Hardboiled: Not Your Average Detective Story (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 5) Read online

  He shook his head, sending his mop of half-green hair whirling around his face. “It looks natural, but you won’t find someone who is that awesome at hair coloring here.” He glanced at me as we came to a stone stairwell. It led upward as though it was the entrance to a castle tower. “I’d enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “I will,” I said, already deciding to get hair dye on the way home even though it probably wouldn’t last very long. Do they sell travel dye packs? Maybe I could skip my first class and go to a drugstore now…

  He opened the door in front of me and gestured at it. “After you,” he said, ushering me inside.

  Before I knew what was happening, I was standing inside the room with several dozen faces staring at me. Had I missed the first bell somehow?

  “Connor,” a man in his mid-twenties with long red hair and a goatee said, “is this our new student?”

  “Yes, Dr. Matthers,” the boy who had escorted me said, glancing down at his black skater shoes. So… he had been sent to get me? Why that little… and here I thought he was being nice.

  “Well sit down, Connor,” Matthers said, weaving effortlessly through the throng of desks until he was standing next to me. He looked me up and down before his eyes settled on my hair. A small sigh escaped him. Then he turned, glancing at the rest of the class who were all staring at me, the freak with the purple hair. Already, I could hear people starting to murmur. Why had my hair picked today of all days to fade back to normal so quickly? Why? Normally my hair took at least a week to shed the dye, this was fast, even for me.

  “Class, we have a new student starting today. Her name is Lillim Callina,” he said, turning toward me. “Why don’t you come to the front of the room and tell us just a little about yourself.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “But be quick about it, we have a state-mandated schedule to keep.”

  “Um… okay,” I replied as I followed him up to the front. When I turned, everyone was staring at me, and somehow, I forgot how to speak.

  “So, Lillim, tell us why you’re starting halfway through senior year at a new high school,” Dr. Matthers said after what felt like an hour of me standing in front of everyone like an idiot.

  “Um… I was homeschooled and my mom died a few weeks ago so my dad wanted me to have a ‘normal’ teenage life and enrolled me in school,” the words tumbled out of my mouth so quickly I couldn’t stop them.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Matthers replied and stood there unsure of what else to say.

  “It’s fine,” I said with a shrug. “It’s not like she was the world’s best mom or anything.” I swallowed, looking away from him but everywhere I turned, people were staring at me like I was a horrible person. Some had their mouths half-open, probably wondering why the new girl was such a cruel, unfeeling person.

  “Okay, well if you need to talk to someone, please let me know,” the teacher replied, moving next to me and pointing at a desk toward the back left of the classroom. “I’m afraid that’s the only open desk.”

  I nodded and made my way woodenly toward it. As I flopped down in the tiny chair, I dropped my head onto my desk and cursed under my breath. I’d been in school all of ten minutes and already everyone was probably laughing at me, or worse, thinking I was a heartless monster. But I wasn’t really. I was mostly trying to play it cool. Besides, weren’t teenagers supposed to hate their parents? Wasn’t that like a thing?

  The bell rang what felt like a second later, and I looked up, realizing I had missed basically the entire class. Well, this day was off to an excellent start. I grabbed my backpack and slung it over one shoulder, fishing my schedule out of my pocket. I was still staring at it when Connor grabbed it out of my hand, glanced at it, and grinned.

  “Oh no,” he said, gulping. “This schedule means only one thing. Math!” People were staring at us, and I felt my cheeks turning red as they filed around us muttering to themselves. “Quick, divide three-hundred-sixty-seven by four.”

  “Um…” I said, my mouth opening and closing like a dying fish as I stared at him. He waved his hand dismissively before wrapping his arm around my waist and leading me from the room. I looked down at his arm, and as he pushed us out the door and into the hallway, I shook my head.

  “Look,” I said, “you’re very sweet and all, but I have a boyfriend…”

  “Okay, so we won’t make out then.” He smirked at me, and it made me even more embarrassed. “The math classes are downstairs,” he added, leading me back toward the stairs.

