“It did,” I agreed.
I leaned back and sipped my coffee as we headed to work. I couldn’t resist smiling as Ember produced a cinnamon stick. She twirled it around in her fingers. A wisp of smoke started rising from it as she ate fire elemental style, by burning it to absorb the nutrients. Ember flicked it and a few ashes tumbled down. The ashes reminded me of my letter to my stepmother. For a moment, my smile faltered, then the question of what I’d be doing right now in Maryland brought it back. Had I stayed in Maryland, I certainly wouldn’t be able to spend my mornings with two of my closest friends, carpooling to a job I was starting to love. Rak purred in reaction to my emotions and kneaded my leg before curling up on the other seat.
~~~***~~~
As lunch rolled around, it seemed like my day was shaping up to be a nice, routine one. Today, like most days, I was assigned to the front desk where I was learning the general ins and outs of MES. I transferred some calls, took some notes, and printed and distributed a bunch of stuff.
MES was a weird place to work. Of course, the different types of magical beings wandering around without worrying about concealing themselves from non-magics made it really weird. It was hard to get used to; I still jumped in surprise when rabbit familiars popped out of walls or ravens fluttered into elevators with me. And of course there were all manner of strange things in the break room on shelves next to what I considered normal food. Even Rak, sitting on his own comfy stool at the desk next to me, was unusual.
But one of the things that made MES really weird was the sometimes amusing, sometimes inconvenient way it incorporated technology. Some magics still had massive monitors, yellowed with age, on their desks, while others had sleek laptops. Most were happy to use the internal chat system, but some didn’t even use the phones and instead physically went to other cubicles to ask questions. Half of my job seemed to be printing and delivering things that could have just been emailed. On the other hand, it did give me a chance to get to know everyone.
When it was time for my lunch break, I waited until Holly, a wood elemental who worked fulltime at the front desk, arrived for her shift. As usual, she was right on time, so Rak and I headed up to the break room. Ember was already there, burning her way through a large log. A jackal familiar was munching out of a bowl of dog food in the corner and several other people looked like they were eating non-magic food, but only one was a witch like me. The others were all just in human form, like Mariana. I sat down next to her, across from Ember, at one of the tables.
“Hey, Jen, how’s the front desk?” Mariana asked me. She had finished her internship not too long ago, so she knew exactly what my job entailed.
She looked as human as me. In fact, she was technically human now, but add some water and she could change into her mermaid form as easily as TS changed into a wolf. Her blonde hair turned dark green the moment she got into water, but she could choose to keep her legs or fuse them into a tail. Faint green streaks in her hair and incredibly blue eyes were the only clue she wasn’t always human. Dani had been babysitting Mariana since she was two, so when Dani and Charlie started dating, Mariana and Ember got to spend a lot of time together. Even so, the pair had eagerly included me from the start, making my move to New York even more rewarding.
“It’s the front desk,” I laughed. “How is accounting?”
Mariana rolled her eyes. “It’d be great if Peridot would actually let me do anything.”
I groaned in sympathy and Ember snorted. Mariana’s supervisor was a stone elemental; they tended to be set in their ways, which apparently included how they operated. Mariana was struggling to get anything more than busy-work in accounting. Even then, she hardly had any. Peridot still had not restructured her department in a way that accommodated a new member and yet both Peridot and Mariana’s other teammate had more than enough work to do.
“Too bad you can’t show her who’s boss,” Ember said.
Ember had struggled joining the all-male IT team. In spite of Charlie threatening to set them on fire for her and Dani offering to “talk” with them, Ember ended up putting her considerable hacking skills to work and making life miserable until her team accepted her. It was lucky they had too; poor Charlotte was having enough trouble adapting to life as a dhampir, without having to deal with some idiots in IT. I was glad Ember was there for her, even if she didn’t seem to be reaching out.
“Elementals,” Mariana said with a long-suffering sigh.
