Monster Control Inc. 5

In which Our Hero learns he is a serious liability

• MCI 001

• MCI 002

• MCI 003

• MCI 004

Kim stared at me. "Horace, what were you doing? This wasn't just about protecting a civilian. This was obviously personal."

I couldn't meet her eyes. It was too humiliating. "I liked her, okay? Elise. She’s really pretty and I liked her. A lot. I was going to ask her out, and I was just getting my nerve up to do it when the werewolf showed up, and after that, everything went straight to hell! It’s not like I ever intended this shitshow! It isn’t my fault!"

Kim's face softened just a fraction. "So you what? Decided to keep following her around like a lovesick puppy?"

"Like a professional," I corrected. "I was concerned for her safety."

"Bullshit. You were jealous of the boyfriend."

"He's not her—" I caught myself and sighed. "Okay, maybe a little. But I really did think he was a skinwalker. I saw something. At least, I thought I did."

"What you saw was what you wanted to see." Kim shook her head. "When you hunt monsters long enough, you start seeing them everywhere. Even where they aren't."

"I'm good at what I do," I insisted, my pride still stinging.

"Eh, you were all right. Now you're a liability. A serious one." Kim tapped her manicured nails on the table. "The question is, are you a liability worth saving?"

That sent a cold feeling down my spine. MCI didn't tolerate failures, especially public ones. Agents who couldn't keep it together, who couldn't maintain the masquerade, who couldn't distinguish between real threats and imagined ones... they tended to disappear. One way or another.

"What does the boss say?" I asked quietly.

"The boss is reviewing your case file. All of it. Your actual assignments, plus this little side project of yours."

"And?"

"And he hasn't decided anything yet." Kim leaned forward. "Your record up to now has been decent. Respectable, if not particularly impressive. But this? This is a colossal screwup, Scrubb. A fuckup of epic proportions. The kind that ends careers. Or worse."

The "or worse" hung in the air between us. MCI had its own cleanup protocols for agents who went rogue. I'd always been on the enforcement side before. Never the target.

"I can fix this," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

"How?" Kim asked. "The damage is done. The girl hates you. Tyler Ellison has a serious injury that you inflicted on him, and his uncle controls the case. And you're facing multiple felony charges."

"If I could talk to Elise... just explain..."

"Good God! Are you not paying attention, Scrubb? You're not going anywhere near her ever again! I’d be shocked if a judge hasn’t already granted a restraining order."

I slumped back in my chair. My eyes still burned. My jaw ached. But knowing that Elise might have actually taken out a restraining order against me really hurt. "So what do I do?"

"Right now? You shut the fuck up. You let me handle this mess, you keep your nose clean and your mouth shut. You stick to the PTSD story. And you pray that the boss decides you're worth the trouble."

"And if he doesn't?"

Kim didn't answer immediately. When she did, her voice was softer than I'd ever heard it. "Then you better hope they just fire you, Scrubb. You’re damned lucky you only stabbed that boy in the arm, and not anywhere vital."

“Oh, jeez...”

“You knew the risks when you took the job.” Her eyes narrowed. “Just one thing I don’t understand. Why did the police report say something about you being a racist and suggest looking into the possibility of a hate crime?”

“Oh, that. It’s actually kind of funny, you know. I said she was a half-blood, so I suppose they assumed—”

“Wow, you really don’t know how to keep your damn mouth shut,” she marveled unappreciatively.

We sat in silence for a long moment. My face still burned from the mace. My pride burned worse.

"For what it's worth," I said finally, "I really did think I was protecting her."

"I’m sure you did," Kim replied. "That's the problem with guys like you. You always think you're the damned hero of the story." She stood up and gathered her papers. "But next time, Scrubb? Whatever poor girl finds herself the target of your romantic obsessions, then just write her a poem, or a godawful song, or something like that!”

I had no answer for that.

"One last thing," Kim said, pausing at the door. "This case file mentioned that you think people call you 'Race'?"

"Yeah, that's my—"

"Nobody calls you that. Not one single person in the office. Not your boss. Not your teammates. Nobody."

And with that final blow to my dignity, she left me alone with my thoughts and the lingering smell of pepper spray.