  “Oh… okay,” I replied, feeling like an idiot. Sure, throw me in front of a fire-breathing dragon and I’m be fine, but navigating a high school? That was too much.

  “I’m sorry about your mom,” he said, pulling his arm away from me and stopping in front of an obnoxiously beige door.

  “It’s okay,” I repeated. “I… um… don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No problem,” he replied and pointed at the door. “Calculus is through the door. Prepare to be transported to a dimension none of us fully understand.”

  “Can I have my schedule back?” I asked as he turned to saunter away, hands shoved in his pockets.

  “Nope, I’ll be here after class to take you to your next one,” he replied, disappearing into the crowd. “If at first you don’t see me, just wait longer.”

  “Great,” I muttered to myself as I pulled the door open and hustled inside. “This is going to be one of those days.” I was really going to have to be more upfront about the boyfriend thing.

  The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, which I’ll admit, was a little creepy. Still, as Connor walked me from class to class, I found myself not finding him quite as annoying as I should have. By the time the final bell rang, I’d grown used to waiting for him outside my classroom.

  Which was bad, right? I mean, I wouldn’t be too pleased if my boyfriend, Caleb, was walking through the halls of his school the first day holding hands with a girl he’d just met. It might give me the wrong idea, and surely, that feeling would be mutual.

  I sighed. I hadn’t even spoken to Caleb since right after my mom died… and our last words had been a fight. I’d been in the wrong, I could admit that now, but at the time… well let’s just say out of the two of us only one was basically a god. Of the two of us, only one could have stopped time and saved my mom from bleeding out on the ground like a stuck pig. And he didn’t do it. Instead, like the bastard he was, he had let her die. My boyfriend, the god of space and time, had let my mother die when he could have saved her. I gritted my teeth. Okay, maybe I wasn’t over it.

  I shook my head, dismissing the horrible memory and tried to be positive as Connor strolled up to me and took me by the hand. “Miss me?” he asked, pulling me down the hallway toward what I assumed was the exit.

  “I don’t think we should be holding hands,” I said, trying to yank my fingers away. “Even if I didn’t have a boyfriend, I just met you. We aren’t even in a relationship where I’d think it was appropriate for friendly hand holding.”

  He released my hand and ran his now empty hand through his mop of semi-green hair. “Is this where you say that your boyfriend is really buff and could beat me up?” he asked, pale amber eyes sparkling.

  I grinned. I hadn’t been about to say that, but now that I thought about it, it was pretty much true. My boyfriend was over six feet tall and built like a professional athlete. He also was an expert swordsman and had actually mastered the control of fire. He was all that before he became fused with the god of time and space. So… yeah, he could probably take on Connor.

  “I wasn’t going to say that, per se,” I replied, smiling stupidly at him.

  “Good, because I’d hate to go all Kung Fu on him,” Connor said, shoving open the heavy door with his shoulder as he turned to look at me. “Have I mentioned I am a master of Kung Fu, Karate, and like six other Japanese words?”

  “You haven’t,” I said, trying not to smile even though it was a little funny. “Although I think Kung Fu
is Chinese.”

  “See, I’m a multicultural badass,” Connor replied, holding the door open for me. “Your boyfriend wouldn’t want to mess with me.”

  I shook my head, shielding my eyes from the bright sunlight filtering through the trees in the front of the school. “I’ll let him know,” I said, fishing out my sunglasses and putting them on.

  “So… do you know how to get home, or do you need someone to walk with you?” he asked, glancing away nonchalantly.

  “Smooth, sir. You sir are smooth,” I said, glancing down the street. I’d been about to say something but my jaw fell open, and I stared wide-eyed in horror. Walking toward me in a wife-beater, cowboy hat, and dress slacks was my father. He had a huge cigar tucked into his mouth, which was odd, because he didn’t smoke.

  I felt my heart start to hammer as I turned back toward Connor, but before I could say anything, my father clapped his scarred hand on my shoulder.

