Bone of Contention

Bone of ContentionFlint & Co Paranormal Investigations, Book 4By Rachel Ford Chapter OneThe car showed up as promised by Special Agent Sean O’Donnell of the FBI. Except, it wasn’t a car but rather a standard, government issue SUV – glossy black paint, tinted black windows, big, boxy profile. Conspicuous as hell, and all the more so because the driver wore a black suit, had a wire in his ear, and a neck roughly the size of a tree trunk. A real Men in Black vibe.We were standing outside the former cathedral that served as the current offices of Flint & Co Paranormal Investigations when he pulled to a halt, tires squealing.“Jill Wallace?” the agent asked.“That’s me,” I confirmed. Pointing to my fiancée and partner in turns, I added, “And Natalie Lyons and Jack Flint.”“Flinty Jack to my friends,” the skeleton said, in a tone that didn’t quite convey where on the spectrum the spook fell.“Uh. Great. I’m Agent Murphy,” the man in black said. “O’Donnell sent me. They’re waiting for you at the museum.”Which temporarily distracted me from any other concerns. When O’Donnell had called us in on the case, he’d said something about a royal protection detail. Not an archeological foray or sightseeing trip.So I was about to follow up with a question when Nat asked, “What about the body?”Murphy stared at her. “The what now?”Which brought me back to the other concerns. “We’ve got a dead serial killer in there,” I said. To his wondering stare, I added, “It’s – a long story.”“You caught us at a bad time,” Flinty Jack put in. “Kind of a…busy morning.”The man in black cleared his throat. “I guess. I’m going to have to radio this in.”“O’Donnell already knows,” Nat assured him.He glanced us over once, clearly skeptical, but then nodded. “Okay. I’ll just see what he has to say.” With that, he buzzed his window up, leaving us to stare at our reflections in the black, mirrorlike surface.“He could have at least let us in,” I complained, pulling my jacket tighter around myself. November in New Boston wasn’t exactly warm weather.“He probably thinks we’re killers ourselves,” Nat, ever the reasonable one, observed.And I had to give her that. Casually mentioning a dead body, even a serial killer’s, would throw anyone for a loop. Certainly, finding it in our office had been one hell of a surprise.After a few moments, the window started to roll down, revealing first the shiny, shaved head, then a pair of disbelieving eyes set in the square face, and finally the tree trunk neck.“The, uh, the boss says not to worry about it. The body, I mean.”“Told you,” Flinty Jack said. “Now, are we going somewhere?”A clicking sounded as the doors unlocked, and Murphy nodded. “Yup. Hop in.”Flinty Jack rounded to the passenger side, and climbed in beside him, wrapping a seatbelt around his skeletal form. Nat and I got into the backseat.“Welcome aboard,” the government man said as we fiddled with the seat buckles.Flinty Jack grunted, and I asked, “O’Donnell said you’d fill us in on the mission?”“Sure thing,” he said, pulling the SUV back onto the road. “We’re headed to the New Boston Archeological Museum. Well, more specifically, one of the storerooms.”“I thought this was some kind of protection detail?” I asked.He blew out a long breath. “Yeah. It is. But your target is one of you guys.”“A detective?” Flinty Jack asked, deliberately obtuse.“What? No. You know, magical. Undead. He’s some kind of pharaoh or something. Or, was, I guess.”Flinty Jack snorted and started to protest that there was nothing magical about the undead – a longstanding sore spot turned soapbox topic for him.I interjected with, “What’s the museum connection?”“No idea,” Murphy admitted. “I just got the call to pick you guys up.”“Who is the pharaoh?” Nat asked.“No idea,” Murphy repeated.“Have you seen him?” I ventured.Murphy shook his head. “Nope. Like I say, I just got the call. And here I am.”“So, you don’t actually know anything, except where we’re headed?” Flinty Jack asked.“And that it’s got something to do with a pharaoh,” he answered.“Great,” Flinty Jack said.Murphy either missed or ignored the sarcasm in his tone. “So, I got to ask – what’s up with the serial killer? The boss said he had a team on his way to process him?”“He better,” I grumbled. The whole situation was another giant sore spot, this time for me. And unreasonable as it might have been, in a roundabout way I blamed O’Donnell for coming home to find a dead body in my workplace.“It’s Gregory Walker,” Nat supplied.Murphy glanced over his shoulder, mouth gaping. “The Southside Stalker?”“That’s the one.”“And you guys killed him?”I shook my head. “Not us. The meteorite.”“The what?”Nat took up the job of explanations: our role in the original arrest of the Southside Stalker, his escape from custody, his revenge targeting of us afterward, culminating in an attempt to burn down the cathedral we worked out of.The cathedral that housed a section of the very same meteorite that had brought Flinty Jack to life, and that had given me powers. The power to shoot fireballs from my fingertips, or summon flaming skulls.Magical powers, if you asked anyone but my partner.The same kind of powers that allowed the meteorite to protect itself against anyone who meant to harm it. Be they the scientists and developers who wanted to move and dissect it after it landed, or serial killers, who wanted to burn the building down around it.Serial killers like Gregory Walker, whose long and devious reign of terror finally came to an end because he’d crossed a magical rock.As much as I loved the brave new world that had changed my life forever, even I had to admit, it could be damned strange at times.Agent Murphy made no attempt to conceal either his wonder or his horror as she talked. Or, for that matter, his questions.He wanted to know how it worked. “You and everyone else,” Flinty Jack told him.He wanted to know how we