There is a time every man’s life when he must forget all that is happening around him and focus on one thing. Not two things, or three things--no. Just one. (I checked.)

So that is what, in that moment, I did. Or, well, tried to do, if you prefer the truth. I had been reading this book for three days and still was not finished. To top it off, it only had six hundred pages. This needed to be ended. This. could. not. go. on.

“Mercy.”

And, yet, I found it incredibly hard to concentrate with two expressionless eyes boring into me. One was called Magritte. She had jaw-length, dark-brown hair that very awkwardly curled up at the ends, matched perfectly by those damned optimistic eyes of hers. Her skin was tanned from so many hours out in the sun--at the beach playing volleyball or whatever it is she does out there, I would guess. In preparation, she was dressed in a wetsuit, T-shirt, and shorts. (According to Magritte, “You never knew when you might have to jump into a large body of water and save a drowning horse.)

Beside her sat Timothy, the definition of posh, in all it‘s stuck-up glory. His blonde hair was slicked back against pale, unblemished skin. Well-bred blue eyes stared unblinkingly, accented by the blue-dyed fur scarf that he had wrapped around his neck. Both Timothy and Magritte sat with their arms and legs crossed as they watched me read.

They watched me read. So many things were wrong with that.

I coughed. “Yes, Magritte?”

She licked her lips and took a sip of her soda, knowing how impatient I was. Time ticked by. I swear to god I could hear the clock tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick-ing. I went back to reading.

“Mercy.”

“Hm?”

“What are you doing Wednesday?”

Clicking my tongue along with the clock, I flipped out my planner and fought to find the right page. Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday…

“Just meeting with the police department at 9:00 a.m., lunch with the mayor, speaking at the local elementary about safety, and… that’s it.”

“So it’s a pretty free day, right?”

“Yep.”

“Cool.”

She sipped her soda some more, unable to decide what to say next. Silences were always awkward with her. She hated silence.

Me? Well, as long as I was sure there weren’t any assassins or something with a gun to my head sneaking around behind me, I loved silence, in general. I liked sitting on my floor-mat and reading a book or a newspaper or just plain sitting there and staring at my beautiful, beautiful wall.

Everybody thinks that’s weird, that I only have one painted wall in my apartment. But I didn’t see a reason to waste all that time with brushes and paint and tape when I can just look at one. That’s not weird. It’s just logical.

This was when Timothy rumbled his throat, because he was worried for the well-mindedness of Magritte. You couldn’t let those quiet moments go on for too long around her, or she could get kind of crazy. Like once, when she went to a meeting with me, and everybody was sitting there reading a proposal, and the silence just droned on and on and on and on. Let’s just say that the tables didn’t survive that day. Nor did the chairs. Rest in peace.

And this was when Magritte hissed at Timothy that she was “fine and didn’t need your help, thank you very much you peace of posh coconut.”

Posh coconut, yes. Magritte was determined to not fit in…

…says the boy who is scared of butterflies and does not sleep, except on Tuesdays, or during movies, because it’s not productive and very boring. And when I’m sleeping, I would never know when someone was standing over me with a blade, ready to kill me. Gosh. Scary.

“Mercy, you’re quiet today,” sad Magritte.

“I’m always quiet.”

She raised an eyebrow and snorted. “No. Some days I can’t get you to shut up.”

I scowled at this, but forgot within the next moments. I didn’t get mad. It wasn’t productive at all, and, as a Masterful Detective Dude, being productive was obligatory.

I stood, swinging my bag over my shoulder. It had been two hours already. I couldn’t be in one place for more than two hours, or else an assassin might come to get me, or things would get boring.

“Two hours already?” Magritte murmured, checking an imaginary watch on an imaginary wrist. (Her other hand was stolen by a shark when she was sixteen. Go figure.)

I nodded, and Timothy groaned. He hated moving. If it was up to Timothy, we would sit in the same place for the whole day, or maybe two days, if we were allowed to sleep there.

You see, Timothy was baked into a very rich, aristocratic family that had maids and butlers and more maids and a few more butlers. He was used to having to just ring a bell if he wanted anything, so he would just sit there in bed all day and watch soap operas and eat crackers. Timothy was the kind of person that could eat and eat and eat and eat and never get any fatter, the fiend. Those types of people are pure evil, and should be avoided at all costs, because they are actually aliens.

