by Molly Harper
“Why not just pull it out?” Jordan said quietly.
I shook my head. “Later,” I murmured. Jordan nodded and leaned back in her seat, keeping her mouth clamped shut.
Thanks to a youth misspent around vampires, I knew exactly why Ophelia didn’t yank the fang. Crushing it was more painful. The nerve ending in the root would remain, but since fangs were the one part of the vampire that didn’t regenerate, the tooth would never grow back. The exposed nerve would remain raw and alive, flaring painfully with every brush or bump. And when he was hungry or stimulated, his “phantom” fangs would extend, which would be even more excruciating. Unless it was capped—which I was sure Ophelia wouldn’t allow—it would go on for years, an eternity of relentless, throbbing pain.
Over copy paper.
My new boss was evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.
“That will be all, Mr. McNichol. You will be continuing your employment, without pay, for the next six months. At the end of the six-month period, we will review your performance. If it is considered subpar, you will be terminated.”
“Somehow, I don’t think she means ‘fired,’ ” Marty whispered sotto voce. I shushed him, patting his arm. When I looked up, Nik was frowning again.
Mr. Crown dragged a groaning Joseph from the dais. Ophelia turned a relatively pleasant smile on the audience, and all of the summer employees practically recoiled in their seats. “Now, just a reminder, please respect the assigned parking spaces. If you do not have an assigned space, there’s a reason. If you don’t like the situation, work harder. Do not touch items in the office refrigerators that do not belong to you. If it’s not your blood, don’t drink it. Friday is College Shirt Day. You will be permitted to wear a T-shirt or sweatshirt advertising your alma mater, and blue jeans, which is an exception to our usual dress code. I know you will all gladly participate in this frivolity. That will be all. Please have a pleasant, productive evening.”
The auditorium was completely silent. None of us dared move, afraid it would draw Ophelia’s attention.
“Get back to work!” she barked. “Now.”
Suddenly invigorated, we rose from our seats and scrambled over one another to get back to our offices.
“Well, I guess I should take that red stapler out of my messenger bag, huh?” Marty joked.
I jostled his arm. “Shh, Marty, now’s not the time for snark. The creatures with the superhearing will not appreciate your special brand of coping humor.”
“What did we just see?” Aaron whispered fiercely. “What the hell was that?”
I pressed my finger to my lips again and shook my head, because discretion was necessary and because I just didn’t know. Why the spectacle over stolen office supplies? Why not just handle Joseph’s theft in a less humiliating fashion? Was it some sort of demonstration for the summer kids? Was Ophelia trying to show us what happened to Council employees who stepped out of line? Or was this more personal? Ophelia had mentioned over and over what happened to “people who take from me.” Was she referring to Jamie in a none-too-subtle way? Was she planning to crush my teeth with pliers for helping her boyfriend fill out college applications?
That seemed like an overreaction.
I glanced over my shoulder down the hall, to where Nik stood, watching as I herded my teammates into our office. His expression was the very definition of inscrutable. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or intrigued or trying to figure out a way to jump me again. Either way, I shut my office door in his face, which was probably rude, but I was team leader. I felt an obligation to protect my underlings and their canine teeth.
Marty seemed completely unmoved by the display in the amphitheater. He plopped down in his office chair and slipped on his headphones as if nothing had happened. Aaron and Jordan, on the other hand, were shaky and pale. Jordan leaned against her desk, arms crossed, chewing nervously on her thumbnail.
“Is it wrong that I’m on the verge of freaking the hell out and walking away?” Aaron asked. “I mean, what the hell was that? We joke around about vampires, ‘Haha, they’ll kill you if your parallel parking offends them.’ Because for years, that was supposed to be how they solved their problems—violence, violence, violence. But that was . . . over office supplies? That just seems petty and weird.”
“I know that guy was a thief, but I felt so bad for him,” Jordan said. “I don’t know if I feel safe here now. What if I accidentally eat someone’s Hot Pocket? They might waterboard me.”
“Look, you two, I understand that you’re shaken up. That’s normal, expected, evidence that you have a soul—which, as someone who shares a very small office space with you, I find very comforting. But this, this imbalanced, paranoid thing, this is exactly why Ophelia pulled that stunt. She wants you to worry, to overanalyze every decision you make for fear of stepping the tiniest bit out of line. She wants to scare you into being a model employee. You know how they say that on the first day of prison, you should find the biggest guy in the room and kick his ass, for intimidation’s sake? Well, this is like prison. We are working in a version of Oz with no full-frontal Christopher Meloni but better AV equipment. You just have to decide if that’s something you can tolerate.”
“How are you so calm about this?” Aaron asked.
“I’ve lived with a vampire for the past couple of years. Some of my best friends—and family—are vampires. I’m used to their tendency toward violent hyperbole. I don’t necessarily like it, but I’ve learned to deal with it, because, overall, vampires are people just like us. And while some of them are card-carrying psychos, some of them are pretty awesome. You just have to tread carefully around them until you figure out which type you’re dealing with. But you have to decide for yourselves what you’re willing to accept. If you have any questions or concerns, I’m here for you. At least, I will be, after I go and get you some morale-building caffeine.”
