6
Arguing with a vampire over office policy is generally pointless. They can outlive you, and really, when one party is alive and the other is dead, right or wrong doesn’t matter much.
—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace
Three days later, Sammy Palona, a permanent “coffee and sandwich” guy, was appointed to keep us humans from needing to leave the office during work hours. He set up a mini-deli in the human break room and kept a constantly circulating batch of espresso flowing to the overnight crowd. Also, there were several new video cameras installed in the parking lot, but I wasn’t sure if that was Nik’s doing or Cal’s. Neither one of them wanted me wandering around darkened streets at night.
But Sammy was a perfectly nice, enormous Samoan guy who knew his way around a skinny peppermint mocha, so I wasn’t going to complain about my brother-in-law and/or vampire crush’s possible interference in my workspace. Sammy’s genius did not extend to sushi, however, so I continued to bring my own vampire-prepared California rolls from home. I even kept a bottle of soy sauce with my name on it in our office’s “nonblood” mini-fridge. I liked to think of it as marking my place as an official Council staffer.
Of course, Ophelia had refused to meet with me twice so far when I’d asked to talk to her about my position as project leader. Both times, she had been unavailable. I tried to tell myself it was because of her busy schedule, but I was sure it had more to do with Jamie than a jam-packed day planner.
Oddly enough, her assistant, Margaret, had wandered in every night, shuffling through our archive files. She seemed to be looking for something. But when we asked her if she needed help, she got this weird deer-in-the-headlights look on her face and scuttled out of the room.
The project seemed to be flowing easily into the initial stages. We’d divided up our tasks and were scheduled to start testing that Friday using a program created by our regional manager. And as much as I enjoyed my work, I hadn’t seen Nik in almost a week, and frankly, I was getting a little twitchy. After his initial, blatant violation of the embargo, he’d kept his word to Cal, not calling, not coming by the house or ambushing me outside my office. And even though he’d had a meeting with Ophelia, he’d managed to get in and out of the office without seeing me. I lived in a Nik-free bubble. This, of course, meant that he occupied most of my waking thoughts. I wondered where he was, what he was doing, where he was staying in the Hollow.
I threw myself into work for a distraction. My skin went paler and paler as I spent my nights glued to my monitor, music blasting into my headphones as I wove coding magic. I was living on fancy coffee and sushi. And despite the fact that I was getting plenty of sleep during the day, the disruption of my circadian rhythms left me with dark circles under my eyes. I was starting to look like a vampire, albeit a vampire of below-average hotness. And no, no matter how many folders I searched through, I did not see information on living descendants Nik might have.
Meanwhile, I was getting past that awkward “I think we might get along, but you could also secretly be a colossal jerk” phase with my new coworkers. The problem with working in the IT field was that when you grouped a bunch of superintelligent people used to being the “weird kids” in their classes, they tended to try to outdo one another in their “out-there-ness.” Marty was on a “brain-boosting” diet of quinoa and wild-caught salmon and therefore refused to eat anything that his mother hadn’t packed for him. Aaron kept zombie-apocalypse supplies in his desk, just in case. Jordan regularly waged war between her My Little Pony and Dr. Who figurines on her coffee breaks. The Ponies always won, crushing the pretend sonic screwdrivers under their ruthless plastic hooves.
Fortunately, I’d spent most of my formative years as a member of the jock semipopular crowd, so I was used to the sort of diplomacy required to navigate interpersonal insanity. Pony carnage aside, I enjoyed spending time with Jordan. At first, I thought she didn’t like me, based on her multiple eye rolls on the first day. But I eventually figured out that was her basic mode of communication. One eye roll meant she thought something was a good idea. Two eye rolls meant she was doubtful. A full three eye rolls meant she thought you were an idiot.
But since she only gave me two eye rolls when I told her I was a Ninth Doctor girl, I considered us friends.
Marty was a mixed bag. Sometimes he could be downright sweet, dropping a handful of my favorite mini Reese’s peanut butter cups off on my desk or bringing me a Wired article he thought I would like. He friended me on Facebook and occasionally left me links to funny YouTube videos on my wall. And there were other times, like when he called me Gladiola or when he insisted on walking me to my car, even when I asked him not to, when he was sort of irritating. I figured it was all part of the grown-up workplace experience, finding ways to cooperate with people who grated on your nerves, even though you spent more time with them than you did with your family.
