The Saga of Erotika Jones 01

The body disappeared, the witnesses forgot their stories. And I had 24 hours to solve the mystery before all the evidence vanished.

I had no memory of how this all started. Only that I was brought in to solve a mystery in a single day before I had to move to my next assignment. Because I'm a time-jumper. And I go where I'm sent.

Because I'm damned good at figuring things out. You don't have to have a string of degrees behind your name to figure out things.

The trick is, I “borrow” someone else's body while I'm on the job, for the time I'm here.

All I know on this job had a missing corpse already. And it happened when no one was around to see, on a government naval base in the heart of New York. Where sub-contractors came and went constantly.

I just had to solve it faster than the witnesses either “forgot” or “disappeared.”

Like I said, I had only 24 hours.

Excerpt:

I didn't want to get out of bed for this new case. I felt tired, the bed was warm, and there was this hunk beside me. Broad shoulders, firm bum, sculptured abs — everything a gal could want.

Still, the phone was vibrating, it's staccato tempo on the side table persistent and annoying.

I had my job to do. And under 24 hours, as usual, to see if I could solve this one.

So I picked that annoyance up and saw the texts that had come in for me. On her phone. My host's.

That was the trick — I “borrowed” someone's body and ID for the cases that came in. How they did it, the nuts-and-bolts, I didn't really know. Nor did I know my own past — any more. Too many of these jumps had kinda swiss-cheesed my memories.

The texts were all from Sy (or “Finn”, as he sometimes referred to himself). Direct descendant from the Irish Old Ones, the Aos Si. And sometimes he said he was descended from the Menehune. It just depended which side of the planet we ended up on. He was my partner, my bar-buddy, and somehow was connected to the reason I still did this. Still, he made it interesting, and cheered me up when things got too solid and graphic.

This morning he'd texted me the body was already missing, already cleaned. Said I needed to get there quick, since we both knew the reasons — the witnesses would be “forgetting” what they saw nearly as quick.

Sy had a theory, and it was closer to true than anyone else believed — other than we who lived in the strange worlds where humans and fairies crossed paths, and where we fought the hidden wars to keep humans safe — in spite of themselves. The darker half of the faery kind were organizing for something — and these human bodies showing up and disappearing were just collateral evidence of their larger plan.

Somehow. Having a working theory, anyway, was better than having none.

My feet on the floor now, I bent to scoop up my underthings and found a too-short cotton bathrobe lay tangled in them. Slipping that on gave me some relative decency.

A few steps further found a couple of pair of pants on the floor, also tangled. Another quick bend and I snagged them both as well, all enroute to my bathroom. Looked like some ID were in them, so I could get some details about who I was and where…

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