by Molly Harper
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Groveling is sadder and involves more crying and promises of one-sided sexual favors.”
Despite my desire to double over laughing, I asked, “And what about the next time you go all cursed and bite-y? Will you panic and leave me again?”
“I am not going to go all cursed and bite-y, because I am no longer cursed.”
“Really?”
“I went to Nola while you were under your three-day sleep. She said all traces of magic are gone. Apparently, my being willing to drink so much of your blood to turn you, even though it meant I could die, was enough of a loving sacrifice to undo the spell. I am no longer cursed, thanks to you.”
“Thanks to you,” I said, wrapping my arms around him. “Good for you.”
“You are still going to require the groveling, right?” he whispered into my hair.
“How could I not, with all those promises of one-sided sexual favors?” I murmured into his chest. He laughed, and I gave him a vampire-strength squeeze. “What am I going to do about college?”
“Iris made some calls. If you want to wait until you have your bloodthirst under control and finish up your coursework at UK, your professors would be willing to adjust your schedule. If not, there are plenty of vampire-friendly schools where you could finish your degree bloodbath-free. I will help you find one, and live in an off-campus apartment that is tasteful, but not so ostentatious as to make your classmates uncomfortable . . . when they visit you . . . because you will be living there with me.”
“I hope you’re prepared to hide your stuff when Iris and Cal come to visit,” I told him. “Because they will not approve of me living in sin.”
He grinned. “I spoke with Peter Crown, who is heading the local Council until the upheaval settles out. He is prepared to offer you a permanent position and a promotion as a result of your work this summer. And as one of their undead constituents, you qualify for an even better benefits package.”
“What?” I exclaimed, insulted. “That’s not fair! I mean, yay for me and all. But I’m extremely offended on behalf of my human coworkers. Not to mention, I’m sort of a terrible employee. I break into offices that aren’t mine to do illicit computer searches. I have sex on interrogation-room tables. I accept bribes to look away when I catch coworkers in compromising positions in the copy room. I got poisoned by one of my coworkers and died in the parking lot. If anything, they should fire me.”
“It is something you are going to have to get used to. While your methods are, let us say, unorthodox, your team still met their deadline. And that was with one employee who was not pulling his weight. Imagine what you could do with fully functioning underlings. And as for the additional benefits, the Council looks out for its own.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to be one of the Council’s own,” I muttered.
Nik smirked, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. “Mr. Crown thought you might want to know what the benefits package entailed.”
I scanned the piece of paper, marveling again at the clarity of my night vision, as I absorbed exactly how badly Mr. Crown wanted to retain my services.
“And her lovely eyes bug out of her head . . . now.”
“I am totally OK with being one of the Council’s own,” I said, folding the paper and tucking it into my pocket. “Do you think I could negotiate similar treatment for Jordan and Aaron?”
“I do not see why not. But before you head back to the office, there is something you need to think about,” he said, kissing me thoroughly and leading me into the woods. “The Council is telling whoever will listen that you suffered an accident that landed you in the hospital. They do not want their human employees to panic in paranoia over what their undead coworkers might do to them. And Ophelia’s management is under review, meaning she has not been allowed anywhere near her office. For once, the Council office gossip is contained, meaning that whoever poisoned you does not know they killed you. They do not know you are a vampire now.”
15
Whether your annoying coworker is living or undead, it’s important to handle office conflicts with patience and finesse.
—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace
I’d never worked undercover before.
There was a good reason. I seemed to suck at it. I was way too twitchy to lie still in my hospital bed in my fake hospital room. Nik managed to persuade what was left of the Council authority to check me in under an accidental-poisoning diagnosis and “multiple organ failure,” and my admission was postdated to line up with my attempted murder. They just fudged my room assignment to make it look as if I’d been in intensive care (no visitors) while I was in my death sleep.
“Stop twitching,” Dick muttered from the doorway, where he and Sam were standing. They were wearing lab coats and stethoscopes and pretending to compare notes from the clipboards they were carrying. They’d been chosen for this assignment because they were the only vampires in our circle who rarely spent time at the Council office. (Dick actively avoided the place whenever possible.) Cal, Iris, and Nik were waiting in a room across the hall, handling the long-range recording equipment needed to capture what I hoped would be a stunning confession, so the Council could do whatever horrible, secret things they did to people who messed with Council property.
(Meaning me.)
“You’re supposed to be poisoned. Act all pathetic and listless,” Dick said at a volume only vampires could hear.
“But I don’t feel pathetic and listless. I feel like I want to pop the poisoner’s head off like a Pez dispenser,” I mumbled.
“It’s a solid instinct,” Sam whispered.
“We are in a hospital,” I whispered. “There would be lots of medical personnel present.”
“There will be no decapitations!” Dick hissed. “I promised Crown this would be handled with little to no bloodshed. I will not take the fall for you!”
I snickered, making Sam laugh.
Dick groaned, “At least close your eyes!”
