Images were flashing across the TV screen faster than on the computer, but I didn’t need my eyes open to see them – my magic sent them straight into my head.  Besides, I didn’t care that much about the victim’s TV watching history, I was more interested in everything else.  Although….

I lifted my hand from the TV and turned to Officer Mills, my eyes open again.  “So, bad news is nothing looks weird on the computer, wiring’s all good, TV is fine.  Good news, though, is he watches some obscure foreign films.”

“Um, okay?”  Officer Mills was clearly confused.

I sighed melodramatically.  “Dude, come on, we’re looking for connecting pieces.  Something that explains how they were ‘called’ or whatever it was that made them all walk off suddenly.  They all liked obscure foreign films.  Maybe a coincidence, but given how little overlaps their lives?  I’m gonna guess not.”

Officer Mills was startled.  “You noticed that?  It’s not in any of the document reports.”

“Yeah, probably no one paid attention to their entertainment choices, but it was part of that stuff Cap Dennis sent me – copied over off their computers, I presume?”

He looked thoughtful again.  “Any particular film they all watched?”

“No, we’re talking about really obscure stuff, some of them probably were pulled because they weren’t doing well.”  I turned back to the TV and made it pull up the list again.  “The others had lists of the movies they watched – none that overlapped, just the genre.  But the others also didn’t give this info.”  I pointed at the screen, where it showed the total number of times the video had been viewed.

Officer Mills raised an eyebrow.  “Not even a dozen?”

“Yeah,” it was my turn to be thoughtful.  “Curious.”

The vet had just been watching us this whole time, listening, but he finally spoke up.  “You think that means something?”

I spun around to face him and put my hands on my hips.  “Well you don’t care what I think anyway, so why ask?  All that matters is if the investigators think it means something.  Now, Officer, we done here?  Do I still get to ride back in the front?  I did behave, I promise!”

Officer Mills chuckled at my question.  “Yeah, but just for my peace of mind, can you double check the other electronics?  His kitchen has fancy stuff – I know it’s not like a computer, exactly, but it is electronic.”

“Say no more,” I waved my hand as I walked towards the kitchen, “I’ll go talk to the shiny fridge.”

The kitchen yielded nothing of interest, so after a quick search of the house confirmed no more potentially helpful electronics, I went out front and waited while Officer Mills started collecting the computer and TV to put in his car.

The vet came outside, carrying some dog stuff, or what I assumed was dog stuff – bowls and a fluffy bed.

I was a little surprised when he decided to stop and talk.

“I’m – sorry,” he offered, even more surprisingly.  “If I came across as judgmental.  I, uh, often come across more harsh than I mean to.  It’s not that I disbelieve you or, uh, don’t care about your opinion, it’s just – my dad’s lived a long time, he knows a lot about species, and he’s never mentioned yours.  It’s just kind of surprising that something might exist that we weren’t even aware of.”

I kind of gave him a bored look.  “You think I don’t hear that from, like, every single new person I encounter?  ‘Oh, you’re not real, you’re making this up!’  We’re an extremely rare species.  Every time we tell people, the same old conversation happens.  You’re not the first, you won’t be the last.  I really don’t care.”

I think he might have been a tad insulted that I’d rejected his apology – which I got the impression he didn’t hand out often – but Officer Mills was waving at me to come to the car.

I pushed myself off the building and started to the car.  “Toodles, Vet!  Hope I don’t see you again!”  I waved my hand but didn’t look back at him.

Officer Mills was cringing a little when I got into the car.

“What,” I asked, “not polite enough to your fairy royalty person?”

“He’s not royalty, just…very influential.  We don’t have any fairies on the force, so he and his family sometimes help us out with…situations.  Like, um, shifters gone feral.  Fairies can deal with them a lot easier than we can.”

“Sure, sure, but he’s not my boss and this isn’t my city.  I have no reason to care what he thinks.”  I looked out the window, but I could hear Officer Mills muttering something under his breath about how he had to worry about what the fairy thought.

