Chapter Two

The annoying ticking of the clock was amplified to the point that Kinsley felt it was assaulting the inside of her skull. She stared at the offending timepiece on her office wall and contemplated how much effort it would take to chuck her resin pyramid paperweight at it to silence it once and for all. Deciding it would be too much effort and too much noise, she got up with a huff and made the short walk to the coffee bar in the open office.

She poured herself a cup of the liquid gold into her favourite and cooky-looking mug, something that was straight out of Alice in Wonderland's tea party and added her creamer and sugar before taking a slow sip, savouring its warmth and the little jolt of happiness it gave her. The slamming of the back door and the loud resounding swear made her jolt and slop a bit on her blouse, sighing as it burned her skin slightly. She thanked her lucky stars she had the good sense to wear black this morning so at the very least her blouse was not stained. 

She poured another cup of coffee and held both carefully as she made her way to the office in the back, frowning at the amount of swearing coming from the room. She moved into the doorway and gasped in shock as she saw the man leaning against his desk with 3 large spikes sticking out of his arm and blood dripping onto the floor from his fingers. She quickly set the cups down on a shelf and stepped forward into action. Taking his belt and secured it around the upper part of his arm, cinching it tight to cut off blood flow. 

“What the hell happened?” Kinsley yelled at her brother, grabbing the medkit beside him and pressing bandages to his wounds as she inspected them, her pounding headache fading into the background as her adrenaline spiked. 

“That routine recon into a nest of creatures went sideways. I’d never seen anything like it. I have no idea what it is or what these spikes do. I just know my arm hurts like a son of a bitch.” Sawyer bit out around the belt in his mouth, pulling it higher as his sister quickly put on gloves and gripped the bottom spike. He nodded and then grunted out in pain as she pulled the spike out swearing as about 3 inches of the 9-inch spike had been embedded in his arm.

“Jesus Christ Sawyer! I thought West was supposed to be out with you on the mission?” Kinsley cursed as she dropped the spike on the floor and pulled out the other two spikes, cursing at all the blood and the depth of the 3 puncture marks.

“He was supposed to. He never showed up this morning. Probably passed out with the latest chick from the bar.” He grunted as he took the alcohol and dumped it over his arms, hissing as it stung and spilled all over the marks.

“Shit, you’re not healing Sawyer. Do you think we can get Weaver to analyze these spikes?” Kinsley asked as she picked up the spikes gingerly with her gloved hands and dumped them into an evidence bag, labelling with a date and time before sealing it.

“Put a call into him. We need to know what these fricken things are. The nest is too close to the civilian areas. Don’t want people to accidentally get hurt, seeing as a lot of them rely on our agency.” Sawyer grunted as he inspected his wounds, letting out a huff of relief as the skin started to heal and knit itself closed.

“I’ll call him now. You clean this mess and call our lazy brothers. I’m the only one here, I had to open. I don’t know where Liam is and he wouldn’t answer his phone.” Kinsley said as she picked up her coffee and motioned to the mess before taking the evidence bag and heading back to the main office area.

She held the evidence bag with her two fingers and looked at it in distaste as she sipped her coffee and sat down at her desk, placing the bag down and pulling out her phone, bringing up Weaver’s contact info to send off a text.

: Have a present for you. Need you to come in and analyze something new. Got Sawyer pretty good. Need as much information on them as you can give me. :

With that she put her phone down and finally opened up her emails, replying to the ones that were most pressing. Normally she had help in the office, but Lydia was in no shape to come into the office after last night, having drunk way more than Kinsley and didn’t have the same fringe benefits as Kinsley and her family.  The Anderson Agency for Preternatural Investigations had grown in the last few years, the emergence of more paranormal activity and creatures causing their business to flourish almost overnight. The AAPI, as it was most commonly referred to, specialized in investigating anything and everything that went bump in the night. Hauntings, possessions, creature attacks, you name it, The AAPI took care of it. 