I stubbornly kept my eyes open and counted the number of pinholes in the ceiling tiles. The truth was, I needed a distraction. My spanking-new supersenses were a little overwhelming in normal situations, but the sounds and smells of the hospital had me on overdrive. I could hear every cough, every beep, every argument between dysfunctional family members. And the smells. Forget silver spray. If humans could bottle the essence of hospitals and shoot it into vampires’ faces, we would never bite a living soul. Pinhole counting was my only defense against one prolonged gag.
When I was done with the pinholes, I closed my eyes and tried to work on some of the relaxation exercises that Cal recommended for controlling my bloodthirst. I made a little room in my head and committed every single detail of this hospital room to memory. The sickly beige of the tile, the whispery hum of the machines, and the multiple layers of olfactory offenses. I wanted to create a “sense memory” of how this hospital floor smelled. And whenever I thought about biting an innocent person, I would think of that smell, and I would never be hungry again.
“Heads up,” Sam whispered. “Creepy little guy with flowers at twelve o’clock.”
“Wait, what?” I whispered.
“He’s heading for your door, Geeg,” Dick whispered.
In the tiniest sliver of light between my closed eyelids, I could make out the shape of Marty walking into my room. Dick and Sam both scowled at Marty’s back but made no move to stop him as he closed my hospital room door. Marty was carrying a big, showy arrangement of calla lilies. Death flowers. Also poisonous.
Prick.
Marty had poisoned me? I could accept that Margaret did it, because it was always the quiet, middle-aged women who ended up on the news after poisoning their entire church congregation’s coffee, being described as “so sweet she wouldn’t hurt a fly.” For some reaso
n, the idea that someone I’d spent the better part of three months working with in a very small room had tried to murder me really hurt my feelings.
“Gladiola, can you hear me?” he whispered, stepping closer to my bed. I could feel him crossing the room, as if I could sense his energy intruding on mine. The scent of frustrated anger, thick and yellow, like burned hair, rolled toward my nostrils, which did not help the whole “prolonged gag” situation. I felt his cold, clammy fingers brush across my cheek, and it was all I could do not to sink my fangs into his hand.
Maybe he was just visiting me because of his weird crush on me.
“Gladiola, I didn’t want it to end like this, but you gave me no choice.”
Probably not.
I forced my face to relax into a “coma” face, dead calm, motionless, completely absent of the “Imma kill you!” energy I felt boiling under the surface of my skin. But under the hospital blanket, I was clutching the sheets so hard my fingernails were ripping through them.
Marty had killed me. He’d put plans into motion that resulted in my death. I couldn’t believe I’d been afraid to hurt this guy’s feelings. I let him push me around with his feelings and his stupid ego. And now I was dead. I understood now how easy it was for vampires to lose their grip on their bloodthirst. I was so angry I could taste it on the back of my tongue, like the sulfur of a struck match. In the coils of my new predator brain, I knew that the only thing that would chase that acrid taste away would be the sweet, warm gush of blood from Marty’s throat over my tongue.
Just a few inches, a sly, cold voice whispered inside my head. He would never see it coming. He thinks you’re weak. He doesn’t think you’re strong enough to hurt him. Show him how wrong he is. Take your payment for the pain he’s caused you!
My predator brain seemed to be a little bit nuts. I felt my fangs growing, long and sharp, against the insides of my lips. I resisted the urge to stretch my jaws and let them pop free. The snake voice did make one good point. Marty thought I was weak, that I was just a harmless girl he’d pushed around. Well, Marty was in for one very nasty surprise. I wasn’t going to settle for a confession. Marty was going to learn what it felt like to be afraid.
I let my eyelids flutter open dramatically, like something out of Grey’s Anatomy. My eyes went wide, as if I just couldn’t believe I’d woken up in the hospital, and oh, heavens, I was just so disoriented, there was no way poor confused human me could possibly be thinking about ripping out Marty’s spleen through his ear with my superstrength.
“Where am I?” My husky voice had just enough disorientation to it to make Marty sink against the side of my bed and stroke my hair. Honestly, if I ever got tired of computers, I was going to look into acting. Because if I could make this tool think I wanted him to touch me, I deserved a damn Oscar.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his pale cheeks pinched and so pale they were almost gray. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Marty? What’s happening?” I whispered.
“I loved you. I loved you so much,” he said. “But you only have yourself to blame. If you’d just done what I told you, if you’d listened, I wouldn’t have had to act out like this. I get a little crazy when it comes to you, Gladiola.”
OK, we were apparently taking the direct route to psycho town, no detours.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know, I wasn’t even sure I wanted the job at the Council at first. My mother was the one who circled the ad in my college newspaper. I think she just wanted me out of the house for the summer. She didn’t want me to be stuck in my room playing video games. She came with me for my interview. She just wanted to make sure it went well.”
I was confused about why Marty was telling me all this. Was he trying to make me feel sorry for him? I could sympathize with having helicopter relatives, but frankly, having a mother who wouldn’t let you breathe without coaching was no justification for poisoning people.
Marty was still rambling. “And she started talking to Ophelia about her work, her spells and hexes. Mother has always had a steady hand with hexes. Ophelia was interested, of course. All she had to do was guarantee my employment, no matter what I did.”
