Hoofin’ It: A Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) Read online

  Hoofin’ It

  A Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count)

  RJ Blain

  Pen & Page Publishing

  Hoofin’ It

  A Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count)

  by RJ Blain

  All Shane wanted was to get away from the wreckage of his career for a while. He picked New York City to provide him with a distraction from his early, unwanted retirement from the police force.

  New York City delivered, distracting him with three corpses and a miniature llama with a spitting problem and an attitude. If he wants to return to a normal life, he’ll have to face off against a sex trafficking ring targeting the woman of his dreams, ancient vampires, murderous criminals, his parents, and an FBI agent with a hidden agenda.

  Some days, it isn’t easy being an ex-cop.

  Warning: This novel contains excessive humor, action, excitement, adventure, magic, romance, and bodies. Proceed with caution.

  Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Blain

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For more information or to contact the author, please visit rjblain.com. Cover design by Holly Heisey (hollyheiseydesign.com)

  To the Usual Suspects: I’m pretty sure this is all your fault.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  About the Author

  Magical Romantic Comedies (with a body count)

  From Witch & Wolf World

  Other Stories by RJ Blain

  Witch & Wolf World Reading Order

  Chapter One

  The next time I took a vacation, I’d just stay home. While there were cozier places than my apartment in Chicago, it beat being covered head to toe in blood spatter on a busy sidewalk in Times Square. I’d seen a lot of crazy shit during my short stint as a cop, but I’d never seen a body plummet from a skyscraper and crash through the windshield of a car stuck in traffic before.

  One body was bad enough, but the victim had landed on the driver and passenger. Maybe if they’d used a real windshield instead of a substitute, the glass wouldn’t have broken into razor-sharp chunks and killed them. I’d seen it in Chicago once, when an enterprising idiot had purchased window glass, ground it down, and forced it to fit in his vehicle. I’d heard about it happening back home in Lincoln, Nebraska, too.

  Both drivers had died after rear-ending someone, breaking their makeshift windshields, and slitting their throats.

  What stopped me in my tracks was the furry head sticking out of the back window, its white fur stained with crimson and its long, fluffy ears pinned back. My mouth dropped open, and I rubbed my eye, blinked, and looked again.

  Nothing changed.

  A rather angry looking miniature llama glared at me as though I’d somehow been responsible for the corpse falling through the windshield of its car which, by some miracle, hadn’t accelerated following the accident. First, I needed to make sure the car stayed put. Second, I needed to call the cops. Since I could do both at the same time, I grabbed my cell, dialed 911, and held it to my ear while I circled the vehicle.

  Fortunately, the driver’s side window was down, offering me a good look inside. Not only had the driver ended up with a face full of glass, the angle of his head suggested the falling body had broken his neck on impact.

  “911, please state the nature of your emergency,” a woman answered.

  “I’m on the corner of Broadway and West 42nd in Times Square. A body has fallen from a skyscraper and landed on a vehicle. There are two people inside the car, and I’m fairly certain they’re dead. The driver’s neck appears to be broken. The passenger has severe lacerations to the face and neck and is non-responsive.”

  “I’m sending officers and EMT to your location, sir. Please stay on the line.”

  I heard the tell-tale click of the operator putting me on hold. Knowing she’d try to stop me if I told her my intention, I reached in, contorted around the tangle of bodies and steering wheel, and put the vehicle into park, grateful the shifter wasn’t part of the center console.

  “Officers are on their way, sir. Does it appear there are any survivors in the vehicle?”

  “There’s an animal in the back.” With the car secured from taking off and rampaging through Times Square, I focused my attention on the miniature llama, which had swiveled its head around to glare at me. It snorted, then it spit in my face through the open back window. Green goo smeared over my right eye and dripped from my face.

  For the first time since the accident that had sent me into early retirement, I was grateful for my glass eye, a solid blue sphere. My insurance company had been far too cheap to pay for a realistic one.

  “An animal, sir?”

  I could handle a body falling from the sky and killing two men in front of me. A miniature llama with an attitude, however, crossed every last one of my lines. Lifting my hand, I wiped the gunk off my face. “It just spit on me. It’s some sort of demented miniature llama, and the fucking thing just spit on me.”

  “Please remain calm, sir. What’s your name? Do you know anyone involved in the accident?”

