Summary:
PsyCop #3.1
Jacob Marks has noticed that crimes are committed whether or not he happens to have a social engagement on the agenda. Date another PsyCop, and the likelihood of having a successful night out are cut in half.
Of course Jacob feels sorry for the poor sap in the Fifth Precinct who's been shot. But did he have to go and get himself offed on New Year's Eve?
Complimentary copy on JCP Books website no longer available. Now included in PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1.
Original Review January 2024:
A lovely little short focusing more on Jacob but as his mind always drifts to Vic, his presence is always there. If you've been reading Jordan Castillo Price's PsyCop series then you have to give this one a go. Jacob is his own man of course but this little short shows how he's just not complete or completely happy without Vic. Gotta admit I loved that the author included how us here in the midwest don't get much of an actual Midnight ball drop anymore. If you tune in at midnight, they use to play it on TV so each timezone got to see it at midnight but it hasn't been that way for years now and when the clock strikes 12 and the new year begins for us poor suckers in the middle of the country, we get to see Time Square nearly empty and the street cleaners beginning. Just kind of nice to have that pointed out through Jacob's inner musings.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Famous last words, I know. But originally we would’ve had four hands to carry the six-pack of microbrew and the sub platter. Then we got a call (okay, Vic got a call). There was a body, and he had to go… which left me by myself trying to figure out how to ring the doorbell. I could’ve knocked on it with my foot, but I really wasn’t in the mood to hear SWAT team jokes for the rest of the night. I really wasn’t in the mood to be there at all anymore, but it seemed better than sitting alone in that minuscule apartment with a platter full of subs.
I managed to connect my elbow with the doorbell, and pretty soon a silhouette filled the frosted glass window. I hoped it was Manny. That surprised me. Keith might have been the one I’d known forever, but Manny had an easygoing way about him that Keith had never managed. Sure, Keith tried, or maybe he just tried to fake it, but all those bitchy remarks he made and then later claimed to be “just kidding” about, all the backhanded compliments and derisive eye-rolls— they added up. The front door opened. Keith. “Oh, here, let me get that.” He wrangled the platter through the door, then did a sudden stop as I mounted the single stair so he could peer over my shoulder. “Where’s this Victor person we’ve been hearing so little about? Parking the car?”
“He got called in. You’ll have to make do with me.”
He shooed me in out of the cold and bumped the door shut with his hip. “And what have we here? Alcohol and nitrates? Very decadent. And just in time— there’s been some grumbling about the gazpacho.” Civil enough. Maybe he was turning over a new leaf. A pleasant new leaf. He leaned over the platter and kissed me on the cheek, then headed for the dining room.
Whatever snow had landed on my leather jacket beaded up into water droplets in the heat of the foyer, and I shook them out before I tucked my coat into the closet. If Vic were there, I would have mentioned how nice it would be to actually have a coat closet. If he were there.
Jordan Castillo PriceAuthor and artist Jordan Castillo Price writes paranormal sci-fi thrillers colored by her time in the Midwest, from inner city Chicago, to various cities across southern Wisconsin. She’s recently settled in a 1910 Cape Cod near Lake Michigan with tons of character and a plethora of bizarre spiders. Her influences include Ouija boards, Return of the Living Dead, “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” girls with tattoos and boys in eyeliner.
Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who’s plagued by ghostly visitations. And her quirky, sweet, magical series The ABCs of Spellcraft is sure to make you smile.
SMASHWORDS / BOOKBUB / B&N
EMAILS: jordan@psycop.com
The Stroke of Midnight #3.1
👀Amazon US/UK PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1👀
PsyCop Series
No comments:
Post a Comment