The body disappeared, the witnesses forgot their stories.
And I had 24 hours to solve the mystery before all the evidence vanished.
I had no memory of how this all started. Only that I was brought in to solve a mystery in a single day before I had to move to my next assignment. Because I'm a time-jumper. And I go where I'm sent.
Because I'm damned good at figuring things out. You don't have to have a string of degrees behind your name to figure out things.
The trick is, I "borrow" someone else's body while I'm on the job, for the time I'm here.
All I know on this job had a missing corpse already. And it happened when no one was around to see, on a government naval base in the heart of New York. Where sub-contractors came and went constantly.
I just had to solve it faster than the witnesses either "forgot" or "disappeared.” Like I said, I had only 24 hours.
Anthology containing:-The Case of the Time Bent Beau by S. H. Marpel-The Saga of Erotika Jones 01 by J. R. Kruze-The Saga of Erotika Jones 02 by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel-The Saga of Erotika Jones 03 by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel-The Saga of Erotika Jones 04 by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel-The Saga of Erotika Jones 05 by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel-The Saga of Erotika Jones 06 by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel-The Saga of Erotika Jones 07 by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel-The Saga of Erotika Jones 08 by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel- The Saga of Erotika Jones Book Universes Notes by J. R. KruzeExcerpt:I didn't want to get out of bed for this new case. I felt tired, the bed was warm, and there was this hunk beside me. Broad shoulders, firm bum, sculptured abs — everything a gal could want.
Still, the beeper was vibrating, it's staccato tempo on the side table persistent and annoying.
I had my job to do. And under 24 hours, as usual, to see if I could solve this one.
So I picked that annoyance up and saw the texts that had come in for me. On her beeper. My host's.
That was the trick - I "borrowed" someone's body and ID for the cases that came in. How they did it, the nuts-and-bolts, I didn't really know. Nor did I know my own past - any more. Too many of these jumps had kinda swiss-cheesed my memories.
The texts were all from Finn. He was my partner, my bar-buddy, and somehow was connected to the reason I still did this. Still, he made it interesting, and cheered me up when things got too solid and graphic.
This morning he'd texted me the body was already missing, already cleaned. Said I needed to get there quick, since we both knew the reasons - the witnesses would be "forgetting" what they saw nearly as quick.
Finn had a theory, and it was closer to true than anyone else believed — other than we who lived in the strange worlds where humans and fairies crossed paths, and where we fought the hidden wars to keep humans safe - in spite of themselves. The darker half of the faery kind were organizing for something - and these human bodies showing up and disappearing were just collateral evidence of their larger plan.
Somehow. Having a working theory, anyway, was better than having none.
My feet on the floor now, I bent to scoop up my underthings and found a too-short cotton bathrobe lay tangled in them. Slipping that on gave me some relative decency...