  “My name’s Shane Gibson. I don’t know anyone involved in the accident, ma’am.” Sighing, I stepped out of the alpaca’s range, returning to the sidewalk to wait for the cavalry to arrive, bracing for the wave of questions the woman would ask to get a handle on the situation and keep me calm. I played along more for her sake than mine. I’d seen enough bodies during my three years on the force to last me a lifetime.

  Three more and a pissed-off miniature llama meant little in the grand scheme of things.

  Sometimes I really hated people. The majority of the passersby decided they wanted nothing to do with the trashed car and trio of bodies. Their unnatural lack of curiosity left me as the only viable witness, which I considered absolutely ludicrous. Times Square in the mid-afternoon was a bustle, and I was the one with the full attention of the six cops dispatched to the scene to deal with me and the angry miniature llama.

  The animal spit on three officers before the youngest one got tired of its existence. He drew his gun and pointed it at the animal’s head. There was only one thing stupider than shooting an animal for being an animal, and that was standing in front of the gun to stop the shooting from happening.

  If he decided to pull the trigger, I
deserved to get shot.

  “Killing the animal isn’t necessary, sir. I’d be spitting angry, too, if someone hogtied my legs together with duct tape and dumped me in a car. It has no other way to defend itself.”

  Did the young idiot, who couldn’t have been more than a few months over twenty-one, really think he could open fire on a busy street because an animal had spit on him?

  Apparently.

  The young cop spluttered but holstered his weapon. Once I was satisfied he wasn’t going to kill the animal, I turned my attention to one of the older cops, a man with gray-touched hair and steely eyes. “What’s the procedure for animals under these circumstances?”

  In Chicago, I would have been drawn and quartered for even thinking hurting the damned thing, no matter how many times it spit on me. Unless a sentient was at risk of fatal injury, killing an animal without just cause would result in a suspense and potential loss of badge.

  A glob of spit smacked into the back of my head, and I stuffed my hands into my pockets so I wouldn’t turn around and throttle the ungrateful animal after standing in the line of fire to keep an idiot from killing it.

  The older cop sighed. “Animal control will be by to pick it up and either dispose of it or take it to a shelter. We don’t have the facilities for animals like this unless they’re sentients or exotics, which this animal is not, so they’ll likely euthanize it and dispose of the body.”

  Bastards.

  “All right. I’d rather not see it destroyed for circumstances out of its control. I’d like to make arrangements to claim the animal if no owners are located.”

  One day I would learn to mind my own business. The cops stared at me, looked at each other, and the oldest stepped away, talking to someone on his radio. The remaining cops resumed questioning me, repeating the conversation five or six times before they came to the conclusion I really had no idea why a man’s body had fallen from a skyscraper and crashed through the windshield of a car stuck in traffic.

  Or why a miniature llama was hogtied with duct tape in the back of the car.

  The oldest cop returned, shook his head, and sighed. “If you want that thing, it’s yours. Leave us your contact information should anyone with legal documentation proving ownership comes forward. By law, you are required to keep the animal in your possession for a minimum of twenty business days. If these terms are acceptable to you, you’ll need to come to the station to sign some paperwork.”

  What the hell was I going to do with a spitting miniature llama for twenty business days? Clenching my teeth, I regarded the surly animal still trapped in the back of the car. It glared at me, and the fires of hell burned in its dark eyes. “They’re acceptable.”

  The third time was a charm. It spit; I dodged and went to work extricating the animal from its grisly prison.

  My new pet, which I learned was an alpaca rather than a demonic miniature llama, weighed a hundred and ten pounds and hated everyone, especially men, with a vengeance. I spent almost two hundred dollars for a vet to tell me she was a female, she seemed to be young, and would need to be sheared within the next few weeks or her coat would become unwieldy and uncomfortable.

  At least my two hundred bought her a round of vaccinations, which she protested with squeals and spits. My hold on her ratty halter kept her from biting anyone. Strips of duct tape still clung to her legs, but I would remove the adhesive with some patience and a pair of scissors later—after I convinced her I wasn’t actually the devil.

  Then again, once I stuffed her in the back of a rental van and carted her halfway across the country, the poor thing would probably hate me for the rest of her life. Since my hotel wouldn’t allow an alpaca to stay in my room, I convinced one of the cops to write me a little note suggesting management release me from my reservation without penalty.

  Freeing her from her duct tape bindings must have earned me a few points because the she-devil stopped spitting on me and didn’t try to bite me once.

