by Molly Harper
Dang it.
5
Little annoyances will build up in any workplace. Keep the big picture in mind when filing complaints with HR. Is that stolen stapler really worth the hassle of a severed jugular?
—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace
Even in the dark, I could see Iris fuming behind the wheel of the van.
“Oh, hell.” I sighed as Nik shoved me behind his back, his body silhouetted against the headlights of the Dorkmobile.
Cal and Iris climbed out of the van. Cal was eyeing the security cameras warily, while Iris slammed the driver’s-side door. She was dressed in her usual work outfit of a slim black pencil skirt and a sage-colored cardigan but somehow managed to look intimidating as she stormed toward us.
“Gigi!” Iris cried. “Seriously?”
“What are you even doing here, Iris? This is not normal sibling behavior.”
“We were bringing you dinner,” Iris said, holding up a yellow Beeline lunch cooler, which the drivers typically used to transport vampire clients’ blood. “To try to make amends for crossing a few lines the other night. But now we find you doing exactly what we asked you not to do! Where is your head, Gigi?”
“Argh,” I groaned, thumping my head between Nik’s shoulder blades.
“It is rather sweet that they are concerned for you,” Nik whispered over his shoulder. I jabbed him in the ribs, making him add, “Though clearly annoying and very wrong.”
Iris dashed around Nik and pulled me toward the car before whirling around to stick her finger in Nik’s face. “You stay away from my sister, do you hear me? You stay away from her, or I will end you. I will find a way.”
“You are very young, and you are Cal’s wife, so I will forgive the finger-pointing,” Nik said. “But do not presume to threaten me.”
“Hey, let’s not escalate this beyond what we can salvage with apologies,” I insisted.
“And you are very old,” Iris said, her voice going deadly quiet, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “And I think you are underestimating the resourcefulness of someone who worked with your kind for years before she was turned and knows exactly how to sneak into a sleeping vampire’s home to use a variety of tricks to make sure that vampire never wakes up again.”
“Aaaaaand now it’s gone too far.” I sighed, rolling my eyes toward the moonlit sky.
“So, Gigi,” Iris said, pursing her lips, “is your death wish so strong that you’ve decided to lie to us full-time now?”
“It wasn’t so much lying as—” I began.
“It was lying. You left out major chunks of truth. The effect is the same. Listen, I’m trying to stay calm. I’m not going to yell or act like a banshee. But this can’t continue until we figure out what is happening to Nik,” she said, her voice quiet and more Iris-like than I’d heard her in days. “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here, Geeg. It’s not like you’re madly in love. You barely know each other.”
Ouch.
I looked up at Nik, hoping for some reaction from him. But his face was inscrutable. Stupid handsome vampires capable of suppressing their facial emotions.
“Just ‘barely know each other’ for a few more weeks . . . or months. Maybe years. Just until we know what’s going on. Or, you know, you meet someone else.”
“Subtle, Iris,” I muttered.
“Nik, we have been friends for a long time, but I cannot allow you near Gigi,” Cal said, urging Iris back toward the car. “Also, we’ve talked about you kissing her. I believe the words ‘ass-kicking of an immortal lifetime’ were used.”
“I would not hurt her,” Nik insisted.
“Not consciously, but I can’t trust you not to lose control over yourself again.”
“Well, that is going to be difficult, considering that Ophelia has hired me on for a long-term assignment at the Council offices, where Gigi will be working.”
Before Iris could even open her mouth, I told her, “I’m not quitting!”
“Well, you are not to see Nik outside of the office,” Cal told me. “And when you are in the office, you must have at least one vampire chaperone to watch over you.”
“Cal, you can’t ask me to—I’m an adult. I am not sixteen years old anymore!” I cried.
“No, but secretly associating with a vampire when you were sixteen didn’t work out for you, either, did it?” he asked.
My eyes narrowed while Nik sent a questioning look my way. “That was a low blow, Cal.”
Cal raised his hands. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m being unreasonable.” He suddenly grabbed Nik by the collar and tossed him toward the open van door.
“Where are you taking him?”
“Away!” Cal said.
“You can’t do this!” I exclaimed.
“It will be fine, Gigi,” Nik said, sounding almost bored as Cal slung the van door shut. “Go back to work. I will see you soon.”
“No, you won’t!” Iris yelled, and pulled the van out of the lot with a squeal of rubber.
As the Dorkmobile’s taillights disappeared into the night, I tilted my head up to the sky and prayed for patience and the strength not to smack all of my vampire loved ones with a tack hammer. I glanced down at the Styrofoam carrier, which was resting safely on the little concrete pad outside the employee entrance.
I hoped my coworkers liked cold coffee.
• • •
I was hiding under my covers, because that’s what grown-ups did when they were faced with problems, right?
I’d managed to finish my workday with some dignity, delivering coffee to my grateful coworkers and doing some actual work. And I’d avoided having any of my teeth forcibly pulled, so I considered that a win. Coming home and avoiding contact with either Iris or Cal, who were both working in their office because three a.m. was the middle of the workday for vampires, was another mark in my victory column.
