Iota wolf shifter Emma Singer was a brand-new hire at the Muskegon Choice Buy store. She hadn’t even met her new boss Dr. Light, when Brant tried to kill her for the first time.
“Can I help you, Emma?” Brant said brightly.
Emma paused squaring up boxes of phone accessories to consider the teenage boy. She and Brant were the only two trainees, wearing salmon-pink polo shirts instead of Choice-Buy blue.
He stood there beaming, a big industrial metal push broom in one too-big hand. As eager as a puppy.
All hands and feet, he was as coordinated as a puppy, too. She’d only been on the job a week, but she’d already cleaned up after him several times.
“Well…”
“Please?”
Emma heaved a sigh. The store manager, who’d been out of state when she was hired, returned tomorrow. Today needed all hands on deck getting the store spiffed up for his return.
“Okay.” She gestured at a fallen headset blister pack. “Why don’t you pick that up and find its proper place—”
“Thanks!” He scooped up the headset and rammed it onto an already full rod. The clip holding the rod to the display board broke loose. A dozen headsets tumbled onto the floor, one after the other like lemmings.
The boy’s face fell. “Awww. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I know you didn’t.” Emma shuffled through the mess of blister packs to pat the teen’s arm gently.
“Ms. Singer!”
Shoulders tightening, Emma leaned out from behind Brant to see a sturdy blonde woman staring in horror at the mess.
Carol Palmer was the Assistant Manager. With silver hairs glinting among the blonde, in her Choice Buy blue polo shirt, she looked more like a professional golfer than a store manager. But she’d hired Emma, and had, in fact, put her professional reputation on the line for doing it. “I shouldn’t be hiring you, Emma. Dr. Light likes to screen all applicants himself. But he’s away right now.”
“Dr. Light’s coming back tomorrow.” Carol briefly covered her eyes. “We don’t have time for messes or mistakes.”
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Palmer. I’ll clean it up right away.”
“Good.” Heaving a stressed sigh, the woman squared her shoulders then trotted toward the next section of the store.
With a grimace, Emma picked up the rod, set it back into its clip, and hooked it to the display board. Fishing the nearest headset from the pile, she slid it carefully onto the rod.
“I can help!” Brant scooped up an armful of blister packs and hustled the heap toward the rod as if he’d shove them all on at once.
“Wait!” With a panicked yip, Emma barred him with her arm, half-shifted for strength. Her inner wolf was showing, but she was desperate to stop the boy, not only from another messy disaster, but from enthusiastically impaling himself on the rod.
He tottered back a step, his gaze bewildered.
“Why don’t you let me reload the headsets?” She willed herself to move her arm away. “You can hold them for me if you want.”
“That would help you?” Brant asked eagerly.
A twinge of sympathy hit her. The teen only wanted to be useful—just like her.
We’re only trying to please people…because nobody really wants us.
She put a lid on the thought. “Yes,” she told the boy firmly. “That will help me a lot.”
Giving him an encouraging smile, Emma took a blister pack from the pile in his arms and threaded it onto the rod.
“So, Emma, do you think Dr. Light will give us our blue shirts when he comes back?”
“Make us real employees? We can hope.” Emma, urgently needing work to provide for her widowed mother, had moved out of state to find a job. She’d been on the verge of accepting a menial, minimum wage position because it was available. Carol had offered her a six-month temp-to-hire contract with Choice Buy. Clean, well-run, good pay, plus her affinity for tech? Emma had snapped it up.
Loading the last blister pack onto its rod with great care, she considered what to do next. Face product—which she’d learned meant bring packages to the front of the shelf and lining them up without gaps—in the phone aisle? See if she could bang out a few laptop setups? She’d been trained on those.
But no, she’d probably better make sure Brant didn’t get into any more trouble. “Thanks again, Brant. You really helped…” She looked up to see the teen’s back disappearing around the corner of the display, the broom in one hand.
Curious and a little worried, she followed.
The shelves here were cut out, leaving an open area of floorspace. It was where the store displayed the big-ticket items.
Carol was fussing around the display table, extracting something from a Russian-stack-dolls’ worth of boxes, tape, and packing peanuts. The Assistant Manager was fretting to herself. “Careful, Carol! Be careful.”
Extracting a thin blade of plastic, the size and shape of a thick phone protector, she gently set it on the table.
Emma edged closer. Either that was one pricey phone shield, or it was something new.
“Why today?” Carol muttered a groan. “It wasn’t supposed to arrive until Dr. Light got back.” She glanced at Emma and must’ve realized she could hear her because her cheeks went ruddy. She spun and clapped her hands. “Gather up, people!”
Blue-shirted employees scuttled in, their curious eyes drawn immediately to the thin plastic rectangle resting on the display.
