Reality kicks me in the gut like a minotaur’s hoof, and I panic.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I demand, as I hoist myself up on top of the table and spread my arms wide.
I almost lose my balance because my poor, beautiful tail is prohibited from moving, but I tighten every muscle I have and straighten up. All the guards in the room grow tense.
“One year? That’s the best you can do? How the fuck did you get this job? I’m a motherfucking menace!” I bellow as I jump down from the table and hobble-run for the judge.
Judge O’Vine just leans back in his overstuffed high back chair and looks at me like I’m proving his point about needing mental help as I run at him. Stupid male doesn’t realize I don’t need that kind of help. What I need is to be locked away where no one can get to me. This asshole is ruining everything! I shift my hair to be blood-red and glare at him as I close the distance between us.
“Toro toro, you little bitch!” I scream at him, taunting him with the call that a bullfighter uses.
Judge O’Vine’s eyes fill with indignant fire, and satisfaction floods me.
Yes, get mad, get even, extend my sentence...please!
I lift my hands to mock his curved horns, but I’m side-tackled by a guard before I can take another step. The impact knocks the wind out of me, which also makes it impossible to scream more offensive shit at the judge. I had a good Your mother was bred in a barn, and your father was ridden by cowboys ready at the tip of my tongue, but I’m forced to choke it down and gasp for air instead as I’m carried out of the room.
No! This can’t be how it goes down!
I scramble to get out of the guard’s hold, but it’s solid, and the magical cuffs around my wrists, ankles, and tail make it impossible to shift into my cockatrice. The door closes behind me, and my chance at pissing off Judge O’Vine so he’ll throw the book at me slips out of my fingers. I pull in deep breaths and fume at my luck.
Okay. Time to change tactics.
I immediately begin to look for ways to solve the problem. So they won’t lock me up and throw away the key...yet. I’ll just have to figure out a way in prison to change their minds. That shouldn’t be too hard.
I hope.
2
It takes about an hour for me to get booked into Nightmare Penitentiary’s system. Someone keeps hacking into the jail’s systems and deleting my file, so they have to put everything in manually so that I can be transferred. Alpha Bowen and his annoying attempts to thwart what’s about to happen will soon be in my past.
The booking officers versus my arresting officers aren’t so different, except the arresting officers at least offered me coffee. These jerkoffs just ignore me when I tell them I could do with a caffeine kick.
Rude.
I sit at a desk with an overweight ghoul who has a very distinct lisp, waiting while he enters everything into the computer. He grumbles with every offense he has to add to my rap sheet. I guess all cops hate doing paperwork.
When he’s finished filing all my charges, he leads me to a room where I change into my new Nightmare Penitentiary uniform which consists of a very drab gray ensemble. The guard points me to the lined wall that clearly displays height measurements. I get a little spring in my step.
“Oh, another mugshot!” I start running my fingers through my colorful hair. “How do I look?” I ask, my lips a little duckish as I pose for him.
He levels me with a look. “Like a convict,” he says dryly.
“But like a cool, hip convict? A pretty convict? Or like an understated, she’s probably a really good person beneath that pile of convictions convict?”
“Are you for fucking real?”
I would admit that yes, I am, but instead, I decide to close my mouth because I don’t think Officer Ghoul is in a very friendly mood.
“Heels against the line. Stand up straight. Hold this,” he says, pushing the placard at me.
I grab it and turn it around so I can read it. “Look at that, it has my name on it and everything.”
I get in position and straighten my new uniform shirt, but I frown down at the gray color. With a thought, I use my shifter ability to change its color. It’s a rare gift for my kind, and it does have its limits. Certain things have to have contact with me longer in order to change. Like shoes or really bad kissers.
For some reason, I can only shift my hair and tail feathers into shades of orange, yellow, or red. I suspect those tones are my natural color spectrum, so it restricts what I can do, but I love those colors, so I don’t feel restricted. Oddly enough, I can’t change my eye color at all. They’re a bright emerald green, and they always have been.
When I look down once again, the uniform is now a lovely lemon yellow. “There. That’s better.”
“No.”
My brows pull together. “But—”
“No.”
“It’s just that the gray—”
“No,” he says for a third time.
I sigh, making the fabric ripple with my skin until the color leeches out and my shirt is gray again. “There. Satisfied? You just made my shirt go from happy to depressed.”
“Yep.”
He picks up a camera from a shelf behind him, and I quickly take position. I want a nice mugshot, after all. I decide to go for a demure half-smile because I know that once my matriarch sees this, it’ll really piss her off. I’m basically smirking at her with a big fuck you in my eyes.
He takes the first shot, and then has me stand in profile, and I hear the click of the camera again. “Done.”
“Can I see it?” I ask.
“No.”
I sigh. “Can I at least keep my placard?”
“No.”
“You should really broaden your vocabulary,” I mutter.
“My shift is ending, and all I want to do is sit on my couch and drink a beer. So get your ass in the portal so you can be somebody else’s problem.”
“That’s the spirit. Way to go above and beyond the line of duty.”
Ignoring me, he leads me through the back and stops at an unassuming white door. “Go.”
My heartbeat kicks up in anticipation. This is it. After all my planning, I’m finally going to the terrifying supernatural prison. This is so exciting.
I turn the doorknob and push open the door, coming face-to-face with the swirling smoke of the portal. I head forward without hesitation, confidently going straight down the middle. There’s no way anyone can try to bust me out now.
With a smug step, I move out of the grasp of Alpha Bowen and my matriarch, and right into the clutches of Nightmare Penitentiary.
I step out of the portal door, and as soon as it swings shut, it disappears. I turn full-circle to look around. Immediately, I feel the damp cool air, which is so different from the stagnancy of the jail office. “Man, I am not in Kansas anymore,” I mumble as I take in my surroundings.
If this wasn’t a convenient solution to my serious life problems, I might take this opportunity to run. I don’t have an escort, and surprisingly, the portal didn’t deposit me inside the prison like I expected. But as I run my eyes over the damp flat landscape and the thick tree line in the distance, I gather that there’s probably nothing surrounding this place for miles.