CHAPTER I

“CONNELLY!”

The windows of the small office rattled from the force of a door slamming shut. Loud footsteps echoed down the hallway.

I, being the aforementioned Connelly, was lounging in Delilah’s office. Delilah, as usual, was crammed in her too-small chair, monitoring our agency’s activity coming in from the outside. The half-daemon looked more like a chubby, fluffy grandmother than a SITO agent, but she presided over her tiny realm with an iron fist. Anything that needed to be reported on a case was reported to Delilah.

I wasn’t there to report anything, I was just sulking.

“Starks is pissed,” I muttered to Delilah.

The footsteps grew louder, and Delilah peered at me through her square lenses.

“Sounds like he’s pretty worked up, and if I had to guess, you’ve got something to do with that,” she said.

I tried not to look guilty.

“Honey, give the man a break. He’s still settling into the big man position,” she said.

I sunk into my chair as our boss’s footsteps marched past Delilah’s office. I didn’t want to give Starks a break. I had been working with the Santa Rosa Department of Satellite Intelligence Tracking of Others, SITO, for two years before Starks was internally moved up to manager. It wasn’t fair he got a promotion and I didn’t. I wasn’t scared of him.

The phone rang and I jumped. Delilah smirked and pressed the headset snuggled behind a pair of ivory horns that coiled over her frizzy blond rat’s nest of curls. They were long for a half-daemon, something she was annoyingly proud of.

“O’Meara, report,” she barked over the mouthpiece. Her pudgy fingers flew over the keyboard as she logged O’Meara’s account.

Fretfully I fingered the shorter pair of horns that were hidden beneath my own short, dyed-black hair. Damn that O’Meara. Out on the out, doing all kinds of exciting fieldwork. He probably had Shirako with him too. Those two gorillas had been hired alongside me by SITO’s Santa Rosa office, yet here I sat like the younger sister who got left behind while her siblings stayed out past bedtime. I cursed SITO and Starks under my breath for the ninth time that day.

“Damn it,” I said finally. “Guess I’d better go and see what he wants.”

Delilah raised one eyebrow at me and didn’t comment, her fingers still working the keys. I slouched out of her office, feeling like a dog with her tail between her legs and despising myself for it.

Starks was pacing the hallway, crackling with angry energy.

“Yeah Boss?” I asked.

Some people referred to my half-angel boss as handsome; sleek and tall with bronze skin and dainty wings. I suppose he could appeal to some. Personally I didn’t find him attractive: he was skinny, and his wings were ugly. They looked like a sick oversized bat attached to his back.

Starks held up a folder.

“This is a report from our PR guys. Says the local sapien newspaper interviewed witnesses that swear they saw a child on the back of a motorcycle flying down Highway 12,” he said.

“So? It’s not against the law for a kid to be on the back of a bike,” I said, crossing my arms. I knew where this was going. I hadn’t planned for that damn traffic jam that kid and I got stuck in, so the whole world could ogle us.

“Besides the fact that it is incredibly dangerous to have any child, let alone someone else’s kid, on the back of your motorcycle, the part that is unbelievably stupid is that it has been reported people swear they saw a TAIL coming out of the kid’s backside, and that the tail was wrapped around your waist! You had that kid’s identity out in plain view for every dumbass fool to see it.” Starks brandished the folder.

“The poor kid just wanted to ride a motorcycle! You know how stupidly overprotective full breeds are; his parents don’t even let him ride a bicycle.” I shot back. “And it was a lot safer to have his tail wrapped around me. If it hadn’t been for that stupid traffic jam, no one would have even noticed.” It was hard to keep my temper in check when my boss scolded me like a child.

“Connelly, you are just asking for me to suspend your license badge.”

“What, my license to babysit?”

“Goddamn it, Connelly! If you weren’t so goddamn gifted with children and this office wasn’t so goddamn understaffed, I would have suspended you months ago! You know we need you in CPU.” Starks’s tone was severe, but there was a pleading underneath.

I deflated. I hated it when Starks pulled the “good in CPU” bit, because it was true. I was an ideal Child Protection agent. I blended in easily with human nannies, and I was really good working with the families who had lost children or mixed orphans. I growled, pushed past Starks, and marched downstairs.

