Peace, Blood, and Understanding

by Molly Harper

  I nodded, making a quick exit from Lainie’s desk and dashing into Jane’s office. Thinking that I was preempting the inevitable request for paperwork, I took some forms out of my shoulder bag and handed them to her. “I filled out the incident report about the elevator failure, Jane. I swear, I’m not going to sue or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Jane looked confused for a split second. “Oh, no, but thanks for that. It’s always nice to receive assurance that I won’t be sued. But I was actually hoping to talk to you about a meeting we have coming up next week.”

  “Um, OK, do you need me to pull records for it or something?” I asked.

  Jane flopped into her desk chair and seemed to indulge, just for a moment, in her obvious exhaustion. “No, our participation in the genealogy project has gone over so well that our programming department is being appointed for some new innovative thing that the national Council office won’t tell me about until they meet with our people next week to make an offer.”

  “So are they poaching our employees?”

  “Decidedly not,” Jane said, sitting up and rubbing at her temples. “The Council has learned from the Peter principle. When an employee is performing at their best, moving or promoting them can create chaos. They want our people to do the work here. Or at least they did, before the ghoul incident created chaos all its own. Which is why it’s very important that the meeting go well, so the Council sees that the recent problems are just flukes and we are functional, competent people.”

  “And how do I play into that? Because that doesn’t sound like something that would require… me?”

  “No, but you’re a nice, calming presence, and I would appreciate having you around. Just hang out, serve some tea, and help Sammy with coffee orders,” Jane said.

  “Calming?”

  “Trust me,” she deadpanned.

  “All right, then,” I said, nodding while frowning. This seemed like an odd request. Was she asking me to dose everybody with Calm Your Ass Down Blend if something went wrong?

  “Great. I’ll send you the info. Let me know if you need anything,” she said.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked.

  “Are you using your empathy thing on me?” Jane asked, bemused. “We agreed that wasn’t OK as long as I didn’t read your mind.”

  “No, I’m just looking at your face,” I told her.

  “Fair enough.” She burst out laughing. “Oh, I needed that. I’m not going to lie, Meadow. It’s pretty bad. Even if we manage this meeting and the rest of Weston’s inspection unscathed, I doubt that Dick and I will be the Council reps when the dust settles. Weston’s report about the ghoul incident was detailed and very blunt, which is amazing, considering he was trapped in the elevator with you for most of it. Peter Crown’s practically gloating, which is never good.”

  “Oh, he’s gloating,” I assured her. “And he’s been looking into my background, which I’m taking as a bit of a personal threat.”

  “Even if he was appointed to replace me, it wouldn’t mean that he would be your case supervisor, Meadow,” she told me. “I would do everything I could to prevent it.”

  It didn’t feel right to remind her that she might not have any say in the matter, so I simply asked, “Any idea how that thing escaped?”

  “Chloe hasn’t found a reason for the electrical short,” Jane said. “It’s weird, because the system is designed to prevent such a thing, but I guess that’s one of those things that can happen because the forces of chaos laugh at me and my plans.”

  “It seems like you’re taking this a little personally.”

  “It feels oddly personal. Of all the things we have stored down there, the thing that can eat vampires is let loose while all of the other cells stayed shut tight as a drum? Seems convenient.”

  I shuddered. In the last twenty-four hours, I’d done a lot of reading on ghouls, because it seemed like a good idea, in case there were more of them being stored on the property. I also read up on as many obscure dangerous creatures as I could, because again, I didn’t want to get on the elevator and find out that a shurale was on the loose or something. Shurale were these weird Siberian forest creatures with long creepy fingers that could literally tickle a person to death. I would rather go on a cozy dinner date with Peter Crown than tangle with one of them.

  I asked, “What else is stored down there, out of curiosity?”

  “I could tell you, but I want you to stay employed here.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” I told her.

  She snorted as I walked out the door. “Wasn’t meant to!”

  I stopped suddenly and turned back to Jane, closing the door behind me. “Hey, I know it’s a random question, but where did Peter Crown work before he came to Half-Moon Hollow?”

  “That is a random question,” Jane said. “He’s been here for as long as anyone can remember, but I think he was at the Martin, Tennessee, office. The Civil War–era version of it, at least.”

  Another connection to the Martin office. Why did things keep connecting back to the Martin branch? It wasn’t a particularly important district location. Nothing had happened there in ages.

  “I hope you’re not planning to do anything stupid involving Peter Crown,” Jane said, eyeing me carefully.

  “Nope, not at all, I was just curious,” I said. “It’s just he’s so dead-set on making trouble here—”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Jane reminded me.

  “Fine, then he seems dead-set on taking over here. I was wondering if maybe he caused this sort of trouble at his previous office.”

  Jane nodded, pursing her lips. “It’s an interesting question. I’ll look into it.”

  “OK, good,” I said. “Good night!”

  “Good night,” she called after me. “Nothing stupid, Meadow. I mean it.”

  “Got it!” I took the elevator down to the archive, tensed to land in a crash position if the car suddenly jerked to a stop. My catlike stance was very upsetting for the poor accountant who was riding to the finance floor, but when he got martini-shaken by an elevator, he could judge me.