I mean, if the fairy was upset at Officer Mills because someone in his company insulted him a little?  Come on!  First, the fairy needed to get a thicker skin, yikes.  Second, blaming someone else for my behavior is no good.  I’m the only one responsible for it and if the fairy thinks Officer Mills could even control my behavior, he’s flat-out nuts.

Back at the station, Captain Dennis was somewhat intrigued by the idea of a shared entertainment genre and he and the officers started looking into the case files.

I had nothing more to do today, so I was bored, lazily spinning around in a chair until Captain Dennis decided to release me and let me go back to my hotel.

I decided to get some coffee on the way and went to a little café.  The timid human guy at the counter who took my order didn’t look at me and barely said two words to me, but at least that was better than the human girl who was staring at me with wide eyes looking all offended like somehow my appearance was just designed to be a personal affront to her.  This wasn’t even my most scandalous outfit.  I kind of wondered to myself, amused, if she’d flat-out faint if I walked in in some of my other outfits.

Coffee in hand, I wandered my way through the city streets, appreciating the beauty of Avenglade.  It was a nice city, really, a lot of activity – great for my kind – but even the streets were wide, plenty of trees planted, and more grass than I was used to in most cities.  I smirked to myself as I wondered if that had to do with a fairy family being so influential in town – maybe they insisted on the beautification that basically equaled more trees and grass for everyone.

I was not an outdoor person.  That should be pretty clear – electronics were my thing and those were usually indoors.  Give me a computer room and I’ll be happy as a clam.  Oh, wait, are clams happy?  I don’t know, never asked one.  Happy as a well-fed cat in a beam of sunlight, that’s better.  But I still liked breathing in fresh air and could appreciate the aesthetics of a town like this.  Trees and open spaces were sometimes a nice break from staring at screens before I dove back into my little bubble, only to emerge weeks or months later for another glimpse of the wide world.

Back in my hotel room, I flopped onto my stomach on the bed and perused some TV channels before giving up and flipping to my computer.  I’d used a fair amount of energy today.  Normally, we didn’t expend much energy just to exist, but doing magic could drain us.  This place was weird with energy, but I could feed enough to get my levels back to average.  It was probably wise, just to make sure I was prepared in case Captain Dennis had something else for me to look at.  He’d probably try to take advantage of my abilities for as long as possible to get the full benefit of my consulting fee, but I’d already looked at most of the electronics so I wasn’t sure if there was much else for me to do.  I’d probably only be here another couple of days then move on, never really knowing the end of this case unless another victim was taken and Captain Dennis called me back.

But that was my life – constantly on the move.  It wasn’t like I was running from everything, I just didn’t have a reason to sit still, either.  My family was long gone and friends weren’t really a thing when you were a species most people didn’t believe existed and then you spent 96% of your time holed up in a room on a computer, listening to the energy of the universe.  Okay, not the universe.  Just the area nearby, but I mean, I could actually pull energy from around the world, it was just a lot less efficient to do so.  It was best to feed off nearby energy.

I guess it was kind of a lonely existence.  Sometimes I wondered what it would be like if I stayed in one place, had a regular job, and even had friends.  Then I’d always shudder and shake my head – the idea was not me.  I didn’t want to be tied down, stuck in stagnancy.  I liked being free to float wherever I felt like even if that came at the cost of not having any close connections.  Life was too short to care about doing “normal” stuff if it didn’t make me happy.

But I could enjoy these few days while I was here – Captain Dennis respected me, that was nice; Officer Mills could banter with me; and Officer Bennet might be inclined to argue with me, but even that was cool in a sense.  “Normal” relation stuff.  It was cool to experience it for a bit and then just walk away, not tied down to all of this.

