Silenced_A Cybil Lewis Novelย In 2008, my first futuristic thriller/mystery, Silenced: A Cybil Lewis Novel, appeared for the first time in print. The first release in Parker Publishing’s Isis SF line, the goal was to publish and promote black speculative fiction. Cybil was to be the flagship for that line.

Fast forward to now. Cybil is back in print! This time Mocha Memoirs Press has re-released it for your reading pleasure. So, if you missed her introductory run, you can catch up with her before the release of COZENED, the second in the series.

So, here’s a glimpse of Cybil’s world inย Silenced: A Cybil Lewis Novel.ย 

 

Excerpt from Silenced: A Cybil Lewis Novel.ย  (R) 2008 Nicole Givens Kurtz

Available Print: $13.75 | Ebook $3.99

“Good afternoon, Mayor Christensen. What brings you to D.C.?” I ignored Jane. She could explain it laterโ€”although I was curious to see what spin she would put on this.

Jane sat down at her desk, her hands twisting together in front of her as she kept her eyes on the mayor and me. Already a thin line of sweat decorated her upper lip and even from across the room, I could see her eyes flittered around, unable to focus on one thing.

Yep, she had done something she knew Iโ€™d be pissed about.

I donโ€™t like being ambushed and despite what Jane would tell me later, the situation definitely felt like an ambush. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it surely is a duck.

Ditto the ambush.

Mayor Annabelle Christensen, Belle to Jane and other family members, was as Southern as grits and bluegrass music. She had occupied the mayoral seat of the Memphis quadrant for at least ten years. The Memphis quad extended up as far north to what was once Louisville, Kentucky and as far south as the modern day Jackson, Mississippi. The quadโ€™s eastern border stopped at the far mountainous border of what was once Tennessee and dipped down to the former Mississippi. The Mississippi River served as the western border to not only the Memphis quad, but also the entire Southeast Territories to which Memphis was the largest quadrant.

She rose from her seat like a queen, with grace and an air of royalty. Her media smile stuck to her face like glue. The room smelled like sweet southern honeysuckles and was thick with humidity. The mayor had been waiting a long time since her scent seemed infused into the officeโ€™s atmosphere.

“Ms. Lewis, so good to finally meet you. Iโ€™ve heard so much about you and your work.” Her voice dropped on me in heavy globs, like syrup, thick and sugary. “I wish it could be on better terms. I assure you that what I have to say will not waste your time.”

Jane fidgeted in her seat as if she wasnโ€™t sure about her auntโ€™s claim.

I didn’t look over at her, but I could feel Janeโ€™s uncomfortableness. Weโ€™d been partners long enough that I didnโ€™t need to see them to know what they were thinking or feeling. I just knew.

“What do you want?” I asked, ready for the game to be over and failing to keep my irritation out of my voice. Mind games, pomp and circumstance didnโ€™t suit me well. My immediate dislike for the mayor didnโ€™t help the situation either, and beneath my attempts at professionalism, I think she heard it.

Her eyebrows rose and her mouth made a small little โ€˜oโ€™.

She recovered and her media smile was back on, full blast as if I hadnโ€™t said anything. Despite the grin, a smarminess seemed to radiate out from her heart-shaped face as if she was restraining her own dislike for me.

Sometimes, a person doesn’t have to do anything to you for you to dislike them. It had to do with chemicals and personalities and other biological complex stuff.

I didnโ€™t know the exact chemicals, but I knew I didn’t like Mayor Christensen.

Moreover, I didnโ€™t trust her.

Already pain nibbled at the edge of exploding along the base of my neck. Stress. I didn’t feel like bullshitting around with the mayor and her entourage of goons. Had the clientele been a little seedier, Iโ€™d shot someone by now.

I have only so much honey in my system a day. Nice people, sometimes-even clients (when we get one) received small doses of my honey. My mother used to say I had an overabundance of vinegar. Of course, bees liked honey, and no one liked vinegar.

Right now, my honey supply of kindness was ebbing away faster than the eastern coastline.

The two bodyguards reached into their jackets threateningly, their eyes narrowed and attached to me. I fought the urge to smile and wave back at them.

Mayor Christensen’s red painted lips opened to speak, but instead she waved the goons into submission. A reddish flush appeared on her cheeks.

“May I speak with you in private?”

I shrugged and headed to my private office with her in tow. I unlocked the doors with a lick of my thumb. After a DNA confirmation check, they slid open. I dropped my satchel on my big oak desk as I stepped into the room and remained standing behind it. It had a big, open surface for all of my belongings. I loved the desk more than some men Iโ€™ve known.

Mayor Christensen didnโ€™t sit in my only visitorโ€™s chair.

With that well-bred posture, she remained standing as she scanned the walls of my private office taking it in. I knew what she was seeing, and I didnโ€™t really care. Everything in the office came secondhand or was here when I leased the space eight years ago. The walls were adorned with newspaper and electronic clippings of various cases I had either been involved with or solved. The yellowing on some of the actual paper ones had chipped and split along the edges. New jpegs had been enlarged and added with updated electronic articles about recent cases. They scrolled upward in slow, casual, read-me-if-youโ€™re-bored cadence.

“Mayor, why are you here?” I asked tightly, my voice edgy and impatient. With amazing effort, I tried to hang on to some professionalism. It slipped out of my hands, like sands through an hourglass. “I do have work to do.”

