I woke up that morning with a head full of fog. The night before had been nice and relaxing, but I must have lost count of the drinks. I reached up to try to rub the sleep from my face, but my hand hit the pillow instead. I felt around, but I only found a bare patch where my head should have been. Just regular skin, too, without the tingly feeling it was supposed to have.

Definitely too many drinks last night. It had been a while since I'd forgotten to take my meds.

I forced my eyes open and took a look around the room. Fortunately, my head was lying at the foot of my bed looking toward the rest of me, instead of in a pile of clothes somewhere. Morning-afters were difficult enough without having to group around my room looking for my own head. I saw myself lying in bed next to a big, muscular guy. He was sleeping in his pants with no shirt on, and I still had my cut-off top and denim skirt on, so both of us must have been too drunk to make any serious mistakes.

When I saw only one leg coming out the bottom of my skirt, a piece of the previous night clicked into place. That's right, I'd picked up a guy because he looked hot and he said he was into magic-bloods. I only saw the long sock on my leg, though, and no thigh-high boot covering it, so at least I didn't collapse into bed with boots on.

As I started to ponder how to get myself together without waking the beefcake next to me, he started stirring. He stretched, yawned, and got up from the bed, seemingly without noticing me, and he started to hunt around the room for his shirt.

What was his name again? Brad? Bart? Whatever. I hadn't expected any sparkling conversation with this guy when I brought him home. He seemed like the type who'd need a few tries to put a sentence together.

I sat up slowly and reached for my head while he was getting his shirt back on. By the time I had my head in my lap, he looked like he was searching for his shoes, but then he turned and saw me.

"Oh, you're awake," he said. "Good morning."

"Good morning," I said sleepily, trying not to make him think I wanted him to stay.

"Looks like your head came off," he said. Yep, not an A-1 thinker, this guy.

"Yeah," I said, idly playing with my hair. "It happens sometimes."

"I mean, I remember when your leg came off last night," he said, waving toward the floor. You lift your head to look, and you see your other stockinged leg lying on the floor, also without a boot on. "I don't think you did it on purpose, but you didn't seem to mind at the time, so I didn't worry about it. Is that a bigger deal?" He points to your detached head.

"No, not really," you say. Better not confuse him with details.

He stares at you for a moment, looking like a puppy that just had its favorite toy covered by a box, and then he smiles and slips his shoes on. "Okay then," he says. "Anyway, I had a really nice night. It was . . . Nellie, right?"

"Yeah, I had a great time, too," I said. My name's not Nellie, it's Nora, Nora Rush, but it's not like I could remember his name either. "Maybe I'll call you sometime."

Pretty sure I didn't get his number, but if I had, I'd probably delete it anyway.

"Awesome," he said. "See you around, Nellie." He left the apartment and closed the door behind him, like a real gentleman.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. I'd have shaken my head if it was in place. Seriously, some people looked at the brains line and the looks line and didn't have the patience to wait in both of them.

I edged along the bed, keeping careful hold of my head, and reached for the pills and the squeeze bottle on the end table. I swiveled my head so I was facing the ceiling, and I fished out three pills and dropped them in my mouth. Once I got a squirt of water from the bottle to wash them down, I started to feel the tingle coming back to the patches on my neck and leg. I lifted my head back into place and set it down, and the gap went away.

I peered into the little jar of pills. Not a lot of doses left. I needed to find a paying client quick if I wanted to keep myself together.

- - -

No two ways about it, it wasn't cheap being a magic-blood. Most of us ended up that way from some kind of industrial accident, or maybe an industrial "accident," but occasionally, you got someone who came about magic the old-fashioned way. It used to be a serious affliction, but these days, people could take meds to keep the effects from getting out of control, keep them manageable, maybe even useful.

Of course, as with any other drug that people need in order to live their lives, the companies that make them see nothing but dollar signs in their eyes, so magic-bloods need to make sure that the money keeps coming in if they want to make way. Most of us end up working for the same companies that make the drugs, at least for some subsidiary or other, which means that these magicorps end up employing practically every magic-blood they can find. It didn't take them long to realize that magic-bloods are even bigger cash cows as employees than they are as customers. It pushed the world of consumer goods in a pretty fun and weird direction, but the world of security and investigations ended up going the other way. Still weird, but very much not fun.

That's what I used to do. As soon as my old bosses learned that I could detach parts of myself without injury and without losing control of them, they put me to work as an infiltration specialist. I saw more secret crawlspaces in more corp spires than most people ever knew existed. In return for my years of sneaking around and stealing from their competition, they made sure my pockets kept jingling and my prescription was always filled.

After a few years of that, though, I could feel my soul draining away. Not in any magical way or anything. I just felt that all I was doing was helping powerful people stay powerful. None of the stuff in my fancy apartment meant anything. It was just a way to keep a leash on me. So I sold my fancy apartment and my fancy car, I gave notice at my soul-sucking job, and I found a cheap studio apartment and a decent office. The money isn't as good, but it's a lot cleaner, and it means I can choose the jobs I take and the ones I turn down. I get to see people smile when their days go from bad to good, instead of just nodding when their wallets go from full to a little more full.

Much better for the soul, but it does mean I have to worry a little more about where my next dose is coming from sometimes.

