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I felt as if I was running a nursery. Court had been in session all morning, and Ovid now had four new children–real children, that is–who needed to be integrated into their new lives. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had all been part of one trial, but the four children were the result of three separate trials. Where four separate men had once been, there were now four children, ranging in ages from six to twelve. Two were boys and the other two were girls. Only one of the girls remembered who she had been before, and she wasn’t very happy. They never are at first.

I certainly wasn’t happy that fall day nearly a year before when I exchanged my life as a college student–a male college student–for the life of a wife, mother, and administrative assistant to Ovid’s most powerful individual–the Judge. Of course, now I wouldn’t trade back for anything. Even on tough mornings like this one, I really enjoyed my job. And I enjoyed being Cindy Patton, wife and mother of two–well two and a fraction–children. No matter that those two children had been fraternity brothers of mine. So was my husband for that matter. None of them remembered their previous lives, though. But the one growing inside me now would be a whole new person.

I experienced a warm glow just thinking about that as I sat down at my desk. Funny, but as a male, I never thought much about having children, and of course I never thought I’d be bearing one. Now, though, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It had to be the hormones.

I looked down at myself. Nothing showed yet. But the doctor had assured me that I was most certainly pregnant. Of course, it wasn’t all joy. At times, I was quite frightened about being pregnant. But I was assured by other women that it was natural. Besides, they reminded me, I had already had twins. If only they knew the truth–that I had never actually borne the twins in spite of what most people in Ovid remembered.

“Can we put a roadblock outside of town?” a woman’s voice muttered from behind me. “I don’t want one more speeder to defend for a month.”

Susan Jager plopped down in the chair in front of my desk. As the official Public Defender for those who appeared before the Judge, she had reason to be more tired than I did. The best she could hope for with her clients appearing before the Judge was a promise of a happy new life. In my experience, no one had ever left the Judge’s court as the same person who had entered. And in addition to the caseload the Judge gave her, she had her own clients as well. Besides, pregnant women get tired easily, and Susan was as pregnant as I was. A fine pair we made–two former men now on our way to being natural mothers.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” I laughed. “If Officer Mercer put up a roadblock, we’d probably just have another plane fall out of the sky.”

She sighed, “True. Is it my turn to buy lunch?”

“No, it’s mine!” a cheerful voice called out from nowhere. Then, with a pop, a willowy redhead was sitting on my desk, her short green skirt a perfect match for her bright green eyes.

“Hello, Diana,” I said calmly. I had seen too many similar entrances from the goddess Diana to be surprised at her dramatic entrance.

“Just Di today,” she explained with an Irish lilt in her voice. “Di Mooney. I thought I’d buy the two of you lunch before popping off to the old sod.”

“Business in Ireland?” Susan asked.

“Funny business,” she said with a grin. “His name is Sean. After the last few days, I need a vacation.”

I suspected most of the gods felt the same way. It had been a tense few days in Ovid. Now, though, the mood was much more relaxed after the events of the weekend. The Judge had been in a fine mood all week and planned to be gone for the next few days. Our session that morning–Tuesday–had been the last planned for the week. Most of the other deities had taken some time off as well, from what I had heard.

“And you just wanted to buy us lunch before you left,” I said. I knew, of course, that it wasn’t the only reason for her largesse.

“Well...” she began, pursing her beautiful lips, “I suppose I would like to hear the whole story before I go.”

“So would I for that matter,” Susan chimed in. “Vera over at March’s said something about it yesterday. I guess I missed all the excitement last weekend.”

“Yes, she was here for the story yesterday morning,” I explained. “In fact, just about every deity in town has been in for this story.” That was unusual, too. Most of the gods didn’t bother to come to me for the tales. I suppose after a few thousand years, tales of the Judge’s transformations were a little dull. Of course, Diana never seemed to tire of them.

“Shouldn’t we have lunch first?” I suggested coyly. “After all, Susan and I are both eating for two now.”

“Only if you’ll settle for fast food,” Diana answered, equally coy.

“But we go to the Greenhouse if you hear the story first?” I bargained.

“Sure.”

I smiled, relaxing into my trance-like state. “Okay, girls, here we go...”

There were times, I thought with a heavy sigh as I stared at my incoming basket, that I wished the life of a private detective was a little more like it was in the old Sam Spade movies. I tried to imagine myself in a wilted suit, my tie loose as I sat with my feet on the desk, tempted by the open bottle of bourbon in my lower desk drawer. Maybe there could be some brassy jazz playing in the background, drowning out the din of afternoon Los Angeles traffic two floors down on a warm summer day.

The only thing in the real world that matched my fantasy was that it was a warm summer day. In fact, it was hot and humid, but that was outside. In my office, it was cool and dry as the sound of the air conditioning hummed over the background music which sounded like the elevator music version of something ELO did back in the early eighties. Outside my window was Chicago, not Los Angeles, and even if the window hadn’t been sealed shut, I don’t know how much of the traffic noise I could hear on Wacker Drive some twenty stories down.

As for my attire, I wore a navy double-breasted blazer and charcoal gray slacks, and everything was neatly pressed and stylish, as befitted an associate of Charles McKenzie and Associates, one of Chicago’s premier private detective agencies. And there was certainly no bottle of bourbon in my desk drawer. If there were, I would probably have been fired in a heartbeat. That was okay, though, I was strictly a beer drinker, and never at work.

Actually, I wasn’t really the Same Spade type anyhow. One of the reasons I had gone with the McKenzie offer when I left the Chicago police force was that they specialized in business clients rather than the more tawdry divorce work of some of the other firms. Oh, we did a little divorce work, but most of our clients were the various law firms that populated the Loop–some of them in our building–and insurance companies.

Actually, our largest insurance client owned the building we were in. It was at One Wacker Drive. Although not as prestigious as some other buildings, it was a good address. It looked good on the business card. And from Charles McKenzie’s office, you could see most of the major buildings in the Loop. Even my humble office looked down on the Chicago River with a nice view of Marina Towers. And if I wanted that jazz music, House of Blues was just a few blocks away.

My only real complaint with the job was the paperwork. It was almost as bad as working as a cop. It seemed as if I sat behind the desk covering my butt (and the firm’s butt) with paper at least two hours for every hour I spent in the field.

“Jeff, do you have a minute?”

I looked up suddenly at the sound of Charles McKenzie’s voice. I hadn’t even heard him at the door. “Sure, Mac,” I replied, happy for any excuse to avoid paperwork. Besides, Mac was a good boss. He treated his associates more like human beings than many of the PI firms did–or so I had heard. That didn’t mean Mac was a soft touch. He could be hard as nails when he needed to be. Like most of us in the firm, he had come up through the ranks as a cop. More than one person had been fooled by his silver hair and fatherly appearance.

Mac eased into my office, followed by another man who I didn’t know. The stranger was about as tall as Mac and me–six-one or so–and looked to be just a shade into his forties. He was balding slightly and had the suntanned look of a man who spent time out of doors. His suit was dark and expensive, and looked rather lawyerly. If I had been a betting man, I would have bet that he was indeed a lawyer, and a successful one at that. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that his tan came from sailing his own boat on Lake Michigan.

“Jeff Riley, meet Franklin Ridgeway,” Mac said formally. I rose and took Ridgeway’s hand. “Mr. Ridgeway is an attorney.”

“The Franklin Ridgeway of Block, Patterson and Ridgeway?” I asked, knowing the answer. Surely there could only be one Franklin Ridgeway. The man whose hand I was shaking was one of the most prominent attorneys in Chicago. He had been involved in a number of high profile cases, and almost always on the winning side. He represented some of the top companies in Chicago.

“That’s right,” he acknowledged with a firm grip. We looked each other straight in the eye as we shook hands. Looking into his dark brown eyes was almost like looking into an abyss. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. If that’s the case, I thought Franklin Ridgeway’s soul had to be darker than the pit of Hell. But, of course, he was a lawyer.

I motioned to the two chairs before my desk. When we were seated, Mac began, “Mr. Ridgeway has an assignment he would like us to undertake.”

“I see,” I said as noncommittally as possible. I had assumed that was the case. He didn’t just come up to see the view from my window. The fact that the great Franklin Ridgeway had made the pilgrimage all the way over to our office from his lakefront offices meant that this assignment was going to be a doozy.

“Mr. Riley...”

“Jeff,” I interjected.

Ridgeway smiled. “Yes, Jeff then. I represent a group of investors with large international interests.”

“Who are they?” I asked bluntly. I saw Mac grimace. ‘Sorry, Mac,’ I thought, ‘but I like to know who’s holding the leash.’

Ridgeway didn’t miss a beat. He didn’t even blink. “I’m afraid the identity of my clients must remain confidential. I have been authorized to assure you though that they are not involved in any illegal activities, nor will they ask you to do so. I have a sworn affidavit on their behalf that verifies this.”

I settled back in my chair, striking what I hoped was a sceptical pose. “So what do your clients want?”

“One of their associates embezzled a large amount of money from them last year.”

“How large is large?” I asked.

“Thirty million dollars,” he replied without hesitation.

I nodded. “That certainly is a large amount of money.”

“And they want it back.”

“I’m sure they do,” I agreed. “But there’s more, isn’t there? Thirty million is enough to get Federal and state authorities on the case, even if he’s had a year to hide. Why involve a private investigator?”

“I told you he was sharp,” Mac said to Ridgeway with a proud smile.

“Yes,” Ridgeway agreed without real conviction. “I’m sure that’s why my clients specified Mr. Riley–Jeff–for this job.”

I was suddenly curious. “Your clients specified me specifically? Why? Do I know them?”

“No,” Ridgeway explained, shifting a little uncomfortably, as if he had been charged with explaining something he didn’t fully understand himself. “My clients are most insistent that you handle this matter for them. They didn’t explain why. I, of course, checked you out on my own. You had a promising career with the Police Department. You were a homicide detective.”

It wasn’t a question, but I said, “That’s right.”

“And yet you gave it all up when...”

“Right again,” I said, cutting him off. There were some subjects not open for discussion. That was one of them. He picked up on it and moved on.

“My clients have reason to believe that their associate fled and is currently residing in Oklahoma.”

I’m sure I gave a surprised look. Embezzlers with thirty million to throw around generally leave for some other part of the world–someplace where extradition is difficult if not impossible. Then they cover their tracks, bribe a few local officials, hire a private guard or two and live off the interest. Let me see, thirty million at eight percent a year is over two million. Most good embezzlers can live on that.

“Why Oklahoma?” I asked, genuinely curious for the first time.

“I honestly don’t know,” Ridgeway replied. When a lawyer says ‘honestly,’ look out. But for some reason, I believed him. He seemed as genuinely puzzled as I was. This case was beginning to sound interesting.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s say the embezzler is in Oklahoma. It’s a big place–too big for one private detective to find him. Why not just tell the authorities? At last check, there were plenty of law enforcement officers in Oklahoma.”

Ridgeway was becoming uncomfortable. Obviously, he had dangled big bucks in front of Mac, and so as the hired underling, I was supposed to smile and take orders. In the three years I had been in Mac’s company, I had never been that sort of person. Mac knew it, but obviously Ridgeway didn’t.

“Look, Jeff,” Ridgeway began with a sigh, “I don’t pretend to understand why my clients do the things they do. All I can tell you is that they are very successful, and they are legitimate. They seem to have insights that have made them wealthy beyond anything you can imagine. And yet they still manage to keep their names out of the newspapers. Now, there’s something in Oklahoma that they want handled, and they want you to handle it. Besides, the police haven’t found him in a year, according to my clients.”

“So I’m supposed to go charging off to Oklahoma and bring back their embezzler,” I surmised. Who did they think I was? The Lone Ranger?

Ridgeway shook his head. “No, you don’t have to bring him back. They just want you to finger him.”

“I thought you said he was an associate of theirs,” I pointed out. “Surely they know what he looks like.”

“He looks like this,” Ridgeway said, opening a file and passing a photo to me. It wasn’t a terribly good photo. It showed three men displaying the results of a day’s fishing. The man in the middle, the tallest, was circled. He looked a little like Tom Sellick with curly dark hair and a mustache, well trimmed, and an easy smile. I noticed he had the most fish, too. “But he may not look like that now.”

So he had invested in a makeover, I thought. Try a little plastic surgery here and there. Maybe shave off the mustache or grow a beard. Wear contacts to change his eye color. Still, he couldn’t change his height. He looked to be about six-two or so. He shouldn’t be that hard to find.

There was still something I wasn’t being told, but I could live with that. It was part of the challenge. Like most good detectives, I liked a good puzzle. Back in my homicide days, I had quite a reputation for putting together vague clues and coming up with a murderer. After a few successes, I seemed to get all the really hard cases. I even managed to solve a majority of them. Of course, there was an eventual cost, one that drove me from the force, but there was nothing I could do about that now.

So when I left the force, what else could I do but become a private cop? The Rileys had been cops ever since they had immigrated to Chicago back in the last century. It was in my blood. I just couldn’t be a homicide detective after...

“All you have to do is find him. Others will bring him back,” Ridgeway was explaining.

So okay, I was curious. In fact, I was more than curious. I was mystified. Our investigations did not come cheaply, and however much was being offered, it was enough to have Mac excited. My services had been specifically requested, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why. And all of this just to identify–identify; not detain–an embezzler who didn’t even have sense enough to leave the country.

“When do I start?” I asked, watching with faint amusement as both Mac and Ridgeway seemed to relax a little.

Ridgeway pulled a packet out of his folder. “You start today. There’s an American flight to Tulsa from O’Hare later this afternoon. We’ve made hotel reservations for you tonight in Tulsa. Then, tomorrow, you drive along the last known route of our embezzling friend. There’s a map in the packet of where you need to concentrate your search. My clients seem to be certain he’s somewhere in the area on that map.”

“How long do I have?” I asked, accepting the packet. I took a moment to look at the map. It was a detail of an area east of Tulsa and north of Muskogee. I had never been in that part of the country, but I at least recognized the names of those towns. My only real knowledge of that part of the country came from watching Twister.

“As long as you need,” he replied, rising to his feet. “A phone number is in the packet. You are to call it when you’ve identified our target.”

“Is it your phone number?” I asked.

That rated me a small smile. “No.”

Mac ushered him out while I inspected the packet. When Mac returned, he was still all smiles. “Great work, Jeff. You really impressed him, and Ridgeway doesn’t impress easily.”

“Neither do I,” I told him as he plopped back down into the chair he had vacated a short time before. “Something about this smells, Mac.”

He began to laugh. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Ridgeway might be a snake, but his record is clean.”

“He reminds me of Al Pacino in the Devil’s Advocate,” I muttered. “I’m surprised his suit doesn’t smell of brimstone. I tell you, Mac, something about this isn’t right.”

He got a little more serious as his body tensed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters, why hire us? This isn’t the type of case we would normally take on.”

“No,” Mac agreed, “but now I have the talent on staff to track someone down–you. After all, you are the cop who tracked down Louie Capella.”

I shifted uncomfortably. It was a matter I didn’t like to be reminded of. The look in Mac’s eyes told me he already regretted mentioning it to me. Still, I answered him. “Louie Capella was hiding out right here in Chicago. He and I grew up here. Finding him was like playing hide and seek in my old neighborhood. I knew all the good hiding places. The only thing I know about Oklahoma is that it’s north of Texas.”

“Eastern Oklahoma is a lot like downstate Illinois,” Mac explained. “It’s mostly low hills and farm land. The further east you go, the more hills and trees you see.”

“So how far east in Oklahoma am I supposed to go?” I asked, slumping down in my chair with resignation.

“About as far east as you can go it appears,” Mac answered with a smile. He knew I was intrigued with the case. He had seen me like this before.

“One question though, Mac: why Oklahoma?”

Mac frowned. “What do you mean?”

I leaned forward and said, “Look, suppose you stole thirty million dollars from somebody. Where would you go?”

Mac thought for a moment. The idea actually seemed to bring a little smile to his face. Well, we all have our little fantasies. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I’d probably try for South America. There are plenty of places to go there to avoid extradition.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “There are some other places in the Middle East, and there’s always Cuba and North Korea, but they aren’t exactly hospitable to Americans–even Americans with money. South America is where I would head, too. The point is I would get out of the country as quickly as possible.”

“Maybe this guy isn’t that bright,” Mac suggested.

I sneered and leaned back in my chair. “Come on, Mac. He was smart enough to steal thirty million dollars. Guys that smart don’t stick around, especially for a year. You’re acting as if he’s some kind of a moron who robs a convenience store, then leaves his wallet on the counter for the police to find.”

Mac looked a little uncomfortable. He saw where this was leading. “You don’t think there is any thirty million dollars.”

“What did they offer, Mac? A ten percent finder’s fee?”

Mac squirmed in his chair. “Eight percent,” he murmured softly.

“You should have held out for ten,” I told him. “Even at that, I hope there’s a minimum fee if no money is recovered, because I think that’s all we’re going to get.”

“There is,” Mac told me, “but why are you so sure there’s no money here?”

“Because the only way Ridgeway’s clients would be coming to us instead of pressing the authorities is if the money was dirty,” I explained confidently. “Ridgeway is too good a lawyer to get mixed up in dirty money. He doesn’t need to. His client list looks like the Who’s Who of Chicago. He may even know that there isn’t any money to be found. In fact, I suspect that’s the case. A year has gone by, so our friend has had plenty of time to hide the money. His clients aren’t after the money; they’re after the man. And whatever he did, it isn’t something they can count on the authorities to be concerned about.”

“Even if you’re right, we still get a good fee,” Mac pointed out. “I still expect you to go to Oklahoma.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” a said with a chuckle. “If for no other reason, I’m curious.”

“Well,” Mac said with a sigh as he rose to his feet, “be careful.”

“I always am,” I replied. “Don’t worry about that.”

After running home to pack, then fighting afternoon Chicago traffic, I barely made it to O’Hare in time to catch my plane. I was pleasantly surprised to see they had ponied up the first class fare, so I was to ride to the outback in style. A nice cold beer in hand as we reached cruising altitude, I managed to settle back and read the file on my embezzler–if that was what he was. Peter Allison had quite a résumé. He had picked up an MBA at Harvard after a liberal arts education at one of the name Eastern private schools and embarked on a career in mutual fund management. He hit the bricks running, and in his first two years, he became the most successful fund manager at Janus. He had opted three years ago to leave Janus and go to work for a private investment fund. I found it interesting that there was virtually no information about the private firm he went to work for. Apparently, his new employers valued their privacy above everything else.

Since many of the cases I had worked on since joining McKenzie had involved high finance, I was aware that this was fairly common. A hotshot fund manager would often opt to go to work for a private fund, usually getting a little piece of the action. A little piece could be worth several million in the bull market of the nineties that seemed to have no end.

So now our pal Allison was sitting on top of the world. He had no family and, unfortunately, there was very little in the file about his personal habits. I had a picture of a man who lived for his work, though. He made money. It was both his occupation and his hobby from all accounts.

The picture I was getting was not the picture of an embezzler. People embezzle because they can’t make enough to fund their dirty little habits legitimately. Drugs, gambling, women (or men) are the common reasons for embezzling. Allison didn’t seem to fit that profile. By all accounts, the guy made more money–both for himself and his clients–than he could ever need. Maybe he just snapped. Maybe the pressure got to be too much for him. But no, that would describe a man who would chuck it all and head for the beaches in Brazil. That isn’t what Allison had done.

And that brought me back to my earlier question: why Oklahoma? According to the file, Allison was a born and bred Bostonian. He had solid if not affluent New England credentials and absolutely nothing to connect him to Oklahoma.

Well, I thought to myself, I had always liked tough cases, particularly when it involved tracking someone down. I had certainly gotten what I liked. What was the old saying? Be careful what you wish for–you might get it? I had been handed a case where nothing made sense. Then I had to track down a man with only the knowledge that he had apparently taken an escape route into the farm country of Oklahoma. To make it worse, he had apparently disguised himself, possibly by plastic surgery. If I got this guy, I was going to treat myself to a case of imported beer and a vacation. Maybe I’d do some fishing. I hadn’t done that since... well, in a long time.

As the plane dropped down through the thick summer air, I got my first real glimpse of Oklahoma. Spread out below was a panorama of hills and trees I had not expected. Oh sure, there was plenty of farmland too, but I was used to the flat expanses of land around Chicago. This reminded me more of some of the hilly, forested areas in Wisconsin where I used to fish with...

With Mary.

I closed my eyes in resignation. As much as I tried to push memories of Mary–and Trisha–out of my head, I couldn’t do it. I could still hear Mary on that last fateful fishing trip. I had three whole days off and we had decided to enjoy them on a fishing trip in Wisconsin. I could still hear Mary squealing with delight as a slight tug on her line became a whir of line being let out as a big one ran with it. I could still hear little Trisha laughing with glee as Mary nearly fell overboard trying to reel the monster in. I could still hear our mutual groan as the line snapped, freeing our mysterious fish to fight another day...

I was brought back to the present as the wheels of the plane touched down in Tulsa. I looked around, hoping no one had seen the tears in my eyes.

