The pile of papers in my office hadn’t felt like it’d gotten smaller in the three hours I’d been working, and only some of that was my own fault. I was easily distracted and a slow reader, even six months on this job it took me too long to read anything that came by my desk at the best of times. Police reports, eyewitness sightings, blog posts, internet threads, the words all seemed too close and too complicated once the boredom set in.

  Reading aloud helped, working through line by line, my finger tracing each word as I went. It made me look a bit silly, but little as I had read in years it was what I needed to not make this take five times longer.

  I’d become a werewolf when I was barely fifteen, and not long after I had fallen in with a group known as The Purists. Werewolves who acted like the worst of legends, thought that pretending to be human, half-one, was a blasphemy of all things. I’d been there five years, and now almost a year and a half later I still wasn’t sure how I was actually going to feel normal again.

  I was getting better, the last bit of mortal or werewolf flesh I’d eaten was six months ago, when I’d consumed a former pack mate’s heart. I hadn’t seriously considered eating someone for almost three months, I had even avoided getting into any fights that ended in unnecessary death. I was even humoring advice I’d gotten to try and feel more like a half-one; I was wearing clothes that felt more me, taking up hobbies, socializing more with all of them.

  That wasn’t to say though I felt human.

  I still had the cravings, my thoughts rarely felt human, and five years not caring about anything academic or literature had messed up my limits for certain things. I’d been working on getting my GED, trying to improve my reading and reading a decent amount, and I still barely felt like I had a middle school reading level. My pack and Sigyn had gotten me several books they liked, picking them up from used book stores, and I could barely make it through any of them. Instead I needed to get young adult books I could actually understand without taking forever to read and I hated it every time I was reminded of the fact.

  I had no idea why, every bit of that considered, The Lady ever thought I could have done this job.

  And despite all of that, it was only three as I checked the clock and I didn’t need to leave for another hour. Even setting my own work hours, with a few boundaries set, having a pretty strong sense of work ethic probably making this harder than needed on me. It was a lazy April Friday anyway, and while I’d put in my required hours I didn’t have anything else to do and plenty of work to keep me busy.

  As much as I was looking forward to the party tonight, I wasn’t so excited I couldn’t work, and it wasn’t like I had anyone at home anyway. No fucking arms to hold me while I waited doing nothing, or partner I could talk to about how The Lady kept sending the laziest reports known to werewolf.

  All of them things that all seemed like someone else could have fucking cleared them for me by just looking at them five seconds and realizing, “that was definitely fake”. A college student not coming back from spring break, an internet thread about a haunted house, a redneck claiming he was kidnapped by aliens. All things that felt like they ranged from obviously a hoax to so easy to check it could have been done easier than sending it to me.

  Most of them ended up in the Fraud category, with a few marked under Consideration to be put in storage later. I actually felt bad the only thing I thought The Lady’s employees needed to actively investigate was a piece of fucking erotica, and I only marked that such because it felt a bit too accurate to what was real. Woe to the poor hunter who was trying to work out some complicated feelings about the Purists, but shouldn’t have made the werewolves quite that accurate.

  When I reached a good stopping point, all but a few files I needed more information on sorted, I gathered the items at my desk. Placing them into a folder, with one of the cases kept on the top of my stack, I walked out of my office and to the secretary at the end of the hall.

  Allie was a half-one, her hair dyed blue and wearing a nice looking dress, whose sleeve barely peaked a twisted burn scar on her arm as she typed away at her computer; the girl smelling strongly of vanilla hand lotion over a vampire’s ashy smells and her usual scents. One of those rare humans well in the know about the supernatural, and her job probably more important than mine.

  She did a little paperwork and filing each week, usually Monday and Friday, and got me in touch with whatever resources and contacts I needed. No longer needing to do everything on my own, or needing to awkwardly ask my pack mates for help. In exchange for that and stalling anyone who tried to get through this floor uninvited, no one stopped her doing whatever she wanted at her desk for fifty hours a week.

  “How’s the book coming along?” I asked, smiling as I sat on the edge of her desk and held the folder close.

