“Well this is a fine little pickle we’ve found ourselves in,” I murmured, poring over the assembled documents on counsel’s table.

  “What’re we thinking?” Julio asked, eyes roaming the juror profiles we’d laid out.

  We currently had our tentative jury of six, with four alternates selected, each alternate corresponding to one of the outstanding peremptory strikes. Whoever got struck would be replaced by the next juror on the list, and that juror would only be vulnerable to a peremptory strike once they were seated.

  And that right there — that I couldn’t strike the alternates until they weren’t an alternate anymore — was a problem.

  “How are we getting on?” Judge Friedman asked, glancing up from his e-reader to give us all a questioning look.

  “Defense needs a bit longer,” the contractor’s attorney spoke up, which earned him a nasty look from the building owner’s attorney. Trouble in paradise, good, we wanted them to start the infighting sooner rather than later.

  “Plaintiff has no objections,” I said, catching the judge’s attention with a flick of my ears.

  “Very well, you’ve all got another… twenty minutes,” he said, checking his watch. “I want this jury seated and then out the door before half past five, you hear?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Judge Friedman gave us all a stern nod, then turned right back to whatever book he was reading and pulled the sleeve of his robe back up over his watch. That meant he wasn’t going to actually watch for the twenty minute mark. It was going to be by feeling.

  Which meant he’d probably bring us to a stop after he’d read another couple chapters.

  “So what’s the plan?” Fatima asked. “Who do we get rid of?”

  “We need to ask a different pair of questions first,” I told her. “Two of the defendants have strikes left. One, who do each of them want gone? And two, which alternates would be worse than someone we have now?”

  And that was the crux of the problem.

  The current state of our jury was as follows: the same two middle-aged white men from earlier, one an accountant, the other an actuary; the Asian woman I’d mentioned, who worked as a realtor; a black male immigrant from Senegal who worked for a limousine company; a white woman empty nester; lastly, a Hispanic man who worked at the Library of Congress.

  Of these jurors, the main ones I wanted gone were the accountant and the empty nester. And if I could somehow manage to only get rid of them while keeping all the others, that would be great! One of the next alternate jurors was a retired black grandmother!

  But the problem was the fourth alternate juror. Single white male, mid-twenties, working at a political think tank. I’d been banking on getting him stricken for cause, but he was much more of a smooth talker than the conservative staffer had been, and it wasn’t like I could prove he was talking out his ass here. His professional bio was politely nondescript, he was better than some politicians at speaking hundreds of words while saying absolutely nothing of substance, and his only social media account with even a single like, followed account, or post was his fucking LinkedIn.

  If he wound up on the jury, odds were he’d become the jury foreman just like that, and his opinion would guide the majority. But the same charisma that would let him manage the rest of the jury meant he had no obvious tells. No euphemisms, no oddly particular verbiage, none of it.

  And the worst part was? There was something that gave him away. His smirk. The stupid little snide smirk that he directed at Fatima’s back as she walked back to counsel’s table.

  But that wasn’t something I could point at and use as proof of bias. All it did was tell me that he could not be allowed on our jury, or we were fucked.

  “Well I know who I’d want gone if I were them.” While Mrs. Banks had barely spoken up during this whole process, she took the opportunity to make her opinion known now, and pointed at the profile for our black immigrant juror. “Him. Never seen a white man have fun convincing a black man to screw over another black person.”

  “And while that’s true, they can’t remove him without also removing somebody else,” I told her. “That’d leave the chance of a jury in DC having the only black juror seated be removed when it’s a white people vs black people case, and that’s not allowed.”

  “Why not?” my client asked.

  “Old Supreme Court case from the eighties,” Fatima interjected. “Prosecutor was stacking all-white juries against black defendants. They were always convicted, even the weaker cases. And this may not be a criminal matter, but I don’t think that argument would hold water with this judge.”

  “Which means they have to strike either two jurors, no jurors, or someone other than the black man. But if they strike two, we can’t strike two, otherwise we wind up with him,” I said, pointing at the fourth alternate’s profile.

  “So what do we do, then?” Fatima asked.

  I didn’t answer immediately, choosing instead to gather up the documents and sort them in order of who we least wanted to who we most wanted.

  Our least-desirable juror was the white male accountant. Not only did he have this air of just not caring, but also the moment we started talking about some of the sneaky bookkeeping tricks the defendants had gotten up to, we risked him getting defensive. That was a surefire way to poison our jury.