  “Hi there,” my dad growled, pulling the cigar from his mouth and smiling at Connor. “Would you like some candy?”

  That was pretty much when I was sure I had died. If I hadn’t, it was going to happen pretty freaking soon. The cause? Advanced mortification.

  Connor stared at my father for half a second, before a grin crossed his lips. “Is it in your van?” he asked. “Because I only take candy from strange men in vans. No van, no candy. It’s my rule.”

  I’ll admit it. I almost laughed. Partially from Connor, but mostly from the look that flew across my father’s face at breakneck speed. It was a cross between surprise and amusement. It was a look that melted into, “well, two can play this game.”

  “Dad, this is Connor. Connor, this is my dad. He is pretending to be a crazy person for no apparent reason,” I replied, turning to narrow my eyes at my father. I flashed him my, what the hell are you doing, look.

  “You want to know how I got these scars?” my father asked, looking past me at Connor.

  “I’m going to go with a fishing accident,” Connor said, still smirking.

  “Dad!” I said, reaching out to grab his arm. My father smiled then, reaching one hand out toward Connor. Before I could stop him, Connor took my father’s hand and pain flashed through the boy’s eyes.

  “I stood on a mountain for days, while vicious beasts tore the flesh from my body with their claws,” my dad said, and as he said the words, Connor bit his lip to keep from crying out. “I saw you holding hands with my sweet innocent daughter. What exactly are your intentions, if you don’t mind me asking?” He pointed at Connor with his cigar.

  That was when I died because my heart exploded, and I became completely insubstantial as I tried to melt through into the ground and hide amongst the grass.

  “Sir, I only have the best intentions for your daughter,” Connor replied through clenched teeth. “And you have one hell of a grip.”

  “Good, I’d hate to have to do to you what I did to the creatures who did this to me.” My father released him and pointed at his own face. “Come on, Lillim. There’s a police officer who wants to speak with you.”

  “Okay…” I mumbled, still sure I was caught in a horrible dream from which I could not wake.

  Chapter 3

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you a psychopath?” I asked as I flung open the door to the tiny golden VW bug my Dad had managed to scrounge up from God knows where. Why he got a car, and I didn’t, had yet to be explained. Still, if it was a choice between walking and driving a bug that was eighty percent rust with two primer-colored doors… well… I’d probably still use the car.

  “What’s wrong with me?” my father asked incredulously as he placed one hand to his heart. “Of the two of us, who is the parent and who is the daughter who sneaks out to go gallivanting through graveyards all night?”

  “That is one hundred percent totally irrelevant to this conversation,” I snapped. “You just made a fool of me in front of the one guy who was nice to me on my first day of high school. You’re pretty much the devil.”

  My father got out of the car and shut his door, still shaking his head. “I’ve met the devil. He has better hair,” my father said, glancing up the stairs toward the police station. “I don’t even know why we took the bug,” he added a moment later. “Since the police station is across the street.”

  “I don’t know why you’re here at all,” I growled, my hands tightening into white-knuckled fists.

  “Because I need to sign some forms so that you actually get paid to work on Detective Lang’s case,” he replied, glancing at me like I was a petulant child. “You’re still under eighteen, remember?”

  “I… erm… okay,” I said as he stepped up to the door and held it open for me.

  “I thought I’d surprise you on your first day, but then I saw that boy, and well…” He smiled at me sheepishly. “You’re not lying to me about the graveyard, right? You weren’t out with that boy, were you?”

  “Um… no. I just met him today.” I felt a blush rising across my cheeks. If my father had thought there had been something there, what would Caleb think? I brushed the thought away like an annoying cobweb and glanced at my father. “Why do you have to do this now? The paperwork, I mean.”

  My father ignored me as we stepped inside. He strode up to the receptionist and smiled, weaving a wall of glamour over himself to hide his scars and make his dress more… presentable. Just like that, he was clad in a two-thousand dollar suit, and his skin was free of blemishes.