Tulsa was hot. Sure, Chicago was hot in the summer–often hot and muggy. But Tulsa brought new meaning to the word ‘hot.’ As I stepped out on the curb to catch a shuttle to get to my rental car, I felt as if I had stepped into an oven. I had been smart enough to dress casually, but even without a tie, I felt like I was being cooked by the blistering Southwestern sun. The humidity was high too, causing me to marvel at how so many presumed natives were bustling about in coats and ties as if it were a cool spring day. I guess it’s whatever you get used to, I mused.

It was even hot the next morning when I started my pursuit of the contradictory Mr. Allison. I checked out a white Ford Taurus at Hertz and tried to get the lay of the land from the girl behind the rental desk. She shook her head when I showed her the map of the area I was heading for. “I’m from that part of the state,” she told me with her soft Oklahoma twang. “There’s not a whole lot out that way. It’s mostly farms, small towns and such.” Then she looked at me with her big brown eyes and asked, “You got some business out that way?”

“Yeah,” I said in my best Phillip Marlowe voice, “I gotta meet a guy out there–about business.”

She looked at me a little oddly. Oh well. She was only about twenty or so. Odds were she’d never even heard of Phillip Marlowe–or Humphrey Bogart for that matter. What was this world coming to?

An hour later, I was east of Tulsa off the interstate and cruising the back roads of Oklahoma. According to the map, my fugitive could be anywhere along this part of my route. The problem was there wasn’t anywhere to look, unless he was hiding under a pile of hay or in the middle of a cornfield. I hadn’t seen anything but farmland for the last twenty miles. My plan had been to check with local police departments–to see if anyone fitting Allison’s description had moved in over the last few months. A single city-type guy would stand out in a small town–even with plastic surgery. But there were no towns in sight, and many of the farmhouses I had seen were deserted. Apparently, like Illinois, the small family farm was disappearing as farmers cultivated more and more acres with less and less people.

It was odd. I hadn’t even seen a single billboard or a road sign. I assumed I was still on the right road, for I hadn’t seen any junctions indicating I had left my highway. The road was a good one–two lanes freshly black topped with a freshly painted yellow line down the center to warn against passing on the winding, hilly course.

Maybe hiding in a place like this wasn’t such a bad idea, I thought. There were hills and lakes galore, and not a lot of people. If you could find a cabin buried in the woods over by one of those lakes, you might be able to hide out in plain sight for quite a while. I doubted if any of the local residents would be very helpful to someone from the big city disrupting their privacy with a search for somebody who was just minding his own business. This might turn out to be tougher than I thought, I realized.

Just when I thought I was hopelessly lost, I saw a road sign. It wasn’t one of those green and white ones you see on the interstates. It was just a small sign white with black letters that proclaimed that Ovid was three miles away, presumably straight ahead.

I pulled off the road in front of the sign, searching for the Oklahoma map I had purchased at the airport to supplement the sketchy map the car rental companies give you. It was a current, highly detailed map, but I could find no Ovid in the index. I knew roughly where I had to be, but none of the roads in that area seemed to lead to a town called Ovid. Well, it was probably just a wide spot in the road, I thought to myself. I had seen places–towns up in the woods of Wisconsin–that were nothing more than a gas station that also served as a post office and grocery store. That was probably all there was to Ovid. Still, it was a starting place. I’d pull off there, get some gas and grab a Coke, and ask about my missing man. It was nearly noon, so maybe I’d get lucky and there’d be a little café there where I could get some lunch.

When I had travelled half the distance to Ovid, I realized that it was more than a wide spot in the road. In the distance, I could see evidence of a fair-sized town. I could see trees and houses, and church steeples rising out of the artificial forest all towns create. The road was widening, becoming four lanes in width as small roadside businesses began to come into view. Apparently, the mapmakers at Gousha had screwed up. I would have bet they had gotten a few nasty notes from the Ovid Chamber of Commerce.

But where the mapmakers had failed Ovid, the weatherman had smiled upon the town. It had been hot and muggy with a serious build-up of ugly clouds as I had left Tulsa, but those clouds seemed impotent in the little valley that held Ovid. It was almost as if they were barred from entry into the valley as they roiled and blustered just beyond the low hills near Ovid, leaving the small town basking in the bright light of a summer day.

I might have been born and raised in the city, but I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with small towns. Between my law-enforcement career and a passion for fishing which had often taken me to small towns in Illinois and Wisconsin, I knew small towns fairly well. Ovid was more prosperous than most of them. Everything seemed neat, clean and freshly painted, as if the town was getting ready for some big event.

Most small towns in the Midwest were in decline. Farming took and ever smaller percentage of the workforce, drying up markets for merchants in smaller communities. I had visited many small towns where half the businesses had been boarded up, or where buildings had burned down right in the middle of the business district and weeds or empty parking lots had taken their place. Not so in Ovid. As I made my way into the heart of the town, I saw a prosperous business district. Shop windows were full of goods, parking spaces were filled with newer cars and trucks, and the people walked about with a sense of purpose.

But upon closer observation, there was something odd about the people. Some of them–most, in fact–appeared strangely transparent. No, that wasn’t the right word. I couldn’t see through them. It was almost as if the mind couldn’t quite reconcile their existence with reality, if that makes any sense at all. It had to be a trick of the light, I thought to myself. After driving through the cloudy Oklahoma morning, perhaps the brightness of the Ovid day was playing tricks on my eyes.

With a little luck, I found what I was really looking for–the police station. First as a police officer and later as a private detective, I had learned that it was wise not to snoop in another jurisdiction without informing the authorities that I was there. It smoothed potentially ruffled feathers and often gave the local police a feeling that you were, if not part of their team, at least rooting for their side.

The Ovid Police Department made its home in City Hall. No big surprise there. In a smaller community, it was common for all city departments to be located in the same building. City Hall was fairly impressive for a small town, though. It was a two-story building faced with granite and sporting small but well-done Doric columns. The US flag hung next to the Oklahoma flags, rippling in the gentle summer breeze. There were well-tended flowers in front of the entrance. Once again, Ovid showed signs of remarkable prosperity.

As I stepped from the car, I was pleased to note that the breeze was actually a pleasant one. Oh sure, it was still hot out–as hot as I had expected. But it didn’t seem quite as muggy in Ovid. Perhaps the breeze had lowered the humidity a tad. In any case, it was comfortable.

I liked Ovid–that was my first thought as I stepped out of the car. The oak trees near City Hall were green and full and looked as if they had been there forever. The grass was green and soothing, smelling of a recent cutting. I could hear birds in the trees, gently singing to each other. What a change from the Loop! I found myself wondering where the best fishing spots might be.

“Can I help you?”

The voice was calm and pleasant, and completely unexpected. I turned suddenly, looking into the face of a police officer. He was tall and slender without being thin. His eyes were shielded by mirrored sunglasses, and the rest of his face was impassive in a way that only a police officer can manage. His gray-blue shirt was neatly pressed, as were his dark slacks. His nametag read ‘Mercer,’ and his gun belt looked almost even with his belt, but there was a sag at the holster allowing him to draw quickly if he need to. In short, he looked like a police-recruiting poster.

He was standing next to a police car. I hadn’t noticed it when I had pulled into the parking lot, but then again, I had been focused on the building. Still, I mentally kicked myself. I was usually more observant. How had I missed the car?

“I was just on my way in to your department,” I told the officer. I extended my hand. “I’m Jeff Riley. I’m a private investigator from Chicago.”

The moment of truth had arrived. How would this police officer treat me? As a contemporary? As a slime ball? It all depended upon the officer. He looked like a pro. Pros were usually willing to take you at face value. This one was no exception. Slowly but deliberately, he extended his hand.

What is the perfect handshake? I couldn’t have answered that question before I shook hands with Officer Mercer. His handshake was firm and warm, and there was something about it that made it sincere as well. He favored me with a small, tight smile. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Riley. I’m Officer Mercer. Now, what can I do for you?”

I reached in my shirt pocket and produced a picture of my fugitive. “I was hired to find this man,” I explained, handing him the picture.

“A bad one, is he?” Officer Mercer asked casually.

“Not real bad,” I replied. “Supposedly, he embezzled a large amount of money. The people who say he took it hired me to find him.”

I could feel Officer Mercer’s eyes bearing down on me. “You sound like you don’t think he took the money.”

I shrugged as casually as I could. “As I told you. I’m a private investigator. The agent who hired me has a reputation of being honest. But I’m not a police officer.”

“Any more,” Officer Mercer finished for me.

“That’s right.” No surprise there. It’s easy to spot a cop. I would have pegged Officer Mercer as a cop even if I had seen him in swim trunks at the beach.

He studied the picture. “A man like this would stand out in a crowd,” he observed.

“Yes he would,” I agreed. “He would have been through here some time during the last year. Have you seen him?”

“I don’t know anyone who looks like this,” Officer Mercer said carefully.

“It’s possible he doesn’t look like that,” I told him. He looked up at me suddenly with a quizzical expression. “He may be disguised,” I clarified, and Officer Mercer nodded.

“You’re welcome to check around,” he said at last, handing the picture back to me.

“That’s neighborly of you,” I nodded with a smile. “I’ll try not to step on any toes.”

“That would be a good idea,” he agreed. With that, he nodded, and walked into the City Hall building.

It was as much as I could reasonably hope for. I didn’t expect him to recognize the picture. That was have been too easy. But he had given me the opportunity to check around. That meant I could talk to motel clerks, gas station employees, and waitresses along the highway. If just one of them had spotted my guy and had any idea where he had been heading for, I might have a chance of finding him. That was the way it usually worked. It was always tedious, checking with everyone who might have seen your man, but it was all part of the job.

My first stop was a motel. I could kill two birds with one stone. I’d be busy the rest of the day checking with Ovid’s residents, so I might as well spend the evening. The best looking motel out on the business strip was a place called the Ovid Inn. It wasn’t fancy, but I hadn’t expected a Hilton.

The lobby of the Ovid Inn was as plain and simple as the rest of the place. The fanciest item in it was a sign resting on the worn registration desk that said ‘Z Proctor, Proprietor.’ Z Proctor was a thin fellow with even thinner hair, gray matching a small mustache. I was a little disappointed. I had hoped for one of the little weasely guys Bogart always ended up intimidating.

“Need a room?” he asked with the soft twang I had noticed from nearly everyone in Oklahoma.

“Sure do,” I replied, hoping I sounded sufficiently folksy.

He seemed to be sizing me up. “Some of the beds are pretty short. I’m not sure I got one long enough for you.”

“I’ll make do,” I assured him, pulling out a credit card and laying it on the counter.

He shrugged. “Okay, take number twenty-seven.” He slid the key across the counter, scooping up my credit card all in one swift motion that would have made a magician blink twice. “You let me know if the bed’s too short, though. I’ll see what I can do.”

“There is one thing you can do for me,” I said as casually as I could.

The guy brightened. Apparently he lived to serve. “What would that be?”

I pulled the picture out of my pocket. “Ever see this guy?”

He studied the picture for a moment before saying slowly, “No, don’t think so. Looks mighty tall. Friend of yours?”

“Let’s just say we have mutual business associates,” I replied, putting the picture away.

“Can’t help you there,” he said, shaking his head. “But you let me know about that bed, all right?”

Actually, I thought as I inspected the room, the bed was a little short, but it would do. The room was nothing special. I was neat and clean with cheap pine furniture and artwork that looked as if it had been left over from a starving artist’s sale. It would do, though. I’d only be in Ovid for a day or so, unless I got a lead that checked out.

I checked the TV schedule to see if there were any decent detective movies on. No such luck, though. I always enjoyed them even though they were so simplistic. I mean, I realize they only have a couple of hours to tell a story, but most detective work isn’t as clear cut as they show it in the movies. The detective always seems to stumble on just the right clue at just the right moment. Then, he takes a straight and obvious trail back to the killer. There are no loose ends, no hotshot lawyers to get him off on a technicality at the trial, and no bleeding heart politicians to rake him over the coals for doing his job.

I might spend weeks in this little backwater area of Oklahoma. I might show my picture of the runner a thousand times and not get one good lead. Or the next guy I talked to might lead me right to him. Oh well, I was on the clock. The agency would be paid for my work even if I turned up nothing. Our mysterious clients would have been better off going to the authorities.

I took a quick shower and got into a clean shirt and slacks. Even though the weather wasn’t as hot and sticky in Ovid as it had been in Tulsa, I needed the shower and the change. It was time to sample Ovid’s nightlife. No, I wasn’t a partying kind of guy. I just wanted to check out places my fugitive might have patronized. Maybe he stopped for a burger, or maybe he tried one of the local bars looking for a little female companionship. Either way, he might have left a trail.

Odds were good he would have stayed on the main highway strip. That cut down the number of places I needed to check. I was hungry anyhow, so I stopped off at Rusty’s Burger Barn just as the sun was going down. It was your typical small town fast food joint. I guess Ovid wasn’t important enough to rate a McDonald’s. Instead of golden arches and a nine gazillion served sign, the neon sign in the window of Rusty’s just said ‘Rusty’s Best Burgers.’

I stepped in the brightly-lit building and looked around. It was neat and clean and about fifteen years out of date, just like every other small town burger joint I had ever seen. There were a few customers eating, but I got the idea Ovid was the sort of place where you went home and had dinner with the family.

There was one thing that troubled me, though. Looking around, I noticed that many of the patrons had that same oddly transparent look I had noticed when I had first arrived in Ovid. I had chalked it up to a trick of the sunlight, but there was no sun now. I don’t mean I could see through those people; I couldn’t–not really. But there was this odd feeling that if I really concentrated hard, I could see objects behind them. I resolved to have my eyes checked when I got back to Chicago.

“Be right with you,” a perky young waitress called as I slid into a booth. She was young and brunette. I guessed her age at about nineteen or so. She was a little transparent as well, but seemed perfectly normal. It had to be my eyes.

I ordered a Rusty Burger and fries from Maxine–that was what her nametag said her name was. And I showed her the picture when she brought my food.

“I’m not sure,” she said uncertainly.

My heart quickened. ‘Not sure’ was better than ‘no.’

Then, I was doomed to disappointment as she shrugged and laughed, “We get a lot of people just passing through. I sometimes remember the cute ones, and he’s cute. I don’t think I remember him though. I know he’s not a regular.”

I had the same results everywhere I tried. There was no luck at any of the cafés or convenience stores or gas stations up and down the strip. At last, I was down to one last place: Randy Andy’s. Bars didn’t seem to do a thriving business in Ovid. Oh, there were a couple of little ones I had checked, but they were practically deserted. If this were Chicago, every little neighborhood bar would be doing a brisk evening business with factory workers and other working stiffs melting the heat of the day with a cold brew. Not so in Ovid, though.

Randy Andy’s was the only bar on the strip big enough to show up on radar. If my fugitive was the sort of guy who might be looking for the ladies, it was the most obvious place. I had saved it until last because it was the most promising. That might seem contradictory, but I was a stranger in town. If I showed up at Randy Andy’s early, I’d be met with suspicion by a group of patrons who were mostly sober and reserved. Late at night, only the serious drinkers would be left. Everybody was their friend as long as they agreed to buy a round of drinks.

There was nothing special about Randy Andy’s. In fact, it was a lot quieter than I had expected. It looked as if there had been a crowd earlier from the debris a sweet young redhead was cleaning up. She didn’t seem too happy about it either. A couple of guys were playing pool in back. They had an appreciative audience: two so-so looking twins who seemed more interested in the balls in their pants than the ones on the table. Other than that, there were a couple of what looked like regulars at the bar, hunched over their drinks while the ferret-like bartender pretended to wipe off the bar.

There were a couple of parties in the booths. They were all wearing bowling shirts and looked as if they had just come in to share a pitcher or two after their match. They were being served by a nice-looking waitress. She was even better looking than the redhead. She had long, dark hair and a body that was enough to make my mouth water, complete with full breasts and long, shapely legs. There was a tattoo of an eagle on one ankle, and it seemed to be in flight as she turned on her heels with a practiced move of a woman who is well aware that her every move is enough to make a grown man cry.

I had slipped into one of the booths and caught her eye. She smiled and headed my way, her short, tight red dress doing little to contain her curves. “What’ll it be?” she asked in a sultry, sexy voice.

“Whatever’s on tap,” I replied. She nodded and turned to get my beer. I might order several just to get a view of her wonderful ass wiggling back to the bar.

When she returned with my beer, I said, “Do you have a moment?”

Her eyes drilled into me. I could see what she was thinking: just another perv who wants to make time with the waitress.

“It’s nothing like that,” I told her. “I just need some information.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Like what’s my name?”

“It’s Sly,” I replied, surprising her. “I heard the bartender call you that when you got my beer,” I then explained.

“Look, I’m the only experienced waitress here tonight and the Borland twins and their dates,” she motioned to the group at the pool table with a nod of her head, “are getting a little low on beer.”

“I don’t think beer is on their minds right now,” I commented.

Sly turned and looked at them. The mating dance was nearly done. One of the guys had just run the table and was getting a congratulatory hand in his pants as a reward. The loser was being consoled in a similar manner. She grinned. “Maybe you’re right. Okay, it’s a little slow right now anyway. Besides, Misty can handle orders for a while,” she said, nodding at the redhead. She sat down across from me. “Now what did you want to know?”

I wanted to know a lot of things, like if she was in a relationship, but I had a job to do. I pulled out the picture, wondering how many times I’d have to show it. “Have you seen this guy?”

She looked at the picture. I could see in a moment that she had seen him before. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. The first day and I might have a lead. I kept quiet. I could see she was deciding how to answer me. Finally, she said slowly, “I don’t think so.”

Her voice lied, but her eyes told the truth. What was she hiding? “Are you sure?” I asked.

She looked up at me suddenly. “Look, who are you? You’re with them, aren’t you? You know I want nothing to do with you or your people. Haven’t I made that clear to you? I’m happy here. I’ve got a life. I don’t just do this; I write books–children’s books. And...”

“Wait a minute,” I said, holding up my hand. “Slow down. Who are ‘them?’ I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve already talked to your police, so I’m not doing anything wrong here.”

If I thought she had looked surprised before, I was wrong. Now she looked surprised, her eyes and mouth wide. “You’ve talked to the police? To Officer Mercer?”

“Of course,” I confirmed. “I’m looking for a man who stole from my client. Here.” I pulled out my ID and showed it to her. She looked at my PI license and then at me. “Now, have you seen this guy?”

She thought for another moment before answering, “Yes. He was in here maybe a week or so ago.”

A week ago? But Ridgeway had said the money was taken last year. And he had indicated that the embezzler had changed his appearance. Now, this woman was telling me that he had been in the bar only a week ago with his original face.

I looked into her beautiful eyes. “Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she replied angrily. “You think just because I’m a waitress in a bar that I’m some kind of a ditz?”

“Of course not,” I assured her carefully. Of course, from experience, most waitresses I had met in bars like Randy Andy’s weren’t exactly rocket scientists, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. Besides, she was right, I had to admit. I had been thinking of her as the average cocktail waitress, and that was a mistake. Even in the short time I had talked to her, I should have realized there was more to her than met the eye. Hadn’t she said that she wrote books–children’s books? I was a little rusty at this sort of an interview. I wouldn’t have made the mistake of stereotyping her if I were still with Homicide. “It’s just that I was given to understand that he might have disguised himself before then.”

She studied me with a practiced eye before saying, “You know, Mr. Riley, your client may have withheld a lot of information from you.”

I shifted uncomfortably. I had been thinking the same thing.

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” she continued. “First, are you happy with your life?”

What a strange question. Was I? No, not really. I hadn’t been happy since...

“Are you?” she pressed.

“It’s all right,” I answered a little defensively.

“That probably means no,” she observed sagely. “But you need to know that Ovid is... different. If you stay around very long, you’ll find that out. But if you are happy with your life, you need to go out to your car right now and drive out of this town and don’t look back.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked. “Is this guy still here in town? Is he dangerous or something?”

“He’s probably here,” she replied. “I don’t know where, but I do know he’s probably still here. And I doubt if he’s dangerous. The Judge wouldn’t allow that. But you’ll find out all about that if you stay here.”

“The Judge?” I asked. “Who is the Judge?”

“Hey, Sly, Jean and Tina are thirsty,” one of the pool players called. “So are we. You can make nice with that guy later. Bring us another round.”

She looked over at the foursome with an expression of mild disgust. “I have to go,” she told me. “That’s all I can say for now. As for the Judge, he’s... well, he’s the Judge.”

As she got up, I touched her arm. “One more question for you, Sly,” I said, not really sure why I was saying it.

“Make it quick.”

“Are you happy?”

A slow smile crept across her face. “Yes, Mr. Riley, I’m happy. In fact, I’ve never been happier in my life.”

I finished the beer and left. At least I knew my runner had lit in Ovid. Now, I had to be careful. It was like when I was fishing. Once you saw there was a fish near the hook, you always had to be careful not to jerk the line. I had to become more circumspect in my questioning. Too many questions would startle my prey. As I drove back to the motel, I mapped out a plan of action. I’d go back to the police the next day. That Officer Mercer had said he hadn’t seen my fugitive, but maybe someone else in the department had seen him. Or maybe Officer Mercer was covering for him. A very small amount of that thirty million dollars might look like a lot of money in a policeman’s pocket. Oklahoma cops might make a lot more money than South American cops, but they could be bribed, too. Maybe my Mr. Allison hadn’t been so stupid after all. He managed to find a hiding place where he didn’t have to speak Spanish.

