by Molly Harper
Aaron gave me a scathing mock glare. “This is a ‘get ahead of it’ situation, Miss Project Leader.”
“Ugh, emotional discomfort.” I groaned, printing out the results of Marty’s work and shoving them into a file folder (a real manila specimen, not a digital one). “This is why you voted me into the job, isn’t it?”
Aaron grinned at me and slapped me on the back. “Yes, it is.”
“Let me look over the file history, make sure this isn’t some misunderstanding, and then I’ll go to Ophelia. I’d hate to tank this guy over some sort of mistake. But if you do see any other files from him with issues, let me know.”
“You have twenty-four hours,” Aaron told me solemnly.
“Really?” I deadpanned.
Aaron pulled a dispassionate face. “Yeah, that always sounds cooler in the movies. Just do something about it soon, OK? Or I will do something regrettable to the files you hold most dear.”
“You realize that if you do, in fact, give me a computer virus, I’ll fix it so every time someone Googles you, your name will come up as the author of articles in Cannabis Quarterly!” I called after him as he returned to his desk.
“It already does that!” he called back.
Just then, Marty came through our office door bearing a disposable coffee cup with the red Council logo on the sleeve. He beamed brightly at me. “I brought you some coffee, Gladiola. Sammy said you were partial to peppermint mochas.”
He glanced into my wastebasket at the discarded mocha cup and frowned.
“Thanks. There was an incident with the last one,” I said, accepting the cup and cringing on the inside. Because only hypocrites accepted gift coffee from the people they were about to run out of the office on a rail labeled “incompetent as hell.” I cleared my throat and tried to keep my tone as friendly and nonjudgmental as possible. “Hey, Marty, are you having any problems with the programming language? We’re not exactly using a standard here, so if you have any questions, just let me know.”
“I don’t need any help,” he said stiffly. “Why?”
“Well, you saved a file in the wrong folder, and I opened it to take a look,” I said, as Aaron cringed and disappeared into his cubicle. “There were a few problems with your work.”
Marty scoffed. “Oh, I’m sure that was just something I was tinkering with, like a doodle on scrap paper. I don’t have any problems with the language,” he insisted. “I don’t need any help. Now, how’s the coffee?”
“It’s fine, Marty, thanks.”
“It was pretty hot,” he added. “I almost burned my hands carrying it.”
“Thank you again.”
“Let me know if you want another cup,” he said.
I pressed my lips together and nodded. “OK, then.”
My eyes narrowed as he ambled back to his desk. He knew something. He had to know something; otherwise, he wouldn’t be sucking up to me like this, trying to keep me from going to Ophelia. Had he overheard Aaron telling me about his issues? That was a socially terrifying thought.
I mentally reviewed the conversation and tried to remember whether we’d said anything personally insulting about Marty or limited our comments to “he sucks, let’s get him fired.” His overhearing either would be pretty damn embarrassing. Or maybe he knew he was failing miserably at the job and was trying to butter me up to prevent an explosive and embarrassing termination? Was he trying to play on my ingrained female tendencies to play nice and smooth ruffled feathers? That was insulting. It was condescending. And worse yet, it was working, because I was trying to find any reason to justify keeping Marty on as a coffee fetcher.
While I was at it, I checked Aaron’s and Jordan’s files, which passed testing with flying, functional colors. I supposed I should be thankful that Ophelia hadn’t saddled me with a completely incompetent team.
Ophelia. I cursed inwardly and made another little hand-shaking gesture at the ceiling, hoping no one else noticed. Had she planted Marty on my team on purpose? Was she trying to sabotage the project so I wouldn’t be hired full-time by the Council? Or was she just messing with me because she could?
I stared at my monitor, but for once, it didn’t have any answers for me. Would Marty ever catch up? Did he really not know what he was doing, or was this some sort of boundary-testing thing with his new project leader?
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I needed to stop asking myself questions and find a solution. No more panicking and self-doubt. It was time to be a hardass and be awesome at it. Just like I did in most craptastic situations, I asked myself, “What Would Iris Do?”