He followed me, still talking. “Look Connelly, our PR department covered up this mess you made.” His voice was gentler. “They told the press that the tail was a new safety harness being developed by a company down in the Bay. No real exposure happened, so no harm done. Higher ups in SITO won’t get wind of this, so you won’t be on anyone’s radar.”

I sniffed and didn’t stop to look back up the stairwell. His angry footsteps echoed down the stairs after me, as he hurried to catch up.

“You know if you pulled this in the San Francisco office you would be out on your ass, and your name would make it all the way to Dubai. You owe me big for this one,” he said, closing in behind me.

I flinched the old-world agencies were not tolerant of their liberal counterparts in the new world, and if I was blacklisted as a risk to SITO operations on this side, I would never work for any SITO agency ever again. Although I wasn’t exactly happy with my current position, I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else.

We stopped in front of my office. I hated to admit it, but Starks was right, I did owe him one for keeping me off of the radar with Dubai.

“All right fine, I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing my bitter pride. “You should have seen the way the kid’s eyes were sparkling when I dropped him off though.”

Unwavering, Starks pursed his lips and glared at me.

“I can’t help it boss. I just feel so bad for the kids. You know daemon parents are tight asses,” I said, giving him the pleading expression he had just given me.

His mouth relaxed and he shook his head. “Connelly, you’re manipulating me like you sweet talk those kids. Just try to be more careful when you pull those kinds of stunts.” He paced around my office, his wings bouncing uselessly behind him. “What do you have going on this afternoon?”

“I’m picking up my normals from school.”

He winced. “Connelly, you know that is not the proper term for them.”

I knew that of course. It was just another way to get under Starks’s skin; he was just so politically correct it was annoying, and I was annoyed. “Fine, I’m going to pick up my sapiens from school.”

“Are these the same children you used as a cover on the last case?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Do you have these kids with you when you are working?”

“Isn’t that the point of a cover?” I asked, sarcasm creeping into my tone.

“Don’t give me lip. The kids don’t notice anything? Like maybe the strange kid they’re playing with has horns?” Starks’s expression turned troubled.

I shrugged. “They’re good kids, and I keep them happy and out of trouble.” I wasn’t about to tell my boss the five-year old, Johnny, knew I was different and that “different” people existed, and that I trusted him more than I trusted most of my coworkers.

“Okay, well, would it be a problem to take the kids to a certain park today after school?” Starks didn’t look convinced, as he changed the subject.

I perked up. “You gotta case for me?”

“Yeah, half-breed orphan child. He’s adopted by sapiens.”

“He’s adopted by normals?”

“Connelly!”

I hid a grin. “Okay boss, I’ll check in on the kid.” I checked my watch. “Actually going to pick the boys up right now. What’s the case number?” I moved over to my desk and woke up my laptop.

Starks frowned. “The case number is 342, but don’t bother looking it up. The report hasn’t been updated,” he said.

The laptop was already whirring. Irritated I shut it again. “You should really get a new secretary to take care of this stuff for you.”

“I can’t help it, our budget is tight and we’re understaffed,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly.

“You’ve been a little tightly wound since that last secretary flew off with his partner. Just can’t find it in yourself to replace him?” I asked slyly.

“Connelly, do not push your luck with me.” There was murder in his tone.

I had gone too far and knew it. The crush Starks had had on our last secretary had been a painfully obvious secret to everyone except the secretary.

Starks spoke through clenched teeth. “He left because he found a different job. Would you please stop spreading office gossip? I’ve got enough on my plate already dealing with the egos in this place. I already hired a new secretary, Galina something or other, she starts tomorrow. But since she’s not here today, for now just go over to that kids’ park downtown. Subject 342 will be there,” he said. He was getting agitated again. I could see a red flush of anger spreading under his skin.

“What kids’ park?”

“I don’t know Connelly. It’s your job to know this shit. All I know is it’s got a bunch of slides and swings and crap, and it’s by the mall. Our informants told us the kid and his mom will be there today.”

“You mean the Burbank playground?”

“Sure, yeah, probably, whatever. Just get it done!” Starks stormed out, his wings snapping shut in his aggravation.

