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Hazel

I woke to the smell of antiseptic and the sound of a machine beeping from somewhere down the hall. The white ceiling of Darlington General Hospital looked slightly green, and my first thought was, huh, they managed to make LEDs look like fluorescent bulbs.

“How you feeling, kid?” asked a kind but gravelly masculine voice.

I looked up into Chief Henderson’s warm brown eyes. He was the only one who could call me kid and get away with it.

“Like crap,” I admitted. The words came out almost like a groan.

Crap was about right. My head was pounding, and my entire body hurt. It made me want to go back to bed and wake up when things were less shitty and more rainbowy.

The last thing I remembered was watching as a giant ball of who-the-fuck-knew-what came barreling toward me and Hayes. I’d pushed my partner aside.

“How’s Mike? Where is he?” I tried to push myself up but realized my wrist was in a brace.

“He’s over in the next room. He caught the other side of that same spell that hit you.” Chief helped me up to just sitting. “Knocked his head.”

Shit. “I guess I’ll be patrolling on my own a bit.”

“Hell no, you ain’t.” He pointed a finger at me. “You hit your head too and were out of it even longer. But they’re telling me part of that was from the spell. And if you haven’t noticed, you’re also injured.”

I lifted my arm. “A sprain?”

Henderson rolled his eyes and pointed at my head. “You were out like a light. That’s a concussion if I’ve ever seen one. I’ve got two new recruits to the special magic task force covering you and Hayes.”

That was probably for the best, anyway. With the way my head was pounding, I probably wouldn’t be much use even if I wanted to.

“We don’t know if there’s any side effects from all that magic,” Henderson continued, “so the EA officers involved said that you should be monitored for the next few days at least. Mike’s wife is going to take a few days off to spend with him, but I know that you live alone.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Now don’t get that way with me, kid. I know you’re strong and everythin’, and you can take care of yourself, but this ain’t about that. And don’t worry about the report until you’re all better. I’m sure Tommy and Koo will have a very similar report.”

Other than Mike, Chief Henderson understood most about how I’d had to prove myself at my job.

When I first arrived in Darlington, I thought the slights and sarcastic words had been because I was a woman.

But that hadn’t been the only reason. It had been because I was an outsider, a human with no magic and no knowledge of what this town was all about.

Sure, there were others on the force like me, but they hadn’t been chosen to investigate all the magically related calls.

Chief Henderson had been the one to stand up and vouch for me, telling everyone that I wasn’t an outsider at all and that he’d known me since I was a little girl when I used to live here.

And he had, I just didn’t remember him or anything about Darlington for that matter, until I’d been back for several months.

To my credit, it was a quarter of a century ago, and I’d only been five or six at most when I’d left.

The only reason I moved to Darlington was because I’d inherited my granddad’s home.

I remembered very little about my grandparents.

They were just vague, barely formed memories from my childhood, and every time I asked about them when I was young, it would start Mom and Dad fighting again.

So eventually I stopped asking just to keep the peace.

Not that it made a difference. My parents had fought like cats and dogs every day and were miserable until Dad’s accident when I was a teenager.

Mom started leaving the house for days at a time after that.

And when I finally told her I’d applied at the local police department, she’d left completely. Said she had to go find herself.

Imagine my surprise when I got a letter stating that my grandparents had just passed away, and I’d been granted their house with the condition that I lived in it for at least five years.

At first, I thought it was a joke or maybe a scam, considering I couldn’t find Darlington on any of the maps I consulted, and I certainly didn’t remember it.

I’d even played my trump card and called Mom to ask about it. The second she’d heard the name, she’d told me never to mention it again and hung up. Her odd reaction was the only suspicion I had that the place actually existed.

And it had, because a week later, the lawyer showed up at my door.

When all was said and done, I was the owner of a house in a town I couldn’t find.

Austin Ellis, the Ellis part of Ellis, Smith, and Associates, had assured me that Darlington did, in fact, exist and that he’d personally drive up with me the first time so I didn’t get lost.

Considering my landlord had just given me notice that he needed me to move out since he was moving his adult child into the home, I saw it as a stroke of good luck.

I’d gone to my chief at the time, told him what he needed to know, and requested to be transferred to Darlington if possible.

I’d been a beat cop at the time, and I really wasn’t sure what I’d expected, considering the lack of presence on any maps, but sure enough, he was able to pull through for me.

Apparently, Granddad had been on the force.

Mom’s reaction to me choosing a career in law enforcement finally made sense.

Somehow, despite not knowing him and having no contact with him, I’d been my granddad’s granddaughter.

That must’ve pissed Mom off since she seemed to have a hate-on for this place, though I hadn’t figured out why until I’d moved here and met Chief.

Chief Henderson had taken one look at me, declared me a true Cooley—whatever that meant—and slotted me neatly into the spot my granddad had occupied before his retirement.

He’d even paired me with Mike Hayes, who had been the elder Cooley’s partner once when Mike had been young and still wet behind the ears.