  Second least desirable? The empty nester. Oh, sure, she was a mother herself who would empathize with our client for the loss of her children… except for one important thing. Destiny Banks worked twelve- to sixteen-hour days to provide for her two kids, because somehow a military widow’s survivor benefits were still not enough (which was a travesty itself, but that was a topic for another day). The empty nester had been a stay-at-home mom, with a breadwinner husband. She hadn’t worked a single day in two decades. The moment she got started on jury deliberations, there was exactly one question she’d ask: “why was the mom not there with her kids?”

  She wouldn’t be able to empathize with Destiny’s experience of coming home from work to find out her children were dead, because she couldn’t ever imagine a situation where that could happen to her. So I wanted to strike her.

  But I couldn’t. Because this was where the other problem began: we had to write our peremptory strikes down in order, and then submit that ordered list to the judge. The defense had to do the same.

  And the defense’s strikes would go through before ours.

  So if we wrote down two strikes, and the defense also chose to use both of their remaining peremptory strikes, and neither of those was the accountant or the empty nester, we didn’t have a chance to amend our selections. The defense would strike two people, then we would strike two people, and all four alternates would sit. That included the poison pill that we could not allow onto the jury.

  But if only three of the four strikes remaining between our sides got used up, that would prevent the poison pill from sitting on the jury at all. The alternates were seated in order, and the one we wanted to avoid was last.

  This meant that in practice, we only had one strike, because we had to assume that the two defendants who had strikes remaining would each use theirs. Why? Well, while getting the poison pill onto the jury was a win condition for the defense, leaving the jury untouched was also a losing condition for them.

  And that was because of the second juror we’d seated. The other white man.

  The actuary.

  “This is the single most important juror,” I said, pointing a finger at his jury questionnaire.

  “... I’m not seeing it,” Julio said.

  I snapped my fingers to draw their attention, and held a finger to my lips in the universal signal for silence. Then I reached under the jury questionnaires for my legal pad, grabbed a pen, and started to write.

  NO TALK

  ACTUARY = RISK # CRUNCHER 4 INSURERS

  DEFS MISSED THAT

  WE NEED HIM

  Once all of them had read the note, I turned the legal pad over.

  “Okay, so they want the black guy gone,” Julio said, picking up as though nothing had happened. Good man, he got the hint. “Who else?”

  “Probably the realtor?” Fatima provided. “She’d know property details better and be more responsive to our arguments.”

  “But the second alternate is a black woman,” Julio argued. “That’s honestly worse for them.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “They’re going to use at least one strike,” she argued. “Even if they have to leave the limo driver on the jury, they can still get rid of the realtor. Heck, they’re probably going to use both on the off chance we do too.”

  “Which means we can’t,” I said. “Which sucks, I know, but we’ll make do. So who do we cut: the accountant, or the empty nester?”

  “I can talk to another mom,” Destiny said. “Look her in the eyes. Tell her how it feels.”

  “I’m not that optimistic,” I said.

  “How much you bet her husband ain’t got life insurance?”

  “He probably doesn’t, but—”

  My phone buzzed, and I raised a finger to hold my place in the conversation before checking. It was another text from Casey, who’d slipped out briefly to run to the restroom, or so he’d said.

  The message was a sequence of screenshots from his phone. First, the accountant’s LinkedIn (which… actually, why hadn’t I searched for it earlier?), showing the man’s exact workplace and the one before it. The next two images were those accounting firms’ “About Us” pages.

  And the last one was the abstract of a paper he’d written and gotten published in a journal.

  “… change of plans.” I put the phone down on the table and slid it over to Julio and Fatima, then grabbed the accountant’s jury questionnaire to put under the chauffeur’s. “We have our strike.”

  “We what now?” Destiny asked, even as I saw understanding dawn on both of my junior attorneys. Once again I grabbed the legal pad, flipped to a new page, and wrote a message out again.

  WAS WRONG EARLIER

  LOOKED UP HIS WORKPLACE

  JUROR IS FORENSIC ACCOUNTANT

  THINK MONEY COP FOR RICH WHITE MEN

  Destiny looked up from the legal pad with a frown. But after a moment, she nodded. With her approval, I wrote the empty nester’s juror number down on the form Judge Friedman wanted us to use.

  Then we sat down, waited, and let the squawking of the peanut gallery at defense’s table entertain us.

  Casey returned to the courtroom right as their discussion seemed to be petering out. I shot off a quick text to make sure he got proper recognition for his work (gj hun, nice find), and resolved to tell Alice that once Casey passed the Bar, she probably needed to up his pay more than initially planned. I liked this kid. And he’d managed to help us sidestep a particular trap too many of us attorneys fall into. Specifically?