  The rental company charged me an extra three hundred to transport an alpaca in one of their vehicles. To add insult to injury, they doubled my deposit due to my vision impairment, making it clear half-blind men were lucky to be allowed to drive. By ten at night, I was ready to hit the road, although I wasn’t looking forward to three days of traveling with an animal in dire need of a bath.

  At least the back of the van came equipped with mounting brackets, which were perfect for tethering my alpaca so she wouldn’t be able to climb over the seats and assault me while I was driving. Once she was secured, I slid behind the wheel and made the phone call certain to add a little bit more suck to an already shitty day.

  My mother answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “The last time you called, you’d just had your eye scooped out. You refused to bring it home in a jar for me.”

  At least my glass replacement made it possible for me to blink—and close my eyes so I could enjoy the illusion of normality. “That’s disgusting.”

  “That’s what your father said. How could you resist the chance to keep an actual human eye on your desk? It’s a trophy. Sure, you lost your eye, but you saved three lives. That’s something to be proud of. Come on, Shane. I raised you better than that.”

  Given five minutes, my mother could always find a silver lining in any cloud. “Why aren’t you in an institution yet, Mom?”

  “You’d get bored if you sent me away.”

  “First, I haven’t needed to call you because you call me every morning at exactly two minutes after eight. This couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “You mean you actually need something?”

  I bumped my head against the steering wheel. “Yes, I do.”

  “Is it my birthday?”

  “No. It’s not your birthday.” Once I popped my question, she’d consider it Christmas in April. “Can you take this seriously for a change?”

  “I always take coercion and blackmail seriously, Shane. I thought you knew this by now. If you’re asking me for help, I intend to get something really good out of it.”

  To the rest of the world, my mother was an upright citizen, a police officer, and the perfect wife and mother. To me, she was everything right and wrong with my life and half the reason I’d become a cop in the first place. Dad was the other half of the reason, and since I couldn’t hear him howling in the background, I assumed he was on duty. “I can’t believe you have everyone fooled into thinking you’re actually a good cop, Mom.”

  “Now you’re just being snide. Aren’t you about to ask me for a favor? I could just wax poetic about how I have such a wonderful son who’s a capable, independent adult, who comes home for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter and doesn’t bother anyone, not even when he’s recovering from losing his eye in a different state.”

  Unless I got to the point quickly, she’d serenade me with every one of my achievements before circling around to the fact she didn’t have my eye in a jar on her desk. If I got lucky, she’d call my grandmother and bring her into the discussion. The only thing worse than my mother on the warpath was my mother’s mother joining in.

  I wasn’t sure if I loved or hated the woman sometimes. “A man fell from a skyscraper, busted through a windshield, and killed the people in the car while I was touring Times Square today. As a result, I am now the guardian of an alpaca for the next twenty business days. I thought I’d come visit you, with my new pet alpaca, for the next twenty business days. Then, because you’re such a wonderful mother, you’ll help me find a good home for the alpaca I’m legally required to keep for the next twenty business days.”

  I loved the sound of silence. It meant my mother had short-circuited and her brain was in process of rebooting. Smiling at having dumbfounded her for a rare change, I buckled up and started the van, fiddling with the temperature controls until it was cooler than I liked but tolerable for my new companion.

  “You have an alpaca.”

  “It’s like a demon
ic miniature spitting llama. The vet told me she’s female, she needs to be sheared soon, and he gave her all of her important vaccinations. We’re both in dire need of a bath, too. By the time I reach the house, I’m sure we’ll be ripe for your enjoyment.”

  “I’ve raised a terrible child. What did I do to deserve you?”

  “But they were going to euthanize her. I couldn’t let that happen, Mom. When she isn’t trying to spit on me or kill me, she’s kinda cute. She’s white and fluffy, and she has these adorable little fluffy ears. If she’ll let you pet her, she’s really soft. I’m thinking I’ll teach her to sleep in bed with me. It is possible to housebreak an alpaca, right?”

  My mother choked. “You’ll do no such thing, Shane Gibson!”

  “But you’re always saying how you want me to come home and visit you. Does this mean you don’t want me? I even found a cute little lady to keep my bed warm at night. Isn’t that what you wanted for me?”

  “A human lady, not a sheep on stilts!”

  “Does that mean I have to try to convince my landlord to let me keep an alpaca in my teeny tiny apartment rather than at your nice big farmhouse? You even have a paddock she can run around and play in.”

  “That paddock is for my horses, young man.”

  “Mom, your horses are almost thirty years old. I’m sure they can share with a hundred and ten-pound alpaca.”