Fire Water: A Prospero's War Novella

Book 0: Prospero's War

by Jaye Wells

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Paranormal; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

Rookie cop Kate Prospero only has one more training assignment to pass before she's officially sworn in to Babylon Police Department. But the veteran cop in charge of the river patrol boat is a salty old guy isn't happy about playing tour guide to a rookie and seems even less interested in real police work. But while on patrol, they stumble on to what appears to be a floating dirty magic lab. This highly combustible situation might finally be the key to these two unlikely partners finding common ground.

Release date: January 6, 2015

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 68

Sample

Fire Water

Pretty much any cop can tell you the story of their first arrest. Also the first time they pointed a gun at someone—or had one shoved in their face. The first handcuffing, the first black eye, the first time a perp puked on them—and, for some, the first person they killed.

My first collar wasn’t all that memorable. Just a speeding ticket that led to an arrest for outstanding warrants.

My second was mildly more interesting, but not exactly earth-shattering. Underage girl selling three-dollar blow jobs in an alley off Stark Street. When she’d seen me coming, she hadn’t fought at all. Not surprising since I basically caught her with a mouthful of incriminating evidence.

No, my first two busts weren’t that impressive. Sure, the second got a couple of laughs when told over beers at O’Malley’s near the Cauldron cop shop. But it wasn’t a contender for best war story compared with some of the fucked-up shit the veteran cops on our squad had seen. Working in a magical ghetto didn’t have a lot of advantages—except when it came to outdoing your cronies with fish tales of junkie wizards and potion-peddling homunculi.

However, my third bust was the stuff of Cauldron legend. Ever since it happened, cops in Babylon referred to it in hushed tones and begged me to retell it over beers. But to me, it was more than just my go-to war story.

It was the story of how I became a real cop.

My name is Kate Prospero, and I bust magic junkies for a living. Most girls don’t grow up dreaming of chasing perps through dark alleys and cleaning puke out of their squad cars at the end of an average night of work. I didn’t, either. In fact, when I was eight, I told my fourth-grade teacher I wanted to grow up to be just like my uncle Abe. Miss Cope’s eyes had grown really wide and she backed away like she was afraid to say the wrong thing and risk Abe finding out.

The dream of becoming the next Grand Wizard of the Votary Coven had lasted only until I was seventeen. And then I didn’t have any dreams for a long time because I was too busy trying to survive.

But that was a long time ago. Now I’m on the right side of the law. It pays a lot less than potion cooking, but it beats spending your life with one ear constantly listening for sirens.

So anyway—my third arrest…

It started on a hot August afternoon five years ago. I was still a rookie, and per the Babylon Police Department policy I was making my rounds through each of the major departments shadowing veteran officers. Apparently it hadn’t always been that way. Used to be, rookies were sent straight out to patrol with a badge, a gun, and a walkie-talkie. But after too many newbies ended up potioned in the gutters, someone in the commissioner’s office wised up that maybe the academy wasn’t doing a good enough job training people for the rigors of patrolling a magical ghetto.

Anyway, I’d already made rounds through the vehicular theft department, the murder squad, the sex crimes unit, and even done a few ride-outs with deep night Arcane patrols. I’d seen lots of action, but hadn’t been allowed to get in the middle since I was both an untested cop and an Adept. Mostly those assignments involved lots of coffee runs and hazing. But I’d learned plenty watching cops who’d seen it all do their jobs. The only department I had left to shadow was the river patrol division.

According to the other rookies who’d already completed their time on the boats that patrolled the Steel River, it was by far the most boring assignment. It’s not that there’s no crime on the water surrounding Babylon. The news was always filled with reports of caches of alchemical materials confiscated from freighters out of Canada. The problem was, the Coast Guard always got credit for those busts. Mostly the BPD was in charge of the river and only provided backup to the Coast Guard on the Lake Erie cases.

I knew all this the morning that I pulled my Jeep into the parking lot near the docks. Even in the early-morning sun, the river didn’t glisten or sparkle like most bodies of water might. If you kind of squinted, you could see past all the trash and the thick algal slime that collected along the banks. But nothing could disguise the stench of gasoline, chemicals, and rotten animal carcasses wafting up so strong from the water, you could swear the odor had a vaguely pukey color. Years of serving as the highway for barges bearing slag and asphalt from factories had ensured the water didn’t flow so much as it oozed.

The police boat creaked at the gray dock. The vessel was white with red lettering announcing it as a Babylon Police Department watercraft. There was a covered portion with sirens on top along with a smattering of antennas. This wasn’t one of those fancy Coast Guard vessels, since it mainly patrolled the river and not the Great Lake with its tides and heavy currents. Still, the boat looked watertight and maintained to my uneducated eye. Even though I’d grown up in Babylon, I spent as little time on or near the water as possible. I’d avoided the river for obvious reasons, and the lake because I didn’t trust any water that I couldn’t see through. Which was why I’d resisted the water patrol assignment until the very last week of my training. Well, that and Cap’n’s reputation was well known, even among the recruits.

I grabbed my gear and jumped out of my Jeep, Sybil, with more gusto than I actually felt. Since I was practically right out of the academy, I was still fueled by the enthusiasm of the recently converted. I still bought into the belief that I could make a real di. . .