  “Oh, querying the one I was working on,” the girl answered, giggling at the thought, “outlining a new one now, though I haven't landed on anything I’m happy with. How’s your life going, Mary?”

  “Pretty good, pretty good,” I said, nodding slowly at the thought, “I’ve been knitting, making a scarf even if it’s a little late in the year for that. I sewed this dress, took me fucking forever, but I like it I think.”

  I gestured down at myself, knowing how little I probably looked good in the dress even if it made me happy.

  My friend Calliope had been teaching me to sew, and as much as I was enjoying it her expertise was limited. I was making patterns to her specifications out of cheap fabric, cutting and sewing everything myself as rough as it was, needing to do a lot of the small work by hand. Not a big problem, she was a good teacher and it was a good learning experience all things considered. The problem had been the fact Calliope was a ghost from the 1700s, and her knowledge reflected that.

  The main dress was white, loosely draping over my body and coming down to my ankles and down to my wrists. It tied at the neck and wrists, and I’d made it out of surprisingly soft cotton. Over that was a black skirt and sort of black overcoat coat, that covered all but the front of the main body and had a sort of vest that laced on the front. It all looked dreadfully old fashioned and my father’s old jacket, a brown leather biker look covered in a half-hundred off-color patches trying to fix it, nor my pentacle earrings helped the look.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  All the same, I fucking loved it, and even if I’d gotten a little bit of judgment for the style it still felt nice to dress pretty for once.

  Before I’d become a werewolf I’d thought I was a guy, and never really been allowed to look cute or girly or have fun with these sorts of things. The transformation shifted the body though, made me look like my soul was, and it was hard to deny myself after that. Honestly, I didn’t even care at this point if someone tried to scold me for doing this sort of thing, I was a werewolf, I could fucking kill anyone who got too upset about how I looked.

  “I do like the dress,” Allie said in a way I thought might have had a tiny amount of lying behind it, “you have some stuff you need help with?”

  “Yeah, actually,” I said, holding the folder out to her while keeping the final file in my hand, “can you get me further information about these cases? I don’t know if I can make a decision based on the current information.”

  “I’ll put it in with the tech guys,” Allie confirmed with me, smiling as she took the folder and sat it aside in one of her trays, “what about that one?”

  “I want you to put in a call now,” I said, sitting the paper down, “something seems…off about this one, but I can’t tell what. College kid; seemed to have left home according to his parents but never moved back into his dorms after spring break and never showed up for classes. Roommate claims he never saw him come back, but no sign of foul play.”

  “What’s so weird about that you want to check on it immediately?” Allie asked, frowning even as she opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out one of the twenty phones lined up there, this one marked FBI by a slip of paper over the camera.

  “The roommate’s the one who filed the missing persons,” I said, tapping the name at the top of the document, “report was filed, police interviewed him again a week later and this was the result.”

  The secretary frowned a moment, tilting her head as she looked down at the file. After a moment’s thought she asked, “why would someone file a report for their roommate not coming back after a break?”

  “I don’t know, seems worth it to just double check though,” I admitted, shrugging at the thought, “one hand there might be a good explanation, other hand it might make him look like the reason his roommate disappeared. There’s a slim possibility though that, well, it’s something that someone The Lady knows needs to look into.”

  Allie nodded, and dialed the contact number at the top of the document, putting it on speaker as it rang. After a few moments, it picked up, and a tired sounding man asked, “what is this?”

  “Hi, this is Agent Cooper, with the FBI,” Allie said, putting her theater degree to best use as she took on a formal posture like this student could see it. “Do I have James? I was calling to ask if we could schedule an interview about the police report you filed March twenty-third about your roommate Phillip’s disappearance at RVU Campus. We’ve been brought onto the case, and just had some questions about your testimony.”

  “Look, did Josh put you up to this?” the man asked, giving a small laugh, “I don’t have a roommate this year, I got fucking lucky. Some weirdo left his stuff from last semester, but I haven’t had to deal with jack shit.”

  “So you don’t know a Phillip Edwards?” Allie asked, frowning as she leaned on her desk in thought.