Aaron had this thing where he pretended to be lazy and sketchy, but he was actually a very talented programmer. He managed to cut through the layers of bull to find the real problem before the rest of us could grasp what was going on. He just didn’t want to be in a leadership position. It took up too much time when he could be doing actual work. I had to admire that about him.
Besides my warren mates and Sammy the coffee god, I didn’t see many of our coworkers on a daily basis. Each office had its function and seemed to work as its own little biosphere of productivity. I ventured out of my office for runs to Sammy for coffee and to the copy room, and that was about it. On one such expedition, I was scurrying down the hall from the copy room and happened to pass Ophelia’s partially open office door.
“What do you mean, it’s ‘missing’?” Ophelia shrieked.
I stopped in my tracks. She sounded displeased, and by displeased, I mean volcanically angry. As scary as she was in everyday interactions, it was pretty unusual to hear her raise her voice. Ophelia was more of a “let your anatomically elaborate threats do your talking for you” kind of gal.
“I don’t know where it could have gone, Miss Lambert,” Margaret whimpered. “The last time I saw a red file, it was on your desk, waiting to be returned to the archive. That’s the only one I’ve seen since I started working here. Normally, they’re kept in the special archives.”
“I know that they’re normally kept in the special archives, Margaret. The fact that the folder is red indicates that it’s a record of some importance. You find that file, Margaret. I won’t even bother to threaten you with the consequences of not finding it. Just have it on my desk before you outlive your usefulness.”
Cringing, I backed away from the door, hoping I could escape before Margaret emerged and I had to make awkward “I heard you getting your ass handed to you” eye contact.
“How was it spelled again?” Margaret asked, her voice quivering.
“Linoge,” Ophelia spat. “L-I-N-O-G-E.”
I froze.
Linoge, as in the red folder I’d found in the archive stack on my first day of work? As in the file folder still tucked away in the recesses of my desk, Linoge? As in the vampire who was executed for “excessive feeding” due to his girlfriend’s evil magical influence? That Linoge?
A familiar sensation buzzed through my brain, the click of puzzle pieces falling into alignment. Linoge was executed for violent, out-of-character behavior linked to magic. Nik was experiencing violent, out-of-character behavior, which, frankly, stank of magical whammy. Could the two vampires be linked? Could I get some clues to Nik’s memory issues if I could figure out how Linoge was cursed?
I needed to get back to my desk. Now.
I motored down the quiet, gray hallway as quickly as I could, while still appearing casual. I opened the door to find an empty office. All the desks were empty. The muffled strains of Sia rang out from Jordan’s abandoned My Little Pony headphones.
Well, this was incredibly creepy. Maybe my team members had decided to take their own simultaneous smoke breaks . . . after simultaneously suddenly deciding to take up smoking? Still, I was grateful for the chance to retrieve the folder from my desk without making my coworkers liabilities . . . I mean, witnesses.
That still sounded wrong.
I opened the drawer where I’d stashed the binder containing the file. I scanned the paperwork, but it was just as skimpy with information as it had been the first time I read it. Basic information about Linoge only, no hints to who or where his descendants were. I wasn’t even sure if it was worth holding on to the file, except that it irritated Ophelia, and that was sort of fun. But something told me to hide it away, to keep it as some sort of leverage against my mercurial boss, just in case. I wasn’t dumb enough to steal Council property and take it home, so I shoved it into a drawer, under my lady supplies and contact solution, and prayed that no one would see it.
Right, so where did this leave me?
I needed to find more information about Linoge. Given the somewhat, let’s say, “creative” information-storage methods used by the Council, it was more than likely that there was another file on Linoge on the server completely unrelated to his kin, probably something to do with taxes or flossing habits or something. I couldn’t use my own computer now that the network administrators had assigned us all IDs and done away with the generalized “new employee” login. I would imagine that the IT staff would ask why I was looking at areas of the server I had no business opening, searching for a file I shouldn’t know existed. And using my coworkers’ stations was weasely and mean.
