A speeding ticket and ten bucks later, Courtney was walking out of her favorite smoothie shop with a cup the size of her head and two phone numbers.
Though her alternative aesthetic did sometimes have a tendency to put people off, it's also true that it made her a bit popular too.
There was really no in between.
She got the most attention from quiet, bookish women / men, gym bros, otakus of every variety, men with criminal backgrounds, women with a history of manipulation, and the occasional wannabe internet influencer...
She didn't have a fair idea as to why, but those inconveniences were kind of just out of her control at this point.
At least she wasn't being hounded by anyone way outside of her age. She had to take that as a win.
There was a park just across the street from the smoothie shop that Courtney visited. She decided to go and sit alone at a picnic table for a while instead of just heading back to her dorm.
Sitting in a park, alone, when it was dark out? That was totally her thing.
Since her sister-in-law stopped shadowing her when she turned sixteen, Courtney did this kind of thing a lot now.
"Man I miss smoking weed... This would totally hit the spot right now." Courtney sighed.
Like most teenagers, smoking was a habit that Courtney picked up in high school.
She had about a month to do it before her parents found out and it became a whole big thing at home.
That was probably the maddest she had ever seen her dad. It took over half a day for him to calm down.
But one thing Courtney always appreciated about her mothers was that they operated based on the carrot and stick method of parenting.
Since she promised to stop smoking, they bought her a new car. She got to keep it as long as she kept her promise.
But not long after, Courtney ended up getting into college with a track and field scholarship. She couldn't smoke anymore even if she wanted to.
"Excuse me... You out here by yourself?"
Courtney turned around, straw in mouth, to find some guy that she didn't know ogling her.
"..."
Ever since she turned fifteen, Courtney had attracted attention from the opposite sex.
She'd yet to actually date anyone, but she already had an idea of what she might like, and what she wouldn't.
It just so happened to be that the man who approached her on this night fit into the dislike category.
Egregiously pretty, overly confident, that kind of thing. Boy or girl, rich or poor, those people usually had the worst personalities.
Besides, it was pretty hard to be interested in those kinds things when her entire family looked like the explicit embodiment of a wet dream.
So, she had a specific way that she liked to go about handling these situations.
"I'm seventeen."
"I apologize for bothering you." The man walked away.
In truth, Courtney was eighteen.
But nobody else really needed to know that, did they?
"Pardon me..."
'By the abyss, not another one..'
Courtney slowly turned around to find a slightly intoxicated looking woman sauntering towards her.
"""What?!"""
"I-I asked you guys not to freak out!"
Courtney watched her uncle develop a serious look on her face that all of her adult family members seemed to have when it came to their respective obligations.
Mateo was responsible for the entire supernatural community on earth. He and her father had both come a long way since their first meeting at around 7000 B.C.
He took his job very seriously, since he was appointed to it by the gods themselves. Though if they knew of his brotherhood with a certain abyss dwelling dragon, they might've reconsidered choosing him.
When Courtney started going to college, Mateo banned ALL supernatural creatures who weren't consecrated or tied within Baton Rouge to leave.
He made up some cheap excuse about Hunter activity to keep them unaware, but there still wasn't much push-back.
Mateo's word is pretty much law among the inhumans. Breaking them is pretty much a sure-fire method to going missing.
While this might've seemed drastic, it was necessary.
Courtney had been living in Tehom for basically her whole life. She was only three when she and her birth parents all died in a house fire that they had irresponsibly started.
In heaven, the Tathamets took immediate pity on her and gave her a new life with them.
But Courtney had been eating only food from Tehom for all of that time.
And when she hit puberty, it was discovered that all of the magically nutritious morsels and liquid she had been eating had some very real effects.
For lack of better terminology, it made her like a living superfood for any creature who ate human meat.
It was especially drastic with fledgling vampires like the one earlier, who hadn't fully learned how to control their new instincts yet.
She was working on lessening the effects by incorporating more food from earth into her diet, but it was still kind of hard. Nothing really tastes like home after all, and most of it makes her face break out.
Smoothies were kind of the only thing she had developed an ability to stomach, while simultaneously meeting her caloric needs everyday.
It was very possibly that her parents, or even her brothers and sisters, could have come up with some magical way to help her out, but Courtney would be twenty soon enough... she wanted to try to solve things on her own when she could.
"Don't worry, mija. I promise I'll have this dealt with before you even open your eyes tomorrow morning." Mateo said seriously.
Courtney smiled. "Thanks, Uncle Mat. And the other thing..."
"You know our deal. I won't tell your father, but if he asks me I won't lie to him either. That is the only promise I can make to you."
Courtney already knew her Uncle well enough to know that he wasn't bluffing. This was as close to a fair deal as she was going to get.
"I understand. Thanks, Uncle."
-
Time was always so flimsy back home. Sometimes when Courtney came back it was the middle of the day, and other times it was the dead of night.
This time it was the latter.
Most young adults would head straight to their rooms and spend the rest of the night either on the phone or doing homework.
But Courtney was a bit different.
Their parents' condition for allowing her to go to college was that no matter when she got home, she had to come and find them to tell them about her day.
It was such a cheesy thing that she laughed and dismissed it at first.
But when she came home and did it jokingly one day, she realized that it actually helped her to de-stress a lot. It was now a part of the day that she really looked forward to.
She traveled through the hallway without flicking on a light.
When she arrived at the pair of double doors that sealed her parents' room, she pushed them open without reservations and wandered inside.