I left the office and adjusted my backpack as I pulled on my helmet, specially made so my stubby horns slid into pockets of foam. Throwing one leg over my little 250 cc Honda, I threw her into neutral, started her up, and cranked the gas throttle. I didn’t care if I had almost lost my badge giving that Code Green daemon runaway kid a ride. The way his face shone when I brought him back to his parents was worth it.

Code Green assignments meant finding stray angel or daemon children who had somehow escaped their watchful parents to play where the “normals” got to play. Usually they were easy assignments as long as they hadn’t been spotted by sapiens.

I wove through the traffic that always filled the part of the 101 that went through downtown Santa Rosa. The April sun was not strong enough to warm the chill from the wind, so I was glad for my thick leather jacket. As I curved around the cars inching along the highway, I wondered how many of the sapiens who witnessed my little stunt the other day, actually believed what they saw was a human child with a long prehensile tail on the back of my bike. Probably not many; normals tended not to believe non-“normal” people existed.

My bike and I roared down Sonoma Avenue and came to a stop in front of Mrs. Wade’s house on Bishop Drive. Her kids, Quinn and Johnny, had been under my care for almost a year now. I fished the house key out of my backpack, stashed my stuff inside and grabbed the keys to Mrs. Wade’s station wagon. She always left me the beat up old station wagon for emergencies. I could easily walk the half-mile to Doyle Park Elementary, but the Burbank Playground was, oh so conveniently, located much farther away, and I was going to have two children in tow, so station wagon it was.

I maneuvered the junker car through the waiting cars in front of the silent school and cut the engine. The bell rang seconds later, and the sounds of laughter and excitement and running feet exploded into the air. Quinn, as usual, raced out in front with all of the bigger boys, his freckled face red with excitement. He spotted me but spent some time jostling and pushing with his friends before coolly strolling over to where I was waiting.

“Hello Quinn,” I said just as coolly when he opened the back door and threw his backpack on the floor.

He flipped back his stringy red hair that he stubbornly kept long and tangled. “Hi Sarah. Why are you in Mom’s car?”

“Because I’m going to take you guys to a playground!” I said my voice bursting with enthusiasm, while keeping an eye out for little Johnny.

“But there’s a playground here.” Quinn frowned. He was getting to that age where just saying something in an excited tone didn’t work to get him excited.

“I know Buddy, but this one has a tunnel slide.”

His face brightened.

I spotted Johnny, my little grubby boy, walking slowly out of the school doors with two other of the smaller boys. They were among the last in the crowd.

Quinn saw his little brother at the same time. “Johnny c’mon, don’t be such a geek!” he yelled out the window.

“Don’t call your brother names,” I said, but not too sternly. Quinn wasn’t bad as older brothers go. It irked him that Johnny liked school and got better grades than him, but Johnny had confided in me that Quinn: “protected ‘im from the big kids who called ‘im a dork”.

“Hi S’rah!” Johnny smiled exposing the gap where his front tooth was growing in. The same spatter of freckles as his brother’s covered his face, but his hair was light brown. He saw Quinn in the middle back seat and frowned.

“C’mon Grub, we’re going to a special playground!” I said. I saw the hesitation in his face, he was not about to let Quinn get away with this. “You can have the middle seat on the ride home okay?”

Johnny’s nostrils flared, Quinn smirked, and I held my breath. I released it when Johnny fumbled with the door and clambered onto the backseat next to his brother. A fight for the middle seat usually ended with threats that I would take them home, which was something I could not back up today. I wasn’t quite sure why the boys fought over that seat, maybe because whoever sat there liked to hang over my shoulder like a puppy dog, but I had given up trying to convince them the outer seats were better long ago.

I had to park a few blocks away, the playground was popular on this sunny afternoon. Quinn was off in a flash making new friends. Johnny stayed close to me. I spread out a blanket on the grass near the sandpit, and dug into my shoulder bag.

“Grub, guess what I brought you?”

Johnny’s eyes lit up.

