Friday 13th

I've never really understood all the fascination with Friday 13th, but that could have a small amount to do with me not believing in luck.

Don't get me wrong, I still use the various phrases that apply to luck - lucky guess, lucky dog, okay I use the word lucky. But I have no faith in luck, that luck will suddenly make everything better or worse depending on what I do - like avoiding walking under ladders.

Well actually I do avoid walking under ladders, but that's because people climbing up ladders drop things, fall off them and ladders also collapse. All of that has nothing to do with luck.

It's the same with breaking mirrors - all that broken glass is just dangerous.

Sure it seems to be my busiest day of the year when it comes to providing protection and yes it often ends with me shooting the people who have hired me because people jumping at the sight of their own shadows gets old quick.

But what I don't understand what makes people so nervous about this day. Surely the arbitrary nature of a date combined with a day doesn't make for a particularly bad day.

I mean anything bad that happens on Friday 13th isn't because of the day - it's just dumb luck.

Fred

So it has been a number of years since Fred first saved my life and yes, I still won't admit to his face that he did indeed save my life, but that is beside the point. I realized that I know very little about Fred's early life except for the little family anecdotes that Ryan, his younger brother, has told me.

Though these precious tales of misspent youth are entertaining (one does involve Fred being chased up a tree by two Chihuahuas, which is a particular favourite) they don't really tell me anything about the man he is.

Yes, he is annoying, more annoying than any other individual on the planet. And yes, he does seem to have a habit of turning up just in the nick of time to save me from horrible villains. And yes, he is incredibly kind and generous and all of these things that make men ideal, but that isn't really knowing him - it's knowing what he's letting me know about him.

So in an effort to learn more about Fred I decided that it was about time to break into his apartment and look through his belongings to see what I could find out. Okay, most people would think that just going out for coffee with him would be a much easier way of finding out what I wanted to know - but then I would have to sit opposite that smug face of his and listen to the glee in his voice about me spending time with him.

Clearly my only option was to break into his house.

And when I say break in, it's hardly breaking in when I have a spare key. And when I say have a spare key, I know where Fred keeps it (on top of the door frame is not really the most secure place to leave a key). So I was merely trespassing when it comes down to grounds for prosecution.

Trying to find out information that helps you get to know people better is surprisingly difficult. Fred doesn't have a whole lot of pictures of family decorating his place. There are lots of pictures of me, Harry and Ryan alongside Fred but none of his parents or wider family.

I'd heard rumours that he'd been married or close to being married, but I'd never seen Fred with any woman and he never spoke about them in front of me. I once asked Ryan about it and then Harry but both of them said the same thing "he's in love with you, why would he be married to anyone else?"

That was something I didn't really appreciate.

After an hour of snooping around his apartment I found a shoebox in the bottom of his wardrobe that didn't have any of his handcrafted Italian footwear in. It was crammed full of letters and pictures of Fred with different women in cuddly poses. The letters were written by him and to him and also were incredibly sweet and cute and all the words that most women would associate with their dream man...

I spent what seemed like five minutes, but was more like three hours, reading through all the letters and notes and discovering an awful lot I didn't know about Fred, including the fact that he was engaged to a girl called Jessica Beach about three years ago. The ring was even in the box complete with engraving but there wasn't any information as to why they weren't married.

It was just after I discovered this that Fred may have come home and found me sat on the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by ALL his love letters and looking at the ring...it wasn't the best situation to be honest.

It took about forty minutes for him to stop yelling at me, to snatch the ring out of my hands, stuff the letters back into the shoebox and throw it back in the wardrobe. When he'd done all that he did spend a further fifteen minutes ranting "how dare I invade his privacy" and telling me to "get out of his house and never come back" - it's amazing how bent out of shape he was over it all. I never thought he'd be so upset, if I had then I would have just emptied the shoebox and read it all back at my place and snuck all the papers back later.

Still, after all the shouting and ranting was done and I may have apologized, he didn't seem too mad about it, but it is hard to tell if people are angry with you when they are kissing you.

Author Note: If you enjoy the blog entries of Nicolette Mace: The Raven Siren then check out the new Siren Wiki, the kickstarter project. Books of the adventures of Siren are available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, iBooks, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and many more.

Hunting the Priest Killer - Day 8

Hunting the Priest Killer – Day 8

Harry and Sykes have a teeny little bit of a history. You might say that Harry wanted to beat Sykes into a pulp, then chop him into tiny pieces and throw them into a river filled with piranhas – but that would be understating the situation somewhat.

Harry had been in love only once, a girl named Sabrina (yes we all made jokes about teenage witches). She had been somewhat of a renegade, a problematic agent working for Interpol, well problematic for her superiors – I thought she was great. She and Harry were at each other’s throats from the moment she arrived until the moment that they both realised how much they cared about the other.