I admitted to myself that it was highly unlikely that Officer Mercer was on the take. He looked like the sort of officer who would rather die than break the rules. Still, if you’re going to be a detective, you have to consider all the possibilities. Of course, what happened next was a possibility I would never have considered.

I got out of the car still thinking about what to do next when I heard him. I had let down my guard, and before I knew what was happening, it was too late. His foot scuffed on the blacktop of the parking lot, but as I turned around to confront him, I was stopped by the feel of a gun placed in my back.

“Well, well, this is gonna be easier than I thought,” a gravelly voice muttered softly. I recognized it in an instant. It was Little Georgie Monello, top hit man for the Capella family. I was in big trouble. It was times like this that I wished I still carried a gun.

“Still not packing, huh?” Georgie asked me, almost as if he were reading my thoughts as he did a perfunctory pat down.

“Never needed one before,” I muttered, still facing away from him with my hands up. “How you been, Georgie?”

“Better than you,” he remarked. “Now get back in your car, and make it slow. I’ll be right behind you.”

I know in the movies, the baddie always slides into the seat next to his victim. Why? I guess it makes a better camera shot. Georgie wasn’t posing for any pictures. He knew how to do his job. If he stayed behind me, I’d never know if he wasn’t alert. He could blow me away in a heartbeat.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Someplace quiet,” he answered. “Head south–out of town.”

Ever since I had taken out Louie Capella, I had known I would be on the Capella hit list. It didn’t matter, though. I didn’t have much to live for. But I hadn’t expected this. Augie Capella had taken over when Louie bought it. He was Louie’s cousin, not his brother, so his blood didn’t run as hot when it came to revenge. Some folks said he was just cautious; other said he was a coward. Whatever the reason, his guys had stayed away from me.

But that was in Chicago, I realized mentally kicking myself. Sure, it made sense now, I thought as the town of Ovid disappeared in the darkness behind us. In Chicago, I still had friends on the force. If Augie wasted me there, they’d be all over him like stink on shit. Not so in Oklahoma. And I doubted if the local authorities in Ovid had had much experience dealing with organized crime. I’d be just one more unsolved murder, and by the time the Chicago authorities looked into the case–if they bothered to do so–the trail would be cold and any evidence compromised.

“How did you find me, Georgie?” I asked as calmly as I could. I didn’t expect to live through the evening, but I didn’t want to go to my grave without a few answers.

“Somebody ratted on you,” he laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “We’ve been waiting for this chance. That’s the thing about Augie. He’s real patient. He’s not like Louie.”

“No,” I agreed, unable to resist the barb. “That’s because Louie’s dead.”

“You can give him my regards in a few minutes,” Georgie growled.

That was no surprise. I didn’t think he was taking me out to the country for a little moonlight stroll. No, Georgie was here to finish what Louie had started. I was a dead man.

“This’ll do,” Georgie said when we had driven down to the edge of a river along a deserted farm road. “Stop and get out–slowly.”

If there had been a chance, I would have taken it. Georgie was a pro, though. God only knew how many guys he had taken out, but he had always been smart enough to cover his tracks.

“Turn around,” he ordered. I did. He was a good fifteen feet from me, an ugly silenced pistol in his gloved hand. Like I said, Georgie was a pro.

“Throw me a bone,” I said, stalling for time. “Who ratted me out?”

Georgie just grinned. “That’s not my department. Besides, I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. So long, Riley.”

He was going to pull the trigger, I realized with a sinking feeling. Well, as I said, he was a pro. There was no way he was going to prolong this. This was just a job. I wasn’t a human being; I was an assignment. I braced myself for the inevitable pain. Knowing Georgie, he’d shoot wherever it hurt the most.

“Freeze!” a somehow familiar voice boomed from a short distance away.

Georgie didn’t freeze. He turned quicker than I could have ever imagined, ready to fire at the voice. As I said, Georgie was a pro. But Georgie wasn’t fast enough. I caught the muzzle flash of a weapon in the darkness. Georgie screamed as his gun went flying from his hand. There was no blood. The stranger had shot the gun right out of his hand, hitting only the weapon.

I know, that happens in the movies all the time. In real life, though, shooting a gun out of someone’s hand is just about the most difficult–and stupidest–thing I could ever imagine doing. Every rookie officer is told to shoot for the money. Go for the torso. It’s the biggest target. A shot anywhere will at least slow the assailant down, so go for the biggest target. Even if you did manage to shoot the gun out of someone’s hand, doing it cleanly, hitting only the gun, would take superhuman skill–or blind luck. For some reason, I was betting on skill. Why? Because the shooter fired only once, as if he knew exactly where the shot was going to go.

Georgie was alternately cursing and crying, rubbing his stinging hand with his good one. He made no move to pick his weapon up from the ground. I think he realized that the only way that shot had been lucky was because his assailant hadn’t nailed him right between the eyes–which he richly deserved.

I wasn’t surprised to see Officer Mercer walking toward us. What I was surprised to see was that his cruiser was only a hundred feet or so down the road behind us. I hadn’t even hear him drive up. Had he followed us, his lights off? I didn’t think so. I had looked back in the mirror a number of times, and the white cruiser would have been visible behind us even on a moonless night like that night. He had to be sitting there, waiting. Didn’t he?

“Are you all right?” he asked me in his calm voice.

I nodded. “Thanks to you. Where did you pick us up? I didn’t even see you behind us.”

He didn’t bother to answer me, but I wasn’t offended. He had his eyes on Georgie. With his gun, he motioned Georgie to the caged back seat of his cruiser. “Follow me in,” he told me.

The drive back into Ovid was much more pleasant than the drive out. And it gave me time to think. I had been ratted out by somebody, but who? Well, it had to be either my firm or their client. No one else knew where I was. But why would my client rat me out? Or why would my firm do it?

Maybe the whole thing had been a setup. Maybe Augie Capella was Ridgeway’s mysterious client. That would make sense. It would mean there was no missing thirty million dollars. It would mean it was all just a ruse to get me out of town. But no, that didn’t sound right. Ridgeway was clever enough to think of that, but he had a reputation of being clean. I couldn’t see him dirtying his hands to set up an ambush for an ex-cop. Besides, he had no known connections to the Capellas, or any other organized crime figures for that matter. And frankly, Augie wasn’t smart enough to come up with a plot like that. None of his lieutenants were bright enough to think of it either. My late mother’s vegetable garden had a higher IQ than Augie’s entire gang.

So maybe it was somebody in my own firm, I thought grimly. Maybe there was a secretary who owed a lot of money. Selling me out might be their ticket to solvency. But no, I doubted that. Mac was too careful in his hiring practices. And most of his people had been with him for years. He paid them well and they gave him loyalty in return.

Maybe Officer Mercer could get Georgie to tell him more than he’d told me. But I doubted it. If Georgie had known who had sold me out, he would have told me. After all, he had a gun trained on me. Georgie would have found it fitting to tell me who had betrayed me just before he pulled the trigger. Talk about adding insult to injury.

To my surprise, Georgie was a good boy when he got out of the car at City Hall. He seemed almost in a trance as he shuffled ahead of Officer Mercer. No one was on duty in the police station that occupied a small wing of the City Hall building. As Officer Mercer locked the cell door, I asked him, “Do you mind if I ask him a few questions?”

He shook his head. “Not now. I had to sedate him. He’ll be asleep in a minute.”

“Oh,” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment. “Did he say anything in the car.”

Officer Mercer just shrugged. “Nothing important. The Judge will see him in court at nine tomorrow. You need to be there, too.”

I smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Then I put out my hand to him. As he shook it, I said, “Thanks again. You saved my life.”

“Yes,” he replied. It’s difficult to be ironic with just one word, but somehow he managed. I got the odd feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling me. Well, it would have to wait for morning.

I wanted to be done with Georgie as quickly as possible. Then I could get back to my assignment. By tomorrow afternoon, word of this would be all over town. If Allison put two and two together, he’d be out of town before I could find him. But in spite of that, I wanted to be in that courtroom. There was nothing I wanted more than to see Little Georgie go down.

I had packed one sport coat and tie just in case I had to appear in court somewhere on the trip. It happens to private investigators with some regularity. So it was a well-groomed Jeff Riley who stepped into the Ovid courtroom at a quarter until nine the next morning. No trial was in session, and the only two people in the room were two very attractive young women. One was blonde and the other brunette. Both wore conservative outfits–women’s suits with silky blouses. The blonde wore dark blue and the brunette a pinstriped gray, but neither outfit did anything to detract from their looks.

The brunette turned to face me. “Hi,” she said to me with a slight smile as she extended a feminine hand. I took it. For a woman, she had a firm handshake. I liked that. “I’m Susan Jager. I’ll be your attorney today, Mr. Riley.”

“My attorney?” I repeated stupidly. “I wasn’t aware I needed an attorney.”

“Oh!” she replied carefully. “It seems Officer Mercer charged you with disturbing the peace last night. Don’t worry, it’s just a minor charge. I’m sure we can clear it up in no time.”

“I thought I was to be here for Little Georgie’s arraignment.”

She looked puzzled. “Little Georgie? Oh, you mean Mr. Monello. You’re correct. The Judge will see him first. Just have a seat with me at the defense table. The Judge will be here any minute and he doesn’t like people moving around in the room once court has begun.”

The blonde had already wordlessly taken a seat in the visitor’s gallery. As instructed, I plopped down next to Susan just in time to see Officer Mercer enter the room and intone, “All rise.”

As we rose, I saw Little Georgie enter the room and stand before the bench. He seemed to still be in a trance as he shuffled toward the bench without so much as a single guard. When he was in place and we were on our feet, Officer Mercer continued, “The Municipal Court of the City of Ovid, Oklahoma, is now in session, the Honorable Judge presiding.”

That was different, I thought. Back home, he would have announced the name of the judge instead of just the title. There was no nameplate on the bench either. It seemed I was about to appear before a nameless magistrate.

The Judge was reasonably impressive in his crisp black robe. If there were recruiting posters for judges, this one could be on one, I thought. He looked to be middle-aged with just a touch of gray in is neatly-trimmed brown hair and beard. He was fit although not thin, and his gold-rimmed glasses did nothing to soften a pair of steel blue eyes that seemed to miss nothing in the room. “You may be seated,” he ordered in a voice obviously used to the responsibilities of command.

Suddenly, Little Georgie seemed to come out of his trance. He looked around suspiciously, muttering, “What the fuck?”

“Mr. Monello!” the Judge boomed, causing the little man to jump. “I will not tolerate such language in my courtroom. Is that understood?”

This wasn’t the first time Georgie had appeared before a judge. He knew the drill. It didn’t do any good to be defiant. If you looked abject enough, a judge might cut you a little slack. Georgie looked down respectfully and replied, “Yes, Your Honor.” He continued to look furtively about the room, though, as if unsure how he had managed to wind up in a courtroom.

“George Monello,” the Judge began, “you have been charged with illegal possession of a firearm, kidnapping, attempted murder, and resisting arrest in our jurisdiction. How do you plead?”

“Uh... Your Honor, this is all a misunderstanding,” Georgie began nervously. “And is that dame over there my lawyer? I need a lawyer before I plead.”

“That is Mr. Riley’s attorney,” the Judge explained patiently. “You are not entitled to defense counsel.”

Georgie’s mouth dropped open. “Not entitled? What kind of a court is this anyway?”

“It is the Municipal Court of the City of Ovid,” the Judge replied, making it sound as if he had just announced that it was the Supreme Court of the United States. “I think you will find it is a fair court, quite unlike the ones you have been in before. Here, the rights and concerns of the victims take precedence. It is unlikely that the fourteen murders you have committed for your employers would have been dealt with so lightly here.”

Georgie’s face became the color of ash. “I... I’ve never been convicted of anything. I was only up on three murder raps and beat ’em all.”

“Yes,” the Judge agreed, “but there were others as well. What about the murders of Mr. Riley’s wife and little daughter?”

Now it was my turn to have my mouth fall open in stunned silence. I had never suspected that it was Georgie who had killed them. When I caught up with Louie Capella, he told me it was Ozzie who did it. And Ozzie had been shot by a rival gang just a week before I found Louie. That son of a bitch! He had lied to me, just to get one last laugh at me before...

“No, Mr. Monello, you will find that justice in Ovid is both swift and appropriate. Since you like death so much, you will be forever associated with it. You are guilty of more than most men could ever imagine, and for your crimes, you will pay now.” He began to chant in something that sounded almost like the Latin I remembered hearing when some of the priests still used it liberally, but it wasn’t their form of Latin. This was a rich, almost musical tongue, and there was power in the words.

“No... I...” Georgie managed to say before his voice was replaced by a raspy cry. It was as if he had suddenly forgotten how to speak. His eyes were wide and frightened, and his entire body seemed to be shifting.

I looked in helpless fascination as Georgie’s form began to shimmer and finally change. He was becoming smaller, and his skin was becoming darker until it was as black as coal. His clothing simply ceased to exist as his arms began to flap aimlessly, suddenly expanding and covered with a coating of feathers. His unintelligible screams of shock and rage became a shrill “caw” as his head became smaller and his lips pushed forward into a dull, dark beak. What had been a man only moments before was now a large and very frightened crow.

Without a word, Officer Mercer stepped over to the new bird, clutching him carefully and carrying him out of the courtroom.

I looked around at my attorney. She seemed unperturbed by what had just happened, concentrating instead on a thin file in front of her. The blonde in the visitor’s gallery also seemed unconcerned, as if this sort of thing happened every day. I couldn’t deny that justice had been served. Little Georgie was bad news. If anything, the Judge had let him off lightly. Being a bird was more than he deserved. I hoped he was road kill before the end of the day.

The Judge seemed to be reading my mind. “You think Mr. Monello deserved worse?”

“He’s still alive,” I replied, rising to face the Judge. “That’s more than can be said for his victims.” Including my family.

“Yes,” the Judge agreed, “but his life will be unpleasant and short. He remembers who and what he was. Now, though, he is just a crow–an eater of carrion no less. He is not a particularly large one at that. His unfamiliarity with his new existence will probably assure him a very short life and a particularly nasty end. Crows have many predators, you know.”

I imagined he was right about that.

“Now, Mr. Riley, since you have been good enough to stand before the bench, it is your turn.”

“Your Honor,” I began uncomfortably, “I’m not aware of any crime I have committed here. I had Officer Mercer’s permission to conduct my investigation in Ovid.”

Was I frightened? Of course I was. I had just watched a man change into a bird. What was my fate to be? I was standing before a... being (for I was certain he was not really a man) with powers I had never imagined existed. People weren’t changed into crows in the real world, and the real world was all I knew.

“Yes, you did have permission,” he agreed. “But did you have permission to commit murder?”

“Murder?”

“Do you deny that you have murdered men?”

I gulped uncomfortably as I vainly tried to gather my wits. It was my attorney who jumped to my rescue. “Your Honor,” she pleaded, “may I have a moment with my client?”

The Judge nodded without comment. Susan Jager motioned me to the defense table and leaned over to me as I sat down. “Mr. Riley, the answers you give now will determine your fate forever.”

“You mean he might change me into a bird, too?” I ventured nervously.

She nodded. “Or worse. Look, I’ve represented many people before many courts. You seem to be a decent man. Most judges will give you points for being honest. The Judge here is no exception. Tell the truth. Odds are he knows it anyhow. Now, did you kill anyone?”

“Yes,” I said with a sigh, “but I was exonerated by a police review board. They ruled it was self-defense.”

Her pretty blue eyes seemed to bore all the way to my soul as she asked, “Was it self-defense?”

After a moment’s reflection, I replied, “No.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Just tell the truth, Mr. Riley. There may be a chance for you if you do.”

“Are you ready to continue?” the Judge asked impatiently.

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said, motioning for me to stand once more before the Judge.

“Well, Mr. Riley,” the Judge said, “are you ready to answer the question? Have you murdered men?”

“Yes,” I admitted, my voice shaking.

“Your Honor,” my attorney chimed in, “perhaps we should see the circumstances of these ‘murders’.”

The Judge was thoughtful. “That might be in order. I, too, am curious as to the circumstances. Let us proceed.”

I felt no movement, but suddenly the world had changed. I was no longer in a courtroom. Instead, I was standing near the edge of a lake in a flat, open area surrounded by trees. I looked down at myself. I was wearing a light flannel shirt against the growing chill of the spring air, and jeans. I was dressed the same way I had been dressed the day... Oh no!

“Boat all ready?” a musical, feminine voice asked.

I turned. It was Mary. Oh God, it was Mary! I wanted to cry and enfold her in my arms and tell her how much I had missed her, but I couldn’t. I was reliving that terrible day and there was nothing I could do differently. I realized that when I said, “Yeah, I think so. Watch it while I back the car down.”

“No, I’ll get it,” she offered.

As she turned and headed toward our aging Pontiac, I could see Trish already in the back seat. “Hi, Daddy!” she called, the happy smile of a six-year-old on her face as she pushed her bright blonde hair back. I wanted more desperately than anything else in the world to scream at her to get out of that car. I wanted to reach out and grab Mary before she opened the car door. But I couldn’t. I was nothing more than an observer in my own body.

“Hi, Pumpkin!” I called back happily, but knowing in my trapped mind that these would be the last words she ever heard me say to her.

I know in reality that what happened next took only a few seconds–a minute at the most. I watched in silent horror as Mary strode purposefully to the car stepped in, closed the door, and started the engine. One second, she was there, ready to back the car down to hitch the boat trailer up. The next second, the world exploded into a ball of flame as my ears hurt, both from the sound of the explosion and the intensity of my scream.

Thankfully, that world melted away. The light of day was exchanged for the dim artificial light of a rundown warehouse. Shark Petrillo, bodyguard to Louie Capella lay motionless in a pool of his own blood. His boss, Louie himself stood quaking only a few feet away.

“Time to pay, Louie,” I said quietly, my Police Special lined up right between his eyes.

“You... you’re not going to shoot me in cold blood, are you?”

“Like you killed my family?”

“I told you, it was a mistake,” Louie whined. “You were supposed to be driving. You always backed the car up yourself. It was Ozzie’s fault. Your family wasn’t supposed to get hurt.”

“Well, they did,” I growled. “They got hurt real bad. They got hurt all the way dead. I’m gonna give you more of a chance than you gave them.” My eyes dropped to Shark’s gun, lying practically at Louie’s feet where Shark had dropped it when I nailed him.

Louie’s eyes were wide. “You can’t be serious. I could never get to it before you shot me.”

“Do it or I’ll shoot you where you stand,” I said resolutely.

It took him a few seconds to work up the courage, but Louie complied. He knew from the look in my eyes that I meant every word I had said. He dropped for the gun. I even let him get his hands on it. I wanted it to look like self-defense. I didn’t plan to be off the force and have what little life I had left ruined by a murder rap. The second he gripped the gun, I emptied the rest of my clip in him. I watched in grim satisfaction as he shook with each impact. My thoughts were on Mary and Trish when his body finally stopped moving...

There was silence. I looked up into the stern face of the Judge. How had he done that? It was as if I had been hurled back in time to repeat the worst moments of my life, and now I was to pay for my indulgences.

“And did you continue your career as a police officer?” the Judge asked me, not without sympathy.

I shook my head. “No, not for very long anyway. After the Review Board, I resigned.”

“Why?”

I was silent for a moment; then replied, “I swore to uphold the law. I began to realize that I had broken that oath.”

“But when you killed Mr. Capella, you were killing a murderer,” the Judge reasoned. “Surely you realized that.”

“I did,” I admitted, “but let’s just say it wasn’t my style. I found a part of myself I never wanted to see again. I was afraid if I took the law into my own hands once, I might do it again. That’s why I no longer even carry a gun.”

“An interesting story, Mr. Riley. However, this crime is not what you are charged with today,” the Judge explained. He turned to Officer Mercer. “What is Mr. Riley charged with today?”

“Disturbing the peace,” Officer Mercer replied.

If I hadn’t been so frightened, I would have laughed. Disturbing the peace? Was that all he could come up with? I didn’t laugh, though. Whatever charge he would have come up with would have been merely an excuse for whatever they intended to do with me. I wondered how road kill tasted. Georgie already knew by now, and it seemed my turn was coming.

“Your Honor,” Susan said, coming to her feet, “I would suggest that given the circumstances, the charges against my client be dropped and he be set free–with of course his memories of these proceedings erased.”

The Judge studied me carefully for a moment. I could feel his eyes staring at me. It was as if they were penetrating to the center of my very being. Who was this Judge? Who could have such powers?

“You’ve been charged with disturbing the peace,” the Judge intoned, trying to make the charge sound significant as he broke the silence. “I find you guilty.”

I braced myself. The Judge was muttering in Latin again. Whatever he had planned for me was about to happen. There was a tingling sensation that seemed to go through my entire body. With effort, I looked down at myself. I was becoming smaller and the skin on my hands was becoming darker. I waited in fear for my arms to become wings and for feathers to sprout from my skin, but it didn’t happen. Instead, my skin changed to a dark brown, and my hands were smaller and my fingernails were suddenly long and painted a dark red. I felt something tickling my neck and used my changed fingers to reach back and pull forward a strand of long, soft hair the color of night.