“Is your mother Jennifer Renart?” I asked.
He nodded. “Jennifer Renart McCullough, but she changed her name to Serena back in the 1970s. Isn’t that weird? I thought it was such a good sign, that you showed an interest in my family. I found that file about my vampire ancestor in your desk drawer, and I knew. I knew that you were just as interested in me as I was in you. How did it all go so wrong?”
“You looked through my desk?” I exclaimed, just a bit too loud.
“Well, you can be such a closed book sometimes. How else was I supposed to get to know you better?” he asked, before assuring me, “I didn’t know about Mother’s assignment. Mother always keeps the strictest confidence for her clients. If I’d known it was you, Gladiola . . . well, I don’t know if I would have stopped her, because you turned out to be such a disappointment.”
He sniffled, and I could hear his hand swipe across the wet skin of his cheek. Seriously? Was he crying over my hospital bed while whining about his mommy and me not loving him? Wow.
“I knew I loved you from the moment we met. Do you remember? You were wearing that beige pantsuit, and you looked so grown-up and polished and professional. You were mature, like me, Gladiola. And you would understand me like the other girls couldn’t, like my mom understands. And I knew I would love you. Only someone I really loved could hurt me the way you did. And even after what you did to me, I couldn’t attack you directly,” Marty said, brushing my hair back from my face. “Not with your vampire family members lurking around watching you all the time like a bunch of guard dogs. I mean, honestly, they’re a little spooky. They don’t care anything about your privacy. They’re always there, in your face, refusing to leave you alone. Even though you were cruel to me, I felt sorry for you. I had to find a way to help you. I broke into your employee file and memorized your background information, including your . . . less savory hobbies. I mean, honestly, what kind of girl takes knifework classes? I wouldn’t give you the chance to hurt me physically as much as you’d hurt me emotionally.”
Seriously, I was willing to stake myself if he would just shut up.
“But martial arts and blades can’t stop poison, can they?”
“Marty,” I wheezed. “What did you do?”
“I told you. I told you that you had to give up on that stupid vampire and open your eyes to what was right in front of you. But you wouldn’t listen!”
“Did you give me something?” I asked, hoping to lead him away from his indignant bitching and into confession territory.
“Yes!” he cried. “I gave you code! Special code that had spells locked inside the binary that were supposed to make you see that your relationship with the vampire was dangerous and doomed. I don’t know why it didn’t work!”
His crap coding was deliberate? Well, that explained a lot. And I hadn’t been the first to see Marty’s cursed program. Aaron was the one who had pulled Marty’s coding off the server for me. Maybe his seeing it first undid the magic? And since Aaron wasn’t into dating vampires, it hadn’t really affected him. Handy information to have but not really what we were looking for.
“No, Marty,” I whispered. “Did you give me something to make me sick?”
“Nightshade. My mother grows it in her garden. I put it in your soy sauce. You ate so much sushi it was the best way to make sure you got a consistent dose. Getting it once or twice a week over time would have made you sick. I would have been there to help you, to take you to the hospital in time.”
Suddenly, the rolling stomach and shaking hands, the emotional roller coaster I’d experienced just before I was turned, made sense. With the nightshade in my system, I’d been getting sicker by degrees but ignored the symp
toms, thinking that I was just upset over Nik’s departure. I’d been dying for weeks and didn’t even know it.
“We got it,” I heard Dick whisper outside. “That’s enough to charge him.”
But Marty was still expounding on the awesomeness of his plan. I hated to interrupt him while he was giving me so many reasons to punch him in the throat. “I would have been your knight in shining armor, and you would finally see me. You’d finally return my feelings and love me the way I deserved to be loved.”
“But you couldn’t know that you’d be there when I got really sick,” I said, sounding a bit too healthy. And testy.
“Easy there,” Sam said, loudly enough for me to hear but not Marty.
“Well, you didn’t use enough!” Marty huffed. “I had to up the ante. I doubled the dosage and put it in your coffee order. I waited all night in that parking lot for you to come out, so I could catch you while you were getting sick. But again, your stupid vampire interfered. It’s your fault, your fault that I had to hurt you. It’s your fault that I’m hurting you now.”
“What are you going to do now?” I asked, as Marty pulled a syringe out of his pocket and tapped the port on my IV bag.
“You don’t deserve to live, not after what you did to me.” He gave me an evil smile. “Wasn’t that one of your criticisms on my progress reports? ‘Marty doesn’t finish his work’?”
I nodded. “I’m so sorry, Marty. I didn’t mean it.” The asshole actually laughed at me as I weakly “fumbled” for his hand. Meanwhile he meddled with the IV bag that wasn’t actually connected to my hand.
“Marty,” I whispered. “I put something else on your progress report.”
He paused before injecting what I assumed was more nightshade into my IV bag. “What’s that?”
“I wrote, ‘Marty misjudges situations and attempts to step in where he doesn’t belong.’ ” I grabbed his wrist and twisted it so hard that I heard something snap. “You’ve really stepped in it this time, Marty.”