We all laughed. Elementals did indeed have their quirks, some worse than others.
After lunch I returned to the front desk for some hands-on training with Holly on how to handle certain calls without transferring them and various procedures. In the early afternoon, I got yet another thick packet to print and deliver. This time, however, I was delighted to see I was taking it to Charlie. The novelty of being able to drop in and see my friends whenever I wanted, even for work, hadn’t worn off yet.
I knocked and waited for him to say I could come in. When he did, I shouldered the door open and awkwardly backed in, trying to balance the stack of papers and keep the door from swinging open too fast.
“Hey, Jen,” Charlie said.
“Hey.”
Then Dani’s unmistakable voice greeted me too.
I swallowed hard; I hated being caught off guard by Dani. “H-hey,” I managed to squeak, turning around to face the entire office. Charlie was sitting at his desk and Dani was in the guest chair across from him.
My breath hitched and I swear my heart skipped a beat at the sight of Dani. It always did. I couldn't help it. No more than he could help that he was part siren – he just had that effect on people. I couldn't imagine what a full-blooded siren looked like; Dani was inhumanly gorgeous and he was barely one quarter siren.
His grin turned up slightly into a smirk. I knew that he was fully aware of his effect on people. And, considering his sense of humor, it amused him every time. No amount of logic could stop the reaction. Not the fact that I had a boyfriend, or the fact that I thought of Dani like an older brother, or the fact that I was very much not Dani's type.
He was lounging in the extra chair like a freaking centerfold, one arm draped over the back, and his legs up on the edge of Charlie’s desk. His feet were bare and I honestly couldn’t say if I had ever seen him wear shoes to work. I also doubted anyone gave him crap for it. When you were a special agent with a list of successful missions as long as Dani’s, shoes at work were probably optional.
“I have stuff for you,” I said. Fortunately, the more time I spent with Dani, the easier it was to recover from the siren effect.
“Great, thanks,” said Charlie, leaning forward to take it from me.
“Are you doing an early shift?” I asked Dani. He usually didn’t start work until I was about to leave.
Of course, his voice was going to affect me nearly as much as his looks did. As a water elemental, he was capable of mimicking an insane amount of sounds and voices, but he usually had a melodious tenor – which he claimed was his real voice – that almost sounded like he was singing rather than talking. Then again, considering the water elemental language was essentially singing it was entirely possible that he considered them one and the same.
“Mm. I got called in early to transcribe some meeting that…” He shifted his weight and slid his cell phone out his pocket. “That is now running twenty minutes behind. Guess I had time to go get coffee after all.”
“Or you could be in your office tidying up,” Charlie suggested with a chuckle.
Dani and I both laughed. In contrast with Charlie’s somewhat organized office, Dani’s was a chaotic mess of teetering towers of papers. I was pretty sure I spotted a pile of floppy disks once.
They really were opposites, from work habits to, well, everything. As red as Charlie’s hair was, Dani’s was midnight blue. He kept it trimmed short enough that it didn't get in the way, but long enough that if he ran his fingers through it got messed up, before falling neatly back into place. I wasn't entirely
sure that wasn't a siren trait. Unlike the red flames that flared in Charlie’s eyes, Dani’s ebbed and flowed like water with countless shades of blue, a dead giveaway that he was a water elemental.
Their eyes still fascinated me just as much as they had when we first met. I could remember a time when I couldn’t tell their moods at a glance, but now I nearly always knew exactly how they were feeling, which was a necessity when you were dealing with any elemental.
Eyes and hair aside, even though elementals looked nearly identical to humans, they weren't human. It was sometimes hard to remember, considering how human they seemed most of the time, but forgetting could be fatal. When they were hurt or angry, elementals could lose control to the point where they blacked out and had no memory of what was going on, often with disastrous consequences for anyone unlucky enough to be nearby.
