The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire

by Molly Harper

  “All right.” He sighed, moving very slowly to pick up his bag. “Good night, Gladiola.”

  I thunked my head against my chair. Great. I was the office ogre. And I was sticking around to sabotage the wounded puppy’s chances of gainful employment. So I was a vengeful ogre. Being a grown-up kind of sucked.

  I gave Marty a few minutes to come back and check one more time if I wanted to leave with him. When I was sure he was gone for the day, I ran every example of his work through the testing program one more time, just in case. It was still garbage. Unusable garbage that failed to meet even the basic standards of coding, much less the version we were using. I was starting to wonder if Marty walked me to my car most nights to make sure I wouldn’t stay behind and discover this dickery.

  I logged off my computer and noticed that Marty hadn’t bothered doing so before leaving for the night, which was a major security-policy violation. I shut down his computer, too. After gathering up the printouts I needed, I walked with purpose down the hall toward Ophelia’s office. Her dowdy human assistant, Margaret, sat outside the closed double doors, stapling papers with such economy of movement that it was practically surgery.

  Over the last week, I’d learned that Margaret was a bit of a blood bunny trapped inside a schoolmarm’s body. She turned her big brown calf eyes at any vampire who crossed her path, simpering and smiling and constantly craning her neck so that the vampires were sure to notice her long, swanlike jugular. But it was hard to complain about her, since she was also a consummate professional when it came to answering questions, responding to e-mails promptly, and juggling Ophelia’s schedule. She also didn’t seem to like me much, but I think that had more to do with my attitude toward her boss than anything else. Much like Jordan, I had a hard time containing my eye rolls when Ophelia was mentioned in the break room.

  When she saw me approaching, Margaret threw herself in front of Ophelia’s door, her gray-streaked blond hair flopping over her face. She blew it out of her eyes and told me sternly, “She’s not available.”

  “Margaret, I’ve worked here for weeks, and I haven’t met with my supervisor. That’s not reasonable. Also, I have something I need to discuss with her. I can wait right here until she’s available.”

  “I meant, she’s not in,” Margaret said quickly. “She’s been out for hours.”

  Just then, I heard Ophelia’s voice on the other side of the door. “I have neither the time nor the patience for your excuses, Serena. I expect results, and I expect them immediately.”

  I tried not to look too smug when I smiled at Margaret. I really did.

  “I demand results!” Ophelia yelled. “Concrete proof that you’re actually making some effort on my behalf!”

  “Fine.” Margaret sighed, her florid face taking on a very put-upon expression. “I’ll buzz you through when her call is over. But I’m not responsible if she takes your head off.”

  I was aware that she was possibly talking about actual decapitation.

  I heard Ophelia bark, “You have thirty days, Serena!” and something plastic shattered against the office door. It was always nice to know you were walking into a room where office supplies were aerodynamically sound.

  “Fine.” Margaret sighed, pulling a petulant face while flopping into her desk chair.

  I straightened my sweater, shuffled my papers, and knocked on the door.

  “Enter, Margaret!” Ophelia yelled.

  Before Margaret could warn her, I walked through the door and shut it behind me. Iris had warned me before my initial interview, but really, nothing could have prepared me for the array of crystal-encrusted Hello Kitty desk accessories before me. It was always a shock to walk into Ophelia’s spacious pink office and see the sheer number of cartoon kitty-cat heads, from the rug to the mouse pad to the giant mural on the wall behind her. It was like reporting to an aggressively adorable Tony Montana.

  And once again, I couldn’t help but be unnerved by the portrait of Georgie, the beautiful blond, gray-eyed child who also happened to be Ophelia’s vampirized biological sister. Still, I’d met Georgie. And as creepy as it was to speak to the living embodiment of that super­sentient little girl from Dune, I still found the Hello Kitty shredder way more upsetting.