“Your shovel!” I pulled out his plastic red pail and blue shovel from the bag. Johnny took digging holes very seriously. Eagerly he grabbed the plastic tools and marched to the sandpit, not too far away from me, to get to work. With my charges happily settled, I was free to observe the rest of the people and look for Subject 342.

The park was filled with the typical after school crowd for Santa Rosa. Teenagers exceedingly aware of their coolness and exceedingly unaware of their awkwardness lingered in a pack by the picnic tables, their black nail polish clashing with their red acne. On the benches encircling the jungle gym, moms and a couple dads sat next to their strollers, flashing their overly-priced engagement rings and designer purses at each other. A few sweaty joggers skirted around the playground, and a not-sweaty man breathed through Tai Chi moves on the lawn. Big kids screamed and laughed throughout the jungle gym, daring each other to do things only young bones could do, as the shy younger kids tried to keep up.

I settled onto the blanket and took stock of the children. There were three or four that could possibly be mixed species and were the right age. I identified each of their parents and narrowed it down to two, a little girl with black hair and dark olive skin, probably a half-angel, and a boy with fair skin and curly blond hair, the coloring of a half-daemon. Both looked happy and healthy to me, so I started to relax and enjoy the afternoon sun.

This isn’t so bad. I wondered if Starks was going to assign the Code Yellow to me permanently. It had been awhile since my last one. They were not as common as Code Greens. Code Yellow assignments meant keeping an eye on the occasional other species orphan that slipped through the system and ended up with normal parents. That was what Subject 342 would be classified, if we had a secretary to classify the case.

Code Yellows were rare, but they did happen, and they were on the rise as adoption became more popular in the United States. It was the agent’s delicate responsibility to screen the sapien parents as well as keep an eye on the adopted kid. If I was permanently assigned to the case, and if I felt the normals were trustworthy and acceptable parents, SITO would allow me to explain to them why their child was growing biblical looking appendages in the middle of kindergarten and how to protect them and their identity.

If I did not deem the normals to be the type to understand and accept their odd child for who they were, then SITO would take steps to protect the child. Sometimes drastic measures needed to be taken before the parents discovered what was happening. Luckily in my district, rarely had a child been taken from the parents. Northern Californians tended to be surprisingly flexible and accepting. I had heard horror stories from other CPU agents, parents who tried to cut off their child’s tail or sell their winged baby to a freak show and the like.

I shuddered to think of the trauma it would have caused me if someone had tried to cut off my horns or my tail. It was because of people like that, that the entire species of Homo daemonis had started hiding their existence in the first place. Between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries hate crimes against daemons were common. It stemmed back to the European witch-hunts, the rise of popular belief in Baphomet “The Sabbatic Goat” as the Devil, and the bastardization of the horned god Pan into Satan himself.

As being the physical manifestation of evil incarnate is unpleasant, daemons had turned tail and retreated into hiding, giving up their history to myth to protect themselves. Since then, “The Great Immigration” we called it, daemons had kept their existence a secret from normals.

The sun was a little lower in the sky when I was put on the alert. A broad-shouldered man wrapped in a trench coat, was leaning against the massive trunk of a tree at the edge of the park. The smoke of his cigarette blurred the lines of his dark face as he watched the children. He had been lingering for awhile, but it wasn’t until he started to stare at the children that warning bells rang in my head.

Covertly, I watched him. His eyes were following one of the kids I suspected was not a normal, the little boy. The kid’s blond curls bounced as he raced back and forth with his companions, oblivious to the attention he was receiving. I looked hard at the kid. That head of hair could easily be hiding a pair of lumps that would someday become horns. I leaned back, watching the stranger from the corner of my eye. The man finished his cigarette and pulled a sandwich out of his coat. He wasn’t going anywhere.

The sandwich was finished, and he still didn’t move. The bottom of my horn stubs tingled. Something was up with this guy. I reached into my pocket and fingered the buttons of my cell phone. Three of the buttons were slick from regular use. My finger pressed the numbers.

“Connelly, report.”

“Delilah, I think we’ve got a stalker on Subject 342,” I murmured, holding my hand over my mouth as if I were stifling a yawn.

“Where are you?” Delilah asked over the rapid tapping of computer keys.

“At Burbank Playground, downtown.”

“Species?”