Sabrina had been sent to help investigate the rise in drug and violent crime in the city after Sykes had disposed of her when she and I had gotten too close to what he was doing. Harry had never forgiven the man for murdering her and had even left the district to get away from him, but he could never quite bring himself to leave the place where he had planned to build a life with Sabrina.

Going to Harry had been a last resort, but also a chance for him to get his revenge. Fred had been his best friend for longer than I had known either of them and I don’t think Harry was prepared to lose someone else he loved at the hands of a pillock.

So when we walked straight into a group of teenagers with mini arsenals, it wasn’t really the start we’d been hoping for – in fact you could say that it was directly the opposite.

Harry, uncharacteristically, had come armed. So with the small amount of gunfire; and when I mean small, I mean small for conflict in the Middle East; broke out, we were more than capable of defending ourselves. There were seven of the grunts, though thankfully none of them were carrying sticky grenades. It took less than ten minutes for us to dispatch them. Being heavily armed wasn’t really any indication to their ability with the weapons.

I would say we did our best not to kill them, but I would be lying. Having a few less gang peons roaming the streets really made it safer for everyone.

We still had the problem of getting to where Fred had gone. Other than after Sykes and into his territory, we really had no idea. This is when keeping one of the peons alive might have been a good idea.

But there were plenty more of them out there.

Heat Wave

The weather has been so hot recently that even I began to rethink my wardrobe.

Walking around in full biker leathers is normally not a problem as far as regulating my body temperature goes, but in the last few days it has been so warm that even air conditioning hasn't kept me from fainting. The worst part of that is that I happened to faint in front of and be caught by - yes, you've guessed it, the most insufferable man ever to don a uniform. I came to with the sight of his smug face before my eyes. 

Now I will admit there are times when Frederick J. Barlow can be a charming and delightful individual. Most of these times are when he is in trouble and begging for help, but nether-the-less they do exist. Needless to say this was not one of those times. 

You may think I am being overly harsh but when I came to, I wasn't on the street where I had passed out. No, I was in a jail cell, with my hands cuffed and Fred looking far too pleased with himself. Apparently there had been reports of a woman matching my description assaulting people at an ice rink with a pool cue.

Unfortunately it does sound like something I would do.

This has given me another reason to rethink my wardrobe. Clearly there are people out in the wider world that have started to impersonate me to take out their petty grievances against the world in my name so they won't get caught.

It took me four hours before I could prove that at the time of the incident, I was sat in Joe's Place explaining the finer points of whiskey to a man who had only ever drunk bourbon. 

What it comes down to is that changing my wardrobe, at least for the duration of this heat wave would mean I wouldn't pass out into the arms of annoying policemen but also wouldn't be constantly arrested for things I didn't do. The downside to this is that I would have to go shopping...

On second thoughts, passing out is quite refreshing really and me wearing different clothes really wouldn't stop Fred and Harry from arresting me every other day.

Laundry Day

There are certain things that most people don't expect me to do: paint my nails, cook a full Sunday roast, be nice; and on the whole they are right. However on this list of things that most souls would never imagine me doing is laundry.

I understand where this misconception has come from and Harry was punished accordingly, but even this stunningly boring chore does have it's upsides. No, I haven't met the love of my life in the launderette and haven't had the courage to speak to her, but it is the one quite place I have found where I can think.

There are no phones ringing with people wanting me to do things for them for a pittance, no annoying policemen circling about trying to save me from myself, no assassins lurking behind the fabric softener - in essence it is my haven.

There is no particular enjoyment in the actual act of cleaning clothes, but knowing that Fred's clothes are all sent out for cleaning and Harry's mum still does all his washing means that they will never frequent the place and never even think of looking for me near a washer or dryer. 

24 hour places are even better as between the hours of 1am and 2am there are only drunks and tramps trying to keep from freezing to death on the streets and for some strange reason they keep to themselves. I'm not sure what it is about a woman doing her laundry after the witching hour, heavily armed, that makes people feel so antisocial. I think it is rather rude actually.

In fact the amount of laundry I do is quite a good indication as to how bad my week has been. If it's been especially bad it's every Wednesday and Saturday though I skipped the weekend a few weeks back.

Though I feel I should be careful where I do my laundry as it is known for villains and wannabe villains to frequent launderettes - in fact I'm a little bit suspicious of a young blonde man who calls himself Billy...

Camping

There are many things in this world that I don't see the attraction of doing. Using sandpaper as toilet paper, being locked in a room with Kevin Metis, eating any form of invertebrates, I could go on. However camping had never really crossed my mind as needing to be on that list. Well that was until I woke up in a tent this morning.

