text: "Whoa, Johnny." Rex sniffed the leg of the solid oak dining chair and sniggered. "When you said sit tight, you meant literally."
  
  The dwarf grunted as he finished tying the thick knot of rope behind the chair, which groaned at the sharp tug. The unidentified Kilomea seated in it grimaced and stretched his hands where they'd also been tied behind his back. "Do you think you can go any tighter?"
  
  "You're a big fella." He slapped a hand on the magical's shoulder and nodded. "I'm sure you've been through worse." He dusted his hands off and glass crunched as he crushed it beneath his heavy boots when he moved across the living room. Now that everyone was secure, he dropped onto the cushion of the expensive leather couch and crossed one leg over the other. "There. Now you have got a fair chance to say what needs to be said without tossin' around fists or spells." His next pointed look was aimed at the senator. "Or bullets."
  
  Hugh struggled against the rope tying him tightly to his chair. "This is outrageous! You people broke into my home, damaged my property, and now you're interrogating me like I'm one of your suspects?"
  
  Strapped to the chair beside him, the half-wizard inclined his head toward the senator and muttered, "Technically, you're the only person in the room."
  
  "Don't argue semantics with me, you low-life alien scum."
  
  "Whoa, now." Johnny slung an arm over the back of the couch and raised his eyebrows. "It sounds like someone has a few things to say about magicals. And it ain't pretty."
  
  "You have no idea who you're messing with, you pathetic excuse for a—"
  
  "Luther."
  
  The smaller hound darted toward the senator and nipped lightly at the man's ankle with a snarl. Hugh shrieked and tried to lurch away, but the rope held him firmly. "That means stop talking, numbnuts."
  
  "I think we've had enough outta you for the moment, Senator. What d'ya think, darlin'?" Johnny turned toward Lisa who was seated beside him on the couch.
  
  She tapped the barrel of her service weapon against her thigh and tilted her head. "I think Senator Hugh has had his say, yes. At least, we know his side of the story."
  
  "We sure do." The dwarf pointed his knife-tip at Yarren, who sat strapped to the fourth chair at the end of the half-circle Johnny had positioned them in. "If you have somethin' to say, now's the time."
  
  Yarren's eyes widened, and he glanced at the half-wizard beside him, then his fellow Kilomea on the other side of Senator Hugh. He exhaled a massive sigh that ruffled the white-tipped ends of his thick facial hair. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this."
  
  The bounty hunter snorted. "A sentiment shared by every fella findin' himself tied up in someone else's livin' room. So what's the deal, huh? 'Cause the way I heard it, you've been terrorizin' Senator Hugh here for a little longer than only the last few days. And someone mentioned blackmail."
  
  Hugh scoffed. "Don't say it like it's so blasé—"
  
  "One more word outta you until I say, Senator, and you'll be sharin' that chair with my hound."
  
  "Yeah. On your back," Luther added with a low growl.
  
  "But the rest of y'all, feel free to chime in whenever it feels convenient."
  
  Soft, slow footsteps whispered down the hall. Cody appeared first with his camera, followed by his sidekick with the boom, Alicia with the bandana, Phil, and two other crewmembers. Howie's cane clicked across the wood, and when he peered around the corner and saw Johnny on the couch, he spread his arms and shrugged.
  
  Lisa immediately pulled her Stephanie illusion up and slipped her service pistol into its holster.
  
  "Who are those people?" Hugh demanded. "Get them out of here! This is my home. You're on private property."
  
  Johnny sniggered. "Naw, they can stay. I think it's a good idea to get all this on film anyhow."
  
  "What the hell for?" The senator jerked against the ropes, tried feebly to free himself, and failed miserably. "No one said anything about you filming your sick little freakshow!"
  
  "Oh, you ain't seen my show?" Johnny shrugged. "Huh. Your loss. Now, fellas. I believe you were ʼbout to get down to it, yeah?"
  
  "We might as well get it over with, Yarren," the half-wizard muttered. "We're strapped to fucking chairs and I don't see another way out."
  
  "Percy?"
  
  The other Kilomea sighed heavily. "We don't have a choice, man."
  
  Yarren nodded slowly and closed his eyes for a moment. "Fine. This whole thing started when we heard about some of the new bills this senator was tryin' to get passed. They were only at the Maryland level, sure, but I live here. We all live here, and I couldn't simply sit back and wait for these politicians to start overturning lives left and right. We deserve as much of a chance as the next guy. It doesn't matter where we're from."
  
