Free Talking Dirty (Pax Arcana) by Elliott James Page B

caught him breaking into my home! He was crazy! He was hitting me, but it was like he didn’t even see me. I don’t see how he could have kept on like that and not have something bad happen to him.”
    “I haven’t seen my police officer friend for a while,” I said. “But I could pass the number on to him if you’d like. See if it’s the same people.”
    “Everybody says I have to let it go.” She was just stalling. It didn’t matter how unlikely or unconvincing my story was. There was no way she wasn’t going to give me the number.
    “I’m not a psychologist,” I said. “But maybe this would be a good way for you to do that.”
    She still hesitated. “What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be getting over being a cop?”
    I half smiled. “I’d just be passing on some information.”
    She sighed and recited the number as if I’d dropped a quarter in her ear. “Do you want something to write that down on?”
    I repeated the number back to her, maybe showing off a little. “And if you got billed for postage, you can probably get the tracking number for some of those packages too.”
    “I don’t know much about that kind of thing,” she said.
    I handed over the last cup. “How about this? Why don’t you cut your credit card information and address off the billing statements? Bring them to me tomorrow morning at a public place, like that diner I saw on South Main Street. And definitely don’t let a strange man you met at a meeting for messed-up people come to your house.”
    She gave me a small smile at that. “You’re the protective type, aren’t you?”
    I shrugged uncomfortably.
    “The real thing,” she said. “Not like those men who act like they want to take care of you, but they really just want to take over your life.”
    “I have my own problems,” I said.
    “I can see that.” Cassidy folded up her dish towel. “Like trying to warn women off because you don’t think you deserve to have anyone close to you.”
    That crack had a little too much dirt in it. I don’t know what showed on my face, but Cassidy laughed. “Not my first therapy session.”
    *  *  *
    I was the last member of the meeting in the church parking lot, though the deacon was still puttering around inside. I stood beside my pickup truck and sighed. “Come on out, Samuel.”
    Samuel Blanco emerged from the shadows of a small playground next to the church. He was eerily good at hiding in darkness, considering that he was six foot six and built like a dump truck. It was cold but he was dressed in a blue T-shirt and jeans, his dark hair swinging lankly around his broad shoulders. “Hey.”
    “You were supposed to stay at the campsite,” I pointed out, though I was careful not to sound irritated. Samuel had a short fuse, but at least he came by it honestly. He was the child of an aatxe, half human and half fire elemental, and any kind of flame can get out of control quickly.
    “There was nothing to do there,” he complained. Ever since I had helped Samuel quit his job and negotiate ending his rental agreement early, we had been camping in the mountains outside Vista Verde. Samuel liked to draw, and I had bought him a sketch pad and drawing supplies. He liked music, and I had bought a portable CD player—nothing that emitted a GPS signal—and batteries and several CDs. But I wasn’t surprised that Samuel wasn’t too good at self-entertaining without beer or television. I’m not any kind of mental health professional, but Samuel was intellectually disabled in some fashion. A low IQ, a short attention span, limited memory retention, some anger management issues, an inability to recognize complex facial expressions or tones, and a tendency to be over-literal all seemed to be part of whatever was going on with him. Not too different from a lot of people who manage to function in society, really, but Samuel had the added complication of a magical nature that he had to conceal.
    What really bothered me was the