  Ophelia was wearing an indecently red pencil skirt with a sheer black silk blouse. Her blond hair was pulled into a carefully arranged ballerina bun, and she was wearing honest-to-God red patent-leather pumps.

  “Is there a reason you are putting my assistant in the awkward position of telling you that I don’t want to see you?” Ophelia asked, also without looking up from her papers. I supposed this was the newest trend in dismissive office rudeness. “Margaret is a polite soul, you see, and she doesn’t like being openly rude to people. I’ve never had a problem with it.”

  “Trust me, I’ve noticed,” I told her. “The others appointed me as project leader. The first task in my job description is ‘serving as a liaison between the project team and supervisory staff,’ which is you. And ‘presenting weekly progress reports regarding the project and any obstacles or problems impeding said progress.’ And since I have not presented this report in the weeks we’ve been working, I figured it’s time.”

  Ophelia propped her elbows on her desk and folded her hands under her chin. “Do you have any idea how inappropriate it is to force your way into a meeting with your supervisor?”

  I smiled sweetly. “Almost as inappropriate as a supervisor who refuses to meet with her employees because of interpersonal tension rooted outside of the office.”

  Ophelia’s eyes narrowed. I was pretty sure that if there hadn’t been witnesses who saw me go into her office, I would have been the first person ever murdered with a Hello Kitty stapler.

  A reasonable person with a proportionate sense of self-preservation would have stuck to the tried-and-true methods to avoid digestion by an apex predator: stay still, don’t make eye contact, and definitely don’t arrange one’s face into a big smartass grin.

  I never claimed to be reasonable. And my sense of self-preservation was clearly nonexistent. So I just stretched that fake sweet smile into the big smartass grin.

  Ophelia’s hand twitched toward her stapler, but she managed to wrap her other hand around it and press it to the desk. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and said, “Very well. What would you like to report?”

  “Aaron and Jordan are turning in quality work and meeting their goals, as am I.”

  I sighed, crossing my legs and shifting in my chair. I cleared my throat. And I felt like a total bitch for what I was about to do. I didn’t want Marty to be fired. He seemed like a nice guy, just a little overwhelmed. But the bottom line was that Marty wasn’t pulling his weight. And it would be a lot easier to point out more serious issues with his performance in the future if I pointed out his weak points now. So I took a deep breath and phrased it as carefully as I could. “Marty is having difficulty keeping up. His work has not been up to par, and we’re still setting up the most basic functions of the search engine. Not to mention that he just left the office with his computer still logged into the system, which is a problem, security-wise. Aaron, Jordan, and I are going to have to redo all of his work, which will create a slight setback now. But if he doesn’t step it up, that slight setback could become a major delay.”

  “I would suggest that you check his work every day, point out any problems, and retrain him.”

  “Retrain him? Programming is a basic requirement of his job. That would be like telling someone they have to retrain an accountant in how to do addition. I have to question how he passed the initial interview if he’s having problems like this.”

  “It’s not up to you to question the hiring process, Miss Scanlon,” she said, quite frostily.

  “But it’s up to me to retrain employees who got through the lax hiring process?”

  “Well, as project leader, you sh
ouldn’t have any problems, should you?” She smiled that flat shark’s smile. “Thank you. I look forward to your next report. And by next report, I mean the report you present after you have shown enough professional courtesy to schedule an appointment with Margaret.”

  I nodded. “Ophelia—”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oph—”

  “Thankyou!” she exclaimed, not even leaving a pause between the two words. And with that, she turned the pink Hello Kitty–embossed back of her chair to me.

  I was pretty sure that between me, the kitties, and the four-hundred-plus-year-old vampire, I was the most mature being in this room. I hoped that with her superhearing, she could hear the way my teeth were grinding.

  Had I been right before? Had Ophelia saddled me with a subpar coworker to sabotage the project? Or was she just trying to drive me crazy? It might have seemed like a paranoid, unproductive way of thinking but not nearly as unproductive as having my work hobbled by a manager who was pissed at me for “stealing her boyfriend.”