  Lisa and Johnny exchanged a glance, and she leaned slightly forward on the couch. "What bills?"
  
  "It's fucking segregation is what it is," Percy growled.
  
  "What is?" Johnny asked.
  
  "This douchebag and all his stuck-up political bozo friends wanna make slaves outta magicals in this state—"
  
  "That's absurd!" Hugh shouted. "You're still getting paid—a-ah!"
  
  Luther jumped into the senator's lap and snapped in the man's face. "Strike one!"
  
  "Get this mongrel off me!"
  
  "Johnny, what's a mongrel?"
  
  The dwarf ignored his hound and the senator and focused instead on the disgruntled magicals' story. "Keep talkin'."
  
  "The bill would pay magicals half state minimum wage. Max."
  
  "Now, I know the two of y'all Kilomeas are some fairly hairy fellas as all Kilomeas are." Johnny scratched the side of his face and squinted at them. "But y'all have illusions at your disposal, don'tcha? Spells or whatever the hell does it."
  
  "Sure we do," Percy replied with a slow nod. "But an illusion doesn't do shit if every employer in the state gives a mandated blood test to every damn worker—the kind that identifies whether or not you have magic in that blood. Understand?"
  
  Johnny leaned toward Lisa and muttered, "Do you know about anythin' like that?"
  
  "It's the first I've heard of it."
  
  "Huh." He studied Yarren carefully. "That don't sound like an appetizin' new bill to me, man. I'll give you that much. But comin' to the senator's house now and again to give him a little shakedown ain't the way to change lawmakin'."
  
  "That's not what happened," the Kilomea protested.
  
  "Don't you dare try to worm your way out of this." Hugh seethed helplessly. "All the evidence is stacked against you. The FBI sent this damn dwarf here to take you away and get you out of my hair. If you were innocent, they wouldn't have—"
  
  "This damn dwarf said enough outta you, Senator." Johnny whistled, and Luther jumped into the man's lap again and this time, toppled him backward.
  
  Hugh shrieked when his head and his twisted hands behind his back met the wood floor. "D-don't! Don't l-let that filthy animal touch me!"
  
  "Who are you talking about, huh?" Luther hopped back and growled in the senator's face. "Me or one of these other guys? Either way, you'd be wrong."
  
  "Yeah, we're hounds, dipshit!" Rex added with a bark, although he stayed between Johnny and the three magicals tied to their chairs around Hugh.
  
  The dwarf gestured toward Yarren. "Keep talkin'."
  
  "I went to his office first," the Kilomea continued. "I made an appointment and everything and brought the petition we'd made up with signatures from the guys at Canton Exports & Supplies and nine other companies up north. All of us are hard-labor workers, regular magicals simply trying to live our lives."
  
  "We had a few thousand signatures too," the half-wizard added. "Once we got friends and neighbors to pitch in."
  
  "The first thing Senator Hugh asked me when I stepped in his office was whether or not I belonged here." Yarren glared at the senator's feet dangling over the edge of the upturned chair. "Whether I was human. I'm not gonna lie about who I am to anyone and he turned me out for it without even getting to the petition at all."
  
  Hugh growled indignantly. "It's not your place—"
  
  "Shut up!" Johnny roared. He tossed his utility knife at the man's head, and the tip buried itself a quarter of an inch into the wood floor just shy of Hugh's right ear. "That ain't a miss, Senator. That's a warning."
  
  The man's face drained of all color and he stared at the ceiling.
  
  "So you came to blackmail this bigoted human thinkin' he'd kill the pay-cut bill?"
  
  "No, man. The guy sent someone after my family." Yarren shook his head. "That's where I draw the line."
  
  "How exactly?" Lisa asked.
  
  "They caught my brother as he was coming off work. Two assholes in suits beat the living shit out of him and gave him a message for me—that Senator Hugh said to drop the petitions and stay the hell out of politics."
  
  Percy shook his head and growled. "Fucker."
  
  Johnny's eye twitched. "Is that it?"
  
  "No. We found the guys who beat Maurice and followed ʼem—me, Percy, and Evan. You might not think it, but Ev's pretty decent with a camera."
  
  "Good enough. The newspapers will pay for a few shots, I bet," Evan added with a gruff nod.
  