  The doors opened without incident and the accountant, a squat little vampire with a bald spot shaped like a keyhole, scurried out. Over his shoulder, I saw a familiar figure moving in a far corner of the finance floor, shining a flashlight toward the ceiling.

  Luke still hadn’t turned toward me as the door slid closed. I stared at my blurred reflection in the matte steel doors.

  “What in the hell?”

  * * *

  That night I didn’t just stop and stare into the Capitol lot. I walked past the splintered concrete and overgrown weeds to sit on one of the broken brick walls. It was an excellent spot for staring into the sky and thinking.

  What in the hell was Luke doing at the office? He didn’t have a current contract with the Council, unless something had changed in the higher-security aftermath of the ghoul incident. Had he snuck in, looking for some sort of business opportunity?

  My stomach seemed to turn in on itself.

  I’d told Jane about it, of course, but I’d made an absolute jackass of myself in the process. I’d spent hours mulling over the decision, trying to figure out if I was overreacting, weighing the potential harm to Luke versus my loyalty to Jane. I definitely didn’t want to cause more problems at the office with all of us balancing on a knife’s edge under Weston’s inspection.

  So I’d called Jane and confessed the whole thing. Of course, Jane had a million questions, some specifically about why I’d waited so long to tell her about sighting Luke. I’d had to fill out multiple forms and witness statements, and Jane informed me that I should avoid future contact with Luke until their investigation into his presence at the office was finished. I left work feeling like an awful friend and a worse employee.

  I groaned and buried my face in my hands. Things were actually simpler when I was having semi-hate sex with my neighbor in a stalled elevator. How was th
at possible?

  “Oh, come on, Meadow, it can’t be that bad.”

  I looked up to find Luke looking at me. His expression was sheepish, which I supposed was reasonable when the last time we’d spoken I’d behaved badly and he’d responded in kind. I tried to drum up some feeling other than abject weariness, but here was a person I’d considered a friend for a long time, and all I could feel at the sight of his face was a bone-deep tiredness that dragged me down to Earth like an anchor.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Well, I was working at the Council office today and didn’t have the chance to see you, so I thought I would walk over to your place.”

  Rather than applauding his thoughtfulness like I normally would, I just stared at him. He seemed to find my silence off-putting, because he crossed the lot and sat next to me on the crumbling wall.

  “We didn’t leave things on a very good note the other night,” he added.

  “No, we did not.”

  “What got into you?” he asked. “You’re normally so centered and calm, and you were just… I know that using the word ‘crazy’ can really make a woman angry, but you were acting crazy.”

  Oh, that was not the way to begin this conversation. I hopped down from the wall, careful not to scrape my bared ankles on the uneven concrete. “Well, since we’re talking about out-of-character behavior, you accused me of messing around with someone else because I didn’t give you the answers you wanted. Never mind that it’s not really your place to yell at me for stepping outside of our relationship because we are not and never have been exclusive. You yelled at me. Over nothing. And even if we’re not some defined couple, I thought we were friends. My friends don’t yell at me.”

  “I know, and I shouldn’t have done that,” Luke agreed, every inch the reasonable person I’d come to adore over the years. “But you’ve been so distant and distracted lately. You’re barely talking to me, and when you do, you’re not yourself. I’m just worried about you, Meadow.”

  “Maybe I have a lot going on in my life. Maybe I’ve had a lot of stuff come up at work lately,” I told him. “I haven’t had time to call.”

  “You’ve had enough time to text that Weston guy, when he’s only a wall away!”

  “That’s none of your…” I paused. “How do you know I was texting Weston?”

  I could see the regret rippling across Luke’s face in a clammy wave. I could smell it on him, the sour-sweet stench of deceit and regret, and it made me gag. He stammered, “Well, I just figured that… with you two being neighbors, you’d exchanged numbers. You seemed pretty chummy the last time I saw you together.”

  I shook my head, edging around Luke so I could back out of the lot if I needed to. “No, no, I’ve made it pretty clear to you that Weston and I are not friends. There’s no reason for you to think we’ve exchanged numbers. And even less reason for you to know that we texted each other from inside our apartments. Now, what made you say that?”

  And suddenly, I realized that when I set my cloud password, I’d written it down in a notebook with all of my significant passwords, which was hidden at the bottom of my kitchen junk drawer. He’d spent plenty of time alone in my kitchen. He could have found it very easily. He’d read my texts with Weston. And while we hadn’t exactly gotten steamy, it was humiliating to think that Luke read a private conversation I had with someone else.

  The cold weight of it settled on my shoulders. What else had he read? My texts with Jane about book club? The text with Andrea about that time Luke damn near sprained my back with a position above our normal expertise level? My e-mails? My online bank statements? My search history?

  “You read my texts?” I whispered.

  Luke’s mouth slipped open. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “How do you not mean to?”

  In all this turmoil, any control I had over my gift slipped, and I was nearly overwhelmed by the anxiety and fear rippling off of Luke. Not the level of anxiety you would expect of someone who had just dropped a vat of toxic paranoid bullshit on a once-healthy relationship, but someone in mortal terror. What was happening to us?