  He’d stopped thinking like a lawyer long enough to use the resources we tended to forget existed.

  Eventually, the judge reached a good stopping point, and looked up from his e-reader. He cleared his throat, and when that failed to quiet all the squabbling from over at defense counsel’s table, he pulled out the gavel and banged it.

  “Have we all decided how to use our remaining peremptory strikes?” Judge Friedman asked.

  “Your Honor, we, ah,” the attorney for WCS & Co. spoke up first, then paused as he got nudged in the side by co-counsel. “If we could have just a few more minutes of the court’s indulgence, that would be appreciated.”

  “Mhmm.” The judge turned towards us. “Plaintiff?”

  “Plaintiff’s decisions have been made,” I said, standing as I addressed the judge with a genial smile, “and I believe we echo the jurors and yourself in saying that we’d very much like to be heading home before the sun has fully set.”

  “You do indeed,” the judge said. “Please hand me your documents. Defense, you have until counsel sits back down to finish making your decision.”

  Oh, ohoho… the judge was being petty. Well, if he was going to open the door like that, it would be remiss of me not to step on through, wouldn’t it?

  Since I was already standing, I just picked up the piece of paper with our strikes (or strike, as it were) written on it. Then, with a wink at the others, my body fell apart into flame, flickering back into reality just next to the judge’s bench a measly twenty feet away. I dropped the paper on his desk, gave him a cheeky grin and wiggle of my ears, then blinked right back to where I’d been with another flash of burning violet and sat down.

  Maybe three seconds had passed in total, and as the judge banged his gavel to get defense’s attention, both he and the bailiff looked to be holding in laughter.

  “Wha—your Honor, I must protest!”

  “Your protest is noted, and ignored. I gave you until Plaintiff’s counsel gave me her strikes and sat back down. I have Plaintiff’s strikes, and she is sitting. I want your strikes now, counsel.”

  “But—” WCS’ lawyer leveled a rather furious glare at me. All I did was offer him a sweet little smile.

  “Face it, honey,” I said, lowering one ear in amusement. “You got outfoxed.”

  I heard a sort of strangled giggle from both Julio and Fatima, as well as from the bailiff, amusingly enough. The defense’s lawyers waffled for a moment longer before the lead attorney between them brought a piece of paper up to the judge, scowling all the while. Judge Friedman took it with aplomb and unfolded it, reviewing the contents before writing a note for the bailiff, who took it and exited the courtroom.

  Three minutes later, the bailiff returned with six people in tow. Both white men and the realtor had survived this round of strikes. They were joined by three of the four alternates: an older white woman who worked as a dental hygienist, the retired african-american grandma that we wanted, and a young Indian man who worked as a waiter in his parents’ restaurant. The bailiff led them all to the jury box, and they sat in two rows, the women in front, the men in back.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a jury,” Judge Friedman said. “Trial will begin at eleven in the morning tomorrow — we’ve had a long day today, and I want to give you all plenty of time to rest up!”

  The jury laughed a little bit, and postures loosened as they realized the judge would be on their side here.

  “The bailiff is on a quick errand for me, but once he comes back, he’ll have another sheet for you to fill out and some pens,” the judge continued. “I want you to provide me your workplace, your supervisor’s name, and both a phone number and email address I can contact them at. Jury pay is a pittance, and your employers are meant to cover the difference between that and your normal forty-hour-a-week pay. I’ll simply be sending all of them a friendly reminder that I have significant leeway to do as I see fit if I hear that any of you aren’t getting compensated appropriately.”

  “Is there anythin’ I should do different?” the black grandma juror asked. “I’m living off my pension and Social Security.”

  “If the expenses put upon you by your service to this court strain your budget in any way, you let me know immediately,” Judge Friedman told her, then turned towards us. “Counsel, I will be in my chambers at half past nine in case there are any last-minute pretrial matters you wish to bring forth. But if there is nothing else, then to be honest, I am tired of seeing all of you. Go home, rest up, we will reconvene tomorrow for opening arguments.”

  “Thank you, your Honor,” I said, with everybody else at my table following suit a half second later. Because we’d had the opportunity to put our everything away while the defense struggled to decide on their strikes, there was nothing left to clean up, and we made our way out of the courtroom without much issue.

  Casey was waiting for us outside and fell into step, matching our pace as we left the courthouse before anybody from the defense team could try and pull us aside for a last-minute discussion, proffer, or the like.