Of course, this theory doesn’t particularly work for me, because I, too, am one of those people, being five foot and so skinny that I’m afraid to weigh myself because the number is, in fact, under one hundred and that just supports the fact that I am a girl. Which gets really annoying, because--and believe me, I have doubted this myself and ran into the bathroom to check--I am a guy, dammit, a freaking guy with the whole package. Stupid genetics.

No, wait, never mind. Both of my parents were over six foot.

“Excuse me, are you Mercy Marker?”

I spun around to see a man in a black suit looking worriedly down at me, holding a piece of notepaper in his hands. He was, in general, an attractive man. Rich dark brown hair, worried light brown eyes. He fit the whole tall-dark-and-handsome thing that I had always envied.

I nodded. “Yes. That is, if the Mercy Marker you are looking for is a.k.a. Terra Jorgeson, then yes, sir, I am, because the Terra Jorgeson you are looking for is a.k.a. Frederic Anderson, who is, in fact, a.k.a. Yith Mcgee, but now that I have told you this you know too much and I will, unfortunately, have to kill you.”

He stared at me with that bewildered, worried expression for a moment. “Pardon?”

“Never mind.”

He chewed his lip. “So… You are Mercy Marker, correct, sir?”

“Yes. I am, sadly, Mercy Marker.”

He smiled, reassured that he had not failed in his duty to find Mr. Marker. But, as he looked me over, the courage faltered. He coughed. “Um, pardon me for asking, but… are you a girl or a boy, sir? Or--uh--ma’am…”

“I prefer the term man, Mr. Insert-Name-Here. I am, as a matter of fact, twenty four.” I hissed. It’s awfully embarrassing when you are forced to hiss in a voice that I have been told, very frequently, is “as cute and sweet as honey. Really, sweetie, you’re adorable.”

He nodded, and I could almost see the pen writing as he added this into his mental notes. Magritte leaned forward and whispered that Timothy and her were going to start heading back to her place, and I nodded.

The silence droned on.

“So, who are you, exactly?” I said, getting annoyed. There were so many other things I could be doing.

“Oh! Yes! Sorry,” he apologized urgently. I sucked in my cheek. “Um, I’m James Park, junior detective here in Frining… um, we have been struggling with this case for a while… and were wondering if you would be able to give us a hand… That is, if you aren’t to busy…”

I nodded as briskly as I could manage, taking advantage of this situation in all of it’s rare glory. I wasn’t used to being called “sir” and asked if “it wasn’t too much trouble.” I had always been a stubborn one, and was extremely talented when it came to getting on the nerves of middle-aged men who want nothing but to go home and have dinner with their families. So, usually, people just ordered me to help them, followed by a nice clean thread of gory threats and some bribing and, there ya go, I was on the job again.

I didn’t go on the job often, of course. I made too much money. I was the last resort, the freak that you dealt with only if there were no other options. I wasn’t what you would call a people person, because people didn’t like it when you had to have things your way. People want you to adjust whatever your schedule or interests are and arrange it around them. Pfft, losers.

“Well, I believe that I might be able to fit you in…” I flipped out my planner and pretended to act all serious and busy. Ha. Ha ha. Oops, didn’t mean to laugh out loud. I smiled up at the man, flipping the little blue book away. “Ah, who am I kidding, I have too much time anyways. Would meeting at 3:00 a.m. every day, except Tuesdays, work for you?”

He blinked, and frowned a little deeper, if that was possible. “Um, sir, maybe something a little earlier--or, uh--”

“Just kidding, James.”

He nodded and smiled, giving a mental sigh that I could almost hear, because he closed his eyes and murmured something. Poor dude. He had shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep. He was almost as sleep-deprived as I was, the pitiful fool.

“Um… can you come now?” he questioned timidly. I could tell that I had not been his easiest target, and was traumatizing him all the more as time bore on. I sighed and nodded.

“Sure. Whatever. But… James? Who are you working for?”

James’s face froze. He began to chew his lip again, but this time with much more enthusiasm, to the point where I was sure I saw some blood. Finally, he slowed. “Um… I wasn’t supposed to tell you this… But… I think you’d have a right to now, sir, so…”

“Who is it, Mr. Park?”

“Zacharias Agnes, sir…”

“Aw, shit!”

James, Agnes, this new guy, and I sat in a booth at the diner, looking one another over with remarkable hostility. Well, I suppose I should say that Agnes and I looked one another over with remarkable hostility. The new guy and James seemed to be friends already.

I clicked my tongue.