Elementals could, and did, kill people when they lost control. Not even close friends were safe. It was common enough that different types of elemental had specific terms for when they lost control and now that I worked at MES, I knew that there were procedures in place to interview, and then basically pardon, an elemental who could prove that a death had occurred because they were out of control at the time.
I had seen both Dani and Charlie lose control in the past and it was terrifying. You'd think that a fire elemental would be the scariest; watching your friend burst into an inferno and kill a bunch of people – never mind they had been trying to kill us first – was pretty terrifying. But Charlie could only create fire within close proximity to him or control pre-existing fires that were farther away. Most people would still consider an erupting fire elemental to be more dangerous than a typhooning water elemental, since they didn't typically do much damage outside of the water. Dani however, was another story and the idea of him losing control was scarier to me than Charlie blacking out.
In addition to decades as a special agent with MES, Dani had served in the Legion, the magic branch of the military, and was usually armed with a couple of knives, if not his gun. Not that having access to weapons mattered, he also was proficient in multiple forms of martial arts and I was pretty sure he could kill me a hundred ways with one hand, if he were so inclined.
Although watching Dani sprawled over a chair, enduring some teasing about the state of his office, made it hard to remember what he was capable of.
“One of these days,” Charlie said, “you’re going to find a body instead of missing paperwork.”
“The offer for you to come burn it all is always open.” Dani’s chuckle turned into a groan as his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, then stood and stretched. “Time to listen in on a meeting.”
Charlie stood too, further highlighting their differences. Charlie was almost as short as me and somewhat stocky. Dani was easily a foot taller and lean and lithe.
“My shift will probably be over before you’re done,” Charlie said.
“Come say goodbye and rescue me.”
Charlie rolled his eyes fondly and hugged Dani. “I’ll see you tonight, Dan.”
“See you then, C. Later, Jen.” Dani waved and headed off to his office.
“I should probably get back to work,” I said.
“Meet you in the garage?” asked Charlie.
“Perfect.”
Once back at my desk, I finished up a fairly calm afternoon. When my workday was over I had just enough time to chat with Thomas and TS, arriving for their own shifts, in the parking garage before Charlie and Ember came to pick me up. Not long after they dropped me off at home, I got a stand by text from MES and my stomach dropped. I doubted I’d be called in, but the alert meant that Thomas, and TS and Dani, were probably going to have a long, potentially dangerous night.
Chapter Three
Thomas
After a brief visit with Jen in the parking garage, something I was still happily adjusting to, I settled into my desk and started prioritizing emails. Someone opened my door without knocking and the brine-tinged scent of water elemental hit my nose.
“Hey Danio,” I said, without taking my eyes off the screen. I did, however, glance at the clock on my taskbar. “You’re actually here on time.”
Dani chuckled and slung himself into the chair on the other side of my desk. “Mm-mm, I’ve been here for hours.” He said it, deliberately of course, in a way that made it impossible to tell if he really had been here for hours or if he just rolled in. Knowing full well I was waiting for clarification, he let me stew for a moment before offering, “Had to dust off my transcription skills for a meeting that took forever. And I didn’t understand a word, so it was boring as hell.”
Ah, so he had actually been here.
The water elemental ability to hear even the most subtle nuance in speech, combined with an incredibly complex writing system, made them skilled transcriptionists. They could even write down languages they didn’t speak and read them back as correctly as a native speaker. Even though technology had come a long way since Dani started off as a transcriptionist for MES, he was still faster and more accurate than any software.
I nodded. “Let’s hope for an easy night then.”
“Please.” He reached out and grabbed a to-go cup from our favorite coffee place off my desk.
“That’s not coffee.”
Danio arched an eyebrow at me and took a curious sniff. “Smells like it. Are you lying to me, so I don’t steal any?”
“You’re welcome to find out.”
Glaring at me suspiciously, he lifted the lid and stuck the tip of his finger in. His frown deepened as he swirled it around, testing the waters. Literally. I just waited.