I gasped as two mounds pushed forward from my chest and the weight between my legs was suddenly replaced by an unnatural emptiness. I could feel my entire body rearranging itself. The process was not painful or even unpleasant, but it was strange and unsettling. Even my clothes were not immune to the change. I felt my ankles suddenly moved about, as if my heels were now higher than my toes. A look down told me that I now wore women’s pumps, brown with about a two-inch heel. They were plainly visible now since my pants had altered to form a short tan skirt. Where the skirt ended, long dark brown legs encased in nylon were visible. My sport coat was still a coat, but it was tan like my skirt and feminine in cut. My tie was gone, changed into something that felt like a necklace over a white silky blouse.

“Oh god!” I nearly screamed, surprised to hear a voice that was husky but obviously feminine.

“Ms. Patton,” the Judge said, gesturing to the blonde in the gallery, “would you please show Ms. Hazleton to her new office?”

I was shaking when the blonde gently took my arm. “Come with me,” she urged, barely above a whisper. “I’ll explain what I can in a few minutes.”

I followed her nervously, unsure of how to walk in the heels. Ms. Patton seemed to understand the problem and walked slowly, waiting for me at the entrance to the courtroom.

No! This couldn’t happen. I had to regain my true body. I turned quickly to face the Judge again, but to my surprise, he was gone. The courtroom was now empty, except for my attorney. “Susan, I...” I began, really hearing for the first time my new voice. It was a little husky with a soft southern accent. It was the voice of a black woman.

Susan gave me a thin smile. “Go on with Cindy. We’ll talk later.”

There seemed to be no other course of action to take. I turned back to my guide and didn’t resist as she gently took me by the arm. She did it not only to guide me in the right direction but to steady me in my new heels as well.

I felt as if I was walking in a dream–a nightmare, really. I was a woman. I could feel the sway of my hips with each step, the jiggle of my breasts, and the bouncing of my longer hair. And it felt as if I was walking on tiptoe, carefully placing each step almost in front of the other due to the natural motion in my hips. The air was cool on my exposed legs. How could this possibly be happening?

There was another factor as well, I thought as we walked down the corridor. I was black. Now, I’ve never considered myself to be prejudiced. I mean, working with the Chicago Police, some of the finest officers I knew were black. I had had black supervisors and black partners and I knew them to be police officers first and whatever else they were second. But like most whites on the force, I had associated on my own time mostly with other whites. Mary and I had lived in a mostly white neighborhood, and all of our good friends were white.

Now, I was not only a woman, but I was a black woman. I didn’t know how to be black or how to be a woman. My only chance was to get changed back into myself, but even at this early point in my transformation, I suspected that the chances of getting that done were slim at best. Whatever power had done this to me hadn’t done it just to change me back again whenever I chose.

“It’s difficult at first,” my guide–Susan had called her Cindy–told me, almost as if she had read my mind. “But you’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” I mumbled as I watched city employees rushing to and fro down the halls on various errands. Some, like Cindy and me, were real. Others–most really–had that faint transparent appearance.

“Take my advice,” Cindy said quietly as she led me into an unoccupied office, “just try to be who you’ve become. You’ll find it’s not bad at all. And this is who you’ll be for the rest of your life.”

She was pointing to a brass nameplate on a large secretarial desk. The name on the nameplate was ‘Wanda Hazleton.’

“Wanda?”

“Yes,” Cindy told me. “You’re now Wanda Hazleton. Look, you’re lucky. Most people wander around for hours after their transformation just trying to find out who they are and where they’re supposed to go. You’re getting the royal treatment.”

“Most people?” I asked. “Are there others like me?”

Cindy laughed, “Honey, we’re all like you. Everyone you see in Ovid–except the shades of course–used to be someone else. That’s how Ovid works. You’re the administrative assistant for Mr. Hanes, the City Manager. That’s why the Judge wanted me to bring you down here myself. Mr. Hanes is a little... difficult to work with. He’s a very private person.”

That surprised me. City managers were usually very public people. Their job demanded it. I was familiar with the City Manger form of government. Some of the Chicago suburbs used them. It was a form of government very popular in smaller cities and towns where the mayor and council held part time positions and weren’t really professionals when it came to administering a city. The city council would make the rules, but the city manager would advise them and then carry out the day-to-day operation of the town.

“Now, just stay here at your desk,” Cindy instructed me. “Mr. Hanes will be out to see you when he’s ready. Never disturb him when his door is closed like now. Use the time to get used to who you are. And don’t worry about having to pee. You’ll know how to do it when the time comes. All you have to do is relax and let your mind go. You’ll find your body knows what to do. I’m down in the court wing if you need anything. My phone extension is on your Rolodex there. If you’re free, I’ll take you to lunch in a couple of hours.”

And then I was alone. I was Wanda Hazleton whoever that was. Even with Cindy’s help, I didn’t really know who I was or where I lived. I sat down at the desk. Come to think of it, most women I knew kept a purse hidden in a desk drawer. Yes, there it was, down in a large bottom drawer. It was brown and matched my shoes and it looked big enough to live out of for a week.

I pulled it up on the desk, catching the strap on one of the fingers of my left hand. I looked to see what it had caught on and gasped. It was a wedding ring! Of course, it wasn’t the kind of ring I had worn when I was married to Mary. Instead of a large gold band, this ring was small and delicate, but a large diamond rose up from the band, catching on the strap of the purse. Oh dear god, no! Wasn’t it bad enough that I had become a different race and a different sex? I had to be married, too?

I dived quickly into the purse. I had to know more about this Wanda person I had suddenly become. After digging through a pile of cosmetics whose purpose I didn’t really want to know, I found a brown wallet. I flipped it open, struggling to find a driver’s license. There it was, the picture of my new face imprinted on it. Or at least, I assumed it was my picture. I hadn’t seen my face yet. I groaned when I saw the face. It was not particularly attractive, featuring a wide, prominent nose and thick lips. I looked fat. I looked down at myself. My new breasts were certainly large, but I didn’t appear fat.

Then I found another picture. It was a city ID, but the picture was much better. With a sigh of relief, I realized that driver’s license pictures in Oklahoma were as poor as the ones in Illinois. My ID picture showed a better view of my new face. I was smiling, and my lips were certainly larger than they had been when I was a man, but they weren’t unattractively large. My nose was still a little wide, but not terribly so. The picture that I was now looking at was of an attractive young black woman, no more than thirty. I checked the age on the driver’s license. Sure enough–twenty-eight. So I had lost a few years, but only a few.

There was a picture in the wallet as well. There were three people in the photo, and I realized with trepidation that this was my family. I looked young and attractive in the picture, and the black man standing next to me looked intelligent and... handsome. There was a little girl in the photo as well. She was about six, it appeared, with dark skin like both of her parents and a radiant smile. Her hair was in long, black pigtails, the color of carved ebony.

I jumped suddenly as the door to Mr. Hanes’ office opened without anyone there. “Come in,” a deep voice said from within.

I quickly stuffed the evidence of my new identity back in the purse and jumped to my feet, nearly stumbling from lack of experience in heels. I saw the name on the door: ‘P. Hanes.’ I wondered what the ‘P’ stood for.

“Shut the door behind you,” the voice said. I was peering into an office which was intentionally dark. Oh, there was some light coming in through the closed blinds, but it did little to offset the effect of dark wood panels and a deep red carpet. A large desk was lit by a single lamp which threw minimal light over its surface. Even the chairs were dark, covered as they were with a deep red leather which seemed to reflect little light. When I shut the door, the room became even darker.

“Sit.”

It was a command. Quickly, and I hoped properly for a woman, I sat. I peered at the man sitting behind the desk. The dim light over the desk did nothing to reveal the appearance of the man. He was tall–that much I could tell. But beyond that, he was nothing but an ominous shape in the shadows.

“You are new here,” he began. “I would prefer a shade for an assistant, but my brother has decided otherwise. At least he has allowed me to dispense with the ruse and tell you who we really are. There is no other way for you to do this job properly.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. A shade? Cindy had said something about shades, too. And what about his brother? It had to be the Judge. As for the ruse, I had already come to the conclusion that Ovid wasn’t what it seemed to be. I sat quietly, though. If I was to learn, it would come from listening.

“Ovid is the creation of what you would call the mythological gods of ancient Greece and Rome.”

“You’re joking,” I commented, my new tongue operating at a rate far faster than my brain.

He leaned forward, his appearance suddenly revealed. I saw before me a large but very thin man, dressed in a dark suit that looked to be well tailored and expensive. His shirt was a crisp white, accented by a tie the color of dark blood. It was cut from fine silk. But it was the face that I was drawn to. Thin, framed by hair as dark as my own, his face was as white as mine was black. A patrician nose sat over thin, pale lips. But the eyes... I remembered when I had met Ridgeway how I had thought his eyes were the darkest I had ever seen. That was no longer the case. Mr. Hanes’ eyes were blacker still. It was as if no light could escape them, mini-black holes embedded in that lean face.

“I never joke, Ms. Hazleton,” he told me, his voice soft but menacing, and I believed him at once. I suddenly realized it might be absolutely dangerous not to believe him.

When I bit my tongue to stifle any reply, he leaned back into the darkness. “As I was saying, my associates and I are what you would call gods. We have formed this town for reasons which do not concern you. You must accept that as you must accept your new identity. You are now and will be for the remainder of your life Wanda Hazleton.”

He stopped as if waiting for me to speak. Hesitantly, I asked, “But why did you change me into... into this?”

“I did not,” he replied. “My brother, the Judge, did. He has his own reasons–his own work–and I have mine. If you would know why you are the person you have become, you must ask him. I am your supervisor. What I can tell you is what I expect of you.”

He went on to explain that I was to be his interface with the mayor and the council. He would give them instructions and they would carry them out. It seemed the reverse of the municipal political systems I had known, but it made it obvious who was in charge. I would, in turn, report back to him. I wouldn’t need to see him. In fact, he warned me I might not see him for days or even weeks at a time. My computer would be used to file reports which he would see on his own system, whatever and wherever that might be.

“Are there any questions?” he asked with a faint attempt at civility.

“I’m not to disturb you at any time,” I ventured.

“That is correct.”

“But what if I need you for something important?”

“Then I will know,” he said cryptically. Then he stood, indicating that our interview was over.

I returned to my desk somewhat shaken. Gods? They were gods? That meant the Judge, Officer Mercer and Mr. Hanes were all... gods? I remembered reading a little mythology as a kid. Then there was a movie I saw on TV one night called Clash of the Titans. I thought the gods all wore togas and sat around on a mountaintop somewhere. I could only remember a few of them. I would have to get a book on mythology to know who the players were. After all, Greek and Roman gods weren’t discussed back when I was at the Police Academy.

True to her word, Cindy came by for lunch. It was a relief from the boredom. I had found very little of interest in the files and nothing other than a few basic office memos on my computer. Apparently being the administrative assistant to Mr. Hanes wasn’t a terribly demanding job.

“So how are you doing?” she asked as she entered.

“Oh, just great,” I said dryly. “I’ve already squatted to pee, practically fallen off these stupid heels twice, bent but didn’t break a nail, took fifteen minutes to try to brush my hair right, and had a short chat with my charming boss.”

Cindy looked up at the closed door leading to Mr. Hanes’ office. “He doesn’t socialize much,” she admitted, understating the obvious. “As far as all the other things are concerned, don’t worry. You’ll get used to them. We all do.”

I looked at her with curiosity. “Are you saying you used to be a man?”

She grinned. “That’s right. Look at me now though–happily married, mother of two and pregnant again.”

If my ass hadn’t been wider than before, I think I would have fallen out of my chair. “Married? Pre... pregnant?”

She sat down across from my desk. “That’s right. I know it doesn’t show yet, but I’m just a few weeks into it. It’s an interesting experience. It’s really my first time. My other two kids are like us. They used to be men, too.”

“Are they... girls now?” I asked, fascinated with how easily she had accepted what had been done to her.

“One is,” she said brightly, pulling a photo out of her purse. “They’re twins.”

I peered at the picture. It showed a happy family–a handsome white man, Cindy, and two adorab... cute kids. They were about twelve or so I estimated, blonde like their mother. They were dressed in swimsuits, and all of them looked very happy.

“This shot was taken at Sunset Beach last month,” she explained. “That’s a nice lake not far from here. You’ll find out all about that, I’m sure. And the guy is my husband, Jerry.”

I looked down at the diamond ring on my own left hand. “Uh... Cindy, what’s it like to be... married?”

Her maternal smile became a wicked grin. “You’ll find out about that, too. Just don’t fight it. Fighting it doesn’t do any good in Ovid. Learn to enjoy being Wanda. I don’t know of too many people who don’t find that their new lives are an improvement. Except, of course, for guys like your friend, the crow.”

“So this is the Judge’s idea of a reward?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not really a reward. But it’s not a punishment either. Nobody really knows why the Judge does things the way he does them. I’ve seen men become women and women become men for no obvious reason.”

“Mr. Hanes said it was the work of... the work of...” I couldn’t quite say it, as hard as I tried. Every time I tried to say “gods” in context, it was as if I lost my ability to speak.

“He told you?” Cindy gasped.

“He said I needed to know–for my job. He didn’t tell me who they were, though.”

“Well, as you’ve just found out, that’s a subject we can’t really talk about,” she explained. “In fact, the conversation we’ve been having already can only be between two people. If someone else walked in the room, we’d have to stop any talk of transformation.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “It’s just part of the rules. There are things we can’t talk about and things we just don’t know. It would drive you crazy to try to figure them all out. Sometimes, they even change a little. After a while, you just learn to live your life and enjoy it. Our... benefactors don’t usually interfere.”

“Then what’s the purpose of all of this?” I asked, becoming truly fascinated. My anxieties had almost been overcome by my curiosity.

She grinned at me. “Does there have to be a purpose? What was the purpose of your life before?”

She had me there. Without Mary and Trisha, there hadn’t been a great deal of purpose to my life. I had no close family. My dad was gone and my mom was in a nursing home back in Illinois, barely alive. She couldn’t even remember her own name. I had a couple of brothers in the Chicago area, but we had little in common and rarely saw each other. So basically, I worked to eat and ate to have enough strength to work. I didn’t even fish much anymore.

When I failed to answer, Cindy looked a little concerned. I think she realized the question had struck a nerve. I let her off the hook by saying, “Maybe we’d better go to lunch. I don’t know when Mr. Hanes will need me.”

We walked together to a little place near City Hall. It was called the Greenhouse, and when we were seated in a booth in a quiet part of the restaurant, I sighed thankfully. “I didn’t think I was going to make it,” I said. “How do you walk in these things?”

Cindy laughed. “You’ll...”

“I know,” I interrupted with a little laugh of mine own. “I’ll get used to them.”

“Yes, you will,” she agreed as the menus were delivered. “And don’t worry. You did fine walking over here. It’s not so much the heels as not being used to the balance of your body.”

She was right about that. Men’s bodies are compact. The only protrusions which might swing about are fairly small and don’t interfere with balance. Women on the other hand have fairly large masses of flesh which change the way they walk. I had always wondered if women were putting on a little act as they swung their asses back and forth. I now knew it was more a function of pelvic shape and more fatty tissue on the rear. I must have presented an interesting view to male onlookers as I sashayed to lunch. There was something else I’d have to get used to–being ogled by men. On the way to the Greenhouse, I had noted several appreciative male stares.

I followed Cindy’s lead and ordered a salad and iced tea. It didn’t seem like much of a meal, but I knew my stomach was much smaller and it was satisfying. Besides, if I was stuck in this body for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to end up looking like Aunt Jemima.

The conversation was light. Any eavesdropper would have not heard anything except two women who worked in the same building talking about the things all women talk about. Cindy explained that her job was much like my own, working as an administrative assistant to the Judge. I suspected her boss was much more approachable than my own. Mr. Hanes had said something about the Judge being his brother. If so, there was little family resemblance.

I listened carefully as Cindy did most of the talking. I found she was subtly coaching me in how to be a woman. She would talk about cosmetics and how to use them, clothes, and general lifestyle in Ovid. I was actually grateful for her help. In a few hours, I would be on my own, living with a husband I had never met and trying to act like a normal wife. Well, as normal a wife as I could be without jumping into the sack with my hubby. Eventually, that might be unavoidable, but I had no interest in trying out my new equipment. Taking a piss had been a nearly traumatic experience.

Lunch out of the way, we headed back to the office. I found that if I didn’t think about it, I could walk just fine. By the time I was alone back in my office, I had begun to feel I could do anything in heels short of running a footrace. My period of self-congratulation was short lived though, for the door to Mr. Hanes’ office opened before I could even sit down.

“Come in, Ms. Hazleton.” The voice didn’t sound pleased.

“Where were you?” he demanded without preamble.

“At lunch,” I replied, trying to sound nonchalant. Secretly, I was quaking in my high heels.

“Lunch?”

I fought the impulse to make a flippant remark. “Yes. Cindy–Ms. Patton–took me to lunch.”

“I see,” he replied. I could tell he didn’t approve much of the Judge’s lenient lunch hour policies. In truth, we had been gone nearly an hour and a half. But fortunately, the subject appeared closed. He handed me some handwritten notes. “Here are the instructions for the Mayor. Type them and give them to him before you leave today.”

“Yes, sir.” I was a rotten typist, but I’d do what I could. As I left the office, hearing the door slam behind me, I looked at the notes. They were scrawled in some foreign language that looked a little like Latin. Oh great. What was I supposed to do, inscribe them on marble tablets?

Cindy had said something to me about letting myself go. Maybe that would work. I gave it a shot, it still wasn’t easy. I had to carefully look at each word, but I was relieved to find that I didn’t have to look at the keys on the keyboard after a few tries. My fingers seemed to know where the right keys were when I just stopped thinking about them and typed. I looked at the screen to check my work. To my surprise, the typed words looked nothing like I had seen on the paper. I felt crestfallen for a moment, concerned that I had screwed up everything. Then I looked again at the words:

MEMO TO: Mayor R. Gooding

FROM: P. Hanes

SUBJ: Projected Budget Changes

I gasped. I had typed nothing like that. But of course, the Mayor wouldn’t be able to read Latin unless he was one of the gods. I knew he was not as I had caught a glimpse of him earlier and saw him to be a shade. I continued to type, quickly and accurately. It was almost as if I had been doing it all my life, and yet Mary always used to tell me my typing looked as if I had been wearing mittens while I did it.

As I finished my typing, I thought about the job that had brought me to Ovid. This time yesterday, I was doing the job I had come to enjoy. I was Mike Hammer out on the streets of Manhattan, working on a case while a soft jazz band played in the background. Of course, everything was in black and white, but that was the way it was supposed to be. Now, here I was, a black woman. I couldn’t think of any detectives who were black women. The closest I could come up with was Mannix’s secretary on the old TV show I used to watch late at night.

Maybe I could still do the job, though. After all, I still remembered all the moves. I wondered if Mac would believe me if I called him and told him what had happened. Well, why not? What did I have to lose? I didn’t expect him to believe me, but it was worth a shot. I picked up the phone and dialled Mac’s office.

“Charles McKenzie and Associates,” the receptionist, Jennifer, chirped professionally. “How may I direct your call?”

Now, Jennifer was pretty good at screening out unwanted calls. Obviously, she wouldn’t recognize my voice. So I had to make something up. “I’ve been talking to one of your associates, Jeff Riley, and he recommended I call Mr. McKen...”

“I’m sorry, who did you say recommended us?” Jennifer broke in.

“Jeff Riley,” I said, a little less confidently. What was wrong? Jennifer and I were good friends. She knew me–or rather Jeff–well.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s no Jeff Riley here.”

I didn’t go on. Slowly, I put the receiver down. No Jeff Riley? It seemed they had not only changed me; they had erased all trace of my identity. What did that mean? Did they just cloud their minds and make them forget I had ever existed? Or had they really removed me from existence entirely? Just how powerful were these gods?

I picked up the phone again. This time, I’d call one of my brothers. It was one thing to erase my memory from someone like Jennifer, but what about my family? My brother, Mike would certainly remember me. I got through to him with no trouble. He sold insurance, so he’d always be available on the phone.

“I’m trying to run down an old high school friend,” I lied. I had used the ploy while a detective many times. “His name is Jeff Riley, and I was told you might be his brother.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike’s familiar voice drawled, “I’ve only got one brother, and his name isn’t Jeff.”

“Thanks anyway,” I mumbled softly.

“My pleasure,” he replied. “I hope you find him.”

“I hope so, too,” I said, hanging up. There was a tear in my eye as I realized it was probably the last time I would ever speak to Mike. What had happened? How could he forget his own brother?

Then, I realized that if Jeff Riley had never existed, then he had never been there to marry Mary O’Hara. That meant the mob would have had no reason to kill her. But of course, it also meant that Trisha would never have been born either. I felt sick. It was bad enough that my daughter had been needlessly murdered but it was quite another thing if I were to find she had never existed.

Forgetting my nails were now longer, I nearly broke one punching in a number I hadn’t used in a long time.

“O’Hara residence,” Mary’s mother answered in her sweet high voice.