“You’re getting us coffee?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah, my treat. There’s a good place across the street, far superior to the swill they serve in the break room,” I said, grabbing my purse from my desk drawer. I’d become quite familiar with the Perk-U-Later, the little independent coffee shop adjacent to the Council office. After she’d started Beeline, Iris had parked me there on the rare occasion she had to stop by the office while I was with her. She didn’t want teenage me anywhere near the vampire hierarchy.
Which, of course, turned out to be pointless, because I was sort of a pain in the ass, in terms of little sisters.
“We face a moral crisis, and she’s getting us free coffee?” Aaron muttered.
“We definitely picked the right team leader,” Jordan whispered back.
• • •
Balancing a purse on one arm and four not-cheap coffee drinks in a flimsy foam carrier with the other wasn’t as easy as it sounded. As I made my way across the darkened downtown street, I was convinced that the weight of Jordan’s drink, which was more than half sugar, was throwing off my equilibrium. I’d almost made it to the staff entrance when a voice sounded from a startlingly close distance behind me. “Miss Scanlon.”
I jumped, dropping the coffee carrier. Nik’s hands shot out with lightning speed and caught it without spilling a drop. He grinned down at me, his stupid perfect white teeth lighting up his whole stupid perfect face. And I felt all of those reasonable, nonsuicidal instincts melt like the now nonexistent whipped cream on my coworkers’ coffees. He was towering over me, trapping me between his body and the grimy brick wall opposite the staff entrance. He wore a blinding-white button-up shirt that perfectly framed the hollow of his throat. It had been easy to stay somewhat emotionally neutral when he was up on the dais, but now, up close . . . I felt badass for not swooning.
I wondered if it would send the wrong message to trace a near-stranger’s throat-hollow with my tongue.
Probably.
More than likely.
These lattes were never going to make it to my coworkers.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” I told him in the sternest tone I could muster.
“Do you always do what you are supposed to do?”
“When advice involves warnings like ‘Stay away from the guy who assaulted you in a parking lot,’ I give it a courtesy listen. Particularly after I see you standing in as Ophelia’s guard dog at the world’s scariest staff meeting.”
“I am no one’s dog,” he said, his voice a low purr.
“You’re right. Dogs are loyal, guileless creatures. You strike me as more of a cat person,” I retorted.
“I do not know how to interpret that.”
“Good. After all the messed-up, potentially scarring things I’ve seen today, I think leaving you confused and off-balance is the only thing that has the potential to make me happy.”
“You are prickly when you are flustered, are you not?”
I stared at him, wondering whether I could get to my hairbrush stake before he realized why I was digging around in my purse. And yes, I recognized that this was a wide swing of the pendulum from wanting to lick his Adam’s apple. I blamed hormones and mild dental PTSD.
“So what are we going to do?” he asked. “With you barred from speaking to me and me unable to remember you?” When he saw my eyebrows shoot up, he hastily added, “To my overwhelming regret.”
I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t trust him. Obviously, I found Nik interesting. I wanted to know more about him, without having to break Council computer-use policies. So I was willing to spend more time around him, as long as I was heavily armed.
“Have you had episodes like this before? Memory loss, blackouts, random fits of violence against an unsuspecting and undeserving target?”
“No.”
“Do you think you’re sick? Or brain-damaged?”
“You know, in five hundred years, you are the first human to ask me that,” he growled, his voice gravelly and low.
“Oh, don’t try to pull the hostile-vampire routine now,” I told him. “Once I stab you, it sort of takes away your mystique.”
“I doubt I am brain-damaged,” he deadpanned. “But it is not as if I can get a diagnostic scan. My brain does not run on the same electrical impulses as yours. Besides, this whole situation stinks of the supernatural. So where does that leave us?”
“I have no idea,” I said, shaking my head. “This is a situation that defies even your twisty vampire logic.”
He smirked. “True. I do not know how it is possible that I do not remember being sent to your college campus to, er, intervene on Cal’s behalf. But I read back over my letters and found—”
“Wait, did you say letters?”
“Yes, letters. Correspondence. It is what people have used to stay in contact for centuries.”
“Yes, but now they have this thing called the Internet, and we use it to send the electronic version of letters. They’re called e-mails. They work faster and kill fewer trees.”
“I know about e-mails.” He sniffed. “I do not trust them. You never know if they have arrived, and they are too easy to access by hacksters.”
“Hackers,” I corrected.
“I have adjusted to modern conveniences enough to buy a cell phone. That is enough.”
“So you haul around a huge briefcase full of letters with you.” I snorted. “That makes way more sense. Let me guess, you run Netscape Navigator on your laptop, huh?”
Nik frowned.
“You don’t have a laptop?” I cried. “Even Cal has a laptop! What are you, a Luddite?”
“My work requires more hands-on involvement. I manage my professional and personal life with less fuss and fewer means to track me. We are wandering away from the point,” he reminded me. “According to my letters, Cal requested that I visit your campus, and there is a reply from me, promising that I would, so I must have done it. I would not have broken my word to Cal.”