I put on my softest, comfiest pajamas and climbed under the covers, pretending the previous twelve hours were a surreal and upsetting dream. All except for the second kiss with Nik, which, again, made the old paradigm its bitch.
And I could not explain that in a rational manner, endorsed by a sense of self-preservation. Nik was the opposite of every person I’d been attracted to in the past. From what I could remember, John had played up the wounded, soulful, brooding creature of the night thing. Ben was the poster child for boys you’d gladly allow your daughter to date. And Nik was kind of, well, untrustworthy, but at least he was up front about it.
I liked it. I liked his weird, dry sense of humor. I liked that he called me on sassing him. I liked that he seemed to take my threats of violence seriously, instead of considering them cute, like the other members of Team Vampire did. He was the one vampire in Half-Moon Hollow who hadn’t seen me go through my awkward adolescent Gigi phase.
The irony that I’d mocked Iris’s fascination with paperback romances for years—and I was basically infatuated with the template for every “naughty duke” cover hero she’d ever swooned over—was not lost on me.
The last thought I had before drifting off was that once she got over being wicked pissed at me, Iris was going to mock me mercilessly. And I was indeed drifting, floating in that unstable twilight space between sleep and waking, where everything is formless and quiet and dizzy. Images floated freely through my head. My desk at the office was perched on the edge of an abyss, and unless I continued working, I would fall off. Then the desk became a table at Jane’s shop, Specialty Books, where stacks of file folders loomed over my head. Nik’s wry grin became Marty’s strangely confident face as we shuffled out of the staff meeting. My delicious midnight coffee was thick and metallic in my mouth, like sucking on pennies. I threw the cup away from my lips and watched it splatter the walls of my bedroom in thick rivers of red. The very sight of the mess wa
s enough to send me running. But now I was sprinting down the hallway at the Council offices with an athame, a double-edged ceremonial blade, clutched in my hand, the gray walls melting all around me into fog. And even though I couldn’t see anyone in the offices, I could hear the click-clack of computer keys. Someone was typing, and from the sound of it, the code was angry. Click-clack-clackity-clack-click. I turned corners at random, searching for a door, an elevator, anything that would get me away from some invisible menace that seemed to be hovering closer and closer at my heels. Click-click-clack-click-clackity-clack. I was afraid to look back, afraid to see what might be chasing me. I turned again, and there was Nik, standing at the end of the hallway, in front of the staff exit, and he was roaring with rage, baring his bloodstained fangs.
Clack-click-clack-clack-clackity-click.
I bolted up from bed, clutching the comforter to my chest, sucking in deep, gulping breaths, as if I’d been shoved underwater. I threw the covers aside and rubbed my hands over my face.
Click-clack-clackity-clack.
What the fracking frack?
I turned toward the source of the noise and saw Nik, with his knees propped up on the planter box outside my window, tapping his fingernails lightly against the glass.
“Ni— Wha!” I hissed, clapping my hand over my mouth so my shouts wouldn’t draw attention from Cal and Iris.
Now that he had my attention, Nik waved casually, as if it was totally normal to be balancing on a planter outside a girl’s bedroom window. Using every trick Cal had taught me, I crept noiselessly over to the window. My room was the only one in the house without sunproof shades, but it also required its own keypad and a thumbprint scanner to open from the inside. So Nik had to wait a while for me to negotiate with my brother-in-law’s insane security system.
“Good evening, sladkaya.” He smiled as I opened the window, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. His soft, sensual, filthy mouth.
“Are you nuts?” I hissed. “My surrogate parents have superpowers!”
He hopped gracefully through the open window, landing catlike on silent feet. “I only wanted to see if you were sleeping well after the stressful events of this evening.”
“Shh!” I hissed, pressing my fingers against his lips. He parted them ever so slightly and gently bit down on my fingertip. I used my free hand to tweak his nose, making him shake his head.
“Do not worry about being overheard. Cal is currently distracting your sister with a very thorough massage.”
I recoiled as if I’d been slapped in the face with a salmon. “Gross. And it should have been clear to you the minute you looked through my window that I was sleeping just fine,” I told him. “And if you think you are going to sneak into my room to watch me sleep, I am not above stabbing you again.”
“It did not look as though you were sleeping just fine at all,” he told me, with an innocent expression far too practiced to be natural. “You were tossing back and forth and muttering to yourself. What were you saying?”
“I don’t know, I was asleep,” I murmured. “Now, get away from my window before we get into trouble.”
“You are not what you would call a ‘morning person,’ are you, my Gigi? How long would I have to wait after you wake to have a civilized conversation with you?”
“Well, if you keep up that condescending tone, it could be a while,” I told him. “And if you make enough noise to draw Cal or Iris up here, a lot longer.”
I was suddenly very self-conscious of my room, which had not changed since my senior year of high school. It was the one area of the house left untouched during Cal and Iris’s remodeling rampage, because Iris knew I needed to come back to a space that was familiar. While I loved that she knew me so well, for the first time, I wished that she’d updated the denim-blue walls, the quilted blue-and-white bedspread, the beaten-up bookshelves containing my old beaten-up paperbacks. And then there was my pinboard, which also hadn’t changed since high school, with the same pictures of me with my friends at volleyball games, parties, and dances. And pictures of Ben. What felt like an inordinate number of pictures of me with Ben.