It was time for the lie again. “Mrs. O’Hara, my name is... Wanda–Wanda Hazleton. I think I may have gone to school with your daughter.”

“You knew my Mary?” she asked. My heart sank. She didn’t say “know”; she said “knew.”

“Yes, I did,” I managed. “I’ve lost touch with her. Is she still living there in Chicago?”

“Oh, Wanda,” my former mother-in-law began sadly, “I sorry, but Mary’s dead.”

“Dead? Oh, no!”

“Yes,” she went on. I hated doing this to her. I could almost see the tears in her eyes. “She and her husband and their little daughter, Patty, were killed in a car accident. It’s been three years now...”

As her voice trailed off, I quickly said, “Mrs. O’Hara, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“That’s all right, dear. Were you a good friend of hers?”

We talked for a few minutes more as I lied about memories of Mary. They were stories Mary had told me about high school. I had just added Wanda’s presence to them to give them a more plausible sound. When I hung up, I realized that Mary’s mother and I had had little to say to each other after Mary’s death. She had always blamed me in a way for her daughter’s death. I had blamed myself as well. But apparently some higher fate had decided she would die no matter what. It was a sobering thought.

I wondered about Mary’s family in this new reality. She had still had a daughter; while we had called Patricia just Trisha, Mary and her husband had called her Patty. The genes might have been different, but I was sure it was the same soul–or whatever the true spirit of a person was.

So reality had been rewritten. Apparently there was no thirty-five-year-old private detective named Jeff Riley, and so Mary O’Hara had married someone else, giving birth to a daughter. Then tragically, Mary and her daughter had still died, but this time, it was in a car accident, and not the result of an explosive device meant for me. That had been how Little Georgie had done it. He had wired an explosive to our car’s ignition, thinking I would be the one to back our car down to the landing to attach the boat trailer after fishing. Instead, it had been Mary and Trisha in the car that day. I had watched helplessly as the car exploded. One minute, Trisha had been there, waving happily from the car. Then, in the next instant, I had been thrown to the ground as several pounds of explosives reduced the car to charred remains after a devastating fireball.

Had reality really been rewritten, or was it only a memory that had been changed? Did their gravestones still say Riley on them? Did Mary’s mother simply look at them and see another last name? I’d never know, I realized. But in a strange way, I felt better about it. I could accept that others remembered Mary and Trisha’s deaths as a tragic accident rather than as a wanton murder I had been unable to stop.

It also meant that no one remembered the mission I had been sent to Oklahoma to accomplish. I didn’t work for Mac and I never had. Ridgeway had never sent me off to find an embezzler. At least I had partially solved the mystery. I wondered what fate the embezzler had suffered before the Judge. Maybe he hadn’t even come to Ovid after all.

But wait a minute, I suddenly thought. Ridgeway had said something about Allison not looking like the picture we had of him. Did he mean a disguise or did he mean the Judge had changed him? And if the Judge had changed him, why did anyone remember him? Peter Allison should have ceased to exist in the outside world, just as Jeff Riley had ceased to exist. So there were two possible answers. Either Peter Allison was not in Ovid or there was more going on than I realized. Given what had already happened to me that day, I was leaning toward the second answer.

“How you doing, babe?” The voice was low and pleasant, but it caused me to jump. I had been so engrossed in thought that I hadn’t seen anyone come in. I looked up to see a black man who appeared to be about thirty. He wore a neat light blue polo shirt and dark blue trousers.

“Can I help you?” I said, still startled.

“You sure can,” he laughed, assuming I was joking with him. Then he leaned over my desk and before I could stop him, he pulled my head around and planted a big kiss on my lips. I was too shocked to resist, and if I have to be completely honest, it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience. It somehow felt right to my body which began to tingle softly as our lips met.

This is my husband! I realized at once. It was the man in the picture of my family. I had been too startled to recognize him. This was the man I would be expected to... to...

“Rough day, babe?” he asked as he pulled back from the kiss.

“You can’t imagine,” I muttered. My husband! What was I going to do now? It was one thing to go through the motions of being Wanda Hazleton at work. Other than learning how to pee sitting down and keeping my skirt modestly in place, it wasn’t that different from a day in my office back in Chicago. Oh sure, I felt different and I looked different, but it was easy to lose myself in whatever I was doing and not think about what had happened to me. Now, though, I would be expected to be ‘the little woman.’ I’d probably be expected to cook a meal and pick up after this man whose name I didn’t even know and be affectionate... Affectionate! Oh my god, what if he wanted me to go to bed with him?

“Are you okay?” he asked with touching concern. I felt his hand softly on my shoulder.

“I’m fine,” I lied, trying in that moment to collect myself. He was a good-looking man, I thought, realizing for the first time that with my change in sex, I was able for the first time in my life to appreciate a man’s looks. He was tall and broad-shouldered. I was a little surprised at how big he was. Then I realized that as Jeff I had been about the same size as he. It was just from my new perspective, he looked very large. No wonder women were intimidated by men. Here I was, in the company of a man who presumably loved me; yet I felt intimidated by his size. He was real and not a shade, and he looked very solid. I had no doubt that if he wished, I would be physically powerless around him.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll do the cooking tonight, how’s that?” He gave me a gentle smile to go with the offer. Then he offered his hand to me.

Reflexively, I took his hand and stood up. “That would be great.” I wasn’t much of a cook, so it would give me a little time to figure out how to boil water without creating a culinary disaster. Well, I really wasn’t that bad, but I was sure Wanda’s family had higher standards when it came to cooking than I had had as a man living alone. Then, before he released my hand, he pulled me to his body and the kissing started all over again.

I won’t lie; it wasn’t unpleasant. If I had been in my old body, I’m sure I would have been disgusted. Maybe I should have been anyway, but I wasn’t. I was in a woman’s body, and that body had urges which were outside the mental experience of Jeff Riley. Again, I took Cindy’s advice and just let it happen. To my amazement, it actually felt good.

As we broke our kiss, the man smiled and said, “Come on, Carrie is probably driving Cindy crazy by now.”

Carrie? Of course, the little girl in the picture in my purse.

My purse!

I barely remembered my purse, slipping the unfamiliar strap over my shoulder as I hurried to follow my new husband down the hall. In Cindy’s office, I found a very attractive little girl of perhaps eight playing a card game on Cindy’s computer as Cindy looked on in amusement. The little girl was that same coffee-color as me with straight black hair braided in long pigtails. She wore a feminine white T-shirt and jean shorts, and when she swung her slender legs, I could see white sandals flash by. She was not a shade; she was real. I wondered who she had been. Did she remember?

“Come on, Carrie, your mom’s ready to go,” my husband said.

“Oh, just one more game?” she wheedled, but she was already signing out of the game as if she knew what the answer would be.

“Not now,” the man said. “Your mom’s tired and you’ve got to help me make dinner.”

I saw Cindy smile knowingly. Damn her; she was really enjoying this.

We walked out to a mid-sized Buick, fairly new, with Carrie telling me all about her day. I was confused at first, listening to stories about her day at day-care, but after a few minutes, it began to remind me of my conversations with Trisha and I soon found that I could follow along, contributing where it seemed right.

Home turned out to be a modest ranch-style house on a pleasant tree-lined street. It was a mixed neighborhood, I noticed with both black and white families in evidence. I was pleasantly surprised. Back in Chicago, there were few such neighborhoods. Oh, there were well-to-do black families living in predominantly white neighborhoods in Chicago, but the more modest neighborhoods seemed to be either black or white.

My husband suggested I get out of my working clothes and into something more casual. I was happy to comply. Needless to say, I had never worn pantyhose before, and wearing them all day, I found them to be hot and a little sticky. I had balanced well enough on heels, but my feet longed for something less precarious. And as for the skirt, I was so tired of being modest all day that I could scream.

I dressed in a fashion similar to my new daughter. I had thought that at least I wouldn’t look so feminine in shorts and a T-shirt. Silly me. Although my breasts were by no means huge, they certainly stuck out under the T-shirt, and there was nothing masculine about the long, black legs that showed prominently out of the short shorts. And I sighed in resignation as I noticed my toenails were now the same dark red as my fingernails. Well, I might not look like a man again, but at least I was more comfortable.

As I entered the kitchen, a little voice said, “Here, mommy,” as she placed a frosty glass of iced tea in my hands.

“Thank you, Carrie,” I said with what I hoped was a motherly smile. She really was a cute little thing. And like her father, she was real. Neither my new husband nor my new daughter seemed to have any memories of a previous life. I almost envied them. Wanda Hazleton seemed to have a pleasant, middle-class life. It was one many would envy. If I had no memories of being male and white, I would... I would what? I would settle back and enjoy this life? Why couldn’t I do that now? I thought as I sipped the tea. The answer was simple: this wasn’t me. I had been sent to Ovid as Jeff Riley, private investigator, on an assignment. Inside this pretty black head, I was still Jeff Riley and hoped to always be him. I still had a job to do.

Of course, I realized my clients hadn’t been entirely honest with me. Had they known about Ovid and what was likely to happen to me? Little things that Ridgeway had said made me believe that was the case. Ridgeway may have not known exactly what was going on, but I was sure his clients must. Why else would they have told Ridgeway to tell me that Peter Allison’s appearance had likely been changed? But had they expected this to happen to me? But of course, if Little Georgie hadn’t tried to kill me, none of this might have happened. The mysterious Judge and his associates might have just let me wander through Ovid and depart again. It was only after I was assaulted that they made their move.

I didn’t get much time to think to myself. Dinner, in the form of delicious steaks perfectly grilled was soon served. Paul–for I had finally found his name in the wallet he had left on the dresser in our bedroom–had done an excellent job. Corn on the cob, also grilled, accompanied the steaks, and little Carrie brought a bowl of salad to the table.

It had been a long time since I had enjoyed a dinner as much as that one. Usually, dinner for Jeff Riley was a quick sandwich late in the evening on the way home from the office. Other than an occasional meal with one of my brothers’ families, I usually ate alone. It was a bittersweet experience, though. I found myself sadly remembering the similar meals with Mary and Trisha. That had been real. They were my real family. This was nothing more than an elaborate play.

Having been a family man once before, the routine of family life was not all that alien to me. We cleaned up the kitchen after dinner and went for a walk in the late summer evening, stopping here and there to talk to neighbors, both black and white. It was a valuable activity for me, for I began to learn the names of the neighbors and a little about them. Most of them were nice, but I noticed one white couple–the Bronsons–were a little standoffish. They were both shades, and the two of them muttered stiff greetings as we passed. I noticed a white couple walking half a block behind us were given a more pleasant greeting.

Paul just shook his head. “Some people just can’t seem to get it right.”

“What?”

“The race thing,” he explained. “I even see it over at the College some days. I mean, they don’t burn crosses in our yard anymore, but they still haven’t figured out we’ve all got to get along.”

Sad but true, I thought. “But it isn’t just whites,” I pointed out. I wondered what he did at the College–or for that matter, what college he was talking about.

“No, you’re right,” he admitted. “There’s blacks who can’t bring themselves to trust whites. Some of our people are still fighting their own version of the Civil War just as furiously as a Southern redneck.”

I remembered a number of examples from my previous life. I had seen blacks that wouldn’t even talk to a white police officer. I had been accused of being prejudiced by more than a few blacks just because I had arrested them for committing a crime. Maybe we’re all just a little prejudiced. But it was more a function of unfamiliarity than fear or hatred. Now I was black. I had just experienced my first racial slight and I had to admit that I didn’t like it. A few more incidents like that and I’d probably find myself just a little prejudiced against whites myself. And it wouldn’t be because I was afraid or because I hated them. It would be because I couldn’t be sure how they would react to me.

We got home just at dark. Carrie scooted to her room to get ready for bed. Soon, I would be alone with Paul, I realized. Would he expect me to have sex with him? If he did, could I do it? I was nearly beside myself with worry. What was it like? Did it hurt? Kissing Paul hadn’t been that bad. Would I find that making love to him wasn’t that bad either? That thought was almost the most disturbing one of all.

“G’night, Mommy,” Carrie announced suddenly from the hall. “It’s Daddy’s turn to tuck me in.”

“Good night, Pumpkin,” I said reflexively, nearly biting my tongue when I realized I had used the same name for her I had used for Trisha. As Paul jumped up to put her to bed, I hoped he hadn’t noticed the sudden tears in my eyes.

He was back in a few minutes. Here it comes, I thought. Carrie’s in bed; now it’s time for Mommy and Daddy to play. But Mommy didn’t feel like playing. I tried not to tense up when I felt Paul’s arm around my shoulder. He leaned down and I could smell the musky smell of his after-shave. Then, there was a warm but gentle kiss and the arm slipped away as he rose back up. “I think I’ll turn in early, too,” he announced. “I’ve got a department meeting at seven in the morning. Can you take Carrie over to day-care?”

“Uh... sure,” I answered, unsure as to how I would find her day-care center. I was also just a little disappointed if that makes any sense at all. As much as I dreaded making love to Paul, I had steeled myself up to it. It was almost like the first time I ever got up enough nerve to dive off a diving board. I couldn’t have been any older than Carrie and I was just ready to dive in the water when a thunderclap caused the pool to be closed. I remember at the time that one moment I had been frightened half to death and the next moment I was disappointed and frustrated. But come to think of it, I had made a fine dive the next day and had enjoyed swimming ever since. Would sex be the same way?

Paul’s departure for bed gave me some much-needed time alone. On a bookshelf, I found a copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology and decided to spend the rest of the evening trying to figure out who the players were. It didn’t take very long. The Judge was obviously in charge–Jupiter. Officer Mercer was almost certainly Mercury. But who was Hanes? That took a few more minutes, but the clues had all been there.

When I was a kid and spent a summer reading stories of mythology, I had been weaned on the children’s version of the myths. For whatever reason, publishers apparently thought the full adult myths were either too complicated or too frightening for children. Very little is said of Jupiter’s brothers, and Hanes had referred to the Judge as his brother. According to the book, Jupiter had two brothers who had worked with him to overthrow the Titans. After the conflict, Jupiter took dominion over the lands, Neptune the sea, and Pluto the underworld. But Pluto wasn’t so much a name as a description. It meant rich. It was apparently a reference to his dominion over the riches buried under the earth. Pluto had another name–a name seldom spoken. That name was Hades. Hanes–Hades. Hades, the Lord of the Underworld.

I shuddered. I had been raised a staunch Catholic; yet here I was, administrative assistant to a being who had probably evolved into our own Christian devil. I read on, but there was little written of Hades. He was feared rather than worshipped. His name was seldom spoken and then only in a whisper. He was cruel, unyielding, and pitiless. Many people think they have the boss from Hell. I really did.

So what was I going to do? I thought as I put the book back on the shelf. I was stuck, it appeared. I had no option but to live the life of Wanda Hazleton. Yet I wasn’t ready to give in to that option yet. I had to sort some things out first.

So with that, I headed off for bed. Paul was already snoring away, and I realized that although I had avoided having sex, I would still be sleeping uncomfortably close to him. I left a light on in the bathroom and searched through the dresser in the dim light for something to wear to bed–hopefully something that revealed none of my new feminine charms. No such luck, though. Apparently, Wanda only bought sexy nightgowns. Everything was short and revealing. I looked over at Paul. Well, he was asleep. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. I grabbed one that looked as if it might reach my knees and scrambled into the bathroom to put it on.

That was the first time I saw myself naked. I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. I wasn’t exactly Vanessa Williams, but I wasn’t bad. My breasts seemed a little large, and the dark nipples a little pronounced. My hips were wide, but not unpleasantly so. As for my waist, considering the fact that I had apparently given birth to Carrie, I had recovered well. As for my face, I thought I looked a little like Anita Hill–younger of course but that same intelligent look that she had. I slipped the nightgown over my head and looked again. The gown was white and diaphanous. It did little to hide my dark skin. If Paul were to see me in this, I’d learn what sex as a woman was like very quickly, I thought.

With that thought in mind, I was careful not to wake him. I slipped carefully into bed and huddled on my side looking away from him. I expected an arm around me, hugging my breasts tightly any moment, but the moment never came. He just snored peacefully away. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep.

I was awakened by the sound of running water in the shower. The sun was still nothing more than a yellow glow along the horizon. I looked at the clock. Six o’clock. It took me a moment–but only a moment–to remember what had happened to me.

The water stopped as I heaved myself out of bed. Heaving myself was a good description for it, because my weaker muscles and large breasts made the act of getting up very different. It wasn’t just the void between my legs that reminded me that I was now a woman. It was a hundred different sensations. There was the feel of long hair flowing down my back, and flesh pooling at the hips, and the breasts shifting. Everything felt just a little different.

The bathroom door opened. Paul had a towel draped loosely around his waist but it did little to hide his body. He was in great shape, I thought. He had the look of a natural athlete. Like most blacks, he had fairly light chest hair, but he had some. I caught myself looking down at the gap in the towel, wondering...

“Good morning, babe!” he greeted me with a wide grin. “I hear Carrie. She’s up and about. I’ll get her set up with some breakfast before I go.” Without warning, the towel dropped to the ground as he pulled a pair of boxers from a drawer. I got immediately nervous again. That was supposed to fit into my... my...

“You okay, babe?”

“Uh... sure, I’m fine.” I looked away quickly, hoping he hadn’t noticed. When I looked back, he had on a pair of boxers. I sighed in faint relief.

I made my way into the bathroom, sitting on the toilet. I had to get myself together. I was a woman now as the sudden flow of urine from the void between my legs seemed to emphasize. I couldn’t have a stroke every time I saw Paul with his pants down. This just wasn’t working out at all. Now I knew how a virgin bride feels on her wedding night.

I peeked out of the bathroom door when I finished, but Paul had already headed for the kitchen. I quickly located the drawer where Wanda kept her bras and panties and, remembering to select a matching set as I had seen Mary do, I retreated to the shower.

I had to overcome a powerful urge to explore my body in the shower. I even rationalized it by thinking that if I got myself off in the shower, I’d be more willing to spread my legs for Paul. I couldn’t bring myself to do it though. I had a lot to do that day, and I didn’t want any of it influenced by my first female orgasm. I got out of the shower and dried quickly, noticing how my more delicate skin seemed to be happier when I patted it rather than briskly rubbing it as I had when I was a man.

I selected an outfit similar to the one I had worn the day before, although this time, the suit was a bright red. Well, if I had to work for the devil, I might as well wear the team colors I told myself grimly.

Paul was just getting ready to leave when I got to the kitchen. His eyes went wide when he saw me. “Babe, you look great!”

I found myself flushing with pride. I had used Cindy’s advice and just let my body do whatever it needed to do to get ready. My makeup had come out fine and I had managed to select all the right accessories for my outfit. If I had to remain Wanda for the rest of my life, at least I’d be able to look nice.

He gave me a hug and a chaste kiss, as if respectfully trying not to smear my makeup. “See you tonight. Carrie wants to stay over at Tanya’s tonight. Maybe you and I can go someplace nice.”

“Sure.” The only place nice I wanted to go was Chicago. After he was gone, I looked at Carrie. She was just finishing her cereal and toast, washing them down with a large glass of milk. It looked nauseating to me. Apparently Wanda wasn’t much of a breakfast person. I opted for a cold glass of orange juice which seemed to be all my body needed to get started.

I had the Buick for the day; Paul had taken another car–a new black Volkswagen. Whatever he did at the college must pay reasonably well, I thought. I belted Carrie in, realizing as I did that I had no idea where to take her.

“Let’s play a game,” I told her as I backed out of the garage.

“Sure, Mommy!”

“Let’s pretend I don’t know how to take you to day-care...”

Her face brightened. “Then I can play here all day?”

“No, Pumpkin,” I laughed, wondering not for the first time who she had been before Ovid. “I want you to show me how to get there.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” she laughed.

And it was. Ovid wasn’t a very large town. It turned out day care was in an African Methodist Church only a few blocks from the house. Of course, nothing seemed very far away in Ovid. After Chicago, most towns are small towns.

I walked her up to the door where she immediately found her friend Tanya, another pretty little black girl although a shade. Her mother, also a shade was standing with her. Together, we figured out the logistics for Carrie’s sleepover and I agreed to meet them at our house at five to get Carrie packed up.

The day-care, I noticed, consisted of all black children. I had never heard of the African Methodist Church, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was a predominantly black branch of the Methodist Church. I found myself wondering if it had been formed by blacks to remain apart from white Methodists or if white Methodists had encouraged its formation to keep the blacks away. I had as much to learn about being black as I did about being a woman.

“Hi there.”

It was a woman’s voice. I turned and saw a woman, white with hair so red it seemed to be on fire. She wore a gray dress, short and revealing, and heels as high as mine in that same gray. Her jewelry was silver and expensive; her makeup perfect and understated. There was a smile on her lips, but it was countered by the dark look in her deep brown eyes. I felt as if I should know her from somewhere.

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” she said as she watched several children from the day-care center at play. “Here we are, two women, watching these children. If someone saw us, they’d think nothing of it. After all, we’re women–mothers and caregivers. Yet if we were two men standing here watching these children, someone would probably call the cops, assuming we were child molesters at the worst or fathers kidnapping their own children at the best.”