  “Hello,” he said, voice booming in the entryway. “I’m here to see Detective Jeffry Lang.”

  The receptionist, a brown-haired pudgy woman in a frumpy blue dress-suit glanced up at him, narrowing her eyes as she pushed her spectacles up on her nose. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” he replied, reaching out and tapping the top of the computer screen. I’m not sure what he did exactly, but the woman’s mouth fell open as she leapt to her feet.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Callina. I’ll go get him right away.” The woman had barely finished her statement before she was gone, and I half expected to see one of those cartoon clouds of dust left behind in her shape.

  “Wow,” I said, and my father glanced at me and smiled. The image of his face flickered in front of me. Whenever he used glamour, it was hard for me to look at him because I always saw two images, one was the shell, the magic he used to camouflage himself, but beneath I could see what he really looked like. I probably shouldn’t have been able to see through his spell, especially since he did this one so frequently, but for whatever reason, I always saw my dad as he really looked. All scars.

  “To answer your question from earlier, Lillim. I have to go on a trip,” he said. “I probably won’t be back for a couple weeks. I need you to look out for yourself, since I won’t be around.”

  “You’re leaving? Already?” I said, and my heart fell into my toes. “I mean we just started to live together… how can you be leaving?”

  “Lillim, there’s a case I need to see through, and I know what you’re going to say, but it really can’t wait, and you can’t come.” He looked away, staring past me toward the upper corner of the room where a camera stared back at him.

  “Fine, whatever, I didn’t want you around anyway,” I grumbled, turning away from him and flopping down in one of the hard visitor’s chairs. “This is great, just great!” I added. “I’m going to have a huge party. I’ll be the most popular girl in school.”

  “I trust you, Lillim,” my father said, voice calm. “If you want to throw a party, I trust you.”

  His words annoyed me. How dare he guilt me into not misbehaving by saying he trusted me to do what I thought best… the nerve. I glared at him as he smiled at me all doe-eyed.

  “That’s not fair,” I said, folding my arms over my chest.

  “True. How about when I get back we talk about you getting a car of your own,” my wonderful father said, and with an underhand toss, threw the bug’s keys at me. “Unti
l then, you can use the bug.”

  I caught them and turned my head, staring out into the parking lot at where the bug was. It sat there like a half-washed slug, but still it was mine… at least until he got back. In that moment, happiness filled me. I had a car! After begging and pleading, my father had actually let me have a car. It was a little out of the blue, sure, but it was a car. As I stared out at it, I thought about asking him why he’d suddenly changed his mind but thought better of it. I didn’t want him to take it back, did I?

  “Mr. Callina, I see you’ve made quite the impression on Beatrice,” Detective Lang said in his high-pitched nasal voice. I swung back around as my father reached out to shake hands with the detective. Great, now they were friends. My social life was as good as dead.

  “Indeed,” my father said, smiling so brightly that it made my stomach turn to watch. “She was very helpful,” he added, and I was pretty sure Beatrice melted.

  “Great,” Detective Lang replied, shoving a handful of papers into my father’s hands. “Just sign these. I’ve gotten the added authorization for increased hours like your daughter asked for. Your phone call worked wonders with my boss.”

  “I have a way with words,” my dad said, winking at me. No fair. He’d totally used magic to influence the guy. That was so against the rules. Well, two could play at this game. Straight A’s here I come.

  My dad looked down at the ream of paper in his hand and sighed. “This is going to take a while, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Detective Lang said, voice very nearly crackling with annoyance. “You have to be put on the independent contractors list. It’s a process most people don’t do in one day, but somehow, I’m supposed to rush you through it.”

  “This isn’t your normal job, is it?” my father asked, looking up from the papers and glancing around the room, presumably looking for a desk or table to fill out his paperwork.

  Detective Lang grabbed the badge that hung around his neck with one slender hand and looked at it, a look of consternation on his face. “Huh,” he said, “You’re right. This says ‘detective,’ not ‘guy whose job it is to personally make sure whack-job private investigators go through the process without a hitch.’”