  But that manager also had fangs, and I needed to get out of the office before she put them to use. I was already violating several bullet points from the orientation video. I had pushed up from the chair and gotten about three steps away from Ophelia’s desk when I stopped and turned toward her . . .

  Screw it, no one lives forever. I kissed vampires in alleyways. I was a badass.

  “You know, it’s not my fault that Jamie wants to have a real college experience. He’s missed out on so much already, being turned before he could graduate from high school. He wants to experience a little bit of the outside world before he settles down, which you know he’s going to do with you. I think it would be kind of selfish of you to try to keep him from that. I only helped him with the application process because it can be overwhelming and scary even without all of the vampire issues. And because it was important to him, and I’m his friend. That’s what friends do for each other.”

  Ophelia turned back to me, and while her face was a pleasant mask, her eyes could have curdled milk. “Oh, I think I know exactly how close the two of you are,” she said. “I hear enough about your friendship every time Jamie and I speak.”

  “Then you should know that there are no romantic feelings between us.”

  “But it is amazing how often he comes running whenever you need something or are hosting something or some member of your dysfunctional group has a hangnail and there’s an emergency meeting.”

  I honestly didn’t know how to respond to that. It had been such a long time since Iris and I belonged to a family that we just took it for granted that it was normal for us to be so entangled with Jane and the other vampires. Also, we didn’t have many friends outside of the circle, so we didn’t have a lot of competition for our time and attention. From Ophelia’s perspective, I could see how irritating it might be to have your time with your boyfriend split with his big fat geek vampire family, even if Georgie did seem to find us entertaining.

  I was sympathizing with Ophelia. This did not compute.

  And damned if I was going to tell her about it.

  “That seems like something you should discuss with Jamie,” I told her.

  “I don’t think I’ll have to,” she said, giving me dead shark’s eyes that, frankly, freaked me the hell out.

  “OK, then.” I nodded. “Good night.”

  Ophelia didn’t answer, which was just the cherry on top of her sundae of rudeness.

  9

  Use common sense when dressing for work. Yes, you have the right to wear open-neck blouses that highlight the length and definition of your throat. That doesn’t mean you should.

  —The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace

  A witch, a computer programmer, and a couple of vampires walking into a coffee bar may have sounded like a complicated setup for one of Dick Cheney’s inappropriate jokes, but sadly, it was how I was spending my night off.

  Nik was working, fielding some last-minute call from Ophelia about a new break-in over in Murphy. When I told Iris that I was planning to spend the evening at Specialty Books, she’d been thrilled, but she’d also called the shop shortly after I’d arrived, either because she questioned my night-driving abilities or she still had doubts about my “going out for coffee with coworkers” excuse for being out so late with Nik. Once again, neither option was great, but I supposed I should be grateful that Cal hadn’t attached a GPS locator to my car.

  Still, it was nice to have a quiet evening out, even if I was under the careful but intentionally nonchalant supervision of Dick, Andrea, and Jane. I loved Jane’s bookshop, with its soothing but whimsical blue and purple color scheme and comfy reading chairs. I loved the old maple and leaded-glass cabinet she used as a sales counter and the tidy, carefully labeled bookshelves that suited her former librarian’s sensibilities. It was nice to know some things hadn’t changed since I went away to school. Dick still “worked” at the shop, but he mostly stayed in the back because of his tendency to offend some (uptight, humorless) customers. Andrea still ran the espresso machine, because she didn’t trust anyone else to keep it from exploding. Jane still made incendiary coffee when Andrea left the shop.

  The business had flourished since Jane’s shaky opening years before. They’d added on to the coffee menu over the years, and they were now considered one of the best vampire-friendly coffee bars in the state. The shelf stock ran the gamut from mainstream paranormal romances to mystical gardening books, but Jane was best known for her vampire nonfiction, self-help for the fanged set. Internet orders alone were enough to keep the store in the black, something Mr. Wainwright had rarely accomplished.

