Klasky - High Stakes Trial

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Four free books.

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No kidding.

I , Sarah Anderson, do solemnly swear that I will strangle the sadist who invented Take Your Child to Work Day.

After all, I was a sphinx. My ancestors were bred to strangle criminals in the earliest days of Egyptian civilization. And I couldnt think of a criminal in the history of the Eastern Empire who was more deserving of execution than the torturer who thought up Take Your Child to Work Day.

Exhibit 1 for my exoneration: The word your. I wasnt the parent of any child. In fact, given the shambles of my love-life, I wasnt likely ever to become a parent.

Exhibit 2: The word child. Children accompanying beloved parents to stimulating days at offices in the mundane world were human boys and girls. But the children visiting my workplace included one griffin, a centaur, a basilisk, a sylph, and a cat shifter. It was hard enough for adult imperials to mind their manners when that many imperial races were thrust together in close quarters. Id already separated the obligate carnivores from the prey species three times, and my chances of maintaining the peace for the rest of the night were low.

Exhibit 3: The word day. I worked for the Eastern Empire Night Court. We were open at night, when well-behaved children were snug in their jammies, tucked into bed, their slumbering minds filled with sweet dreams. Children who were forced to stay awake hours past their bedtimes, wearing uncomfortable grown-up clothes, and listening to incomprehensible legal mumbo-jumbo were most decidedly not well-behaved children.

But as clerk of court, I was a devoted team player, intent on making Washington DC safe for imperial and mundane citizens alike. Especially when we had a new judge on the bench. In fact, Elizabeth Finch was the first new judge in twenty years.

I, um, killed the last one.

Sure, as a sphinx I was supposed to protect vampires, not kill them. Protecting vampires was literally in my DNA. But when paranormal push had come to supernatural shove, the best protection I could offer Judge Robert DuBois was giving him the coup de grce, releasing him after a magical battle where those of us on the side of right and justice had come up short.

Very short.

Ten months later, I was still recovering from the emotional and physical fallout of that fight. Sphinxes werent sure what to make of me because Id murdered a vampire I was sworn to protect. Vampires didnt trust me either because, well, ditto.

I had to prove I was a team player. So, when Judge Finch personally asked me to manage the courts Take Your Child to Work Day, er, night, festivities, I reluctantly agreed.

Of course, I hadnt taken into account how long it would take the kids to clear court security. Since last June, wed been functioning at Security Level Orangelimited access through a secret underground entrance, heightened restrictions on the metal detectors, hand inspection of all bags larger than a standard briefcase, and regular full-court searches by bomb-sniffing wolf shifters.

All of the adults who worked at the court had grown used to the routine. We called it Security Theater, an elaborate charade intended to make us forget that Maurice Richardsonthe most vicious criminal mastermind of the vampire worldhad been on the loose for ten months. Judge DuBoiss unfortunate demise had resulted in a mistrial in the case that was supposed to put Richardson behind silver for the rest of his unnatural life.

We adults were used to the hurry-up-and-wait of court security, but the kids were restless even before I rounded them up for a fun night of wholesome, educational, workplace-based activities.

It didnt help that we needed to stay in hiding for the first four hours of night court, the time when humans frequented the hallways and Judge Finch heard mundane cases. I kept the kids isolated in a dusty supply room down a long, deserted corridor, far from the actual courtroom and any chance wed be spotted by mortals.

Twisting the hematite bracelet on my left wrist, I fought the urge to straighten the shelves around me. The clutter of partially used notepads jangled in my mind like out-of-tune violins. The plastic bin that held a jumbled pile of pasteboard folders made my palms itch.

But if I started organizing the supply closet, Id never get the kids to settle down. Instead, I tapped the face of my coral signet ring, trying to reassure my sphinx brain that a little disorder had never killed anyone. Yet.

With desperate good cheer, I handed out word-search puzzles, explaining to the kids that they were going to find fun terms related to the case Judge Finch was hearing that night. As they dutifully started to circle letters, I told them about plaintiffs and defendants, doing my best to make land-use litigation sound engaging. Easement, I said brightly, helping them pick out letters on the diagonal. Laches. Estoppel.

Why the hell werent these kids visiting some other parents workplace?

Using a fresh box of sixty-four crayons that Id snagged from the local drugstore, we colored the courts logoan ornately carved sword that pinned down a sheaf of parchment.

I dumped a huge bin of Legos (thank you, Amazon Prime) onto the table, and each kid built something related to the courthousethe judges massive bench, a gavel, a fragile scale of justice. That activity met its untimely end when the cat shifter started rigging an electric chair.

After a refreshing snack break of cookies and juice, I handed out workbooks ruthlessly cadged from a computer site: What I Want to be When I Grow Up. I passed out pencils and watched the kids complete their scaled-down version of the Myers-Briggs personality test.

It wasnt my fault the centaur came back with meatpacker as his primary job focus. It only took half an hour to get him to stop sobbing when he realized exactly where packed meat came from. (How many meatpacking plants even existed these days?)

The sylph wasnt thrilled with the recommendation that she pursue a career in nuclear power reactors. And I couldnt begin to explain to the griffin that ballerina was never going to fly, not for a mountain spirit who already clocked in at more than two hundred pounds.

So much for the workbooks.

Okay, kids, I said, glancing with relief at the clock on the wall. Its time to head into the courtroom. But before we go, what is Judge Finchs number three rule? Wed rehearsed them every hour, on the hour.

No talking to humans! shouted the cat shifter, loud enough that any human within a five-hundred-yard radius could easily hear.

I nodded before I prompted, And Judge Finchs number two rule?

No harming other imperials, recited the sylph, with a sweet smile that almost made me miss the hungry looks the shifter directed toward the centaur foal.