  "This asshole's goons beat seven different magicals to a pulp in the last three weeks," Yarren continued. "We have shots of ʼem all and pics of his victims too—the ones who are trying to stand up for their right to be here like we are."
  
  "Until we pounded those bastards' faces into the cement." Percy growled with satisfaction.
  
  "Yeah. We finally got ʼem." Yarren swallowed thickly. "And we came here to talk to this poor excuse for a leader in person and show him the pictures. We tried to tell him we know what was happening and would go to the press if he didn't do something about it."
  
  "That piece of shit pulled a gun on us," Evan shouted. "We don't even have guns."
  
  "He doesn't give a fuck about what happens to any of us," Percy added. "We came to make this peaceful, man. And he doesn't wanna listen."
  
  "Senator?" Johnny turned slightly on the couch cushion to stare at the soles of the man's house shoes. "Now would be the time for you to say somethin'."
  
  "You'll all be behind bars when I'm done with you!" Hugh spat the words with ugly virulence. "And I'll shoot these fucking dogs myself."
  
  Luther cocked his head. "Okay, see, I still can't tell who you're talking about."
  
  "I think I've heard everythin' I need to hear." Johnny stood from the couch and strode toward the senator's overturned chair. He squatted beside the man's head that glistened with beads of sweat and fixed him with a hard look. "You made your bed on this one, didn't ya?"
  
  "I'm protecting the good people of Maryland from being taken advantage of. You Oriceran freaks have magic. What the hell do you need money for?"
  
  The dwarf sniggered. "You'd hate to see my place back home." He grasped the back of Hugh's chair and hefted it upright again. The man yelped in surprise and the chair creaked beneath him. Johnny bent down to take hold of his utility knife and jerk it out of the floor.
  
  "Oh! That's the best damn decision you've made since you got here," Hugh snapped. "Not get these goddamn ropes off me."
  
  Johnny stepped toward Evan and sliced through the ropes binding the half-wizard to his chair. "Go on. Get up."
  
  "For real?"
  
  The bounty hunter cut Yarren and Percy free as well and nodded toward Lisa. "Y'all are gonna hand over your numbers to this good-lookin'…redhead over here."
  
  She looked up at him with wide eyes. "They are?"
  
  "You bet. In case we need to contact y'all in the future."
  
  "Um…what?" Yarren stood slowly and the severed ropes dropped around his body as he stared at Johnny. "You came here for me, didn't you?"
  
  "Sure. But what I got was the truth. I see no reason to take y'all in as peaceful as y'all have been. Well, for the most part. And whoever has those photos needs to send ʼem along when y'all finish exchangin' numbers, understand?"
  
  "Yeah." The Kilomea glanced at his friends as they all moved slowly toward Lisa, frowned at each other in confusion, and rubbed their wrists. "I… Thanks, man. I don't know what else to say."
  
  "You've said enough. Sorry y'all had to be tied up for anyone to hear it."
  
  "I want all of you out of my house." Hugh snarled with barely suppressed rage. "This is a violation—"
  
  "Y'all get in here and get a good shot of this magical-hater, huh?" Johnny pointed at the senator with his blade, then flicked the utility knife shut and returned it to his belt. "As close as you like. Maybe even get that pulsin' vein in his temple."
  
  Without waiting for anyone else's permission, Cody stepped nimbly across the broken glass to zoom in on Senator Hugh. The man tried to jerk away from the camera but was held fast in his chair. "Let me out, dwarf!"
  
  "Naw. You need some coolin'-off time to think about your choices." The bounty hunter stepped past the film crew and nodded once at Yarren and his buddies who shared their numbers with Lisa. "It's time to get on, boys."
  
  "Aw, Johnny. Can't I at least bite a chunk out of him?" Luther snarled at Hugh, then darted out of Cody's way.
  
  "What about his gun, Johnny?" Rex asked as he leapt onto the leather sectional and trotted down the length of it. "He wasn't using it the right way."
  
  Johnny snapped his fingers and waved for his hounds to catch up without turning to look at them.
  
  "Untie me this instant!" the senator bellowed. "This is why none of you deserve the same rights. You're monsters."
  
  The dwarf snorted.
  
  "You…you can't do this!"
  
  "Watch me." He threw the knob-less front door open with a bang and stepped out onto the front porch.