Black Shadow Detective Agency

I heard a knock on the outer office door which was answered by Jamie asking whoever it was to come inside. I wasn't too worried about what was being said, Jamie was good at her job so there was nothing to concern myself with until she called me on the intercom. The intercom buzzed. "Boss?" she said across the line. "Yes?" "I have a Sasha Sumer out here, she said she needs to talk to you." That sort of surprised me because I thought I knew who she might be talking about, and if it was who I thought it was, something was seriously wrong. "Is she about five seven, Arab looking, and insanely beautiful?" I asked. "Uh, yes." "Then send her in right now, it's almost definitely important." Are you thinking she's one of the waitresses from the Mystic Wolf? Shadow, my crow familiar, asked me, his voice in my head only. "Who else," I replied to my familiar as the door opened. "Mr. Black? I need your help," she said as she entered my office. As she stepped inside her human facade was replaced by her natural, daemonic form, that of a lovely succubus. Sasha wasn't her real name, it was just the one she had currently adopted to fit in. Only one human knew her true name and that was Brisbane. To know a Daemon's true name was to have power over them, so they didn't give it out very often. "Well, have a seat and we'll discuss your problem," I said motioning her to the chair across from me. She tucked her wings in and sat down with some hesitation, obviously both nervous and upset. "Well first let me thank you for seeing me, I..." I cut her off. "Don't thank me," I said. "You've come to me as a client so you can thank me after this is all settled. Now what is the problem?" "Well a friend of mine has disappeared, and I'm terribly worried about her. I want you to find her for me." I was immediately surprised by this. For one thing I knew that it was rare for daemons from the infernal realms to really form attachments to others, my dad being an exception, but this was something different. I had never seen a daemon this upset about missing a friend before; even my dad hadn't been this upset when my mother had been killed over three centuries ago. I nodded to show that I was going to take this seriously, I may find this situation unusual, but that didn't matter. Sasha was just another client right now which meant I would treat her with the same respect I do all my clients. I took a notepad out of a desk drawer and got ready to start the initial questioning that would help me find a place to start. "So what is your friend's name?" I asked her. "Kara Odinsdottir," she said quietly. My first response was to drop the pen I was about to use to take notes with. If she had just said what I thought she had, those two words had just turned this into the most outlandish case I had ever started. The hell!? I heard Shadow exclaim in my head. It can't be. "Let me make sure I have this right. Am I correct in thinking that Kara's last name, Odinsdottir, is Icelandic in origin?" Sasha nodded quietly. "Yes," she said in barely more than a whisper. She seemed almost ashamed of the answer. "Am I also correct when I translate it as 'Odin's Daughter'?" I asked. Again she gave me another barely audible 'yes'. I leaned across my desk to get a better look at her, if she was lying to me I would know. "So what you mean is that this friend of yours that you want me to track down for you is a Valkyrie, correct?" This time when she said, 'yes', I could see tears welling up at the corner of her eyes. I dropped back down into my chair. Never in all my years would I have thought I would ever see a Daemon from one of the infernal planes brought to tears, but the reason for those tears was completely unreal. My client, a Daemon who's nature caused her to fit neatly into what most people thought of as a classic 'Demon', was asking me to find a Daemon from a divine plane, or what many people would call an 'angel'. This was so utterly beyond belief that it couldn't have been made up. Had anyone else told me about this case I would have called them liar, but this was no lie. I would never have expected that a succubus could even cry, not even fake tears, but these tears were not fake, they were genuine. She wasn't just upset, she was scared.