“Hush! This is important.” Carol continued when they quieted, “This is a phone—with a five-thousand-dollar price tag.”
Eyes all around her went wide.
“It’s called the Wrapphone, made of bendable glass, this is the first commercially available wearable phone—potentially worth billions.”
Emma’s breath sucked in.
“We are stratospherically honored to be the site chosen to test market this phone. It even has a Holographic keyboard!” She plucked the thing off its stand and demonstrated, smoothing it into a cuff around her wrist then swiping until a keyboard made of light hovered just over her arm.
Gasps popped all around Emma. Eyes got even bigger and a few filled with tears.
“But you can still use it like a regular phone.” Carol swiped back to deactivate the keyboard, pulled it off her wrist, and held it up to her ear to illustrate.
“Cool! Are all the Choice Buys selling it?” one employee asked.
“No. Nobody is because this is a prototype.” She glared around the ring of blue-shirted employees. “The only one in existence until the company’s manufacturing gets up to speed. They’re seeing how many people might want to order it at this price point. We get to be the test market because Dr. Light has mega-connections. So if you screw this up…” Her gaze stopped to nail Brant.
He only beamed at her. But Emma shifted uncomfortably on her feet.
“Nobody touches this until you’re trained. For now, any customer inquiries, come find me. Okay, now I’m going to lock this onto the display, and…damn.” Carol hunted around the slanted plate that would hold the phone. Emma realized the curly steel security cable wasn’t there. “I’m going to get the lock and be right back. No one touch this. Don’t even breathe on it.”
As Carol went to get the lock for the display, the rest of the employees dispersed.
Except for Brant, who stood with his industrial-sized metal broom, fingers flexing thoughtfully, staring at the empty boxes and packing peanuts that Carol had left on the floor. “Look at this mess. Ms. Palmer would want me to clean it up.”
Emma put up a cautionary hand. “Maybe we should wait to ask Ms. Palmer…”
He’d already swirled into enthusiastic sweeping. Dust and packing peanuts went flying.
One especially exuberant spin hit the lowest shelf of phones. Models went flying.
Emma lunged toward the phones, hoping she could catch a few before they hit the thinly carpeted concrete floor—until she saw she had bigger problems.
The broom had jounced off the shelf, sailing straight into the air—on a direct collision course with the five-thousand-dollar Wrapphone.
Emma did the only thing she could. She twisted her body mid-lunge, trying to intercept Brant’s broom.
At the same time Brant, his expression almost comically horrified, tried to avoid hitting her—by pulling the broom down.
The metal head, which should have hit her hands, whacked her in the skull.
Sharp pain exploded in her brain, her ears ringing a moment later with the aftershock. She landed in a stumble, nearly hitting the Wrapphone herself.
If she hadn’t been a shifter, with unnaturally fast healing, she’d have had a concussion or worse. He isn’t trying to kill me, she told herself. Really.
“Emma!” Brant dropped the broom and rushed her. “Are you all right?”
He tripped over his own big feet and blundered into her. She stumbled back into the table. The display holding the Wrapphone tottered.
Or maybe he is trying to kill me. If only by proxy, because if the phone fell and broke, Carol would wring Emma’s neck.
Calling on her wolf, Emma grabbed the gangly teen in a tight hug then gave her whole body a prodigious twist. Their momentum sent them crashing into the rest of the phones on display. Plastic clattered and popped, along with a few teeth-shredding snaps.
Carol returned, jaw agape, lock cord dangling from her hand.
Emma smiled weakly at her. “Um, the Wrapphone’s okay.”
Carol’s eyes clenched and Emma could almost see her teeth spark from grinding them so hard. Then older woman’s lids opened, and she said in that honeyed tone all retailers learn to disguise their true feelings, “Brant, would you go back to the break room and…and count the napkins? Make sure we have enough?”
“Right away, Ms. Palmer!” Brant saluted—with the broom still in his hand. Emma threw up both forearms and barely saved herself a beaning. The impact smacked into her bones and vibrated down her skeleton.
“Hand me the broom, Brant. Gently.” Carol took the pole from him before he dashed away.
Emma hugged her arms to her. “I’m sorry about this, Ms. Palmer.”
“No, it’s my fault.” The woman’s gaze followed the boy as he disappeared. “But you need to remember—Dr. Light comes back tomorrow. He uses these cute breakfast-style swears, but make no mistake. Gabriel Light is as smart and strong as they come.” Her gaze came to Emma, and caution sat there. “He’ll make the final decision regarding your hire.”
Emma swallowed hard. Carol was reminding her Gabriel Light liked to screen his own hires.
And if he saw anything like this…
“I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“Good.”