It was just about three o'clock Friday afternoon as I pulled the car up and stopped out front of the college's main building. I was parked on the side of the road about fifty meters from the front doors, in easy view of everyone as they came out.

I figured Elise would be out any minute. I'd take her over to her place so she could drop off her books and grab her overnight bag, then we'd head back to the house. The twins picked up sushi fusion when they came home from university earlier, and the fridge was all stocked up with food and lots of booze.

Everything was ready, all I had to do was bring Elise back home and we'd be set for the whole weekend.

I still wasn't as much of a drinker as the others, but ironically it was Elise who'd been gradually convincing me to loosen up and enjoy myself more. She turned out to be quite the party girl, which was a detail that continued to amuse me.

As I waited, I noticed traffic in front of the college's main doors was lighter than usual. There were normally a lot more cars coming and going at this time of day. Especially on a Friday. Especially on a Friday of a long weekend.

A car pulled up behind me, and I frowned as it came too close for comfort. I hated how some drivers seemed to want to almost touch bumpers when they parked next to you.

I was just about to move the car up a little, to put some space between me and the driver behind me, when another car coming from the other direction cut across the centre line and pulled up directly in front of me, blocking me in. Then a split-second later a big black van came screeching to a halt a couple meters to the left, completely boxing me in.

By now I knew the situation was bad. My first thought was to just teleport clear and abandon the car, but I was in full view of the two guys in the car in front of me, and the guy behind me. A moment later it hit me, they were all in uniform.

So were the half dozen cops who came pouring out of the van. There were two dash-cams pointed at me, and a half dozen body-cams on me. Not to mention eight or nine sets of eyes. And that was above and beyond however many college students were now staring from a safe distance.

This wasn't something I could just charm-spell my way out of. And I couldn't use any other obvious magic without it being seen by countless people.

My heart was pounding as I sat there staring. I'm sure my eyes were wide, my face was pale. I had no idea what they wanted with me, I'd done nothing wrong.

I glanced around as someone outside the car shouted, "Hands on the steering wheel where we can see them!"

There weren't any guns pointed at me yet, but the half-dozen cops standing next to the car had their weapons drawn. All were pointed at the ground, but it was obvious they were ready for trouble.

I kept my hands on the wheel like they said as I quickly ran through my options. I knew a spell that would fry any electronics around me, that would take care of all the cameras. But I still couldn't teleport away without everyone seeing. I could start hitting the cops with magic, but there were too many to get them all at once. If they started dropping from sleep spells or whatever, someone would probably freak out and start shooting.

Considering I only just narrowly escaped death on Monday I wasn't in any hurry to risk that again. The only other thing I could do was the one thing I would not do. I could have used mind magic to find out who was in charge, then used mind-control to have him order the rest to stand down. But that was a line I didn't want to cross.

I had my ring of course, but I decided not to contact my girlfriends yet. I didn't want them to suddenly appear in the middle of this mess. So in the end I decided to just do what the cops wanted. I'd let them arrest me, and let them haul me off somewhere. I figured I'd get the chance to escape later on, when there weren't so many eyes on me.

I followed all the directions they shouted at me, and eventually they hauled me out of the car.

Despite me cooperating completely they still threw me face-first to the pavement and someone's knee was pressed into my back. Then when I let out an angry yelp at the pain, my arms were wrenched back and the cuffs ratcheted down tightly.

Finally I was hauled back up to my feet, and as they roughly dragged me to one of the cars I felt at least two or three of them grope my boobs and grab my ass.

I bit back my anger. I was still in view of the public, and I was positive a dozen college students were filming the cops' behaviour with their phones. It was tempting though, with all the magic I knew and what I was capable of. I could have done some pretty horrific things to them, but I didn't want to be like that.

Once I was locked in the back of the car I tried to get comfortable. My arms ached, my wrists hurt, my back hurt, my boobs hurt from when I was thrown to the ground, and my chin was bleeding a little from my face-first encounter with the asphalt.

I kept my mouth shut though as two cops got into the front. It was only about a ten minute drive and we were at the station. They hauled me out of the car and into the precinct, and I was taken to a small interrogation room.

It was a lot like you see on TV actually. There was a small table bolted to the floor and the wall, a chair bolted to the floor behind the table, and a pair of normal chairs sat on the other side of the table. A camera was mounted in one corner of the ceiling, and there was a two-way mirror on one wall.

I was sat on the bolted-down chair, the cuff was released from my right wrist but the other side stayed on my left wrist. Then the loose end was locked to a ring welded to the table, so I couldn't go anywhere.

Nobody had searched me yet, not that I had any weapons or anything. I still had my spring jacket on though, my phone was in one pocket and some money and ID in another pocket. I was surprised that hadn't all been taken.

Once I was secured to the table, the two guys in uniform left but I wasn't given any time alone. As soon as they were out, two plain-clothes guys came in, and closed the door behind them.

One sat down across from me, the other stood leaning against the wall by the door.

The standing guy was tall, at least six feet, maybe six-foot-one. He looked sort of slim and wiry. He had short brown hair and a very short moustache and beard. I figured he was somewhere in his mid- to late-forties.