I shaded my eyes, pretending to observe two little girls swinging a little too high on the swing set. My target had dark skin, which meant sapien or angel. He shifted, and a small bone covered in leathery skin peeped out from the bottom of his coat, followed by tattered wing membrane. Disgusted with the state of his wings, I turned away; he could have at least bound them up for their protection.

“One scruffy Homo angelus, wings unbound, but covered,” I murmured into the mike. I had figured he was at least part angel, but his wings were big enough to make him a full-breed. It was unusual for any angel to have his wings unbound in public; the wings could get caught on things, causing tears and scratches in the membrane, and more importantly, having wings unbound risked exposure of the angel’s identity. Having his wings unbound like that was almost enough for SITO to arrest him.

Angels did not want to be discovered by normals any more than daemons did. They had followed daemons into hiding after the population boom of the Homo sapiens during the industrial revolution. We didn’t want to go the same way as the Homo neanderthalensis or the Homo heidelbergensis, extinct with only small bits of our genetics found in the random Homo sapiens here and there. SITO was developed to protect angels and daemons and keep them from extinction.

Delilah grunted her surprise at my report. An angel with wings unbound around here was unusual even to her, who had heard almost everything monitoring SITO’s activity. I waited patiently, listening to the steady tap of her keyboard.

“Okay, someone is on the way. Connelly, you better remove yourself from the premises.”

“But Subject 342?”

“We’ll deal with the situation later, he should be fine for now, better you are not identified.”

“Ten-four.” My headpiece went silent. It was aggravating to be asked to leave just when the situation was getting interesting, but with Starks’s warning about the consequences of my breaking the rules still ringing in my head, I got up and began packing up. Ignoring both the grown angel and the child daemon I hollered, “Johnny, Quinn, time to go!”

“Awwww, Sarah!” Quinn was hanging upside down from the monkey bars, his freckled face red. Sitting in his hole, Johnny pretended he didn’t hear me.

“It’s snack time!”

Johnny looked up, but Quinn kept swinging away.

“I’ve got Oreos in the car!” I said the magic words.

Two boy-shaped cookie monsters appeared in front of me.

“Can we come back later?” asked Johnny. He slid his hand into mine as we walked away from the playground.

“I don’t know Grub, it’s getting pretty late,” I said.

“But we stayed last time.” Johnny pouted.

Quinn zoomed ahead of us, skinny arms spread wide. “Look Sarah, I’m an airplane!”

“I wanna be an airplane.” Johnny raced after his brother.

“Can’t stupid, you’re too little.”

“Quinn.” I let there be more than the usual amount of disapproval in my tone.

Quinn looked at me defiantly.

I raised an eyebrow, and his arms drooped like cooked noodles. He knew better when I used the no-no voice.

“Here Johnny, like this,” he said, pulling gently on his brother’s arms and then weaving back and forth.

“C’mon S’rah!” Johnny called, following Quinn eagerly.

I did a mock imitation, and the sun grappled with the ink of the tattoos covering my arms, highlighting the multi-colored mural of snakes and flowers and flames. The boys veered around me, make-believe machines of flesh and blood soaring through the air. We were well beyond sight of the playground when a familiar dark SUV with tinted windows drove by. I resisted the urge to turn and watch it disappear down the street.

For the next few hours I let myself pretend my reality was as normal as the two dripping peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that found their way into two bellies. A splash of a bath and a grumble of homework later I settled the boys on the couch of the living room. While they were drowsily put under by the flickering colors and happy voices of Toy Story, I pulled out my slim laptop and did my own “homework”. My fingers tapped out the case number and Subject 342’s profile appeared. Apparently someone had finally filed the case, probably Delilah.

CASE NUMBER: 342

NAME: KELS SMYTH

AGE: 5

HAIR: BLN

EYES: BLU

LOCATION: WESTFLD, CA, USA

SPECIES: .5 ANGELUS/ .5 SAPIENS

ORIGIN: UNKNWN

PARENTAGE: ADPTD UNAWRES

CODE: RED

I blinked and felt a little thrill. This was a Code Red. I wondered if Starks had finally changed his mind and was assigning me to a Code Red. I looked at the report again and tilted my head. Something was off. Subject 342 was not an orphaned daemon like I had assumed. The lump of cartilage under his hair was not forming into two horns; it would someday become a circular ridge.