  “No, I mean, maybe someone does but I’ve never heard the name,” the man said, sounding annoyed, “look I think you have the wrong James, or someone fucking used my name, I don’t know fucking shit about this. Can I just go back to bed, shouldn’t have left my ringer on anyway.”

  “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, sir. I’ll check back in with the local badges, see if the college gave us a wrong name,” Allie told him, hanging up as she went about turning off the phone and pulling the sim card out.

  “Well, that was weird,” I said, shaking my head as I watched Allie drop the card in a small container in the phone drawer, before pulling a new one from another jar she loaded into the phone. “I’ll toss this in the pile for investigations, someone can probably find out what’s going on there.”

  “I’ll get these documents sent in for their full files as well,” Allie told me, pulling out a notepad and she started recording notes on it. I watched, even as she half-rolled the folder around the note, and walked over to a back wall.

  There she placed the folder in a metal cylinder, sealing it tight before opening a panel on the wall to reveal a series of metal pipe ends. She fed the cylinder into the pipe, and it was immediately sucked away, to some other nearby building or floor or wherever these fed. The Lady’s extremely out of date network of information I wasn’t sure why she maintained.

  “If you don’t need any help here, Allie, I’m going to get changed in my office and get ready,” I said, giving a small yawn as I stretched until my back cracked. “Vergil’s hosting a costume party, one of my friends is celebrating her birthday. I got roped into it.”

  “Oh yeah, I heard, down at Dante’s Inferno,” Allie said, giving a small laugh, “I was going to go to the contest later tonight, but couldn’t think of anything. Makes sense he’s hosting it if there’s a party going on too. What’re you going as?”

  “Well, I was going to go as something scary,” I said, more than a little annoyed as I remembered the costume waiting for me, “I lost a bet with Tara though and she thought I should go sexy. Sexy’s not really an option for me though, so…well, you’ll see.”

  “I think you’re pretty good looking,” Allie admitted with a shrug as she looked over me with a smirk I couldn’t quite place. The idea almost appealing, almost desirable, as I wondered what it’d be like if she did actually want me, “you could make sexy work.”

  “You haven’t seen me without my shirt on,” I told her, smiling at her like it was a joke as I headed back to my office to change.

  It was technically a joke, at least, more than it would have been six months ago. I had been skin and bones then, with one able to count my ribs, my arms thin, and my cheeks a little sunken without adequate nutrition. By now I’d at least put a good layer of fat on my body, and I actually had a few parts of my skin where I thought some muscle was starting to show.

  That was only part of the problem though.

  My body was largely covered in scars, silver blades and wood burners creating a mural on me that was supposed to be like tattoos. They were rough, objectively ugly, though I personally liked to think of them as somewhat artistic and beautiful in their own way. Vines, flowers, and swords made up the majority of it, covering almost all of my torso, arms, and legs. On my back, taking up most of the flesh there, was a burnt mural of a wolf howling at the moon, with my former name Bloodhound across my shoulders.

  It was one of many things about me I both loved and hated, found beautiful and ugly in the same breath. Something I wished I could bring myself to show off, and felt more comfortable hiding.

  And just because my costume covered them all didn’t mean I was particularly happy with it.

  Tara had gotten it for me, putting together the pieces from various things and even having Calliope make the most important aspect. Everything folded up neatly in the bottom of my knitting bag, I quickly stripped out of my dress as I laid the items out. Black stockings that at least obscured my tattoos, a red skirt that ended just above my knees, and a frilly white top with thankfully long sleeves. All of it was easy to put on, and I stepped back into my boots as I finished, a nicer black pair I could slip on relatively easily, and pulled my long auburn hair into a loose ponytail.

  That done I put on the cornerstone piece of the outfit, a heavy cloak, well sewn and bright red that I clasped over my chest. The final bit of what Tara thought I’d look sexy in, and somehow the second time I had been forced to wear a Red Riding Hood costume to a party in my life.

  At least this time I probably wasn’t going to kill someone, as tempting as it felt for this.