Right, accessing scary vampire networks without it being traced back to me or my computer. Something to ponder. For now, I needed to do some actual work so I didn’t get fired before I could do something that could get me murdered or, at least, scolded in a stern fashion.
I’d no sooner logged back into the server when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped about a foot, throwing my coffee cup aside and knocking it into my wastebasket. And somehow I did it without spilling a drop. God bless lids.
“Whoa,” Aaron said, jumping back from me, hands raised. “You’re right. It was bad coffee.” Aaron sent a mocking glare into the wastebasket. “Bad coffee.”
“Sorry, a little too much caffeine today,” I said, laughing nervously. “What’s up?”
Aaron brushed his hair out of his eyes long enough to look distinctly uncomfortable. He opened his mouth as if to speak and then stopped, dashed over to the office door, and shut it. “I don’t want to break the unspoken rules about office tattling.”
My eyes went wide. Crap. He knew about my file hoarding.
I cleared my throat, willing my blood to go back into my facial muscles so I could appear nonchalant. “I don’t think those are an actual thing.”
He grimaced. “It’s just that Marty accidentally saved a copy of the file he’s been working on in my folder on the server. And I was curious.”
Relief flooded through me, like sipping a hot drink after feeling cold for days, and I was able to smile and appear truly nonchalant. “Because you’re competitive and wanted to know if you’re better than he is,” I said, my tone teasing.
“No comment,” he said primly. He nudged me aside gently to open his server folder on my computer.
“If you give me a virus, there will be consequences,” I told him.
Aaron snickered. “Anyway, I went over this section of code that Marty just finished, and it’s not working. It’s like he isn’t even using the same language we are.”
“What?” I scoffed. “That can’t be right.”
I opened Marty’s work and ran it through the test program that would show what the final results would look like live. And the result was gobbledygook. Just a bunch of random letters.
“Wow, that’s a steaming-hot mess,” I marveled. “Maybe he’s just nervous? Sometimes when I’m feeling uneasy, it puts me off my game.”
Aaron shook his head. “Almost every file in his work folder is like this.”
“What are you doing opening all of his files?” I asked him seriously.
“No comment,” he said again, clicking as many server folders as my monitor would allow.
“You’ve got to wonder how he got the job,” Aaron murmured, as each piece of Marty’s work failed the testing program.
“Uh, yeah, I barely got the job, and I’m competent,” I grumbled. Beyond the initial test to prove that I’d mastered basic programming, Ophelia had locked me in an outdated archive and asked me to find the living descendants of Geraldine Dvorak, who was not, in fact, a vampire but the actress who played Dracula’s bride in the Bela Lugosi classics. I was only allowed to use the resources in the room, which did not include a computer—which I’d found a little odd, considering that I was being hired for a programming position. I’d only managed to find the answer because Ophelia failed to pat me down for my smartphone. “Hey, speaking of which, how did you get past Ophelia’s insane test?”
Aaron shrugged. “All she asked us to do was Google a few names and find some descendants’ addresses and then pass a basic programming test. I basically got the job based on my professors’ recommendations.”
“You were allowed to use a computer?”
Aaron’s sharp black brows furrowed. “Yes.”
“You didn’t have to complete her insane challenge?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” I clenched my fist and shook it at the ceiling. “Ophelia!”
“Well, insane tangents aside, if Marty keeps this up, we’re going to have to redo his work on top of doing all of our own. It’s going to put us way behind on our schedule and make it impossible for us to meet the deadline.”
“That sounds like the voice of a mature, involved employee, and yet I am distracted by the Bieber haircut,” I said, shaking my head as I saved copies of Marty’s work to my folders.
“This is not a Bieber cut,” he insisted, pointing at his carefully shagged, inky black hair. “I had this haircut way before Justin Bieber.”
“A hipster and a Bieber!” I gasped.
“OK, now I’m giving you viruses on principle,” he told me.
“I’ll talk to Ophelia about Marty.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “When?”
“What time frame will prevent you from uploading cyber-herpes into my hard drive?” I asked.
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 and 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.”