“That’s a little exaggerated, don’t you think?” I challenged her as I walked closer to her.

She shrugged. “Maybe, but maybe not. That’s what being human is all about, isn’t it? You can never be too sure how to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

“So which are you?” I asked as I tried to fold my arms over my breasts.

“Me?” she grinned. “I’m one of the good guys, of course. Can’t you tell?”

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“We’ve met before,” she admitted, “but I didn’t look like this then. We met at your office in Chicago.”

The eyes. It was the eyes that gave her away. “Franklin Ridgeway?” I asked. “But it can’t be. He was...”

“A man?” she asked with a laugh. “Well, so were you then. But so you will understand, I was just using his image when we met. The real Franklin Ridgeway has no idea he was successfully impersonated.”

I thought about my impressions of Ridgeway. I had been completely wrong. He hadn’t been a lawyer whose clients were withholding vital information from him. That had merely been an act to keep me from asking all the questions I wanted to ask. Whoever this woman was, she had powers not unlike those I had seen from the gods.

“Who are you? What are you?”

“Just call me... Erin,” she said enigmatically.

I grabbed her arm. Despite her soft appearance, it was almost like clutching a piece of granite. I released her arm and asked, “So what’s this all about? Just what is going on? I feel as if I’m being set up.”

“You were set up,” she admitted, “but we had no choice. This was the only way to insert you into Ovid.”

“Insert me?”

She nodded. “Yes. The Judge is very powerful as I’m sure you’ve come to realize. No one stays in Ovid without his concurrence. If we had sent you in here with full knowledge of what you were facing–even if you believed us–the Judge would have known at once. So we had to make you interesting to him.”

It dawned on me suddenly. “He left me alone until Little Georgie showed up. You were the one who ratted on me, weren’t you? You told him where I’d be!”

“You’re upset,” she observed. “You shouldn’t be, you know. You never would have gotten Little Georgie on your own. You had no idea he was really the one who killed your family. No court could have proved it–except the courts of Ovid, of course. We gave him to you, and the Judge allowed you to observe his punishment. A crow no less! How fitting for the little bastard.”

“So was any of the story you told me in Chicago true?” I asked.

“A good deal of it was,” she assured me. “Your mission is a real one.”

“But why should I carry it out now? I’m stuck here. I’ve changed somewhat, or hadn’t you noticed?”

She laughed again. “It doesn’t have to be permanent. We can change you back, and we’ll do so gladly as soon as you finish your mission. We want you to find Peter Allison for us.”

“Just a minute,” I said defiantly, trying to disguise my elation at the thought of being able to return to my male life. “I want to know who I’m working for. Just who are you and who are you working with? And if you have such powers, why can’t you find him yourself?”

“So many questions,” she sighed. “Very well, I’ll tell you as much as I dare tell you. The Judge and his minions can track you, though. They have ways of intercepting your very thoughts, although they seldom do so until you’ve acclimated to your new identity. I haven’t much time to tell you, either. I don’t want to make you late to work. That might look suspicious and the Judge has a very good record of tracking our people down in Ovid. Now I have to be a little careful of what I say so as not to alert the Judge. To begin with, are you aware that in Roman and Greek myths, there was a civil war among the gods?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I was reading about it last night.”

“Have you ever wondered what happened to the losers in that war?”

“I assume they were killed,” I told her. “I couldn’t find any other reference to them.”

“You can’t kill a god, silly,” she laughed. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a god. By definition, gods are immortal.”

“So you represent the losing side,” I concluded sarcastically.

She paid no attention to the sarcasm. “They call us the ‘Others.’ They don’t even dignify us with our true names.”

“So why should I help you?” I asked. “Maybe I like it here. Maybe I don’t want to be changed back.”

She smiled and traced a finger along the back on my hand. “Nice try, but I don’t believe that. Neither do you. You aren’t this woman. You aren’t black. You’re an Irishman who wants to be a gumshoe in the pulp magazine sense of the word. Besides, we’re on your side.”

“My side?”

“Humanity,” she explained. “Their side wants to control you–to make you into little puppets like the people you see around you here in Ovid. That’s why they changed you. They couldn’t manipulate Jeff Riley, but they can control Wanda Hazleton every time you let down your guard. We offer you free choice–free will. Humanity has outgrown the need for us. If you help us find the man who stole from us, you can have your real life back–and you’ll be helping the human race.”

“And why are you being so benevolent to humanity?” I asked. “And don’t tell me it’s because you admire us so much.”

“I wouldn’t insult your intelligence on that point,” she snorted. “No, you’re right. We oppose them for other reasons–reasons of our own. But that is no less reason for us not to help humanity. Your slavery to them gives them strength. If they have no influence over you, they are weakened. That’s reason enough to help humanity.”

I had to admit there was something to her argument. It was the Judge who had changed my life–not Erin and her people, if I could call them people. I sighed. “Assuming I agree, what do you want me to do? I can’t exactly go around town like Jeff Riley asking questions.”

“No,” she agreed, “you can’t. But we know who you’re working for. He is the one who controls all the written records on the population of Ovid. He’s sort of like the Olympian version of the KGB. You can find out where Allison is.”

“But I wouldn’t know where to start,” I protested. “There must be hundreds of people who’ve been changed here.”

“Peter Allison disappeared only a few days ago,” she admitted. “We told you it was longer so you would not wonder why we didn’t wait for the authorities to find him. As you probably know by now, once you have a new identity in Ovid, your identity in the real world ceases to exist. There are exceptions, but not many. As far as the authorities are concerned, there is no Peter Allison. Whoever he is, he has been here not more than a week. And he undoubtedly remembers who he was. That narrows it down to a handful of possibilities–no more than four or five.”

“And Hanes has the records?”

She nodded. “Yes, but only the records of current identities. Only the Judge has the records of prior identities and that blonde bitch who works for him would never let you see them. It will be up to you to determine who Peter Allison has become.”

“And if I do?” I demanded. I was a little annoyed with her description of Cindy as a ‘blonde bitch.’ I considered her a friend.

“Then all of this will be just an unpleasant memory. I can even make you forget it if you prefer. And, you will have a nice bonus. We can arrange many things for our friends. This time, we plan to be on the winning side.”

“I’ll think about it,” I told her. “If I need to, how can I contact you?”

“Call me at this number,” she replied, thrusting a business card into my hand. I looked at it quickly. Printed on it was simply a phone number. It was the same number she had given me when she had been Ridgeway. “If I haven’t heard from you by Monday morning, I’ll be right here. Think quickly, though,” she cautioned as I turned away. “Time is a factor.”

I put the card in my purse and turned away. I turned back to say something to her, but there was no one there. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was the only player in the game without any chips. Should I do what she asked? If I wanted my real life back, it was probably the only option. If I found their embezzler today I could get back to reality before sundown. I need never again put on lipstick or pantyhose or prance around in heels. And most importantly, I need never know what it was like to have a man’s dick between my legs.

On the other hand, I was up against very powerful beings. I knew from watching Little Georgie’s transformation that there were far worse things than being changed into an attractive black woman. If I guessed wrong, or if I was caught, the consequences could be devastating–even fatal.

But it wouldn’t hurt to do a little poking around, I thought as I drove to City Hall. I might not have any chips now, but maybe I could find a way to buy my way into the game.

I wasn’t sure who showed up for work in my office that day. It might have been Wanda Hazleton, wife, mother, and administrative assistant to one of the most powerful beings in Ovid. Or, on the other hand, it might have been Jeff Riley, private investigator in extreme drag, doing his assignment. I was sure I wanted to be Jeff Riley again. I wasn’t sure why. He didn’t have the best of lives. But I had been him for thirty some-odd years and I was rather used to him. But at what cost? Who would I be working for?

Erin had to be telling me the truth–or at least most of it–this time. They really wanted Peter Allison. There was no doubt about that. Had he really taken thirty million dollars from them? I didn’t know, but whatever he had done, he had pissed off some powerful folks in the process. Of course, maybe he had made some other powerful friends at the same time. And he almost had to be in Ovid. I was certain Erin and her associates had made sure of that. Whatever powers the Judge and his gang had seemed to be mirrored by the Others.

And who were the Others? I had read about the civil war of the gods, but what had happened to the losers? Erin had said they weren’t dead. I wasn’t sure any of the off-the-shelf books on mythology in the public library would have much to say on the matter. It could be that such information had never been recorded.

Did I dare do any of my research perched outside Hades’ door? For some reason, I didn’t think he was in. There was a ‘feeling’ I had noticed the day before whenever he was in his office–or at least I assumed it was while he was in his office. I didn’t feel that feeling now. Maybe Cindy would know.

“Good morning!” she said cheerfully when she saw me at her door. It was hard to believe that such a vivacious, attractive blonde woman had ever been a man. But I suppose it would be hard for others to imagine that a certain attractive black woman had ever been a man either. “How was your first night?”

“Quiet,” I said with a meaning she understood.

“That’ll change,” she replied with a wagging arch of her eyebrows.

“Cindy,” I began, trying to ignore her innuendo, “what can you tell me about Mr. Hanes?”

Her look became serious. “Not much. We all try to avoid him as much as possible. Most of the... powerful people around here are nice–even the Judge. But Mr. Hanes is... distant.”

“That’s putting it politely,” I observed.

“Yes, well, he seldom comes out of his office, and no one has ever seen him leave the building–at least not by the front entrance.”

“So how does he get out?”

To my surprise, she laughed. “Think about it, Wanda. Did you know that if you walk outside and look at where his office should be, all you’ll see is a patch of grass with a few bushes on it? By all rights, there should be nothing beyond the wall behind your chair. Trying to find the answer to questions like that will drive you up a wall. Believe me, when I first got here, I looked for all sorts of answers. Most of the ones I found just led to more questions.”

“I’d better get back to my desk,” I told her, sensing suddenly that my boss had arrived. “One more quick question. What makes you think the... powerful people are the good guys?”

She looked at me oddly for a moment. “I just... feel it, I guess. Call it women’s intuition if you want to.”

I was right: Mr. Hanes was in his office, and he barked for me to come in the moment I got back to my desk.

“Where were you?” he demanded. It seemed to be his standard greeting for me.

“I was in Cindy’s office,” I explained with a calm voice that belied how I really felt.

“I want you here during working hours,” he said curtly.

“What if I have to go to the bathroom?” I asked, but the sarcasm was lost on him.

“If you must,” he allowed, his lip curled as if the very thought of having to defecate was repugnant to him. Did the gods have to go to the bathroom? That was something I’d probably never know.

“Now here,” he said, handing me a small stack of papers. “See that these are typed and distributed before you go home.”

I took the papers from him and departed, hoping that I could it all done in time to get Carrie packed up for her sleepover. There was a fair amount of work, even when I let myself go into automatic mode to type. Fortunately, one of the other girls down the hall ordered out for lunch, so I was able to work straight through. I could feel my boss in his office. It was just an uncomfortable feeling as if someone was looking over my shoulder. By mid-afternoon, the feeling was gone, but I continued typing away. I had to get Carrie ready.

I was learning the hard way what many women could have probably told me. When you’re a working mother, you are a slave to everyone else’s schedule, and no one understands why you weren’t able to handle their tasks first. Had it been this way for Mary? Probably, it was. Mary had always been there for Trisha it seemed, even when I couldn’t be there. I was a cop after all. My work was important. Had Mary been angry with me because she had to pick up the slack for me with Trisha? Was I angry with Paul for the same reason?

No, I was angry with Paul because I knew that sooner or later–probably sooner if he was like most men–I’d have to spread my legs for him. Now that would be the perfect ending to a perfect day. After being chewed out by my boss, working my little black butt off, and running around for Carrie, I had an evening of being poked and prodded to look forward to.

And then there was Erin. Could she really change me back as promised? It was a little hard to trust someone who had gotten me into this fix to start with. How could I accomplish it anyhow? Erin had said Hanes had the records of current identities. And I could sense when he was gone. I could always sneak in his office and look for them. Did I dare?

Carefully, I opened his office door. Although I expected him to be gone, I still breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that I was right. I had an excuse to be there. I had just finished all of his reports, so I could always say that I was dropping finished copies off for him.

Okay, now that I was in his office, how would I find the information I was looking for? Presumably, many of the files were in Latin. Then I remembered that the Romans used a calendar somewhat similar to our own. Perhaps there was a date file. I checked a row of filing cabinets along the far wall. Yes, there were files in date sequence. Hurriedly, I pulled open a file drawer. In the drawer were files arranged by subject within date. Unfortunately, as I had expected, they were in Latin.

I knew a little Latin. Most good Catholic boys did. Also, being a cop meant that I knew many legal terms derived from the Latin. I wasn’t sure what the Latin for ‘law’ was, but any file starting with ‘juris’ was probably a close match. To my dismay, there was more than one for the time period I sought. A quick look at most of them showed what looked like normal civil proceedings. Then, my search was rewarded. A small, thin file listed several names. I took the sheet for later study, hoping that even if by chance it was missed, it would be chalked up to a clerical error. I’d make a copy of it as quickly as I could.

I slipped the sheet of paper into the waistband of my skirt, thankful that I had chosen to wear a suit rather than a dress. The thought of stuffing the paper down the front of a dress into my unfamiliar cleavage was too trite to consider.

Now, any reasonable person–and I like to think that usually includes me–would have hurried out of that office as fast as their high-heeled shoes could have carried them. But at the heart of it all, I was a private detective–a snoop. My curiosity got the best of me. If this office wasn’t really ‘there’ as Cindy had warned me, where was it?

I looked at the carefully-drawn blinds, seeing the thin rays of sunlight that found their way into the room. Carefully, I pulled the blinds back. The pattern of light on the carpet changed, but it was as if the light came from some other source, for it most certainly did not come through the window. I would never have expected to find what I found beyond the window. The best way to describe it was that I found... nothing.

I remembered suddenly an experience I had had as a child. My parents had taken my brothers and me to the Southwest on a camping vacation. We had stopped at Carlsbad Caverns and taken the tour. There, deep below the surface, they had turned out the lights to show us how unbelievably dark the caverns truly were. Not even the tiniest particle of light had registered on my eyes that day. It was like that now. Through the window was darkness–a blackness that allowed no light to exist. With a gasp, I dropped the blinds back into place.

“Have you satisfied your curiosity?” Mr. Hanes’ voice asked ominously from behind me. I hadn’t heard him come in, and I was so shocked by what I had found behind the blinds that my sixth sense regarding his presence had failed me.

“I...” I tried to begin, but I could think of nothing to say.

“Don’t worry,” he said softly, surprising me with his lack of anger, “I expected you to do that eventually. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer, but I don’t think he expected me to.

“Not what you expected, is it?” he asked, pulling up the blinds so I could see the darkness again. “I know. You were expecting red fires and demons with pitchforks and the screaming of souls being punished, weren’t you? You were expecting your childishly simple Hell. I’m sorry to disappoint you. My domain is far more complex than you could ever imagine. I have decided that my view should be of one of its more intriguing regions. It’s called Tartarus. Have you ever heard of it?”

Silently, I shook my head. I was looking at the darkness still unable to speak.

“It’s a very special region,” he explained, sounding like a proud homeowner explaining the important features of his dwelling. I suppose that’s what he was actually doing. His voice was soft, almost loving in tone. “It lies below the Underworld, although ‘below’ is a relative term, I suppose. You could dig to the center of the Earth and still not reach it, for it is really in another space and time.”

I could sense something out there in the void–something large and ominous. It was like the feeling I remembered when I was a little boy visiting an aunt who had an old, dark house. It was as if there was something alive in the darkness of her house, and it was as if there was something alive in the darkness of Tartarus.

“You can feel them, can’t you?” he asked soothingly. “They call out to us all, but some are more sensitive to their entreaties. Listen to them for a moment. Hear what they are saying.”

I strained to hear, but could not make out the words. I could somehow sense their tone, though. There were many voices, some deep and resonant, others high and feminine like my own. One moment, they seemed to be crying out in pain, begging for mercy–then the next moment, they threatened, causing shivers up and down my back.

“They must remain here for eternity,” he explained.

“Who are they?” I asked, barely able to find my voice. I hated myself for doing it, but I found I had actually backed into Mr. Hanes and found comfort in his touch. I could never remember being more frightened of anything in my life.

“They are the Old Ones,” he told me.

“I seem to remember a little of my mythology,” I said slowly. “They were called... Titans?”

“Yes,” he agreed, “they are the Titans. There are others with them as well–others whose names humans have never spoken. They cannot die; they can only be contained.” With that, he shut the blinds, and the feeling of dread that had been building inside me ebbed at last. He turned me to face him and looked piercingly into my eyes. “So now you understand why you must come in this office only when I am here. They made you curious. They caused you to open the blinds. Had I not been here, you would have been made to listen to their pleas, and you might have tried to help them.”

He picked up the reports that I had placed on his desk. “These are acceptable,” he declared. “That is all I have for you today. You may go home.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I rushed for the door.

“And Wanda...”

I turned toward him. “Yes?”

“Remember–always–what you have seen here today.”

I would, I thought as I closed the door behind me. I now knew what Erin was trying to tell me when she had spoken with me that morning. Had she known what I would see that day? Yet according to her, it was the good guys who had been locked away, while Hanes and the Judge represented the other side. I had to admit, although I had been fearful in Mr. Hanes’ office, I had not sensed evil. Whatever was beyond that room was neither good nor evil: it just... was.

But what did that mean to me? According to Erin, the Judge and his ilk sought to control humanity. Did they? I couldn’t be sure. I did know one thing, though: if I came down on the side of the Others, I might regain my manhood. They were offering me the chance to recover my real life. If I did nothing, it was the same as supporting the Judge, and I would remain Wanda Hazleton for the rest of my life. My fingers touched the paper I had tucked into my skirt. It wouldn’t hurt to check the names out, I thought. Then I could decide what to do.

I didn’t dare look at the list until I was safely in my car. There were five names on the list. Four of them meant nothing to me, but the fifth was familiar. It was a ‘Misty Stafford.’ Sly had called the redhead at the bar ‘Misty,’ and now that I thought about it, she hadn’t looked too happy–almost as if she wasn’t used to being a waitress in a bar. It was worth a shot. I had an hour or so before I had to get Carrie, so I decided to start with Misty.

I began to reconsider my decision the minute I walked into Randy Andy’s. When I had last been there, I was just another guy in a bar on a slow night. Now, it was Friday afternoon, and the bar was obviously gearing up for a big night. The problem was that like most bars, there were a lot more men than women. Here I was, a pretty black woman in a skirt and heels, and to my dismay, it seemed as if all eyes turned on me. Now I knew what a turkey felt like the day before Thanksgiving.

“Look at that!”

“Mmmm... tasty!”

“Look, Stan, dark meat!”

Those were just the comments I managed to hear clearly, the last from two guys a couple of barstools away from where I had nervously sidled up to the bar to talk to the only familiar person in the room–Sly. She was picking up an order at the bar from a weasel-faced bartender. She looked at the two clowns at the bar, and said to the one who had made the last comment, “Look, Larry, if it’s meat you want, why don’t you go into the men’s room and slap yours around for a while?”

Larry looked suddenly embarrassed while his friend, Stan, laughed loudly.

Sly looked at me. “Do you need something, Honey?”

So I was a honey now. Great. “Sly, I need to talk to Misty.”

“She’s not here today,” Sly told me. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”

I almost forgot about the wolves staring at me. “Not here? Why not?” Had she run? Was she my man–woman?

Sly laughed, “She turned her ankle. Let’s just say she hasn’t worn heels much.”

Did Sly know? I had to find out. “Maybe she’s used to wearing different shoes–and other things,” I ventured.

Sly looked at me carefully. “Do I know you?”

“I was here a couple of nights ago asking questions,” I said.

To my embarrassment, she laughed even harder. “Oh, this is too good. Look, we’re busy, but I can talk for a minute. Let me deliver these drinks and I’ll meet you in the storage room. It’s back beyond the restrooms.”

I was relieved to get away from the bar. Two more guys tried to put the moves on me as I made my way to the storage room. I was beginning to understand why few women hung out alone in bars. I had never really appreciated the freedom being male conferred on me, but I was learning. This would be my only foray into a bar by myself.

“I don’t have much time,” Sly said, closing the door behind her. She took a moment to look at me carefully. Then she smiled. “Well, Mr. Riley, I warned you about Ovid. I see you’ve met the Judge.”

“It’s Wanda now,” I replied, suddenly a little uncomfortable being called Mr. Riley. “Wanda Hazleton.”

“Married, too, I see,” Sly noted, nodding at the ring on my finger. “Well, welcome to Ovid. What can I do for you?”

“I still need information,” I sighed.

“Why? Odds are your client doesn’t even remember hiring you.”

“Let’s just call it an obsession,” I said. “I need to know. Misty was just changed, right?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, but how did you know that?”

“I came across a list,” I told her. “It has the names of everyone changed in the last week. But I don’t know anything except the names. I thought the Misty here at the bar might be the one I’m after.”

“I doubt it,” Sly mused, shaking her head. “The word is she was a guy but nothing like the guy you’re looking for. She remembers who she was, but she clams up when I try to talk to her about it. She was a supposedly liquor salesman–a big fat guy, balding and about fifty. I might be able to help you with the list, though. And there’s always the phone book, you know.”