  The nonfiction section, particularly the titles concerning magic and its effects on vampires, was what drew me to Specialty Books that night. Since Nola didn’t have a lot of experience with vampire curses and I knew how easy it was to post absolute insanity-babble on the Internet, I was sifting through Jane’s shelves to try to find some answers about Nik’s state of mind. Jane was eager to help, as she was unaware of vampires’ susceptibility to curses and figured if anyone was bound to tick off a witch badly enough to end up hexed, it would be her.

  “Thanks for letting me use your research materials, Jane,” I said, as Andrea served me a (nonbloody) mocha and a chocolate chess square.

  I had all of the related books in the store spread across my little round maple table, including When Magic Meets the Undead: Spells and Their Effects on Vampires and Curses Most Foul: A Guide to Hexing Your Exes. Even though Ben was a pretty nice guy, it was good to know I had options.

  “We’ll just tell Iris that you spent the night reading the Morganville Vampires books and ridding my computer of viruses, OK?” she said, throwing her long braid of thick brown hair over her shoulder as she wiped down the sales counter.

  “I clicked on one pop-up ad!” Dick shouted indignantly from the back of the shop.

  Jamie, who was sprawled across the cushy purple love seat near the coffee bar, shook his head and raised his hand. He mouthed the words “Multiple pop-up ads.” Then he made an explosion noise and spread his fingers wide. I laughed. Even though Jamie wasn’t helping with the actual research, he’d insisted on accompanying me to the shop tonight. He claimed he wanted to spend some quality time with me, now that I was a grown-up working woman and my nights off were such a precious commodity. But I suspected he was just nervous about me walking back and forth to my car, since that was proving to be such a challenge of late.

  Jane insisted that Jamie wasn’t going to help me, that he was going to read something constructive, so she’d handed him a copy of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. While I’d had to read that particular title as part of my senior English class in high school, newly vampirized Jamie had completed his diploma from home and had missed out on Sinclair’s scathing depiction of the pre-USDA meatpacking industry. The m
ore Jamie read, the more repulsed his expression, which seemed to make Jane happy, because at least she knew he was paying attention.

  “If I wasn’t already on a liquid diet, this book would put me off hamburgers for life,” Jamie said, making his patented gag face.

  “I was a vegetarian for about six months after reading The Jungle,” I told him. “I still can’t eat hot dogs. But it’s important that you read that now, because you’ll be reading much more disturbing stuff in your freshman lit class. Heart of Darkness will scar you for life.”

  “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to have you two sitting around discussing books,” Jane said, putting a tall glass of what amounted to vampire chocolate milk in front of Jamie: bottled blood and Hershey’s Special Blood Additive Chocolate Syrup. She actually wiped a pinkish tear from her eye as she ruffled Jamie’s hair. He scowled and brushed his hair back into its usual intentionally messy state. But after he drained his little snack, he had a bright red milk mustache on his upper lip, so his indignation was short-lived.

  “That is disgusting,” I told him.

  He winked at me and wiped the errant blood foam away.

  “So if you don’t want to tell Iris why I’m here tonight, why are you helping me?” I asked Jane.

  “Because forbidden love with a hot, mysterious vampire?” she said, gesturing to her paranormal romance section. “I’m not only the president of that club, I’m also a member.”

  She ignored Jamie’s muttered “Gross.”

  “Besides, you’re going to do this whether we help you or not, so it’s better that you have some resources and supervision,” Jane continued. “And for what it’s worth, based on my very quick read of Nik, I don’t think he’s a bad guy or that he’s trying to hurt you. I’m getting a lot of blank spots from him, which backs up his whole amnesia story. Don’t get me wrong, Geeg, he has some very warm thoughts that I probably shouldn’t share in front of Cal, but none of them are hostile. He honestly doesn’t want to hurt you.”