My big sister would put on her big-girl underpants and deal with the situation, no matter how eye-twitchingly awkward the solution might be. She would figure out the extent of her employee’s incompetence and then address it with her superior, even if it made her very uncomfortable.
I scrubbed my hand over my face. Why couldn’t I have just taken a job at the Apple Store?
• • •
I could not get out of the office fast enough. I grabbed my purse from my now-empty cubicle farm and bid Margaret a cheery good night. She did not return it, giving me a shallow imitation of Ophelia’s stink-eye. As I walked into the employee lot, I pulled my silver spray out of my purse, as was now my habit, and snagged my car keys. I’d promised Cal that I would take more care with parking-lot safety, and honestly, if I got attacked again, I’d never hear the end of it. He’d probably follow through with Dick’s giant-hamster-ball idea.
I rounded the car nearest the Dumpster and jumped at the sound of angry hissing.
“Shitballs!” I yelped, jumping back three feet as an angry possum swiped at my ankles, obviously upset with me for interrupting its dinner of garbage. I dropped my silver spray, and the can skittered across the pavement, under the Dumpster.
“Really? I need the scare factor of an angry marsupial?” I sidestepped the still-agitated possum and backed toward my car. “I’m going to have a heart attack before age twenty-five.”
I had only dodged a possum once before. I didn’t have a lot of practice. That was the only justification I had for running smack into Nik’s chest.
“Gah!” I exclaimed, bouncing off my vampire’s considerable pectorals like a bumper car and smacking into a nearby Honda. “Come on, Nik, there’s only so many scares I can take in one night!”
But Nik didn’t respond, not a word, not even a facial twitch. His eyes were glazed over, filmy and hazy blue. His mouth hung open, and he was breathing heavily, even though, technically, he didn’t need to breathe at all. He shuffled toward me, zombielike, without really seeing me.
“Nik?”
I backed away, edging my way along the Honda’s body to an open space. “Nik, is this a joke? Because it’s not funny.”
He lumbered closer, his expression dead. It would have been almost comforting if he’d snarled or leered or even looked vaguely confused. The blank, lifeless face was just unnerving. I faked left, then darted right. Nik lunged, snapping his jaws where my neck had been just moments before.
Nik dove at me, arms flung wide and teeth bared. I sidestepped him, wrapping my arms around his waist and shoving his weight to the left. He flew face-first into the Honda and dropped to the asphalt like a sack of potatoes, groaning. I grabbed my hairbrush out of my bag and clicked the stake into place.
Nik staggered toward me, moaning softly. He was moving slowly, I realized, like someone who was sleepwalking. It was probably the only reason I stood half a chance when he attacked me. He didn’t have all of his vampire wits together, or I would already be girl-hamburger.
And why the hell wasn’t anybody watching the security live feed so they could send in some backup for me?
I held the stake out straight, like a dagger, aiming it at Nik’s chest. Could I do this? Could I stake him? Could I hurt him at all, now that I knew him an
d had kissed him and had the not-so-tiniest of crushes on him?
No. A world of no.
This wasn’t Nik. This empty, violent shell of a vampire wasn’t the Nik I knew. I couldn’t hurt him when he wasn’t in control of himself. He wasn’t to blame. I would have to find some other way. I backed up a few steps, dropping the stake to the asphalt.
I slipped my hand into my purse as Nik followed. At the very bottom, I found Old Reliable. Mr. Sparky. The very first Taser that Cal had ever given me, now rewired and more powerful. And it was pink.
Nik shuffled forward, hunching down as if he was getting ready to spring at me.
“Nik, I am really sorry about this.” I sighed, wincing as I pushed the trigger. A bright white arc of electrical current jumped between the prongs. Scrunching up my face, I jammed the prongs against Nik’s ribs. He yowled and dropped to his knees.