A white, blue-eyed, half-breed angel was in my district. It was rare for half-angels to have pale eyes, let alone pale skin. No wonder someone was lurking around the little boy. This had the potential to be an explosive situation. There were many groups out there that would have it out for this kid as he grew into his heritage. And with parents who were not even aware of what he was; the boy would be an easy target.

I ran my fingers through my short hair, rubbing the horn stubs on the top of my skull. It was a habit that only got worse with stress. I glanced over at the couch. The boys were both fast asleep. I slipped into the next room.

“Call SITO.” I ordered my phone, not bothering with the earpiece.

“Connelly, report.” Delilah picked up on the first ring.

“Jesus, Delilah, you all didn’t tell me this was a Code Red situation. That white kid is a half-breed angel?! If the Angelus Purists find out, they are going to be up in arms about him!”

“I didn’t know myself until just now. Starks came storming up here about an hour ago, blabbering on about low staffing and runaway secretaries. I took over the reports until the new secretary gets settled in.”

“Who was assigned this case before me?”

“Chambers, but she’s out on leave.”

“Who is the case manager?”

“Levins.”

“Right. Okay will you transfer me to Levins?” I asked.

“Sorry, no can do, she’s with Starks, they’re interviewing that angel you called in about.”

I growled under my breath. Just like Starks to jump ahead without me. I was still just an amateur half-daemon in his eyes, and this was a Code Red situation. “Starks, you fucking angel halfer,” I muttered.

“No call for that kind of talk.” Delilah reprimanded gently. “There is enough between angels and us daemons outside of work. Don’t forget you’re a half-breed yourself.”

The guilty clench in my stomach admitted she was right even if my brain wouldn’t. Halfer was a vulgar term for us mixed breeds with sapien blood. SITO’s mission was not just to protect and hide angels and daemons. It was also to bring peace between all three species, even the oblivious normals. “We are all human,” was our catch phrase. It sounded nice, but it was not practiced in reality. Most angels and daemons kept within their own species and believed that was the way it should be.

I pitied that poor kid and his wrong-colored skin.

“Damn, Subject 342’s parent must have had some interesting genes to produce those looks,” I said aloud.

“You said he’s white? Really? And with blond hair?” she asked, curious.

“As golden as Raphael’s angels.”

Suppressed laughter sounded on the other end. If Renaissance artists had known what angels really looked like, they would have cried at the lies in their own work. A Homo angelus was usually tall, muscular, winged, beautiful, just as in the paintings, but then similarity stopped. Angels were dark-skinned, almost black, and they had large leathery bat-like wings that extended from just above their armpits.

Subject 342 had a long struggle with identity ahead of him. I wondered if he would even grow wings, and if he did if they would be the same color as his skin. Normals thought they had it tough dealing with their racial struggles; just imagine the chaos of throwing two more species into the mix.

A pair of headlights shone through the dining room window.

“Delilah, I have to go. Leave a message for Levins to touch base with me would you?”

“Ten-four.”

The line went dead, and the creak of the front door opening sounded.

“Sarah?” The boys’ petite mother called softly. “Sorry, I’m late, work was a mess.”

“Hi Mrs. Wade, that’s okay. Quinn finished his homework, and they both had a bath.” I hid all of the afternoon’s tension behind a bright smile for the hawk-nosed woman. As usual she was exhausted from the strain of a long workday. I carried a sleeping Johnny up to bed, Quinn stumbled up after me. The house grew quiet and Mrs. Wade fell on the couch. I excused myself. That woman was really in need of a vacation.

The garage sensor light caught me outside and illuminated where my trusty old motorcycle, the love of my life, waited. I rolled her down the driveway, swung on, and cranked her up. The bike was warm between my thighs, and the road stretched ahead, empty. Relaxing, I let my pores open and drink in the cool night air streaming past me. The day’s tension eased as my pulse thrummed and the motorcycle wove side to side, speeding down the road where my headlight cleared the way home.