Eventually satisfied with the energy level I reached, I decided to sleep for a bit – which didn’t restore energy, just preserved it at its current level – and hoped that Captain Dennis actually had something interesting for me in the morning so I wouldn’t end up sitting and twirling on that chair again all day.

~~~~

I was wrong, he didn’t.  Boring, boring, boring.  I mean, the looks I was getting from the officers were kinda funny.  Some of them didn’t even recognize me when I walked in, which amused me for all of nine seconds before I was bored again.

I dress based on my mood.  I’m never tied down to any one fashion style, so I can go from punk rock to renaissance faire to conservative housewife in a week.  I change out my makeup and hair to go with each look – well, wigs, I don’t change my hair itself – so it’s really not that uncommon to see me look very different from one day to the next.

Today was a very androgynous look.  Slacks, low boots, vest over a button-up shirt, hair tightly slicked back into a bun, and a chic hat.  The slacks and vest were deliberately designed to hide my curves, which probably worked better since I’m not like super curvy to begin with.  Average curvy, I guess?  I’m also 5’6” but gain a little height with most of my heels – I do generally wear some kind of heel or shoes with some height to them, regardless of outfit – so while I would probably be on the shorter end for most guys, I could reasonably be seen as either.

Officer Mills paused in front of me, uncertainty on his face.  “Claire?”

“Yep, it’s me.”  I tilted the hat at him.  “I’d say ‘at your service’ but it looks like there’s nothing to do here today.”

“Right.”  He shifted from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable.  “You…you didn’t change up your look based on something Officer Bennet said, right?”

“Oh no.”  I waved dismissively with my hand.  “I never listen to other people’s opinions on my look.  I only care about my own – I just so happen to like a lot of different styles.”

“Well, that’s good then.”  He still seemed concerned, or confused, it was hard to fully tell which.  “Captain Dennis doesn’t have anything for you to do today yet?”

“Eh, well, already checked all his electronics we can find, reviewed the stuff from old cases but nothing there, so…nope, nothing.”  I spun the chair around, yet again.  Maybe I should just ask if I could sit in front of a computer instead, at least that way I could collect energy and not be so freaking bored.

“I’ll see if he maybe has any ideas, it seems like a waste of resources to have you sitting around doing nothing.”

“Cool, let me know if he finds anything,” I responded, my eyes on the ceiling while I spun.  I really should reconsider these consulting contracts – they often wanted to keep me around as long as possible “just in case” but they didn’t have anything for me to do half the time.  It ended up like this, me sitting around bored, twiddling my thumbs.  Yeah I got paid for it, I guess that was nice, but it wasn’t like money was actually a problem for me.

I was left alone for a while before Officer Bennet came to get me.  Lovely.

“Hey, um, Claire.”  Her tone was stiff, but maybe a little less offended than yesterday.  The power of wearing a suit.  “Cap wondered if maybe you could review some of the victim’s older computer files.  You only went back two weeks, right?  He knows you can’t get traces off the older stuff, but thought maybe there still might be something of interest.”

Well, it was better than nothing.  “’Kay, fine.”  I hopped to my feet, the room spinning slightly from stopping the chair-twirling abruptly, but one long blink of my eyes and I was back to normal.

She took me to a room where they’d set up the victim’s computer.  Well, actually the room looked like it was the command room for this investigation?  All the officers were there, sitting at desks or hovering over tables, going over pages of paperwork that looked oh so fun.

Paper was not my thing.

Tucked into the corner in front of the computer, I booted it up again.  I’d left it unlocked after I got into it yesterday so the officers could access it, so it went from startup straight to the home screen.

I spent several hours poring over the victim’s old emails and documents.  At some point, one of the officers offered me some sandwiches they seemed to have delivered for lunch, which got an eyebrow raise and a reminder that “I only eat energy, dude, I don’t eat that stuff,” which sent him scurrying off muttering apologies and looking embarrassed.  It wasn’t like I meant to embarrass him, but I thought that was pretty obvious.  Regular vampires only drink blood.  I only eat energy.  Duh.  I mean, okay, technically I could drink stuff – like coffee – not that it provided me any sustenance, but no, I didn’t eat regular food.