It is a shock to the system when you wake up in a tent, especially as the night before you went to sleep in your own apartment. Fred and Harry felt it was a good idea to kidnap me during the night as a joke.

A joke!

I woke up under canvas with rain pelting down on it. Not only was I under canvas, but I was in the smallest space imaginable. Needless to say I was less than impressed. My normal reaction to this kind of behaviour would have been to chase them both down and shoot them in the knee caps. Unfortunately this was not an option at this particular time; not because I had any change in my character or had been flooded with a sudden sense of remorse you understand. Oh no, it was solely down to the fact that I didn't have my guns. In fact all I had on was my very thin, very see-through nightdress.

There are times when I can be a reasonable person, they might be very few and far between, but I can be reasonable. For example I have never, to date, shot Mayor Major Tyler despite him deserving at least two hospital stays for his incredible inability to do his job. I haven't spent my time consumed with plotting revenge against Richard Ellis even though he tried to put my favourite gunsmith out of business. Yes, I can be a very reasonable person. However when I am taken from my bed in the middle of the night in attire that is less than suitable for the great outdoors and shoved into a coffin comprised of poles and semi-waterproof material I am not really inclined towards being reasonable.

I could hear the two of them outside the tent trying to contain laughter, they have always found themselves far funnier than they actually are. So I decided, for the moment that restraint would be a good course of action...and when I say restraint, I mean I wouldn't bludgeon them both to death with rocks from the edge of the campfire.

Since my clothes didn't appear to be in this claustrophobiac's nightmare, I had to go out and face the two morons in something only slightly more discreet than my birthday suit. Upon emerging the first thing I noticed wasn't how breathtaking the scenery was, nor how peaceful the place seemed to be, no the first thing I noticed was how quickly Fred's laughter turned to blushing and looking away. Harry stared unashamedly and was given a damn good thrashing with a nearby fallen branch until Fred brought me my clothes.

Harry tried to talk his way out of trouble and when that didn't work the two of them took me out on the nearby lake to fish...as this was really going to improve my mood. As soon as we were in the middle of the lake, the two of them mysteriously ended up falling overboard and I rowed back to the shore before they could climb back aboard. Fifteen minutes later the two managed to crawl their way back on to dry land.

They were right though, going fishing really did make me feel so much better.

Hunting a Priest Killer - Day 7

Harry is the kind of person to hold a grudge. Though clearly grateful that I saved him from an awkward conversation with the Mayor about the twins in the hot tub, it had dawned on him that the hole in the side was not going to fix itself. In fact he seemed to think, for some ridiculous reason, that I should have to pay for the damage.

Me pointing out that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't hung up on me clearly was not the best thing to do, though if Harry hadn't then tried to throw me off the balcony we wouldn't have ended up having a fist fight that broke his coffee table...and his brand new TV...

I don't get invited to his place much.

It took about an hour for us to broker a peace and to sit down and think about what we were going to do about Fred. Fred going after Sykes and the Snake Devils was understandable even though it is on his top ten list of 'stupidest things he's ever done'; though not quite good (or bad enough) to grab the top spot. That still belongs to the time he decided to go undercover to break a child pornography ring and didn't tell anyone he was doing it. It took a long time and a lot of awkward, searching questions to get him out of trouble that time. 

So with Harry on side, we had at least a small fighting chance of getting Fred out alive and making sure Sykes paid for what he did to Harry. 

The other thing we had going for us was how unpopular Sykes was as a leader and how many of his gang land pals felt it was him who had arranged the downfall of the Snake Devils former leader - Jarndice. 

Normally those kind of suspicions led to feelings of respect and fear, but this was a slightly more complicated situation.

Jarndice had been a scumbag, no morals, no conscience, but he was smart. He had managed to outwit and stop Derek Long on more than one occasion, granted not without the help of yours truly, but all the same impressive. Jarndice had held together the gang through many attempts by the other neighbouring gangs to destroy them and expand their territory without opposition from residents and other gangs. 

All in all, Jarndice had made the gang untouchable and so far Sykes really didn't measure up. Shooting Patrick was seemingly the start of his campaign to prove himself, but I wasn't about to let that happen.

Harry and I both agreed that if Sykes got hold of Fred, then Fred would end up being nailed to a perch to be kept from pushing up the daisies. We had to wait until nightfall before we could go into the gang territory to try and avoid detection.

The only problem with going in at night to a gang held area of the city - walking smack into a group of low level gang peons who had a more impressive arsenal than any 80s action hero.

Needless to say the Rescuers business was safe from being threatened by Harry and I.

Also if I get shot by Sykes - I am going to kill Fred.