Aw, hell.
Why hadn’t I pulled those down? Stupid ex-
boyfriend clutter blindness. I thought I’d gotten rid of all of those.
“I pictured something a little more genie-in-a-bottle, big, round bed covered in pillows and scarves.” He scanned my pink checked pajama pants and tank top. “And I pictured you wearing less.”
I grinned. “Oh, you did?”
“A lot less,” he said. “And I have imagined it frequently over the past few days, fantasized about it shamelessly.”
I ran the tip of my tongue along the blunt edges of my canine teeth. They weren’t as brilliantly white or razor-sharp as his, but the action certainly caught his attention, if the dilated golden glow of his eyes was any indicator. “Did you, now?”
“Shamelessly,” he said again, bending to kiss me.
“No, none of that,” I told him, dodging him. “We need to talk without the distraction of your sexy mouth.”
He frowned with said sexy mouth. “That does not make any sense.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I do not. But I would like to. Why do we not go outside for a conversation, so you feel more comfortable speaking at full volume?”
“Eh,” I said, letting the corners of my mouth tug down as I glanced out the window.
“It is a lovely night,” he added, in a lilting, crooning tone.
“This is literally how every horror movie starts. Also, you’ve attacked me before. I know it seems petty to harp on that, but . . . I think I will anyway.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“If you are worried about getting out of the house unnoticed, I can hold you as I jump to the ground from the window.”
I arched an eyebrow. “My brother-in-law put me through ninja training. You don’t think he taught me how to land safely from a second-story jump?”
He grinned. “You do not like being patronized, do you?”
“No, which is why they call it ‘patronizing,’ with the negative connation.”
“I know the connotation. I have spoken English for many years,” he insisted, more than a little affronted.
I shushed him. “I know, that’s not—OK, I’ll jump, but maybe hop down there and be ready, just in case.”
“Excellent,” he said, swooshing out of my room like a gust of wind.
I peered down from my window at the handsome blond man beckoning with a fang-tipped smile. Like many a damsel before me, I wondered at the wisdom of joining my moonlit paramour. A smart woman would have smiled, waved good night, and not joined the man who’d recently attempted to maul her on a midnight stroll.
And yet . . .
“I am not a smart person,” I muttered, slipping into my sneakers, which were a lovely complement to my pink gingham pajama pants and tank top. I braced my arms against the windowsill. It was maybe fifteen feet to the ground. I cut the difference, dangling from the planter box ever so briefly and dropping to the soft grass on both feet with a quiet oof.
Oh, thank Cthulhu that worked, because otherwise, I would be very embarrassed.
I wriggled both ankles to make sure they were intact. I listened for some weird alarm from Cal to sound or for Iris to come screaming out of the house.
Nothing.
Nik smiled and offered me his arm. It was all I could do not to hold my pajama leg up like a hoop skirt.
“I think I owe you information,” he said, as we sauntered through Iris’s elaborate garden. In high summer, her beloved flower beds were bursting with night-blooming plants: delicately scented jasmine, proud, trumpetlike moonflower, and night gladiolus (in my honor, thank you very much). Cal and Sam even dug a small pond in the cent
er of the yard so she could plant night-blooming water lilies, in bright pinks and white. Thanks to Cal’s influence, it reminded me of Persephone’s garden, delicate and beautiful but still shrouded in the darkness of the underworld. Iris, a lifelong gardener, was careful to mix some color into her palette, the sturdy pink evening primrose and flaring yellow of narrow-leaved sundrops, to remind her of the joys of daytime living even while the moonlight reflected, bright and brilliant, against the petals.
Even though she clearly loved her life with Cal, even though I knew that vampirism was the only option if she wanted a long-term commitment with him, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad for my sister, having lost the sun, cut off from the growth cycle that had meant so much to her. I wondered if I would be able to make the best of it, as she had; if I would be able to give up feeling the sun on my face, the crackle of popcorn on my tongue, the velvety softness of chocolate. Probably not; Iris had always been better at adapting.
For now, I was grateful that the scents and colors gave me something to cling to, to focus on, rather than the pounding of my nervous heart. I was counting on the droning of crickets to drown it out for Nik’s sensitive ears.
Nik folded his arms behind his back as we walked, with a strange, almost military stance that made me wonder whether he was used to more formal “walk-and-talks” or he just didn’t know what to do with his hands. We wandered closer to the edge of the woods, ducking into the trees.
I stopped just a few feet in, far enough that Iris wouldn’t be able to see us if she glanced out the window but not so far that I couldn’t see the lights of the house. That counted as some semblance of common sense, right?
Nik cleared his throat, leaning back against a tree. Despite my desire to look just as casual, I did not want to risk bark scrapes or getting my hair caught in low-hanging branches. Nik tilted his head, studying me. “If I recall, the last time we were together, you were interrupted before you could ask me anything.”
“I suppose my first question would have to be, are you an evil vampire hell-bent on my death and/or destruction?” I retorted with more snark than I probably deserved to use.