“But they were just changed,” I pointed out.

“So were you, but I’ll bet you’re in the phone book.”

I felt like a fool. Of course she was right. I was new to Ovid, but as far as most people were concerned, I had been here for a long time. So had my suspects. I showed Sly my list. She actually knew two of them. Both were men who came in for a beer every now and then.

“I doubt if it’s them,” Sly told me. “I’ve talked to them. Neither one of them remembers who he was before.”

“You’re sure?”

She shrugged. “I suppose they could be lying, but I doubt it. You’ll see what I mean after you’ve been here for a while. The newcomers always seem a little uncomfortable for a few days if they remember who they were.”

Like me, I thought. She seemed to read my thoughts. “Just like you.”

“It shows, huh?”

“Yes, it shows,” she laughed with an encouraging squeeze of my arm. “You’re still trying to be the tough private detective. I’m sorry, honey, but it doesn’t work. Take my advice: try to play what you are. If you look like an attractive black woman, try to act like one. Odds are good you’ll learn more about your suspects that way than trying to be Sam Spade.” She colored suddenly. “Look, I’m sorry. I meant ‘spade’ like in the Bogart movies. I didn’t mean...”

It was actually my turn to laugh. “No offense taken. I guess I’ve been a black woman for such a short time that I didn’t think to take offense.”

“Well, okay,” she said, mollified. Then, after a silent moment, she added, “Look, Wanda, I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but take it from me. What has happened to you may be the best thing you could ever hope for.”

“Being turned into a woman? A black one at that?”

“When I got here and got changed, I was really pissed,” she went on. “I mean, I had what I thought was a good life. I’ll tell you about it some time. But now, I wouldn’t trade my life here for that old one for anything. Ovid is a great place to be. You can start over, have a family...”

I winced a little at that. Were Paul and Carrie really my family? Or were they just cardboard cut-outs representing a life that might be pleasant enough but wasn’t really mine?

“I’ll give it some thought,” I promised.

I had spent all my free time with Sly. Now, it was time to go play mom. I rushed over and picked up Carrie who regaled me all the way home with her eventful day. “And I made this for you,” she said proudly as she handed me a card while we were stopped at a light. I looked at it. It was a greeting card drawn on a computer. “To the Best Mom in the whole World!” it said in bright red letters in front of a colorful rainbow.

“That’s very pretty, honey,” I told her, finding I really was touched. I could remember when Trisha had done one similar to it.

“I mean it, too,” she said seriously.

“I know you do,” I replied, equally seriously. Then, slowly, I said, “I love you, too.” It almost hurt to say it. Did I mean it? I wasn’t sure, but I knew she expected me to say it. Trisha was the same way, and Carrie was so much like Trisha in so many ways...

I got Carrie ready to go and waved as she rode away with her little friend. I had no time to think about anything else though, because Paul was in the driveway within five minutes of Carrie’s departure.

He had a hand behind his back and a big smile on his face. Then, with a flourish, he whipped his hand out, producing a bouquet of a dozen pink roses. “In celebration of our evening alone,” he explained with a lecherous grin.

Now, I had been a husband before, and I knew where this was all supposed to lead. First, it was flowers. Then would come dinner and drinks at a nice restaurant. Then, it would be time to pay the piper. I would be expected to happily spread my legs for this man. I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready for it.

But I had a part to play, I realized. Sly was right. I couldn’t go around acting like the man I used to be. To nearly everyone–Paul included–I was Wanda Hazleton, wife and mother. I had no choice but to be Wanda–for now at least. So I forced a smile and accepted the flowers, sniffing them as I had often seen Mary do. “They’re beautiful.”

The smile became still wider. “I have seven-thirty reservations at Winston’s. Why don’t you slip into that little black number I like and I’ll put on a coat and tie?”

What choice did I have? It was obvious when I looked in the closet which dress he was talking about. It was the proverbial little black dress, short, revealing and decidedly feminine. With a sigh, I pulled it off the hangar. It was time to turn on the old cruise control and get ready for my first date.

It was a good thing I did. Jeff wouldn’t have had a clue how to put together all the pieces of the outfit Wanda ended up wearing that night. I observed myself getting ready, resisting the temptation to interfere as I deftly selected a necklace and earrings as well as matching bracelets. For stockings, I shocked myself when I selected a garter belt to go with my black bra and panties. Whoa, Bessie! What was I doing to myself? It was bad enough that I’d probably have to go for a roll in the hay with Paul after dinner. This outfit was guaranteed to get me raped!

I nearly stopped myself right then and there, but in a curious way, I was fascinated with the whole thing. I had a major decision to make shortly. I needed to decide if I was going to work for Erin and her side or not. If I did, I could get my old life back. But what did working for them mean? Was my old life important enough–or desirable enough–to risk angering the gods? And then there was Sly. She had obviously gone through the same process I was enduring. She even claimed to have a good life before her transformation. Yet she was happy now–as a waitress in a bar no less. Would I be?

I had to give being Wanda a fair chance. If I didn’t, I’d never know if I was making the right decision or not. The only way I could do that was to play out the evening as a happy wife. I don’t know which I feared more–that I wouldn’t like sex as a woman or that I would.

The evening was what I expected–and more. Paul was a gentleman of the first order. He escorted me as if I were a princess, opening doors for me and taking my arm. I was really grateful for that since the heels I was perched on were the highest I had worn yet.

I felt exposed at first as we stepped into Winston’s, a surprisingly well-appointed restaurant for such a small town. Here I was dressed to the nines. I had spent what seemed like an eternity with my makeup and my clothes until everything looked just right, and there was enough man left in me to know that I had done an excellent job on myself, for I was very attractive. But I was also wearing a dress that prominently displayed my breasts, and the skirts I had worn before exposed considerably less leg. My arms were bare and I could actually feel a little draft on my back. I was suddenly thankful for long hair, which covered at least a portion of it.

We smiled and spoke to several couples already dining. I was a little relieved to notice that we were accepted members of the community. I had been a little concerned that our race would make us unwelcome in some quarters of Ovid. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case.

We were seated in a somewhat secluded part of the room where we were able to have a little privacy–or as much privacy as a couple ever has in a restaurant. I found it to be immensely enjoyable. Paul was an intelligent man. I managed to figure out during dinner that he taught sociology at Capta College, a small liberal arts school in Ovid. Yet in spite of a doctorate in the field, he never talked down to me, respecting my opinion on subjects as the evening progressed.

I had to admit to myself that I hadn’t had as much fun talking to someone since my days with Mary. I’m convinced that the true secret to a successful marriage is the ability to talk to your partner as an intellectual equal. The ability to carry on a conversation with one’s partner is a relationship. Anything else is just sex.

Mostly, we talked about mundane things: family, friends, our jobs. Of course, I hadn’t had the chance to make friends yet except for Cindy and, I suppose, Sly. As for my job, well, I was certainly prohibited from telling him I worked for Hades. So we talked about his job mostly. Capta College sounded like a nice little college, and it was obvious that Paul was very happy there.

“Which reminds me,” he said as we finished the last of our dessert and coffee, “I have a luncheon with the President of the College tomorrow. It won’t take long though if you and Carrie still want to go out to Sunset Beach.”

“Sure,” I answered agreeably. Of course, I had never mentioned Sunset Beach, but it sounded all right to me. I was pretty mellow from the wine we had shared at dinner. I wasn’t used to wine or mixed drinks, being primarily a beer drinker, and I had drunk just a little too much. My smaller size made the effect of the alcohol greater, and I have to admit I probably drank more than I should to dampen the fear of what I was sure was still to come that evening.

I was as prepared for sex as I could manage to be. I have to admit that in a perverse sort of way I was actually looking forward to it. It represented an obstacle I would have to overcome if I remained Wanda Hazleton. And many women seemed to enjoy sex–Mary did. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Paul’s arm was around me as we walked out together. Given the wine I had consumed, I appreciated the extra support. But more than that, I found my body was responding to his closeness. My nipples and my crotch both seemed to tingle mildly. I seemed to crave his warmth and his strength.

So it came as no surprise to me that we didn’t even bother to turn on the lights when we got home. We were in each other’s embrace the minute we stepped in the house. The tingling I had felt before was becoming more and more insistent. I began to feel warm, and it wasn’t just the closeness of our two bodies.

I’m not sure what was going through my mind at that moment. I know I wasn’t on cruise control because I was willing myself to touch him all over as he was touching me, our hands conducting a symphony of flesh as we peeled each other’s clothing away. I do know that whatever rational thoughts I was having were being pushed aside by the sudden needs of my new body. I was experiencing a feeling of emptiness which had to be abated, and the solution was obvious.

I slipped down onto the bed. The covers had been pulled back, but I didn’t remember doing it. I felt my large, fleshy ass sinking down into the mattress and my long hair spreading across the pillow. Paul was careful not to put all of his weight on me, wordlessly slipping over me. I felt something rubbing against me, tentatively at first but soon harder. There was a friction against my flesh and I knew instinctively that he had begun to stimulate my clitoris.

I felt as if my body was turning to liquid, starting between my legs. Each movement seemed to produce more fluid from my body until I felt something solid invading the inner sanctum of my body. The feeling of emptiness was subsiding, but another feeling was beginning. It was a feeling unlike anything I had ever known before, and it seemed to be felt in several parts of my new body at once, rising until... until... Oh God! Is this what it’s like?

We slept in Saturday morning, and with good reason. I almost lost count of how many times we made love together that night. We would awaken still naked in each other’s arms, and the need would rise again. It wasn’t an orgy; it was gentle. Following my initial insistent foray into sex as a woman, our subsequent efforts were more relaxed and protracted. How could I have ever dreaded something so pleasurable? I wondered the next morning. I even considered waking Paul for one more round before we got up.

This didn’t mean that I had completely given up my interest in returning to my previous life. Far from it. But it did mean that if I chose to remain in this new life, it would have its own compensations. But I wasn’t sure I could continue to work for Mr. Hanes. It was like working for the devil, and the Catholic boy who still wandered around inside my head was unhappy with that prospect.

I slid out of bed, careful not to wake Paul who continued to snore contentedly. I still couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, I realized as I took my morning shower. There seemed to be nothing sinister about Ovid. It was the perfect small town–the sort of place where neighbors helped each other out and children grew up healthy and happy. Even Mr. Hanes wasn’t really so bad. He might resemble the Catholic devil with his power over the underworld, but there seemed to be nothing evil about him. Not once had I seen him rush gleefully into the office with the contract for someone’s hapless soul.

And yet Erin claimed she was one of the good guys, I thought as I soaped my soft curvaceous body. She made it sound as if the gods sought to control and dominate humanity. But it was her side who had made me a cat’s-paw. A black cat’s-paw, I thought with grim humor.

I looked down at my body as I rinsed. The black skin, prominent breasts, and furry mound between my legs seemed almost normal to me now. I had washed myself off without a thought, and now, I was preparing to wash my long hair as if I had done it a thousand times before. If I did what the Judge expected of me and acted like a good little girl, this would be my life forever.

And was it so bad? No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a life I would have chosen for myself, but it wasn’t a bad life. In fact, everything felt suddenly... right. When I looked at my body, I saw a person. I saw myself. This was going to make the decisions that followed all the harder.

The rest of the morning was a portrait of domesticity. I made breakfast for Paul and me. We read the papers and did a few chores. Carrie had called right after I got out of the shower and asked for permission to stay at her friends until early afternoon. Then she had talked me into taking them both to some place called Sunset Beach in the afternoon. A beach in Oklahoma? I knew it was there. Cindy had shown me the pictures, but it seemed as out of place as a small town run by the gods.

As soon as Paul left for his lunch meeting, I grabbed the phone book. I needed to check out the last two names on my list. I had reached the conclusion that even if I decided not to cooperate with Erin and her side, I wanted to know who Peter Allison had become. It was a mystery and I was still a detective–sort of. I wouldn’t be happy until I knew who Peter Allison had become. Although I was becoming more and more convinced that once I knew, I would keep the information to myself. I just couldn’t bring myself to trust Erin’s ‘employers.’ And, if I admitted it to myself, a couple more nights like the last one and I’d have absolutely no desire to change back.

Jim Delong turned out to be a sixteen-year-old boy with his own phone. A very awkward short conversation with revealed that he knew nothing of who he had been before. The little prick even tried to make a date with me sight unseen. That left me with one name on the list. It would come down to the last name. I decided to see Lisa James in person.

Lisa was home, although it wasn’t much of a home. Her home was a rundown little house in one of the less prosperous parts of Ovid. As I approached the small house, I couldn’t help but think even a coat of paint would make things look better and might make visitors forget the weed-infested, junk-filled yard. There was the smell of something cooking as I approached the door–something cheap and pungent. I could hear the screams and yells of what seemed to be a house full of children.

Lisa James looked as if she had seen better days. With a little makeup, her hair washed and set, and a decent outfit, she would have been attractive, but she exhibited none of those things when she answered the door, a filthy baby in only a diaper crying in her arms. Her hair was vaguely blonde and stringy. She wore a tank top and cut-offs that displayed a reasonably good figure, but if she continued to eat whatever she was cooking, the figure wouldn’t be good for long. Her lack of makeup made her look older, but I estimated her age at no more than thirty. Two other children, neither more than five, ran unsupervised through her tattered, untidy living room. All the children were shades.

“Yes?” she said in a tired voice.

“Ms. James?”

“Yeah,” she replied with suspicion. “You from the county?” Her voice had a nasal twang that made my own Oklahoma drawl sound absolutely Fifth Avenue.

“The county?”

“Welfare,” she explained.

I was momentarily taken aback until I realized what she meant. I suppose it was a reasonable assumption. Why else would a black woman in even a casual skirt and blouse like I was wearing show up on the doorstep of someone like Lisa James on a Saturday morning.

“Uh... no,” I managed to respond. “I’m just doing an investigation. I’d like to talk to you about... about...” For some reason, I couldn’t get it out. It was as if my voice had frozen.

Lisa seemed to understand. She deftly handed the baby to one of the other children. I think the child was a girl, but it was hard to tell. “You take your little brother Jed in and change him.”

“Ma!”

“None of your back talk,” she said sternly. “Now git!”

Oh, there was no way this was Peter Allison, I thought to myself as the two children hurried out of the room, awkwardly carrying the crying baby.

“There,” she said when they were gone. “Now we can talk about it. It’s them rules, you know. We can’t talk about the changes with more than two of us in earshot.” She sat on a worn couch as primly as she could. She only succeeded in looking tired.

“Then you remember who you were?” I asked, sitting in what appeared to be the least dirty chair.

“Oh, I remember,” she laughed mirthlessly. “I just wish I didn’t.”

“I’m looking for Peter Allison,” I told her. “Were you...?”

She nodded slowly. “Hell of a note, ain’t it? They did this to me. They took all the money I had and made me into this. I thought I’d be able to buy myself a good life here with what I brought them. Fat chance, huh? They took all the money–every dime! And what did they do for me? They give me these three little rug rats, an eighth grade education, and a husband that ain’t been seen since little Jed was still in the pouch–or so I’m told. To make it all worse, I can’t talk except like this. Ain’t that a kick in the pants?”

“I’m... I’m sorry,” I offered.

“T’warnt your fault,” she muttered. “‘Sides, looks like you ain’t got it the best either. I’ll bet you weren’t no black gal afore you got here.”

“No... no, I wasn’t,” I admitted. But I thought to myself how fortunate I was to be Wanda Hazleton after seeing what had happened to Peter Allison. In fact, even without seeing what had happened to Allison, I was beginning to feel I had been given an incredible gift when I became Wanda Hazleton.

“They’re after me, ain’t they?” Lisa asked.

“They?”

“Don’t be coy,” she growled. “The Others. They sent you. If you ain’t from welfare and ain’t one o’ them that run this place, you gotta be workin’ for the Others. I know who they are. Well, you just tell ’em to come and get me. I’ll be glad to see ’em. With any luck, they’ll just kill me and be done with it. It’s gotta be a damned sight better than this.”

I rose unsteadily to my feet and pulled my purse up on my shoulder. It had nothing to do with the heels I wore. I was horrified with what had happened to Peter Allison. I think it was the realization that it could have just as easily been me standing there in all that squalor with that life. For the first time since my conversion, I was absolutely thankful to be Wanda Hazleton. Mumbling a quick thank you, I rushed out of the house.

So I had my man–or rather my woman–I thought as I got into shorts and a T-shirt for the afternoon at the beach. Now what was I going to do about it? I had realized I could be happy as Wanda Hazleton, but I hadn’t made up my mind completely. Should I turn Allison over to the Others? It seemed as if I would almost be doing her a favor. Besides, what would it hurt? The money was gone, so that wasn’t an issue. I could be Jeff Riley again...

But what would the Others do with Peter–or rather, Lisa? It seemed as if as bad as her life was, it was probably better than what the Others would do to her. If they were being honest with me, they could change her into something far worse than a welfare mother. And I would be responsible.

I had a little time to consider what I was to do. Obviously, the former Peter Allison wasn’t going anywhere. He’d keep until I decided what I was going to do. Of course, Erin was going to be most displeased when she found that the money she sought was already gone. I extracted the card she had given me from my purse and looked at the number. It would be so simple to dial the number and complete my assignment. Then I could go home. So what was stopping me?

My thoughts were interrupted when I heard the door slam and the running of little feet. “Mommy, aren’t you taking us to the beach?” Carrie asked when she and her friend Tanya saw me.

“Sure, I told you I would,” I replied.

“Then why aren’t you in your bathing suit?”

Bathing suit? It was bad enough to display what I had already displayed in public, but now I was expected to show even more skin? I wasn’t ready for that–not yet.

“Wear the yellow bikini!” Carrie insisted. “You look hot in that!”

“Carrie!” I cried, trying hard not to laugh.

“Yeah, wear the yellow bikini!” a deep voice laughed. It was Paul. I hadn’t heard him come in. “After that boring luncheon, I need to see my woman in a yellow bikini.”

I don’t know why, but the more I thought about that, the more I was rather curious to see what I would look like in that yellow bikini. If both my provided husband and daughter thought I’d look great in it, I was beginning to warm to the idea.

Carrie was right, too–I did look hot. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, I had to admit that I was a very attractive woman. The bright yellow bikini was just the right accent for my dark skin. It fit me like a second skin, displaying my breasts and hips in a way I would have never imagined. I should have felt embarrassed. In fact, I thought I would be embarrassed. After all, the suit did little to disguise and much to emphasize my feminine shape. Instead, I felt... proud. Yes, that’s it! I felt proud. I looked downright fantastic and I was actually proud of it.

I had made up my mind, I realized as I admired myself in the mirror. I was Wanda Hazleton, and Carrie was my daughter, and Paul was my husband–and my lover. Who knows? Maybe we could work at giving Carrie a little brother or sister.

So I enjoyed my day at the beach. Sunset Beach was actually an artificial beach built on a lake, but the late summer sun was warm and relaxing, and with the joyful cries of bathers splashing in the clear lake water, it took only a little imagination to pretend I was on a fashionable beach in a more exotic part of the world. I smiled at that, though. When, I thought about it, what could be more exotic than a town run by the gods?

“I see you’re acclimating nicely,” a voice said, bringing me out of my thoughts. I had been lying back against a plastic lounger, my eyes closed while Paul took the girls over for ice cream cones. When I opened my eyes, I saw Susan Jager looking down at me, a wide grin on her face. She was wearing a bikini similar to my own only in a burgundy shade that complemented her white skin and rich brown hair. “Nice outfit,” she added.

I actually grinned back. “Yours, too.”

“This is probably the last time I’ll get to wear it,” she laughed. “I’m pregnant, so by next spring I’ll have to work to get back in shape to wear it again.”

“Were you...” I began. “I mean, before Ovid, what...”

“You mean was I a woman before Ovid?” she asked brightly. “No, I wasn’t. I was an attorney but a male one–and a very unhappy one, too, I might add.”

“So... how did you become... pregnant?” It was a stupid question, but I asked it with a purpose. I had had sex with Paul. Was I pregnant? Was that the way it worked? I mean, sure, I thought about it for the future, but I wasn’t ready to have a child just yet.

“I became pregnant in the usual way,” she laughed. Then, she stopped laughing. “Oh, I can see by the look on your face what’s worrying you. Well, don’t worry. There’s a three-month grace period for all newcomers. You can’t get pregnant until then. But take my advice, if you’re already worrying about it, I assume you’re sexually active.” She gave me a wicked little grin. “And with a guy like Paul, I don’t blame you, by the way. So as to the advice: go ahead and get started on birth control pills. Better safe than sorry.”

“Sure,” I agreed. At least it was a relief to know I wasn’t pregnant–at least yet. “Susan, are you happy now?”

“The happiest.”

“I guess you realize this is all a big shock for me,” I ventured.

She nodded, sitting down on the lounge chair beside me. “Wanda, this is a big shock for everyone. Most of the men who are transformed into women didn’t really want that change. The same is true of the women who become men. But the funny thing is, it usually works out for the best. The Judge finds us because we’re usually about to experience a meaningless death out there in the real world. If I had died as I was supposed to out there, I would never have known how happy I could be. I was divorced, in bad health, and made a good living getting guilty slime balls off the hook in court. Now I’m young, married, proud of what I do for a living, and about to become a mother. Give it a chance. You can be happy, too.”