I kept the Taser pressed against his side even while he flopped against the pavement like a hyper fish. The strange gray fog drained from his eyes as he twitched. His brow furrowed, and his jaw clenched, but I couldn’t tell if it was from confusion or electrocution.
“G-G-G-Gigi!” he stuttered. “Stop T-T-Tasering me!”
“You attacked me!”
“S-s-s-still Tasering m-m-m-me!”
I yanked the Taser back and pulled my finger off the trigger. “Sorry.”
Nik groaned and let his head flop back onto the asphalt. “Ow.”
“This can’t be healthy, domestic-violence-wise,” I said, as he sat up and shook his head, as if he was checking for a rattle in his skull. “We’re going to end up in some horribly ironic PSA.”
“What happened? The last thing I remember was sitting at home, doing some work. And now I am here. I do not even remember driving here.”
“You were waiting for me in the parking lot. Again. And you attacked me. Again. This is a pattern with you.”
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, sitting back against the tires of the damaged Honda. He cupped his hand around my jaw, searching my face for bruises, then my wrists and arms.
“No, I pretty much whooped your ass,” I assured him, as he pulled me into his arms. It surprised me how easy it was to let him. He’d tried to exsanguinate me just moments before, and now I was letting him hug me. It made no sense, but somehow it seemed right, which just spoke to my spotty sense of self-preservation.
“I do not know how to feel about being with a woman who can beat me up,” he murmured into my hair.
“Well, stop going all Walking Dead on me, and you won’t have to worry about it.”
He frowned. “Would that make you the Daryl Dixon in this relationship?”
I tried to contain the silly little thrill in my belly at his use of the word “relationship.” Also, he got special bonus points for understanding my pop-culture references, which was always a risk with non-Jane vampires. I nodded. “Get me a crossbow, and I’ll be the most badass lady redneck you’ve ever met.”
His shoulders sagged. “I knew it.”
“Come to think of it, I wonder why Cal hasn’t gotten me a crossbow yet.”
“It is probably in the public’s best interest.”
7
Older vampires are more prone to office intrigues than humans. Centuries of living under the human radar and negotiating vampire politics instill a strong need for the rush of subterfuge. Frankly, it’s better to let them get it out of their systems as long as no one gets hurt. A bored vampire is a dangerous vampire.
—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace
“Get up.” Nik was shaky, but he helped pull me to my feet. He seemed to be looking around the parking lot for his car. “I am kidnapping you.”
I groaned, stretching and gingerly testing my bruised arms. Nik nodded toward a black SUV and clicked the keyless entry. “Shouldn’t you be using an unmarked white panel van and some candy for this?”
“Very funny,” he grumped, rubbing at the side I’d Tasered. “Now, call your sister and make some excuse that will keep her from activating the LoJack chip she installed in your neck while you were sleeping.”
“She was only kidding about that,” I huffed, pulling out my phone. “I’m ninety percent sure.”
I was never so grateful for a call to go through to Iris’s voice mail. Because I’m sure that the presence of her vampire superpowers on the other end of the line would have resulted in Iris guessing that I was lying about going out for a late breakfast with my coworkers. I could lie to a machine, but I couldn’t lie to my sister.
Nik opened the passenger door and handed me inside. Honestly, he offered me his hand and helped me in, as if I was climbing into a horse-drawn carriage. The elegance of the gesture—compared with guys my age who not only walked through doors before me but didn’t bother holding said doors open long enough so they wouldn’t smack me in the face—touched that part of my heart that secretly enjoyed Jane Austen movie night with Iris and the girls. There were definitely perks to this “Old World guy” thing.
We were silent on the drive down the Hollow’s country roads to . . . I wasn’t sure where. And that’s when it occurred to me, once again, how potentially stupid it was to drive anywhere with someone who had been lunging for my jugular just moments before. But somehow, with Nik, it made sense, in a way I would never ever explain to Cal, because the mocking would be extreme. Zombie Nik and my Nik weren’t the same person. And so far, I’d been able to handle zombie Nik pretty easily.