Agnes smiled, crossing his arms onto the table and leaning towards me, smiling that evil smile of his. “How have you been, Mercy? Are your friends Timothy and… er… Mary well?”

“It’s Magritte,” I clicked my tongue really loud a couple more times just to annoy him. “And yes, Agnes, they are fine. So why am I here.”

He frowned that old man frown. The old man frown that screamed that this was a man who pretended to care about people but, in reality, he really only cared about himself and pretended to care about people for his benefit, and his alone. “Agnes…” he murmured. “I really do wish you wouldn’t call me that, Mercy.”

I rolled my eyes. “It is your name.”

“Yes, but…” I could see the wheels turning in his head as he searched for an excuse, other than that the name was Agnes, of all names. “I know that the only reason you use that name was because you don’t like me, Mercy. We may not always agree, but shouldn’t we handle this like mature adults?”

“But I’m not a mature adult.”

“Um…” James interjected worriedly. “I--um--don’t mean to--um--interrupt but--um--Hansford hasn’t been introduced yet…” He motioned towards the man sitting next to Agnes, who smiled stiffly and sighed. “So… Hansford, Mercy. Mercy, Hansford. Hansford is my fellow junior detective, but he travels instead of sticking to Frining.”

Now, Hansford was something to look at. He was tan and tall, looking to be about two feet taller than me and very muscular. His hands were folded neatly on the table, but loosely, like he was ready to take on any of the assassins that might come for me here. His floppy golden-blonde hair hung into his face, swinging over his piercing ice-blue eyes…

Oh good god, his face.

Every feature was perfect. So sinfully perfect. His cheekbones were placed distinctively high, but not so high as to lead him to a stuck up look like Timothy. His nose was elegantly placed exactly in the middle of his face, leading down to full lips that had that little arch thing going on.

“Can you be my new bodyguard?” I questioned.

For some reason he seemed shocked. After a few moments of catching his breath and looking away from the Freak That Sat Across From His Boss And Asks Weird Questioned, he blinked. And he laughed. Big, rolling laughs that had some sort of childish feel to them. They were so innocent. But so… um… masculine, at the same time. God oh god, if only I had a laugh like that. But, sadly, my laugh was “cute and adorable,” just like everything else about me, dammit.

“Um--I--um--” Hansford continued laughing. I would have been offended, but his laugh was so interesting. I had never heard one like it. Generally, everybody’s laugh was the same to me, but this… was so… different.

He calmed down after about five minutes. But when he did, he slammed his elbows onto the table and leaned forward, towards me. He stared at me with those eyes of his, a smile on his lips, gaze full of fascination. “You really are something else, aren’t you?”

I thought about this. Well, other people slept and like butterflies and painted every wall and didn’t think there were assassins after them and could stay in one place for more than two hours, so…

I sighed. “Yeah. I’m something else, alright.”

He extended a hand towards me, grinning warmly. “It’s nice to meet you, Mercy.”

I took the hand, timidly. My whole hand, fingers and all, fit into his palm. We both stared at the intense difference in size, and I blushed. I looked up to see was Hansford was doing. He was blushing, too. Carefully, he shook my hand before pulling gently away. He murmured something about being delicate to himself.

Agnes and James were staring at us.

“So, er, what am I here for, exactly?” I demanded.

“Oh, yes, I apologize,” Agnes murmured. He seemed disturbed. “There has been a long line of murders occurring lately. They all seem to be related, unless we have a new trend going around… er, they were all laid in a bath, Mercy. This is one twisted guy, I have to say.”

“With so many murders and so many people working on it, shouldn’t you know who did it by now?” I grumbled.

He shook his head. “There’s no blood. There’s no fingerprints. And no witnesses, or links between those who were murdered. There’s nothing. These must be the most perfectly planned murders in all of my career. Whoever’s doing this must be a genius.”

Now I thought about this. It was very likely that this was a genius we were dealing with. The line between genius and crazy was fine, and it only takes a little stumble to cross that. Geniuses don’t need a motive, especially crazy geniuses. They just practice whatever they feel needs to be practice. They do things for fun. But no genius can go through life hiding his face. Everyone leaves a memory behind, so that they may carry on after they’ve died. There must be someone out there who knows who’s doing this. Someone who is not willing to tell on this person… A childhood sweetheart, perhaps? A relative, or an enemy, even.

“Take me to the latest murder scene,” I demanded.

Agnes nodded.