The quiet of empty rooms always bothered me, so I turned on the television as soon as I walked in the door. Sinking down into the old couch, I lit a joint from the stash I kept in the drawer of the coffee table and opened my laptop. A nervous excitement filled my gut, as sweet smoke filled my lungs. Subject 342’s profile stared back at me. This was a Code Red. I finally had a chance to work on a Code Red. Like Starks said, I was good at Code Greens and Code Yellows for two reasons: one, because I was a good nanny, that made it easy to work undercover with child cases, and two, because my own extra appendages were barely noticeable, allowing me to infiltrate normals areas easily. The way I saw it, I would be good at Code Reds for the same reason.

I was good at my job. That’s because it was all I did—I went to the office, I picked up the kids and did any field work needed, I went home, and the next morning I was back in the office—I didn’t have a life outside of SITO. Normally I was pretty happy with my life, but sometimes I got lonesome.

I looked around my lonely living room. A funky white leather loveseat, a frayed wicker rocking chair, and the peeling paint of my coffee table gazed back at me. A worn bible bookmarked with a box of rolling papers and a framed photograph of my parents were the only decorations in the room, if you could call it decor. My mother smiled out at the camera, dusky and petite. Staring down on the top of her head adoringly was my father, wearing his characteristic fedora. I self-consciously touched the top of my head where my horn stubs were. His horns underneath that fedora had been long, almost eight inches, and they curved back over his blond hair, a beautiful ivory color. Mine were painted black to blend in with my dyed black mop, and they were stubby. Their stubbiness made them easy to hide, but man they were ugly. I sent Starks a silent apology, but remembering what he was doing now, I took it back. His wings were pretty hideous.

I looked at the clock on my laptop, eleven p.m. My parents would be starting their morning. I logged online and dialed Ireland through my computer.

My mother picked up. “Hello darling!”

“Hi, Mum,” I said, turning off the television.

“We haven’t heard from you in awhile, how’s everything?”

“It’s okay, is Dad there?”

“Yes, Honey, he’s here, but you always want to talk to him. Before I give him the phone I want to hear more about what’s going on with you. Any new boys? What happened to Gregory?”

I bit back a snappy retort. My mother was overly concerned about my singlehood. She didn’t understand the difficulties of being a mixed species. She had grown up in a small Midwest town, blissfully a part of the status quo. If my father had not been so charming when they met at a conference in the Bay Area, she may have lived the remainder of her life in that small town.

“Gregory went bye bye Mum,” I said, wishing I had never told her about him in the first place.

“What about,” she hesitated.

I knew what was coming; it came up a lot recently.

“Sweetheart it just worries me: the job, the motorcycle, the short hair.”

I grinned. The seed of conservative Midwestern normals was planted too deep in her heart to be uprooted by a marriage to a Homo daemonis for thirty-five years. She became incredibly awkward when the subject of sexuality came up. I stifled the urge to play dumb and draw out her discomfort.

“Mum, I will let you know if I meet someone, male or female.” Let her chew on that. I had better luck with men than women, but that didn’t mean I was straight.

“Kathryn, leave her be. Sarah, I’m here.” My father’s lilting voice came on the line.

“Hi Dad,” I said.

“Hi Sarah, everything okay?”

“I have a new assignment with SITO. A half-breed orphan.”

“Like you?” he asked teasingly.

His attempts to humorously acknowledge the gulf between us did not amuse me. My father had never been around when I was younger, and it pissed me off that when we had finally started to get closer, he and Mum abandoned me in California to move to Ireland. I wasn’t ready to forgive, but I found his advice invaluable for many of my Code Yellow cases.

“No, the boy is a white half-angel,” I said.

Silence on the other side.

“White-skinned, blue eyes, blond hair.” I drove it home.

“Do the Purists know?”

“Probably, the kid’s listed as Code Red, and there was an angel hanging around him at the park today. SITO picked the creep up.”

“His parents?”

“Adoptive, Homo sapiens, assumed unaware of the whole situation. I didn’t see any signs of wings on him, and his halo is barely pushing through. I actually mistook him, thought he was a half-daemon.”

“Fascinating.”