I had a good idea of what the mayor wanted. Still I wanted her to say it, to speak it out and to ask.ย  There was something naughty in the smile I gave her. The edges curled up in a dark satisfaction of knowing that Iโ€™d refuse her request anyway. Beg me, baby! Waitโ€”hold for the rejection.

She brought her eyes back to mine and pressed her lips together before talking as if trying to keep her mouth from saying things she might regret later. With three more attempts, her words finally managed to clear the gate.

“Miss Lewis, I am from tough southern people who aren’t bothered by mosquitoes, wauto wrecks, or mouthy inspectors.”

Her voice lost its sweetness and turned hard, like wet sugar left out in the cold. In place of the soft, worried mother, was now the voice of a seasoned politician who thought I would cower and obey her every whim.

Obviously, she did not know me very well.

“The Memphis regulators are idiots,โ€ she was saying, her hands folded neatly in front of her. โ€œThey have bungled my daughter’s missing personโ€™s case and I want the bastard that took Mandy found,” she finished, her voice demanding, her eyes seething with anger and raw emotion.

Will the real Mayor Christensen please stand up? There is something knowing, hell creepy, about someone who could flip the coin of her personality like that. It made me want to lock my satchel in the safe, and nail down the valuables.

She stood there in her immaculate gray suit that cost more than my monthly food budget allowed. The layers of make-up didn’t hide the bluish circles under her eyes, or the new crop of wrinkles along her forehead the photos and media coverage seemed to have missed or airbrushed.

“In case you haven’t noticed, this is a long way from Memphis,” I said, my temper escaping into thin strips of exasperation. “And I don’t respond well to threats and name calling.”

The mayor’s eyes held mine.

“I apologize,” she said forcefully, as if she didnโ€™t really mean it. “You’re the best in this business, or so I’m told.”ย  She crossed her arms over her chest. “You solved the case that sent Governor Price packing to Alamogordo Cradle a few years back.”

“Yeah, I did. But the answer is still no,” I said back, inserting my own steeliness into my voice. The Change met with certain death and several key political figures were apprehended, killed, or promoted depending on what side of the case they landed on. It garnished me some publicity and the client list swelled after that, a fat monsoon rain, drowning me in fresh currency, vile human actions, and a shower of gun play.

It had since dried up.

I came around to stand close to her, to face her so that she knew she wasn’t intimidating me. I was taller by about three inches and weighed more than her for sure, which somehow didnโ€™t make me feel all that great.

The doors to my private office slid back in a hush. Jane came in, cautiously. She stood inside the entranceway. She opened her mouth to say something, but quickly closed it.

Smart girl.

Mayor Christensen ran her hand through her light brown Afro, ruining its puffiness.

“Miss Lewis, I have come all this way through the territory. The regulators are no closer to solving this than they were four weeks ago! Time is ticking away, and my, my baby is out there somewhere. These are dangerous times, as you well know. Help me find her, please.”

Suddenly, she was the sweet, southern girl from Memphis, twang and allโ€”the distressed parent, not the bullying politician.

This one was quite the actress.

I shrugged. “As a rule, I don’t investigate cases where the regulators have already been called in.”

My friend Daniel Tom, a regulator and the only one competentย  on the D.C. staff would kill me for meddling in his case without his permission. Iโ€™m sure the Memphis regs felt the same way.

She stared at me, aghast. “As a rule? This is my daughter, Miss Lewis, surelyโ€ฆ”

“Yeah, a rule. You should know about those. They’re kind of like regulationsโ€ฆback in the day those were called laws. When you are self-employed you can make up rules for your business. That’s one of mine.”

I did not dance to the beat of anyone’s drummer, but my own, especially not that of some big shot politician. She could bring all the muscle she wanted, but I wasn’t budging unless I wanted to.

Call me stubborn. Call me cautious. Just donโ€™t call me dead. I didnโ€™t like the way this whole thing was unfolding.

“I will double your usual retainer,” she said as she looked around the office. “It seems you can use it.”

Jane winced, but still didn’t speak.

“No,” I said, struggling to keep my displeasure from going nuclear. “I just explained it to you. I donโ€™t do regulator ruined cases.”

“Miss Lewis-”

“No.”

My voice was louder than I wanted. Could it be that she just didn’t get it? I wasn’t taking her on as a client. Was it because she was a mayor and no one in the Memphis quadrant ever refused her, so that no was a word she didnโ€™t understand?

Or could it be that she was so desperate to find her daughter, no was unthinkable?

I wasnโ€™t quite sure yet, but I did know one thingโ€ฆI didnโ€™t like the ambush and it had put me in a bad mood.

Mayor Christensen stiffened as if slapped.

Jane finally spoke. “Cybโ€ฆ”

I waved her off. My ire boiled beneath my somewhat awkward grin. I didn’t take to people barging into my office with a trio of paid thugs to flex on me. If you truly wanted my help, there were better ways to ask than to come armed. Yeah, I had a reputation. And sure, she required protection, who didnโ€™t in this age? Still, the entire affair couldโ€™ve been handled differently. Way different.

“Excuse me, Mayor Christensen. Jane. I have work to do.”

What work? I had no idea, but I wanted them both out of my office and fast before I lost total control. I hunkered down at my desk and turned on my computer. I played around with the mouse, gliding my fingers across the metallic square as if I had something important to read or type up.

I didn’t look up as the doors opened and closed after them.