Daniel had met Riley at the Inn after work. When he arrived, she'd been in heated discussions with Mesteno, discussions that hadn't ended well. They left and went home via the Marketplace, wehre Riley scored a beautiful cut of beef and a red velvet with cream cheese frosting cake. After a home-cooked meal of steak fajitas, rice and black beans, Riley and Daniel were sitting quietly on the couch in their loft. They were both sipping from mango-flavoured margaritas and enjoying a little time alone; David was working the third shift and wouldn't be home for hours.

Daniel looked over at Riley as she rested next to him, eyes far away, facial muscles slack, and raised a brow.? "You look like someone just cut the power to your brain."

She turned to him, her mouth falling slack, eyes slowly glazing over, her tongue slipping out from between her lips.? "Dur," she said softly.

He laughed hard enough that his drink was in danger of spilling, which prompted him to quickly drink some to lower the level in the glass.? This, of course, resulted in choking as he tried to laugh and swallow margarita at the same time.

She giggled at him and then managed to look alarmed when he started choking.? She reached out to take the glass from him so he wouldn't spill it while he tried to put himself back together.? "Careful.? No dying is allowed."

He relinquished the glass long enough to catch a breath, and shook his head.? "I couldn't possibly die from choking on a margarita.? I'd be the laughingstock of the Lycan community."

You totally would, too.? I'd make sure it was your epitaph.? 'Here lies Daniel Tej.? He enjoyed his mango margarita to death'."

"And the obituary would say:? "Riley O'Rourke makes a killer margarita.? Literally."? He laughed some more.

"Heh.? I can see Fenner having a field day with that headline."? She shook her head and handed him his glass before taking a sip from hers.? She sighed heavily and her face sobered.? "Should I quit?" she asked him softly. It was a subject that she had been thinking about for the past two weeks and had discussed with both Daniel and David on a few occasions.

"Do you want to quit?" he asked, the humor falling away from his face to be replaced by a look of concern.? He took his glass back and held it on his lap.

"Sometimes, I think maybe I should.? I mean...I've screwed up the Delahada and Bishop cases so badly and I have to be hurting Dris's public image."? She paused for a moment and took another sip of her drink.? "It's just so...hard."

"Harder than being a defense lawyer for supernatural beings?"

"Yes.? Because at least at home, there was already a sense of law and justice.? Things were set out already.? I didn't have to make it up as I went.? I didn't have to worry about my perps dying multiple times.? I didn't have to worry about f*cking faeries or monsters.? I knew where I stood.? I knew what was expected of me."

He nodded.? "There is a lot of skepticism here as to whether there should even be a justice system.? I don't understand how people expect to have a society without one, but it seems like most of the people I overhear talking about it think they don't need one."

"The world used to be black and white, Daniel."? Her voice was very soft now and she turned away from him, staring sightlessly at a water-colour painting of a monkey outside temple ruins.? "It's grey now...and I don't know what to do with it."

"If you were to quit, what would you do?"

"The same thing I did before.? Teach little girls ballet.? My yoga class at dawn.? Maybe Taya would let me help her with the theatre, too."

"Would that be enough for you?" he asked her.

"It was before.? I imagine it would be again."? She smirked a little and turned back to face him.? "Maybe Neo would let me join the Knights."

He chuckled a bit at that, after hearing about her arguments with Neo about vigilante justice.? Then he asked seriously, "Are you sure?? Something prompted you to go out for the Minister job in the first place."?

"I thought it would be like my stint in the DA's office in Tucson.? The cops would give me good cases, good evidence, good testimony.? I'd go in front of juries and have them eating out of my hand again.? I'd fight the good fight, put the bad guys away. The only cases I've seen here are so ridiculously twisted that if they were people, they could eat soup with a cork-screw."? She snorted.? "I thought it would be a cake walk."

He tilted his head a little.? "It sounds a bit like you're mad that an easy job wasn't handed to you."

The next morning, there was a little surprise waiting for her on her desk. She sat down and read through Lucien Mallorek's petition twice. The first time she was stunned. The second time she was amused. So amused in fact that it took her at least ten minutes to stop laughing and to recover from the horrible case of the giggles she suffered.

?Oh, my god,? she said to herself when she finally recovered. Judah had managed to make himself look like a weak, impotent, whiny child who had gotten his a** handed to him by a girl and then went to cry and hide behind his lawyer's skirts. The fact that the lawyer had called her actions a ?personal vendetta? made her smirk. ?Personal vendettas are obviously something you're quite familiar with, Mallorek,? she muttered to herself. ?Wonder what your pet magistrate would do if he found out about that little matter of premeditated murder??

She stood and went over to the small hearth in her office, standing over it and carefully, deliberately, neatly tore the petition up and dumped into into the fireplace. She withdrew a single match and set fire to the shredded petition, watching the pages curl and blacken. She did not feel as guilty about beating Judah as she had expected to. He had, after all, endangered all of Rhy'Din, simply by being alive. If the people knew what sort of danger they were in because Bishop wasn't locked away somewhere, they'd be clamouring for his head.

The petition, the ridiculous allegations, the fact that Mallorek seemed to have some sort of axe to grind with her ? if his client really wanted redress, he should file suit against someone who had actually done him harm by killing him...twice ? were the straws that broke the camel's back. She'd given the conversation with Daniel the night before serious thought, and decided that he was absolutely right ? if she had been treated the same way in Tucson as she'd been treated here, she would have quit long before now.

Taking a deep breath, she went back to her desk and took out a single sheet of personalised stationary and wrote a simple, succinct letter of resignation, effective immediately. She rose from behind her desk, went out to the receptionist's area and made a copy of the letter. Grabbing an envelope, she stuffed the copy into it and went and stood in the doorway to her inner office. She looked around with something approaching a sad, regretful sigh and then turned away. She'd get David to clear her personal belongings out later. She left the office then for the final time, making sure to lock the door to the suite behind her, and dropped the letter off with Erin. She wanted to go to the Inn and to the Watch Houses, to catch her Watchmen and tell them the news before they heard it second-hand. She owed them that much.

Somehow, the heat and the humidity didn't feel quite so bad when she stepped out of the Courthouse and stood at the edge of the Marketplace. She took a deep breath, feeling a huge weight lifted from her shoulders. ?Well, there's a major load of stress off my back. Wonder if Neo would make a good boss?? She smirked at that thought and turned her steps towards the Inn.