The whirr of a computer being started filled the awkward silence between us. I waited patiently, covering the sound of my lighter clicking on and my inhaling. For this particular purpose I had never explained to my parents about the video call function online. I was pretty sure my father smoked weed when he was younger, but my mum would have a heart attack if she knew.

My father muttered to himself, “Most half-breed Homo angelus have small useless wing bones with thick leather webbing. Some do develop wings strong enough to fly, especially if they are of a slight build. All mixed breeds show the typical Homo angelus dark skin pigmentation. On occasion they do appear with lighter skin pigmentation, but those cases are usually second generational.” He paused and caught me with a throat full of smoke. “Are you sure this kid isn’t less than half?”

I covered the spastic cough. The profile still glowed through my laptop. “The basic blood workup shows the kid to be half angel half sapien. SITO found him when they intercepted his lab tests at UCSF. Guess the subject was in a minor accident a few months back.”

Mixed-breeds could appear normal for most of their childhood, so a lot of times SITO did not know they existed until the kid went to a doctor’s office. Most pediatrician offices were infiltrated by SITO to alert us of any unusual lab results. We rarely had a situation escape our notice. Those that did, our PR department took care of. Most doctors were willing to believe the lab had messed up over a strange lab report.

“So that’s how he got on the radar, imagine the surprise if that blood work had come back to that poor doctor. Your kid is infected, just not with what we believed it was.” My father giggled. I rolled my eyes; he could be such a dork sometimes.

He continued, “Mmm, let’s see here, is his Homo sapiens genetic sequence listed?”

I navigated the maze of SITO’s database, until I hit the lab work summary.

“Some, not much.” I emailed the summary to him.

The mutterings on the other end of the line continued.

I left the conversation window open and the blunt still smoking in the ashtray, to get ready for bed. After washing my face, brushing my teeth, and touching up the black paint on my horn stubs, I returned to the living room. My father was still muttering into the speakers. I could picture him, horns sticking through a disarrayed blond fro, bespeckled blue eyes peering at his genetics program, my mother occasionally peeking over his shoulder to give him a kiss or to warm up his coffee. My loneliness curled around the smoke diffusing in the air.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Sorry, Sarah, this is going to take me awhile. I may need more information if you can get it, and then I need to map out his genetics, which can take a long time.”

“I probably can’t get you more information. The full lab reports are classified.”

“Just if you can get it, it would be helpful. Otherwise I’ll work with what I’ve got here.”

I yawned. “Okay Dad, I’m going to bed, tell Mum I send her my love.”

“Sure, sure.” He was lost to me in a world of nucleotides and amino acids.

I really should get a dog, I thought as I crawled into my cold, empty bed. My mind whirring I tossed around, unable to sleep. The last warm being that had been in my bed was months ago. Gregory was a sapien law student who had thought my horn stubs were cute genetic mistakes. I had thought he was different, so much that I had revealed my other “genetic mistake”. He had not found the bit of tail, covering my perky ass, as cute.

 Another one bites the dust.

My mom should spend a day as a half-breed and then tell me she was worried because I wasn’t meeting anyone. Half-breeds were constantly walking the fence between our world and the sapien world. We passed for normals, so we were able to mingle among them, but we were unable to get physically close. Most of the full-breeds treated us just as badly; using half-breeds for brief sexual adventures and tossing them aside. It really was a load of bullshit what we got stuck with.

Horny and alone under my sheets, I toyed with the idea going to one of the gothic clubs that O’Meara liked to frequent. Normals with fetishes were commonly used by half-breeds for hook-ups, they were as open with their sexuality as we were, and they just assumed the extra appendages were surgically modified. I tended to use the goth scene as a last resort hookup, something about being fetishized made me feel ashamed and used, but it got the job done in the end.

Thinking such thoughts annoyed me, and I was still horny. I got up, went back into the living room and turned the television back on. There had to be some hazy half-naked show on. I clicked through the channels, and found nothing. Resigned I left the television on and reopened my laptop. Girls with fake breasts sucking huge dicks splashed across the screen. Feeling a little shameful, and a lot turned on, I fumbled under my pajama pants.

I came quickly, and with my feet hanging off the old loveseat, fell asleep to the television screen’s cold flickering company.