  “We got lucky here,” I admitted once we were outside. “Casey, thank you for reminding me that we needed to use everything at our disposal when researching jurors. Over a decade later and I’m still not used to having the internet in my pocket, I swear.”

  “T-thanks,” the student attorney said, sinking into the winter coat he’d shrugged on over his already-oversized sweater.

  “Young man, she said you done good!” Mrs. Banks pulled to a stop as she said this, turning to face the bashful 3L. “Own it! Be proud of that!”

  “It’s okay, he’ll get there,” I said. “God, should’ve seen me during my first stint at courtroom lawyering. I was a nervous wreck.”

  “You were probably cute as hell,” Julio chuckled.

  “Oi!” I exclaimed, spinning to face him with hands on my hips. “I am your boss, young man!”

  “Nah, just one of ‘em,” he fired back with a shit-eating grin, drawing laughs from Casey and Fatima. I rolled my eyes and flicked my ears at him, which sent him laughing again. But as we approached the company car, the humor died out.

  “It’s almost time, ain’t it?” Destiny asked, hand on the car door. “Finally gonna make those rat bastards pay.”

  “Yeah.” I opened the passenger-side door and got in. Julio had offered to drive, and I was able to finagle my tail into a more comfortable position if I didn’t also have to reach the pedals. “We’re gonna make them hurt.”

  “Not just hurt,” Destiny said as Julio put the car into gear and exited the parking lot into traffic. “Hurtin’ ain’t enough. They’re gonna bleed.”

  The conversation died at that point. Julio dropped Mrs. Banks off at a green line station so she could get home, and took us back to the firm for a last-minute check of our trial binders.

  Everything was in order. All of our evidence was ready. And as I practiced my opening statements while washing up for bed, I felt… optimistic. We had this.

  We were going to win.

  “… up, wake up!”

  Hng… what? Time, what time… still dark. Not time to be up yet, just, close my eyes and back to dreaming.

  “Naomi, get up! It’s important!”

  “S’not time ye’…” Gorou being noisy, dumb fox, just wanna sleep, was having a good dream…

  “… I’ll apologize later.”

  Mm? Whadda he—

  PAIN. Needle-sharp pain on my ear!

  “Ow!” I jolted upright, suddenly wide awake and tenderly massaging my poor abused ear. “What the fuck, Gorou!? I have court tomorrow!”

  Two of his tails shot out and wrapped around my arms. A moment later, the world flashed blue before slowly swimming back into existence, the unexpected transit by flash of fire sending me for a bit of a loop before I felt the sofa underneath me.

  “Look.” Gorou said in his native tongue, pointing at the TV with his tails. I looked at the screen, and my eyes went wide in horror.

  The emergency news report showed an apartment building on fire. Flames consumed it entirely, the firefighters’ hoses having little to no effect, likely due to delays arriving brought on by the late hour — 3:37am EST. The chyron at the bottom said it was in Navy Yard, and provided the name of the building and the street address. It was the same building that Miguel Arroyo had gotten his sister and her nieces moved to after DCHA became aware of the pressure from Mrs. Leslie King to file false building inspections.

  And it was the same building that Destiny Banks had been living in ever since her sons passed away.

  “Oh my God…”

  I fell apart into flame and reappeared sitting on my bed upstairs, whereupon I grabbed my work phone from the nightstand and flashed back down to the living room sofa. My hands shook so badly I could barely keep myself steady enough for the fingerprint sensor, but once I was in, I opened up my recent phone calls and dialed Mrs. Banks’ number, putting the phone on speaker.

  “Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system,” the phone sang for both Gorou and me to hear, with absolutely no ringing to precede it. “At the tone, please leave your message—”

  I hung up, and stared at the screen, drinking in the terror. The phone tumbled from my suddenly-limp fingers, glancing off of the coffee table before resting on the rug beneath my feet. I just… fell back against the sofa, unable to tear my eyes away from the screen. Was… was she in there? Was this some last gasp, some final gambit, some sort of, of, of…

  “Naomi?” Gorou pushed his way onto my lap. I wrapped my arms around the fox and held him tight. “What are you going to do?”

  “... I don’t know. I… I don’t, I. I don’t know, Gorou. ” It was a struggle to say even that much. The clock ticked closer to four in the morning. Opening statements were set to begin in seven hours, but… but what?

  “I don’t know.”

  something circulating around the site. That was courtesy of the wonderful , who saw I had the idea and managed to spin up a draft and ideas within a few hours of the sudden eureka lightbulb moment.

  March 4. Which will be after I've gone and been a Monster Hunter fanatic for that weekend!~