- - -

I got off the streetcar and climbed up to my office, wiping a bit of dust off the glass: "Nora Rush - Special Consultant." It was a little bleed-through from my old corp days, with that much understatement, but the little magical symbol below the words made it clear what the 'special' was for.

Before I even got my hand on the door handle, a big guy in dark glasses and a featureless suit stepped from another doorway.

"Are you Nora Rush?" he said.

Either he was standard-issue corp muscle or he was trying hard to look like it, but the wristwatch and the belt leaned more to the first one. I couldn't think of anything a corp would want with me or have against me, but better safe.

"Yeah, that's me," I said.

"Ms. Rush, a woman will be here soon. You should wait in your office for her."

". . . Okay."

I opened the door and headed for my chair. As I walked in, the guy said something into his lapel. Seemed like he was helping secure a perimeter for his client. It was the kind of protocol that corp-level security used when top people visited not-top places.

But corps had their own in-house investigators. Why would an exec come to a hole-in-the-wall private eye?

I made myself comfortable while my visitor made her way to the office and took a seat. She actually took two seats, because when her guard led her to the office and closed the door behind her, there were two of her. Two shapely women, with identical faces and identical strides, one in a sheer black latex business suit and one in a matching suit in white.

Obviously, anyone who saw her 100% present would know she was a multi, but the figure-hugging look would have marked her as a magic-blood anyway. A lot of magic-bloods tended to learn that fashions like that came in handy.

Most of my own clothes had good-sized gaps between them so I could detach as needed without worrying about tucking anything in, and the heavy boots helped me make sure I didn't lose concentration and leave a toe behind somewhere. In her case, the tight fit probably helped everything stay in place when she copied herself, or maybe she just liked to show off her money.

Most multis didn't go around copied that often, if only because navigating sidewalk crowds could be complicated with two different points of view, but this woman seemed okay with it. She'd been checking behind her a lot as she approached the office. Maybe she had a personal security problem that her expensive corp guards couldn't handle?

"Good morning, Ms. Rush," she said, the one in black doing the talking while the one in white kept her head on a swivel. "You come highly recommended. I understand that you solve problems of a magical nature. I have one for you."

"Don't corps usually solve their own problems?" I said.

"When they can," she said. "There are times, though, when we need to sub-contract."

Sub-contracting, I thought. That was usually code for mole-hunting, when a corp thought they might have a traitor in the ranks and needed an outside pair of eyes to root out the rot.

Just then, I had a though, a brief flash of memory from the old days. Wasn't there a corp with a magic-blood somewhere at the executive level? Didn't they have their fingers in some weird, experimental pies?

"Fair enough," I said. "You said I came highly recommended. You mind if I ask who did the recommending? You don't seem like the type who checks classified ads."

"Indeed not," she said, both faces smiling a little. "We try to keep tabs on promising talent, especially those we've dealt with before."

"I don't recall ever working for you," I said. "Which company did you say you worked for?"

"I didn't," she said, switching from the black one to the white one. "That will come later, once we're ready to discuss details. No, you have never worked for our company, but you do seem to have worked against us on a few occasions."

Yep, it was that company all right. Hopefully there were no hard feelings. Corps tended to have long memories, but surely she wasn't here nursing a grudge, right?

"In fact," she said, "it is exactly that work history that makes me think you might be the right person for this job. I need someone with experience in corporate espionage, and you not only have those skills, but you have already used them against my company. This is nothing you haven't done before. All that's changed is that I'm offering to pay you directly, rather than making you give your own executives a cut."

"This must be some bad rat problem you have," I said, putting my thigh-high boots up on the desk. "You travel with at least two bodyguards, but you didn't bring one into the room with you. You were even checking your own six when you were with them. Means you have no idea who might be working against you. I'm guessing they don't know why you're really here. Let me guess: they think you're here with an embarrassing personal problem? Maybe you're here asking me to take some dirty pictures for you?"

She seemed a little embarrassed at the suggestion, but both of her had exactly the same look at the same time. Good chance it was genuine. Making me reach a conclusion like that would have been a good way to pull a con, but either she was the best actor I'd ever seen, or I'd just hit the nail on the head.

I took another look at her handbags and her manicure. As uncomfortable as it may have been to get back into the corp world again, she was definitely good for a big enough fee that would pay my bills for a few years. Plus, she had a good point. It would be good to root around in a corp's affairs again without having to invoice anything to a budget office.

I reached into a drawer of my desk where I kept my collection of form contracts, and I pulled out the most astronomical one, the one I used to scare off clients who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.

"I'll need a retainer in advance to cover initial expenses," I said, pushing the contract across the desk. "You'll find my hourly fee covered in here, along with a standard NDA. Once you've signed, we can talk about the details of your operation."

She took the contract and looked it over. Most people would have at least blinked a little when they got to the hourly-rate-plus-reimbursement paragraph, but she just looked it over and then reached for a pen.

So. Back into the corp world it was. This was going to be a busy few weeks. I'd have to talk with some old friends about this job, and it would be fun explaining why I was getting back in touch after so long. First things first, though. I needed to stop by a pharmacy.

After all, with the check she was about to write, I could at least make sure I got my prescription filled.