I needed answers. I needed time to figure out what was happening and what was going on inside Nik’s head. And to do that, I needed to trust that he wasn’t going to space out and try to kill me again . . . despite all evidence to the contrary.
I’d just guaranteed my own “dumb human trick” hashtag on Twitter.
And still, I stayed in the car. I didn’t employ the Charlie’s Angels roll that Cal had taught me to escape a moving vehicle. Information—I needed it, and Nik had it, or at least, he had more of it than I did. So I would just have to trust, while keeping my hold on Mr. Sparky.
I’d expected him to live in some vampire-friendly extended-stay hotel or one of the renovated condos downtown, but he took me to the old Victorian house where Nola lived. The duplex was owned by Dick Cheney and had been split into two rental units years before. Nola and Jed lived in one half. And apparently, Nik lived in the other.
“Ophelia arranged a short-term rental for me,” Nik said, as he handed me out of the car. “My neighbors were out of town until a few days ago, and Dick was eager to have at least half of the house occupied while they were gone. Something about invasive possums.”
“They are aggressive,” I said, nodding.
“Well, it is not much, but it is definitely more luxurious than some places I have stayed over the years,” he said, as he unlocked the door.
Nik’s half of the house was comfortable but impersonal. The door led into a large parlor and, beyond that, a small beige dining-room-turned-kitchen. The polished living-room floor was covered with an extra-large faded blue rag rug. The furniture was sturdy, manly, no-nonsense. Several large bookshelves flanked his windows, but they were empty. There were no personal touches, no pictures, no personality. And no laptop. It might as well have been a hotel room.
Stairs led to a second story, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to see that part of the house, because if I did, I would probably end up losing all of my clothes. They would just spontaneously fall off. And that would be embarrassing.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, crossing into the kitchen.
“That’s always a loaded question, coming from a vampire,” I said, leaning against his counter. “I am not one for O positive.”
“I have human drinks. I arranged for my Beeline representative to stock them. I thought you might be coming by.” He opened the refrigerator door
to show me a stunning array of sodas, juices, mineral waters, and wine coolers mixed in with his bagged donor blood. My mouth fell open at the sheer quantity of beverages weighing down his fridge shelves.
“I did not know what you would like.”
“That’s kind of adorable.” I tried my hardest to keep my smile in check, but I failed. “Diet Dr Pepper is my favorite.”
“Do not patronize me,” he grumbled. “Why not get more comfortable, and we will talk? I will get your drink. We will sit down and have a normal talk, like two normal people.”
I turned toward the living room but hesitated as I surveyed the seating options. A recliner and a couch. If I sat in the recliner, it was a pretty clear message that I didn’t want to sit anywhere near him. Or that I had a bad back. If I took the couch, he might think I was angling for snuggle time. If I continued standing, it was going to get weird.
It was already weird.
Nik stepped closer and rubbed his palms along my arms, his gaze intent and absent of any sort of glaze-y hostility. Before I could adjust to this new proximity, he yanked me against his chest and zipped across the room at vampire speed. I yelped as he gently dropped me at one end of his couch. I bounced a little, but before I landed, he had arranged the cushions behind me in the perfect vegging-out position and spread a soft blue chenille throw over my legs. I opened my mouth to protest, but he’d already disappeared into the kitchen in a blur, retrieving my soda and placing it on the coffee table. On a coaster.
If Iris ever got over her irrational “attacking Gigi” hang-up toward Nik, she would love him.
“See?” he said, dropping gracefully against the opposite end of the couch. “Perfectly normal.”
“Not quite,” I told him. “But it was a nice effort.”
There was an awkward silence as I paused to open my drink. How exactly did you start a conversation like this? Someone should write a book about upsetting conversations with undead potential boyfriends with memory issues. Note to self: Talk to Jane to see if she has any books about upsetting conversations with undead potential boyfriends with memory issues. If not available, force her to write said book at stake-point.