“So you don’t remember anything about me?”
“I do not remember anything about the month of December,” he said. “Nothing. And that is not normal. Usually, I spend Christmas tucked away at some remote cabin with a . . .”
There went my eyebrow again. “Yes?”
“A carefully selected, special lady friend,” he said, clearing his throat. “But I do not remember that. I do not remember anything around that time. I do not know what is happening to me. But I think you are the key to finding out.”
“So that’s why you want to spend time with me? So you can figure out your Swiss-cheese memory? That’s flattering.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he was looking at my earrings, the little flowers made of moonstone, the same earrings I’d admired in a shop window right before my forgotten kiss with Nik. The same earrings that mysteriously showed up on our front porch on Christmas, right after my forgotten kiss with Nik. The same earrings I’d worn almost every day since, because I thought they meant something. His brow furrowed, as if he was concentrating on them. “Those are pretty baubles. Were they a gift?”
“You don’t remember them?”
He frowned. “No, should I?”
My heart sank. “No.”
I’d assumed that he’d given me the earrings. But what if it had been someone else? What if it was Cal or Jane, and I just hadn’t thanked them? Now I felt foolish and rude.
“Why does that make you so sad?” he asked. “I hate that I could be the one putting that heartbreaking expression on your face.”
“It would be really hard to explain,” I told him. “And it would cost me a lot.”
“How?”
“In terms of my dignity?” I laughed. “How would you like it if you’d had this knee-trembling, paradigm-shifting kiss with someone, and they didn’t even remember it?”
“In my defense, you know nothing of my life, my history. And I doubt very much that Cal has told you anything of interest.”
I nodded. “I know that you enjoy biting people, and your name sounds Russian.”
He smirked. “Maybe that is all you need to know.”
“That wasn’t an answer.” When he gave me a blithe, maddeningly confident smile, I poked him in the ribs—really hard.
He yowled. “And you complain about my fits of violence?” But he grinned—a real, amused expression of joy—and his face looked vaguely human.
“How about, for everything you tell me about yourself, I will grant you information.” Said smile became downright filthy, so I added, “Nothing dirty. And just one question, because I have to get back to work.”
“Who was that boy you were sitting with at the meeting?”
“That’s the one you went with?” I asked, leaning closer to him, not entirely unaware that it made the dip in my camisole fall open just a little bit, exposing a hint of cleavage. “Of all of the depths you could have plumbed, of all of the dark secrets you could have asked me to share, you picked ‘Who was that boy?’ ”
“Well, now that you mention it.” His tongue swept over his bottom lip as if he was reconsidering, and then he added quickly, “Yes, that is what I want to know.”
We engaged in a facial-expression standoff, in which I squinted at him and he did not appear to be affected by my scrutiny at all. This would be so much easier if he was some alpha-male tool. But here he was, being all charming and rakish, and rakish vampires seemed to be my kryptonite.
I blamed Iris and her stash of romance novels for my even knowing what the word “rakish” meant. I rolled my eyes and told him, “ ‘That boy’ is Marty. He works in my department. And for wasting your request on a boy who doesn’t mean anything to either of us, I should be allowed to silver-spray you again.”
“Or, instead, we could do this,” he said, bending his head toward me, and gently brushed his lips across mine. I stiffened, lips parting as I
gasped against his mouth. He took advantage, sliding his tongue between my lips and teasing my own into a slow, tangling dance.
After a long moment, I pulled back. “You remember anything yet?”
He shook his head, ducking to recapture my mouth. He pulled my bottom lip between his teeth, nibbling lightly. I moaned, wrinkling the hell out of his shirt as I gripped it and pulled him closer to me. I could feel his fangs growing into sharp little points, scraping against my lip. My breath caught as a tiny bead of blood welled up and he lapped it away with his tongue.
He growled, palming my hip in his hand and pushing me against the wall. My cardigan rode up, and my back scraped against the brick, but that only put my nerves on edge. Every neuron seemed to fire at once, making everything I felt ten times more intense. His mouth worked at the little wound on my lip, his movements becoming quicker and more frantic.
I couldn’t do this, right? I couldn’t just make out with a vampire right outside my office door. I was sure there were security cameras around somewhere, and this was not the sort of thing I wanted getting back to Ophelia. Not to mention, I didn’t want to get a reputation as a willing fang-bunny among my undead colleagues. Plus, the man didn’t even own a laptop. How was I going to find common ground with someone who was neither a PC nor a Mac guy? We were doomed.
Right, OK, I’ll push him away in three . . . two . . . just one more kiss . . . Seriously, this is the last one. The next-to-last one.
Finally, I pushed him away, and he was panting, staring at my mouth with the sort of hunger that tested my knees’ resolve all over again.
And the repeat performance of the paradigm-twirling kiss was interrupted by the screech of tires. The Dorkmobile, Iris’s bright yellow minivan, emblazoned with the Beeline logo, was barreling down the street toward us.