“I plan to,” I told her honestly.

We had to break off the conversation, for Paul, Carrie and Tanya had just come back with ice cream. Although I had said I didn’t want one, Paul had brought me back a huge strawberry cone, and it did look good. I accepted it gratefully, but I had a most unmasculine thought about needing to watch my weight.

By the time we got home that night, Carrie was practically asleep. When we had dropped Tanya off at her house, Carrie was barely awake enough for us to tell her goodnight. Of course, she had had a long day playing at the beach, followed by wolfing down a full-sized Rusty Burger. She was tired and full and made no arguments when I got her ready for bed.

It felt so natural to be doing that. Many were the times that I had gotten Trisha ready for bed, watching her with a smile as she ambled about half-asleep. Color aside, Carrie could have been Trisha. She had the same bright sparkle in her eyes and the same love of life. I kissed her gently as I tucked her in.

“I love you, Mommy,” she said sleepily.

I smiled and replied softly, “I love you, too Pumpkin.” And I found I really did.

“She asleep?” Paul asked when I got back into the den. He was standing there, still in his swim trunks as he flipped back and forth between the various satellite sports channels. His T-shirt covered his chest, but I couldn’t help but think he looked pretty fit.

“Sure is,” I replied. I was still in my bikini, too with just a cover-up over it. We had needed little else in the warm Oklahoma evening.

Paul turned to me and pulled my cover-up down. “You really do look hot in that bikini,” he remarked.

“I look hot out of this bikini, too,” I said with a sultry smile.

I knew where this was leading, but unlike the previous evening, I was ready for it, too. Sex as a woman had been better than I had imagined, and I found myself oddly attracted to this man. Maybe it was the hormones, or maybe it was part of the magic of Ovid, but I didn’t really care. I actually gave a little gasp of anticipation as Paul gently removed the bra of my suit. He wordlessly gave a gentle kiss to one of my nipples, and if he had asked, I would have made love to him right there in the den.

Fortunately, he didn’t ask until nearly ten minutes later when I was lying back languidly on the bed.

It had been even better than the previous night, I reflected as I slipped out of bed the next morning. Oh, we hadn’t done it as many times. We were tired, too. But I had been more relaxed. I had even worked up my nerve enough to experiment with oral sex. I was glad I had, too, for Paul reciprocated, proving to be a master at it.

How could I have considered giving this up? I thought as I showered. I had enjoyed life more in the last two days than in all the days as Jeff after Mary and Trisha had died. I was part of a family again. Granted, I wasn’t crazy about my job, but I had a lot to be grateful for. I had a decent lifestyle, a loving spouse, a pretty young daughter, and most of all, I had a future. Where was my life as Jeff leading me? I hadn’t really dated since Mary’s death and had no plans to start. I had sacrificed my career with the police for revenge, and although I could have done nothing else, the sweetness of the revenge had turned to bitter ash in Jeff’s mouth.

I found I was even starting to think of Jeff as another person. He was someone I had known a long time ago. He was a nice guy, but he had problems–problems I couldn’t help him with. Jeff was gone. He wasn’t even dead and buried; he had never existed.

The only unresolved thing in my mind was what to do about my assignment. Remaining as Wanda was a personal choice I had already made. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t complete my assignment. I could simply ask Erin to leave me as I was. The problem was that I still needed to figure out who the good guys were.

There were really three possibilities, I realized as I dressed for the day in a white casual knit top and denim cut-offs. The first possibility was that Erin had been telling me the truth. It was the simplest solution, really. It meant all I had to do was call the number, tell her where Peter Allison was, and go on with my life.

But what if the Judge and his crew were the good guys? What if they didn’t seek to rule mankind, but that Erin and her cohorts did? Would the combined force of the classical gods and goddesses be stuck here in a small Oklahoma town if that was their ultimate goal? I had seen power wielded that I could have never imagined a few days ago. If they sought to rule with that power, why weren’t they in Washington doing to Congress what they had done to Ovid?

There was a third possibility as well. It was just possible that there weren’t any good guys or bad guys. How did the old song go? There ain’t no good guys; there ain’t no bad guys. There’s just you and me and we just disagree. Maybe that song described the gods.

So should I call or not? The dilemma plagued me throughout most of the day. Of course, that meant I didn’t call. I just enjoyed life right up until the moment it all fell apart.

Oh, it started innocently enough. Carrie had gone over to play with some neighborhood kids. I was even relieved to see they were both black and white kids. While Ovid seemed to have its bigots, the races in general mixed well. Paul was on the patio in back of the house, poring over some materials for a class he would be teaching for the fall term. I was going through the motions of doing what all working wives and mothers do on the weekends–laundry, cleaning, and all the other domestic chores. It was time for a break, so I fixed a pitcher of lemonade for Paul and me.

“Thanks, babe,” he said with a smile as he accepted the icy glass. He took a sip and added, “I needed that.”

“What’s the class?” I asked, sitting next to him and nodding at the stack of books he had spread around him on the table.

“Comparative religion,” he told me. When he saw my vague look, he explained, “You know, comparing the various religious beliefs around the world, like Loki to the Trickster or Wotan to Jupiter.”

Jupiter. The name caught me by surprise. “I thought we couldn’t say their names here,” I commented. It was an idle comment. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that Paul wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I wondered how I would explain my comment.

But he was too wrapped up in his subject to notice. “We can, so long as it’s in the mythological context instead of...” He broke off, and his dark face actually lost a little color as he realized what he had just said. I realized it at the same moment: he knew!

“Wanda, let me explain...” he began nervously.

“You know who you are!” I practically yelled. “You... you...” I wanted to say “took advantage of me”, but it sounded so shop-worn. Some detective I was! Paul had fooled me into believing he was just one of the innocent souls transformed without memory of a previous life. “My god, how you must be laughing at me,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “Was it fun, fooling the big city detective? Who are you, Paul? Are you one of them? One of Jup... Jup... the Judge’s people? Or are you one of Erin’s people just making sure I complete my assignment.”

“Damn it, Wanda,” Paul broke in, “will you let up for a minute? I’ll tell you everything if you just give me a chance.”

“A chance?” I yelled. “A chance? I gave you a chance. I thought you were... I mean, I even let you... screw me! You son of a bitch! You...”

“Wanda! Please listen to me! I’m Peter Allison!”

It was probably the one thing he could say that would make me shut up. “You’re who?” I asked softly.

“Peter Allison,” he repeated. “I’m the one you’re looking for.”

It didn’t make any sense. I had already found Peter Allison, hadn’t I? And besides, Paul wasn’t even on the list.

“I’m Peter Allison,” Paul said again. “Look, sit back down. I’ve got a story to tell you.”

It was a hell of a story. I sat quietly, listening as Paul told me his story. Part of it I knew already, but I knew it out of context. Paul as Peter was really human like me and he really had been a fund manager. What I hadn’t known was that his undergraduate degree had been in sociology. Rather than go on in that field, he had shifted to business, eventually ending up with the Harvard MBA. By the time he was forty, he had been married, divorced, and had become one of the most successful fund managers ever to work for Janus.

“I think I picked Janus because of the mythological symbolism. Classical mythology was always a hobby of mine,” he explained with a little smile. When he saw my confusion, he explained, “Janus was one of the oldest of the Roman gods. He supposedly ruled areas around Rome and even invented money.”

“I wonder if he really exists,” I murmured, more to myself than to Paul.

“Probably,” Paul replied. “Anyhow, I had my obligatory mid-life crisis. I had done everything I set out to accomplish at Janus, and I was bored. Then a woman named Erin contacted me about a job with a group of private investors. They had set aside a fairly modest fund–only five million–and wanted someone who could make it grow for them.”

“Wasn’t five million a little puny after what you had to play with at Janus,” I asked a little sarcastically.

“It was,” he agreed, “but that was the challenge. Look, Wanda, they told me about you. I know who you used to be. When you were in Homicide, did you ever get tired of the slam-dunk cases and find a tough one you really wanted to sink your teeth into?”

“Sure,” I admitted. I was getting over being mad in spite of the fact that the Judge’s side had obviously set me up, too. Paul may have been Peter Allison at one time, but like me, he was now a different person. I don’t know if I would have liked Peter Allison, but in spite of all that had happened, I found I still liked Paul. He was as much of a cat’s-paw as I was.

“That’s how I felt about the private fund,” he continued. “It was a challenge. It’s easy to run a fifty million dollar fund. You’re the eight hundred pound gorilla–you sit wherever you want. That’s not the way it is when you have a small fund.”

I was finding it difficult to think of five million dollars as a small amount of money, but I saw his point. And as I knew from personal experience, Erin could be quite persuasive. I could see Paul–Peter then–being enticed by the thought of building up a fund from scratch. It must have been a terrific challenge for him. I told him so.

“Not really,” he said shaking his head with a little smile. “It took me less than a year to build it up to thirty million.”

“And then you decided to take it all for yourself,” I surmised a little sadly. He was Paul now, but he had embezzled thirty million. There was some real irony here. I was a former cop who had fallen for a crook.

“Wrong. I don’t have a dime of the money.”

He smiled at my open-mouthed stare.

“They were careless,” he explained. “They didn’t know about my interest in mythology. I would overhear names and events. Eventually, I started to put them together. It was by eavesdropping that I learned of something of their plans. And what I heard frightened me. Wanda, the funny thing is, these Others think they’re doing the right thing, but they aren’t. They’re so frightened of the Judge and his plans that they’re willing to form an alliance with a group they call the Old Ones. I don’t know who they are, but I can guess. The results wouldn’t be pretty, I’m afraid.”

I didn’t tell him that I knew where the Old Ones were. He seemed concerned enough about them without knowing that there was a direct conduit to them only a few blocks away.

“Then I heard them mention Ovid,” he went on. “I was desperate. I was working for beings who could bring about the downfall–even the end–of mankind. And I was giving them the money to carry out their plans. Then, I overheard them mention Ovid by name.”

“So you came here on your own with the money,” I surmised, too wrapped up in his story to sustain my anger. This was Paul, I kept telling myself–not Peter Allison. This was Paul, the man I... I...

He nodded. “Yes, but more importantly, I had my notes about their activities.”

“So tell me,” I prompted. “What makes you think the Judge and his ilk are the good guys?”

He actually laughed at that. “It really isn’t that simple. I can’t say too much without running into the blocks the Judge has on all of us. Personally though, I have more faith in the Judge than I do in the Others.”

“So you brought the money here?”

He shook his head. “The money is still invested. It’s in timed accounts. I’m sure they told you that before they sent you here. Losing the money hurts their cause, but what they really want to know is what I discovered from them and what I told the Judge. That information is potentially far more damaging to them than losing the money.”

It all made sense, except for one thing: why had the Judge changed me into the wife of the very man I sought? It didn’t make any sense unless...

“My god, Paul!”

His look of contrition turned to one of alarm. “What?”

“Do you know what a cat’s-paw is?”

He grinned. “Sure, I like mythology, remember? It refers to an old legend where a monkey uses the paw of a cat to get chestnuts out of a fire. It means a tool.”

“And that’s what we both are,” I told him quickly. “We’re in danger here.”

“Not if you cooperate,” a new voice said. But it was a familiar voice.

“Hello, Erin,” I said without turning.

It was, indeed, Erin, flanked by two large men. I had seen their type many times before. They were hired muscle. Ask them to add two plus two and they’d look at you in confusion, but ask them to break somebody’s arm and they would respond at once.

“Hello, Wanda,” Erin responded. “You’ve done a fine job for us. You are to be congratulated.”

For what? I wondered. I had fingered the wrong person as being Allison. Then, I had gotten so comfortable in my new life that I hadn’t called in. And all along, my target was sharing a bed with me. Well, what was the old saying? Something about keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I couldn’t have gotten much closer to Paul.

“But how did you know about...?” I closed my eyes and sighed. “You’ve had me bugged, haven’t you?”

She smiled and reached into my purse which I had carelessly left on the couch. She extracted the card she had given me at day care a couple of days earlier.

“It’s magical?” I asked.

“No,” she laughed. “As I told you before, it’s a little dangerous to use magic around here. It’s state-of-the-art electronics. We have a listening post a few miles out of Ovid.”

“But you didn’t come when I thought I had found Peter yesterday,” I pointed out.

Erin shook her head as she put the card in a pocket in her skirt. “No, it just didn’t sound right. We decided to wait. It seemed unlikely that Peter would have been given such a life after he did so much to hurt our cause. And we were right. Here he is with a loving family and a prestigious job at the college. See how they use people, Wanda? You, his hunter, became a significant part of his reward.”

I flushed in both anger and embarrassment. I had been used, true, but I had found something I thought I had lost in the process. But Erin didn’t know that, did she?

“Now,” Erin continued, “if the two of you will come with us, we can settle this whole affair like civilized people.”

Now what did that mean? Was I to be returned to my old life? What would happen to Paul? What would happen to the human race?

“Come on, Wanda,” she prompted. “No harm will come to you. We will make good our promise to you. You will be Jeff Riley on a plane home to Chicago by morning.”

“But what about... Paul?” I couldn’t bring myself to call him Peter.

“He has betrayed us and caused great trouble for our cause,” she explained. “His fate doesn’t concern you. You shouldn’t care, you know. He deceived you. He took advantage of your womanhood.”

Paul looked at me sadly. “For what it’s worth, Wanda, I do love you.”

I said nothing. I didn’t want Erin to know that I had made my decision, and I wanted to remain Wanda–with Paul at my side.

“Wait!” I told Erin. She turned to face me, puzzled. “What about Officer Mercer? What if the Judge knows you’re here?”

“He can’t possibly know,” she laughed. “And Officer Mercer is quite occupied right now. A bus filled with children on their way to a Sunday School day camp is about to roll off the road and catch fire not ten miles from Ovid. He will be occupied with that for the rest of the day. So will the Judge I should imagine.”

Was that what the Others were all about? Would they actually risk the lives of a bus loaded with children to further their cause? If I had held any doubts before, they were gone now. I had picked the right side.

“Oh?”

Another familiar voice, but this was one I was happy to hear. It was Officer Mercer. I wondered in a sudden flash of cockeyed humor if I had made enough lemonade for everyone.

I should have been paying more attention. As the two heavies tried to take on Officer Mercer, Erin grabbed Paul and began to fade from view. I should have realized she didn’t plan to get him out of Ovid by conventional means.

“No!” I screamed, grabbing Paul’s fading form by the legs in what had to be a tackle my old high school football coach would have been proud of. Of course, I learned in that moment that wrapping your arms around a man’s lower torso when you had breasts the size of mine was a little painful, but I held on. I felt Erin’s grasp on Paul fail and I tumbled to the ground with him as she faded from view. I hit my head on the patio bricks and was out like a light.

“She’ll be all right.”

The voice seemed to be echoing around inside my head, pushing back the darkness as I awoke. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. All I knew was that I had the mother of all headaches.

“It was just a mild concussion,” the voice, which I now realized was Officer Mercer, explained.

“Easily repaired,” another voice, belonging to the Judge I realized, said.

The pain in my head and the bruises I incurred in my unladylike tackle faded to nothingness. I opened my eyes and sat up. Of the five men looking at me, only Paul looked concerned. Both Officer Mercer and the Judge were smiling confidently, and the two heavies stood against a wall with sullen but frightened looks on their faces. They seemed unable to move. Looking around, I realized I was in my own–or Wanda’s own–living room.

“What happened?” I managed to say.

“Quite a lot, really,” the Judge said with a slight chuckle. “Officer Mercer subdued our two friends over there while you kept Paul here from being captured by Eris.”

“Eris?” I echoed.

The Judge nodded. “You apparently knew her as Erin. She’s quite a dangerous character. She’s considered to be essentially the very personification of strife. She and her brother Mars used to cut quite a swathe before he settled down to become a pillar of our little community.”

I looked at Paul. “Are you all right?” I asked quietly.

“I’m fine, babe,” he assured me, taking my hand in his and squeezing lightly. “You saved my life.”

“She saved a lot more than that,” the Judge told us. “Thanks to your husband, Wanda, we have severely damaged the network of the Others. We were able to uncover their plans to release the Old Ones and upset the careful balance of power we have maintained for centuries on end. Had they realized how much we now know of their plans, they might have been able to adapt more quickly. Thanks to you, though, we will be able to act on Paul’s information within the next few days. We are in your debt.”

“Thanks, I think,” I said, still a little woozy.

“Now, to business,” the Judge said. He muttered a few words in that archaic dialect of Latin, or whatever it was, and I watched in rapt fascination as the two heavies shrank, their clothes becoming a coating of fur. In moments, two small Pekinese dogs growled nervously as they brushed against each other. “Meet Yin and Yang,” the Judge laughed. “They’ll be going to a good home. As soon as Yin goes into heat, they’ll be too busy to get into any more mischief.”

Then the Judge turned to me. “You should feel privileged, Wanda. Very seldom have I given anyone the opportunity to change back, but since you were brought to us under false pretences and have helped us with a very knotty problem, it is only right that you be rewarded. I’m prepared to return you to your old life.”

I gasped. If he had offered this to me two days earlier, I would have accepted in a fraction of a heartbeat. Now, though, I wasn’t prepared to be Jeff Riley ever again. Paul had lied to me, but the stakes had been higher than I had imagined. I looked at him. There were tears in his eyes.

“Paul, I...”

“You do whatever you want, babe,” he said sadly.

“Do you... do you really love me?”

His eyes squeezed in pain. “Oh yes I do. When they brought you to me, I never dreamed I’d end up loving you, but I do.”

If you love something, set it free. I don’t remember where I read it, but I know I did. Paul loved me enough to let me go back to my old life. But I couldn’t do that. I was Wanda Hazleton. And just thinking about that made me want to be with him. Without a word, I stepped into his arms. I hugged him as if I never wanted to let him go, and felt the loving pressure of his arms around me.

“Well, Officer Mercer,” the Judge said with a polite cough, “it seems we have a new resident in Ovid.”

Then I had an idea. “Judge, what happened to the school bus?”

“We were fortunate,” the Judge replied. “We had other associates who were watching for such a strategy. The children are fine. They won’t be joining us.”

“But even with that, Officer Mercer couldn’t have prevented Paul from being kidnapped.”

“That’s true, my dear,” the Judge admitted.

“If Ovid is growing, maybe it’s about time to expand the police force,” I ventured. “And I don’t think Mr. Hanes has been too happy with my work.”

The Judge smiled. “My esteemed brother is seldom happy with anything. Continue, my dear...”

...and I was suddenly back in my office with Diana and Susan.

“You stopped too soon!” Diana cried.

“But you know where she is now,” I told her, “don’t you?”

“I don’t,” Susan said.

“But of course I do,” Diana replied with a wave of her hand. “I just like happy endings. You know, the kind where everything gets all tied up in a big bow.”

“Well, I don’t know about the bow, but I do know how to tie things up. I need to drop off some papers for the Judge before we go to lunch. Shall we?” I asked, rising to my feet.

Of course, only Susan didn’t know, but I imagine she suspected. All of her clients had been brought directly to court that week, so she hadn’t been on the Police Department side of the building since it happened. Her mouth still dropped open when she saw what Diana and I already knew. There, behind the front desk at the Police Department was a new officer. Although dressed like Officer Mercer, the officer wore a uniform that had obviously been tailored for a much more curvaceous form.

“Hi, Cindy,” the lovely black woman said from her desk, a wide smile on her face.

“Hi, Wanda,” I replied with a smile of my own. “How’s the new job working out?”

“Great,” she told us. Then she looked at Diana whom she had never seen before.

“It’s all right,” I told Wanda. “You can talk in front of Diana. In fact, you can say anything you like.”

Wanda gave Diana the quick once-over as only a police officer can. “One of them, eh?” she asked. There was no rancor in her voice. She actually seemed to find Diana’s godhood amusing.

Diana just smiled.

“It’s good to be back in police work again,” Wanda told us. “Even if it is behind a desk. I don’t know how Officer Mercer held everything together, even with his speed.”

“Is everything okay with you and Paul?” Susan asked.

Wanda raised an eyebrow. “Looking for a little divorce work, counsellor?”

“Of course not!” Susan replied, her face reddening.

Wanda just laughed. “Only joking, Susan. But to answer your question, Paul was in the doghouse for a couple of days. It’s funny, but I find I enjoy getting flowers and gifts from a repentant spouse. Like the new earrings?” She indicated the small glittering stones in her ear lobes. “They were yesterday’s peace offering.”

“Rubies,” Diana observed. “They’re very nice. Next time, though, be a real woman–hold out for diamonds.”

Wanda, Susan and I all laughed, but I think I was the only one who realized Diana hadn’t really been joking! Diana looked confused at first, but then she smiled, too.

“There’s just one thing I’d like to know,” Susan said as the three of us walked to the Greenhouse. “If Peter wasn’t Lisa James, then who was she?”

“Be derned if I know,” Diana said with a deadpan drawl that matched Lisa’s perfectly. She then smiled at us. “We all have to do our part for the cause, you know.”

I couldn’t stop laughing at the look of surprise on Susan’s face.

The End