  “I just didn’t know what was going on with you, and I thought maybe reading through your texts would tell me!” he cried. “I was worried about you. And I need to talk to you about some things at the Council office.”

  “Then you talk to me. You don’t spy on me. That’s unacceptable no matter what sort of relationship we have! And to think I stood up for you! I turned myself inside out trying to figure out…” I stopped before I made the same mistake that Luke had, blurting out information that I didn’t want him to know. And Jane certainly wouldn’t appreciate me telling him that he was suspected of sabotaging matters at the Council.

  “Trying to figure out what?” he demanded.

  “Why were you at the Council office today?” I asked. “Why would you be there in the first place? Why would they let you in the building when we’re on a security lockdown?”

  “I was in the building because of the security lockdown!” he exclaimed. “The Council is hiring additional consultants to tighten things up after the recent problems.”

  He was lying. I didn’t need my gift to know it. There’s no way Jane would hire Luke if he was already suspected of sabotage. She wouldn’t take the risk, even to let him into the building to watch him, if it meant more people could get hurt.

  “Look, let’s just go to your apartment and talk,” he said, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. “I don’t want to lose you, Meadow. Not over something as silly as miscommunication.”

  “Miscommunication.” That was what he was calling lying and breaking my trust. Spying on me. “Miscommunication.” Next thing I knew, he would tell me I was “overreacting” and being “irrational.” Because that would certainly help. It always made me feel so much better when my dad completely invalidated any hurt feelings I had by saying I was being “dramatic.”

  Wait, no, he’d already called me “crazy,” which was worse than “irrational” and “dramatic.”

  Also, I was comparing Luke to my father, which meant the relationship was well and truly over.

  “Don’t touch me!” I pulled my arm out of his grip, my other arm whipping forward lightning fast and shoving his chest. His eyes went wide as I shoved his shoulders, making him stumble back into the broken wall so hard that it cracked behind him. It was to be expected. Luke had never seen me so much as swat a fly. He’d certainly never seen me during my post-turning blood rampage across central Kentucky. He only knew me as sweet Meadow, patient Meadow, until I didn’t do exactly as he expected and suddenly I was crazy.

  Part of me wanted to show him what I was capable of, to vent all that anger and hurt radiating up through my belly. My hands curled into fists, and I stepped forward, ready to punch him in a highly dramatic and irrational fashion. But then I saw myself reflected in those dark eyes of his, my face bent into harsh, angry lines. My fangs were glistening in the moonlight, and I hadn’t even realized they’d dropped.

  No.

  I wouldn’t do this to myself again. I wouldn’t indulge in these wanton, destructive… oh-so-satisfying… urges, only to wallow in guilt over it later. Even if he really, really deserved a good smack to the forehead. I backed away, mustering up the most severe tone of voice he’d ever heard from me.

  “You will never touch me again. I’m changing all of my passwords, and my locks, everything. Stay away from me. We’re not friends with benefits. We’re not even friends.”

  11

  There are some problems that not even diligent avoidance can help you escape. Death, taxes, photos of our high school hairstyles, just to name a few.

  —Peace, Blood, and Understanding: A Living Guide for Vampires Embracing Pacifism

  If I tapped my pen any harder on my desk, I was going to break through the wood, and possibly through the floor below.

  My problem, as always, was that my brain wasn’t occupied enough to ignore my real problems. I co
uldn’t hide behind the relatively easy inventory tasks at the shop, or sending out orders. I couldn’t even work through my filing duties because I’d done them all. I was spending too much time with Weston. I was becoming too efficient.

  Then again, the average American worker thinks they’re at least eleven percent more productive than all of their coworkers.

  My eyes went wide.

  Damn it, Weston!

  I was determined not to think about the mess with Luke or the Council’s security problems or my parents. And so my brain offered up the conversation with Weston as a distraction, when he’d accused Dick of killing his sire. Weston mentioned that the Martin office had been having similar problems to ours. I wondered if there were any common staff members between the two offices. It wasn’t unusual for the Council to move employees around from branch to branch. Maybe the person who had caused the problems in Martin was also causing problems here?

  And so the pen tapping continued. I could not fix things with Luke. And I didn’t want to fix things with my parents. But maybe I could help fix this.

  I plugged in my long-unused computer, updated the security software, opened my e-mail program, and sent a message to the archivist in the Martin office. Archives ran much like libraries. We could request files from each other for research or office use. I just had to ask the Martin archivist to send me anything I was allowed to see regarding Jonas’s investigation and a list of personnel who worked at the office at that time. Unfortunately, Rosemary, the Martin archivist, was just as much of a Luddite as Lotte. All of the Martin files were paper.

  Rosemary did deign to use e-mail to tell me it would take a while to dig up those files, so I supposed that was progress.

  The elevator dinged, and I tensed until I saw Dick step out, grinning broadly.

  “Hey, I got your text that you need to see me?” he said, his smile fading as he got a look at my face. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Hippy-Dippy, but you look like hell. You OK?”