QSFer Kim Fielding has a new MM fantasy/paranormal Christmas romance book out: A Very Genre Christmas.
Very little is merry in a private dick’s world.
Private detective Nick Bozic works the mean streets of 1950s Portland, Oregon, shadowing unfaithful spouses and nabbing thieving employees. He may be lonely, but at least he’s not crooked. Despite the festive season, Christmas simply means less dough in his pocket.
With the holiday only a few days away, a regular client drops a new case on him: yet another being has come through the Rift and needs help finding his way home. Maybe Evindal the elf will help Nick find something too—a bit of cheer and magic amid the usual brew of corruption and betrayal.
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Excerpt
“Hey, Nick. We’ve got another one.”
“I’ll be over right away, sweetheart.” I hung up the phone receiver but remained seated in my padded desk chair. Amelia Sansone had sounded annoyed instead of afraid, so I didn’t have to hurry. I finished my cigarette and whiskey, then took a minute to make sure my Colt was fully loaded. I shouldn’t need it on a call like this, but in my line of work, assumptions get you dead.
Out in the reception area of my office, Carmilla Karnstein paused her typing and watched as I buttoned on my overcoat. I’d met her during one of my previous jobs for Amelia, and she’d ended up as my secretary. She was an odd duck, but she arrived at work before dawn and never left before sunset, and she was a whiz at getting bloodstains out of my clothes—a favor I needed pretty often.
“Another one at the bookshop?” Her husky voice seemed a mismatch for her delicate frame. But she was older than she looked, and her pale beauty was only a façade for her sharp mind.
I set my fedora on my head. “Yeah. I doubt I’ll be back after, so lock up for me, please.”
“Of course. Good luck, Mr. Bozic.”
I tipped my hat and headed out.
It was a typical winter afternoon in Portland, gray and drippy, with mist obscuring details and blurring edges. I didn’t mind. In fact, I preferred this weather to bright sunshine, which brought false promises. And anyway, I was in a good mood as I walked down Burnside toward Sansone Booksellers. Although Amelia had some dough, I’m not sure I’d have charged her for these jobs. The city paid my bills for these particular calls, and the city paid well.
My office was in a third-floor walkup across the street from the Chevy dealership, but Sansone’s was in a more upscale location on 6th Avenue, near the Fred Meyers. Her retail space occupied the bottom two floors, her office was above that, and the top two floors contained apartments she rented out. She could’ve saved herself a lot of grief by moving somewhere else, away from the Rift, but business was good where she was, and she was too stubborn to budge. For a dame who’d been left with nothing after her husband bought it on Okinawa, she was doing well for herself.
Amelia met me as soon as I entered. She was a small woman whose gray suits always appeared to be swallowing her, and she kept her light brown hair in a pixie cut to avoid fuss. “You walked again instead of driving?” she said by way of greeting.
“Needed the exercise. Besides, takes less time to walk than to find a place to park near your joint.”
“Suit yourself.”
I took off my hat and followed her to the back stairway. “So, what’ve we got this time? It ain’t another kid, is it? That one was a pain in the ass.” He kept waving a stick around and saying words that Amelia told me were mostly bad Latin. I was glad when we sent him back home.
“No, and it’s nobody you’ll need to shoot, so you can keep that gun tucked away.”
I shrugged. You never can tell who’ll need shooting. Then I had a hopeful thought. “Is it another guy wearing nothing but that, uh….” I waved vaguely around the region of my groin.
Amelia gave me a knowing look and shook her head. “Loincloth? No. This one is fully dressed.”
Shame. Now that fellow had been something to look at, with long black hair and gray eyes, and he had a lot of interesting stories about apes and other animals. He was athletic too. I took him to Forest Park, partly because I wanted to watch him in action, and he’d swung from fir branch to fir branch as easy as you please. That had been a pretty sight.
The first flight of bookshop stairs was wide, with pale marble steps and a polished wooden railing, but the second—used only by employees—wasn’t for show. A little window on the landing had a view of the alley and the grayish building on the other side.
“You’re not gonna give me any hints about this one?” I coaxed Amelia as we ascended the final part of the staircase.
She got an odd expression, one I couldn’t read. “We have a big display of Christmas titles out now.”
Well, that wasn’t enlightening.
Whenever the Rift shifted, the results ended up in a dead-end hallway on the third floor, just around the corner from Amelia’s personal office. Nobody knew why, although the eggheads at that commie college across the river liked to throw around fancy words and call them theories. In any case, after the first couple of times, Amelia had arranged for iron bars to be installed across the hallway, forming a sort of jail, with a heavy lock holding the gate closed. That kept most of the results contained until they could be dealt with, although a few had managed to slither or ooze through the openings, and a muscular blond guy with a giant hammer had smashed his way right through the wall. Then he’d jumped, apparently under the impression that he could fall forty feet with no problem.
That one hadn’t ended well.
I didn’t draw my Colt, but I made sure my coat was unbuttoned, and I kept my hand hovering near the holster as we turned the corner.
“Oh jiminy, ma’am, I thought you were never coming back!”
I stopped walking so suddenly that I almost tripped over my own feet.
A man stood inside the makeshift cell, his hands wrapped around the bars. He was a good four inches shorter than my five-ten, slender, probably in his late twenties. His pale straight hair hung to his shoulders in back and swooped across his forehead in front, and he had a slightly pointed chin, pink cheeks, and enormous cornflower-blue eyes.
But it was his clothing that had thrown me for a loop: shiny red boots; red-and-white-striped stockings; an emerald-green tunic with red belt, cuffs, and collar; and a floppy, pointed green hat. With a giant bell at the end.
And did I mention that his ears were pointed too?
I turned to Amelia. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Detective, meet Evindal, the Christmas elf.”
Author Bio
Kim Fielding is very pleased every time someone calls her eclectic. A Lambda Award finalist and two-time Foreword INDIE finalist, she has migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States and currently lives in California, where she long ago ran out of bookshelf space. She’s a university professor who dreams of being able to travel and write full time. She also dreams of having two daughters who fully appreciate her, a husband who isn’t obsessed with football, and a house that cleans itself. Some dreams are more easily obtained than others.
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