“This is coffee!” he said. “You did lie to…” He froze, then slowly pulled out his finger, recapped my cup, and set it back on my desk. I tried to suppress a smirk as he cleared his throat and wiped his finger on his pants. He took a deep breath then cried, “You were going to let me drink that!”
I shrugged. “I told you it wasn’t coffee.”
“Yeah! Well, I didn’t think you were enhancing your cup of joe with a shot of… Joe!”
“Technically, that one is a Joanne,” I chuckled.
Danio groaned. “Lovely. That doesn’t make it better.”
I chuckled and took a sip of my enhanced coffee. There was a time I would have felt embarrassed drinking anything with blood in it in front of anyone. Then again there was also a time when I would have flat out refused to drink any sort of blood if I could taste it. Funny how things change.
He leaned back and propped his feet up on the corner of my desk. “So,” he said, gesturing toward my drink. “This is new.”
Okay, so maybe I felt a little embarrassed now. “Yeah,” I said with a shrug.
As it happened, it was very new. The first time in fact and a somewhat spontaneous choice. I was in line to get coffee behind another vampire who ordered his with a couple pumps of blood. I wasn't unfamiliar with the concept, but I never considered it before. While I waited to order I asked him if it was any good and he said he wouldn't drink coffee any other way anymore. So, I figured, why not? I had to admit the added rush from the blood coupled with my favorite latte was delicious.
“How is it?” Danio asked.
I cleared my throat and admitted, “It's actually pretty good. Want some?” I added with a grin.
He snorted. “I'll pass.”
It occurred to me that even though I was becoming comfortable feeding in front of him, he might not feel the same way. “You don't mind, do you?” I asked. “I mean if you're uncomfortable at all… you know, with the drinking blood…”
Danio shook his head. “The only thing I'm uncomfortable with is that now I can't steal your coffee and I have to drink the nasty stuff in the break room.”
“How terrible for you.” I took another sip and absentmindedly started scrolling through emails.
“Good for you.” Danio said.
I glanced up at him curiously. “What?”
“Good for you,” he repeated, nodd
ing toward my coffee. “You've come a long way.”
Even after I stopped hating myself for being a vampire, I couldn’t bring myself to embrace it. Sure, I grudgingly accepted it for a few decades, but it wasn't until the last couple of years – thanks to a new outlook on life and some amazing support and encouragement from Jen – that I really started allowing myself to enjoy some of the perks. It felt sort of weird after decades of denying it, but I felt like I was finally starting to feel comfortable in my own skin again. Strange as it was to think, I was actually really enjoying being a vampire.
I flashed Danio grateful smile. “Yeah. I guess I have.”
He hadn't known me at my worst, but I had still been pretty messed up when we met. He was wrestling with his own demons at the time and the two of us hit it off right away. Quite honestly I wasn't sure that either one of us would have gotten to where we were now without the help of the other and knowing that he approved of my new unconventional coffee made me happy.
“And how are you?” I asked, shooting him a look that made it clear I was probing a little deeper than just typical small talk.
He shrugged. “I'm doing pretty good.” His eyes churned in annoyance. “Do you have any idea how many aquatic wedding venues there are around here?”
“Do you have any idea you're marrying a fire elemental?” I retorted.
He rolled his eyes. “Tell that to my mother. Please.”
I laughed. “I thought she was usually obnoxiously over-accommodating of Charlie's needs.”
“Usually,” he snorted in annoyance. “But apparently she thinks our wedding requires an obscene amount of water. And while I typically enjoy obscene amounts of water I prefer them, you know, not all over my boyfriend.”
“You mean your fiancé,” I corrected.
“Yeah, I'm still getting used to that.”
“You've been engaged for five years.”
“And we were dating for twenty-five. Give me a break.”
I chuckled and took another sip of my coffee before returning to my emails. Dani pulled out his phone and fiddled with it as I worked.
Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 3