be a little sick of Aran’s attitude.  “I didn’t say, ‘get down there and hunt me some sewer alligator.’  If you don’t want to, we have stores enough that you don’t need to.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to!  Just that…” He trailed off, muttering.  “This is stupid.”

“It is,” she agreed.   “We’re not in safe territory.  Let’s save the fight for when we’re off in the countryside again, why don’t we?” Continue reading →

A New World 20: Drinks

May24

First: A New World
Previous: The Hoija

⚗

Kael didn’t need the potion to tell her what he was asking; what she did need was some way to tell her if she wanted to agree to his proposition.

“Maybe not tonight?” she offered, hoping that would go over as she meant it.

From the rueful look on his face, probably not.

“I just moved in here,” she tried.  “And I don’t even know where everything is yet.  In a week – next Yorday? – I’ll have drinks to offer you that aren’t potion reagents.” Continue reading →

Beauty-Beast 36: Time

May24

First – Previous – Landing Page – Next

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He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that permission, but, after considering it, he decided to split his hour three ways and do the three things that Timaios had suggested.

Twenty minutes in the gym wasn’t much, but it was enough for him to feel a pleasant burn in his shoulders and chest. It was nice to not have to rush, to not be looking over his shoulder.  He could be here.  He had permission; his Owner had told him to do it.  He could do anything here he wanted.

He spent the next twenty minutes lying on his back, down to his underwear (he had considered stripping naked and then, thinking of the number of people who worked for Timaios and decided not being naked was probably better).  The sun was warm on his skin, and he wondered what his actual color looked like. Continue reading →

Tootplanet: Explorers’ Logs Planet 7-12-1

May23

Planetary Date 317

Among the interesting things that we have discovered lately, there have been:

a mutation of the puffball creatures (the Vernal line) that explode.

They don’t exactly explode, technically, but the end result is something that destroys itself violently around maturity.

Sadly for us, that “around” means that some of them mange to breed before exploding.

It took us a month to get the problem contained.

In the meantime, in addition to the green dog-ponies, we found something that most closely resembles a very long-legged mountain lion, except it’s patterned mostly in pink and blue.