The Order

I stared in its direction and saw a small office littered with file cabinets. A large desk sat in the middle of the floor and on top of the desk posed a middle-aged woman.

The woman was prim, tall and very thin, with a halo of curly hair dyed platinum-Brad. She wore a fashionable blue pantsuit.

A matching pair of shoes sloped near the leg of the chair she must have used to get on the table.

"He is with someone, dear," the woman said.

She put up her hands and proceeded to change the lopsided bulb in a few lanterns attached to the ceiling next to the electric light.

"You do not have an appointment, do you?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, you are in luck. He is free in the morning. Why don't you provide me with your name and the reason for your visit, and we will see what we can do."

I paused until she finished with the feybulb, told her that I was here in relation to Greg Feldman, and gave her my card.

She took it down, exhibiting no reaction at all, and pointed behind me.

"There is a waiting area over there, dear."

I veered around and walked into the waiting area, which happened to be just another office, furnished with a black leather sofa and two chairs.

A table sat against the wall by the door with a coffeepot, shielded by two stacks of small clay cups.

A large jar of sugar cubes also stood next to the cups and next to the jar sat two boxes from Duncan's Doughnuts. My hand tugged at the doughnuts, but I deterred myself.

Anyone who had the fun of trying one of the old Scot's doughnuts instantly learned you could not eat just one, and waltzing into the protector's office wrapped in hand-whipped chocolate cream was not a good way to make the right appearance.

I begin with a safe spot by the window, away from the doughnuts, and peeked past the bars to the outside, at the small spread of the overcast sky, fringed by roofs.

The Order of Merciful Aid gave just what its name suggested: merciful aid to anyone who asked. If you could pay, they would bill you; and if you could not, they would kill shit on your behalf pro bono.

Officially, their mission statement was to ensure humanity against all harm, by a weapon or by magic.

Trouble was, their definition of harm seemed rather flexible and sometimes merciful aid meant they lopped your head off.

The Order got away with a ton. Its membership was extremely powerful to be ignored, and the attraction to rely on it was too great.

It is been approved by the government as the third part of the law enforcement triumvirate.

The Military Supernatural Defense Units, The Paranormal Activity Police Division, and the Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid were all presumed to play nice together and keep the general public safe.

In actuality, it did not just happen that way. The knights of the Order were useful, competent, and lethal. Unlike the mercenaries of the Guild, they were not impelled by money and they stood by their promises.

But unlike the mercs, they also made judgments and they thought that they often knew best.

A tall man stepped into the waiting room. The stench hit me virtually before I saw him, a sickeningly sweet, prevailing odour of rotting garbage.

The man had a sweeping brown trench coat on which was stained with ink and grease spots and dabbed with so many variations of foodstuff and plain trash that he looked like young Joseph in his coat of many colours.

The coat hung open in the front to enable a glimpse of an abomination of a shirt: red and blue with green tartan stripes. His filthy khaki pants were held up by pink suspenders.

He wore old steel-toed paratrooper boots and skin gloves with their fingers cut off at the first knuckle.

On his head sat a felt hat, an old-fashioned fedora, soiled and stained beyond notion. Thick mousy hair seeped in limp strands from under the hat.

He saw me and scooped his hat, holding its rim between his index and middle finger the way some people clench cigarettes, and I got a glance of his face: hard lines, three-day stubble, and pale eyes, short and cold.

There was nothing, particularly threatening in the way he stared at me, but something behind those eyes made me wish to raise my hands in the air and back away slowly until it was sure to run for my life.

"Ma'am," he drawled.

He frightened the shit out of me. I grinned at him.

"Good morning." My greeting wailed a lot like "nice doggy."

I had to pinch past him to get to the door.

The receptionist came to my salvage.

"You can go in now, dear," she said.

The man strode aside, bowing slightly, and I walked by him. The side of my jacket stroked against his trench coat, possibly picking up enough bacteria to knock out a little army, but I did not haul away.

"Nice meeting you," he mumbled as I passed him.

"Nice meeting you, too," I said and fled into the keeper's office.

I found myself in a large room, at least thrice the size of the offices I had seen so far. Big burgundy draperies enclosed the windows, letting in just sufficient light to create a relaxed gloom.

A massive desk of shiny cherry- wood dominated the room, aiding a cardboard box, a heavy mesquite plank paperweight with a Texas Ranger emblem on top, and a pair of black cowboy boots.

The legs in the boots were the property of a thick-shouldered man, who leaned back in a large black leather chair listening to the phone at his ear. The knight_protector.

At some point, he must have been relatively powerful but now his muscle was wrapped in what my father had called "hard fat."

He was though a vast, robust man and he could stride quickly if he wished to, despite the hideous swell around his middle. He chafed jeans and a navy blue shirt with a ledge.

I did not realize they even made those anymore. The clothing in which the West was won—or sung into submission—was meant for whiplash-lean men.

They made the protector gape as Gene Autry moved on a lengthy Twinkie splurge.