The guy sitting across from me was a little shorter, maybe about the twins' height. He had some extra weight on him, especially around his middle. He looked about a decade older than the other guy, his dark hair was greying and he had a bald spot on top. He had a bushy moustache but no beard.

I looked back and forth between them as the two just stared at me with grumpy expressions. Finally I asked, "Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?"

The seated guy asked, "Who or what is 'Clan Brah-day'? Is that an organized crime syndicate? Is 'Lady Maeve' the boss? What about the 'Key-ah-lay family'? Another organized crime group?"

I scowled at his attempts to pronounce the names, but I was also concerned that he even knew those names at all. I was positive the guy was human though. If he was fae he'd have known how to pronounce them.

After a few moments I shrugged, "I don't know anything about organized crime. You've got me confused with someone else."

The tall guy asked in a sarcastic tone, "You figure there's a lot of short purple-haired girls running around town? Are you Tegan Vale, age twenty-eight?"

I looked at him and nodded, "Yeah that's me. Are you going to tell me what this is really about?"

He kept his eyes on me and stated, "You don't look twenty-eight. You look like a college freshman."

"So I have good genetics," I shrugged again. "Is that a crime?"

The seated guy said "Five years ago you bought a million-dollar property. Two years ago you spent nearly two million more buying up more land, and you added a fancy cottage and a workshop. Yet you've never worked a day in your life. Coincidentally, a little over two years ago your parents Erik and Laura Vale vanished without a trace. They sold their home, cashed out all their investments, and poof. Disappeared off the face of the Earth."

The standing one added, "Two and a half years ago you witnessed two police officers die in a mysterious shooting just down the street from your house. Yet you were never even questioned."

"So here's what we think," the sitting one said. "You're with some sort of organized crime family. You're in deep with them. They're paying you well, set you up with your nice cosy property. Then a couple cops turned up, wrong place, wrong time. Maybe you got rid of them, maybe your friends did. Someone did a good job covering it up though. And maybe your folks started asking questions, got a little too curious where the money was coming from, so you had your friends get rid of them too."

By now I had a cold feeling in my stomach. Even though their speculation was all completely wrong, I couldn't tell them the truth about anything. And from the sound of it, they'd been doing a lot of digging into my past. I had no idea how long they'd been looking into all this stuff.

After a few moments I decided I had to know what they knew, what they were up to.

I sighed and slumped back a little in my chair as I brought my right hand up to rub my forehead and cover my eyes as if I had a stress headache.

It was honestly the stupidest trick in the world but it was surprisingly effective. If either of these guys were fae, or if there was a fae on the other side of the two-way mirror they'd see my eyes flash when I used magic. So I just covered my eyes, and nine times out of ten nobody would catch on.

First I cast the spell to take care of the electronics. The fluorescent lights flickered for a second, that was the only indication anything happened. But I knew that everything with a microchip within twenty-five or thirty meters of me was now fried and completely useless. Cameras, microphones, phones, computers, digital watches, radios, even cars, would all be scrap now.

Then I used a mind-reading spell, on the tall guy first.

He was Detective Scott MacRae, human, aged forty-seven. Not only was he not fae, he didn't know anything about the fae, or magic, or even the shadow economy. He was just a human cop. He and his partner were assigned to this case three months ago.

They'd been watching me, investigating me, digging into my past, and looking for any suspicious activity. They hadn't found any crimes yet but a lot of stuff looked suspicious to them. They decided to scare me and rough me up today to see if that would prompt me into talking, or doing anything else to incriminate myself.

Then I found something else, which sent a chill through me as I realized what was really going on.

Both these guys had seen the body-cam and dash-cam footage from when that cop tried to kill me and Kelly a couple years back. Body-cam footage that Sir Colm Mac Cionaoith told me he destroyed. Both these two detectives saw and heard exactly what happened that day.

They saw me raise my hand up and somehow stop a dozen bullets fired at point-blank range. They saw me use healing magic to save Kelly's life. And they saw me teleport Kelly and myself away.

Neither of them understood what they saw, they both assumed the videos had been doctored or something. But they heard what that cop said. They heard him call me Tegan Vale of Clann Brádaigh, and they heard him say the Ceallaigh family sent him.

My heart was pounding again and my stomach felt like lead. Rather than destroy the videos Colm obviously kept them. And now they'd been given back to the humans, along with the idea that I was involved in organized crime. And since then, these guys had been investigating me, and all my 'known associates'.

It only took a second to put it all together. I had a nice cosy life here on Earth, and I was content to stay here. King Cathal had no real power or control here, there was no fae law on Earth. He couldn't force me or order me to return to Otherworld.

But he could stir up trouble for me, he could ruin my cosy perfect human life. He could make it too difficult, too uncomfortable for me to continue living here. I was sure by now he knew how I felt about using magic, he'd know I wouldn't want to hurt a bunch of human cops, and I wouldn't use mind-magic to control them or anything like that either.

So by getting me in all kinds of trouble with the law here, the king would know I'd either have to go on the run here on Earth, or I'd have to return to Otherworld. He was forcing my hand, forcing me to return home, by making it impossible for me to stay here.

I continued rubbing my forehead. The stress headache wasn't just an act anymore.

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