It hadn’t made sense at the time, no matter how I did the math.

Mandatory retirement for most LEOs was fifty-seven, and my granddad had been a late octogenarian when he passed.

There was no way Mike had been working for thirty years, considering he was only a few years older than me.

But that was before I learned that Darlington had some different rules since there were so many magical folks who lived longer than normal humans.

Chief Henderson had thrown me into the thick of it without a stitch of warning.

Mike had known, of course, and tried to give me the rundown that first day, and I’d thought he was pulling my leg about the monsters.

Imagine my utter shock when I walked into a domestic situation with a wolf shifter in half-shift.

I still couldn’t believe I didn’t pass out right then and there and become a secondary emergency.

The Wall, the millennia-old spell that had hidden magic and monsters in plain sight, had still been up and running at the time, but a place like Darlington had such a high concentration of magic that it sometimes struggled to hold it all together.

My theory was that the Wall had been weakening for years, and that was why it had been letting bits and bobs slip out here in Darlington.

And apparently, my granddad had been responsible for dealing with it.

“I already have everything organized and paid for,” Chief said, bringing me back to the bare white walls of the hospital room. “You will be in good hands. He’ll double as a bodyguard too.”

I wondered if he meant someone from Redrock Protective Services. Somehow, I didn’t think that my being laid up with a magical headache was enough to call on the Redrock brothers. Oh well, I’d just have to wait and see.

Chief left after updating me on what had happened at The Breach.

Two of the men had leaped into the abyss, and the last one was currently spending some time in lockup.

He was still spewing the same crazy rhetoric.

The doctor had come in after, and she’d confirmed that I had a concussion and to rest up for at least a week, preferably two.

She was also adamant that I would not be discharged until I had someone to pick me up and that I was not to operate any heavy machinery, and that included driving.

After she left, Mike and his wife came by on their way out of the hospital. His face was sallow, and he looked ready to take a long nap. Was that what I looked like now? It sure felt that way.

“You look as shitty as I feel,” I said.

“I can always count on your honesty,” Mike said. “Trust me, you look worse.”

“Thanks.”

Even the beautiful Mrs. Hayes, who had never really liked me on account of the fact that I spent so much time with her husband, had a pitying look in her eyes.

It wasn’t that she thought there was anything untoward going on between us, but more that she associated me with the reason that Mike often went home late was because we were always getting out to just one more call.

Or at least I didn’t think it was because she was jealous or anything; it was hard to imagine someone as gorgeous as her being jealous of me.

She was literally an ex-model, and their kids belonged in commercials.

They wished me well, and I was finally left alone to feel sorry for myself. I hated feeling weak. I was just nodding off to sleep out of boredom when a knock at the door had me jerking awake again.

“Hello gorgeous, ready to go home?”

A certain suave wizard stood leaning against the doorjamb.

Seth? Seth was the one Chief had gotten to play nurse and bodyguard? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!

Seth’s punk-rock-meets-Victorian-poet-dying-of-consumption style no longer fazed me.

I had known him for too long for that. He’d leaned into his punk side today with a pair of ass-kicking boots, a studded belt and a strategically ripped muscle tee.

There was an illegally generous amount of lean, muscular bicep on display.

I bet he’d gotten quite a few looks on his way in.

He looked like the type to give law enforcement trouble rather than help us.

But you know what they say: don’t judge a book by its cover.

I had to admit, though, that sometimes I really wanted to get the cuffs on him and throw away the keys.

Seth strolled into the room like he owned the place, and in his hand was a bouquet of daisies. The sight of them immediately cheered me up. He set the daisies in the vase on the table before picking one and tucking it behind his ear.

Seth looked ridiculous. The white and yellow flower was a stark contrast to the black and metal outfit. Pulling up a chair to my bedside, Seth flopped down into it before reaching over to touch my wrist gently. He looked down at the wristband.

“Hazel Sarah Cooley,” he read.

“Sarah is fine.” That was what everyone I worked with called me since Hazel sounded too close to Hayes, and Mike and I were often together.

“It’s Hazel. Says so right there. Or do you prefer Hazy?”

“No. What type of nickname is that?”

“Aww.” He took the daisy from behind his ear and tucked it behind mine. “But what if I wanted to call you Hazy Daisy?”

Was this guy for real? He had no business giving me a nickname of any type.

And not just because he was him and I was me, but because, technically, Seth already had a live-in demon boyfriend.

Or was that a husband? I wasn’t sure I knew the correct terminology, but I knew that Liam considered Seth his mate.

I’d worked with monsters and shifters long enough to understand what that meant.

Seth was a total tease, and if I had to be honest, so was Liam, but they were not available.

So then why did the idea that Seth had given me a cutesy nickname make me all fuzzy inside? It must be magic. I didn’t trust it.

“Nope. No way. I’m not responding to that.”

“Sure you will, Hazy Daisy.”

“If you call me that again, imma smack you.”

The discharge nurse came in then, and it wasn’t long before I found myself being wheeled out of the hospital by one annoying wizard.