Because the business was so sought after they were thinking of expanding and bringing on more people, however, it took very specific skill sets to make it at The AAPI. If you were magically nose blind, you would not make it. You had to be sensitive to magic and all things paranormal, and unfortunately, most of the human population were duds, magically speaking of course. Kinsley’s phone beeped on her desk and she lifted it to read the message.

: Be there in 15. Have my room ready and there better be donuts and pastries :

Kinsley chuckled and put her phone down, finished her email and headed farther into the office and took the steps down into a large basement lab, flipping on lights and raising blinds as she did so. The windows were street level but they were large and let in lots of morning light, the fluorescent lights above lighting up every inch of the space. It was a fully equipped lab and had everything they needed to be able to run tests on the different creatures they came across.

The AAPI didn’t just approach the preternatural from a scientific angle, but an occult one as well. Their extensive library was the envy of all practitioners and every occult faculty member in North America. It helped that The AAPI had been in operation in various forms since the dawn of creation. Where ever anything preternatural popped up, a member of the Anderson family was not far behind it. Once upon a time, the Anderson family was numerous, spanning all across the world.

Now, however, the true and first Anderson family was only 5 people remaining. Kinsley, the youngest and her 4 older brothers. Their mother and father having died when Kinsley was an infant. Since then the eldest has raised them all as well as could be managed and still take on the family business and legacy. The Andersons might have a very important purpose, but with that purpose comes many enemies. Long ago a creature cursed them upon her death, one day the family line would die, procreation of their line only possible with another of their species or a true mate. Being Fae and their kind almost extinct, it was damn near impossible to find another Fae.

Kinsley sighed softly as all these thoughts plagued her and she ordered pastries and doughnuts from a nearby bakery as she made her way back up the stairs and to the main floor of the office. She sat back at her desk and picked up the office phone and called her brother's cell, hoping that he’d be more likely to pick up the phone if it was the office calling him and not his sister's number. She swore a colourful curse under her breath as she got his voicemail once more.

“West Anderson! Get your playboy ass to work now, kick out the floozy, pull your shit together and get to work. Because you’re an irresponsible ass Sawyer got hurt and we’ve got a problem on our hands. We need you here.” She spoke angrily into his voicemail before slamming the phone down and taking her cell to call her other brother Liam. He was closest to her in age but still, being Fae, age was a relative number.

: Some new creature about. We need all hands on deck. Get to work ASAP :

She tossed her phone down and finished the last of her coffee before going back to Sawyer and checking on him. She knocked on the doorjamb seeing him on the phone and he nodded before running his hand through his blond hair, looking drained and tired. He hung up the phone and looked out the large tall arched windows that took up most of the wall space in the office space. She sat across from him at his desk and waited for him to talk. Sawyer was the quietest and brooding of the siblings, often mulling over everything by himself before sharing with his siblings.

“That was Walker. His job in Europe is taking longer than anticipated. He won't be home for another week.” he sighed and swivelled his chair to face her head-on. “We’ll have to handle things together without him for a while more. But he said he met someone, he’s in love and he’s going to bring her home.”

“Is she Fae?” Kinsley asked with interest. It had been a long time since they had seen another Fae, as far as they knew, they were the only Fae in North America.

“She is. Said she’s from an old sidhe family, didn’t mention a court so he’s assuming they are no longer part of the Courts.” Sawyer spoke slowly, a touch of envy colouring his tone. Out of all the siblings, quiet, brooding and romantic Sawyer was the one that most wanted a family.

“Perhaps she has sisters?” Kinsley offered with a shrug, keeping her tone even. Sawyer flashed her a small smirk and shook his head.

“I already asked. Apparently, she has brothers though. Didn’t go into much detail about them however.” Kinsley nodded and stood up, changing the topic before he brought up the dreaded topic among them all.

“Weaver should be here soon and I left a message with West and texted Liam. Hopefully, the knuckleheads will respond soon enough. In the meantime, I’m going to do research on what these creatures might be. The spikes are on my desk and there's a delivery coming in the form of pastries for Weaver. You know where to find me if you need me.” With that she turned on her heel and headed up the metal stairs at the back of the office, going up to the top floor that was an entire library with all the records they have ever needed.