by Molly Harper
My whole frame seemed to sag ever so slightly against Weston’s side as he subtly edged me behind him. For someone who struggled with social situations, he was doing an amazing job of serving as a buffer between me and Mr. Crown. “It will only take a moment, Mr. Crown, and then we can proceed with our appointment.”
“I wouldn’t take anything Ms. Schwartz says into account for your report,” Mr. Crown said, smirking at me as Weston continued to imperceptibly guide me toward the exit. “She needs extensive instruction before she’ll know what makes a proper Council employee, or even a proper vampire.”
“Oh, I’m sure Ms. Schwartz would surprise you with all sorts of competencies if you got to know her,” Weston said smoothly. “And I’m certain she has all sorts of information I need. Certainly more than someone who only shows up in the office once in a blue moon.”
My head snapped toward Weston, who had just very quietly thrown shade at Peter Crown’s feet.
Baby’s first shade thrown. Part of me was so proud.
“Ms. Schwartz, I can ask you my questions on the walk to your car,” Weston said, cupping my elbow in his hand.
“I’m not driving a car,” I whispered so quietly, I was surprised Weston heard me.
“He doesn’t know that,” Weston responded.
“Make it quick!” Mr. Crown growled after us. “My time is at a premium!”
“Such a charming man,” I said far too loudly as we reached the door. “It’s a wonder that he’s single!”
I didn’t name Libby’s mother-in-law as the woman who’d left him in that single state, but it was a near thing. It was also a stupid thing, but it was less stupid than, say, face removal in a Council hallway. We reached the dim, quiet parking lot, and Weston turned to me, peering intently into my eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his brow furrowing.
“Definitely not,” I told him, pulling my arm from his gentle grip. “What are you even doing talking to that psycho?”
“It’s part of my procedure,” Weston said, shrugging. “Even if he’s part-time, he’s still a link in the chain of command.”
“And you think he’s going to be fair and impartial?”
“As opposed to the person who looked ready to decapitate him with a file folder just a few minutes ago?” he asked pointedly. “What happened to all your peace, love, and understanding?”
“It takes a backseat when someone threatens me with internment in a ‘special facility,’ ” I shot back.
“What?”
I waved him off. “Look, I have places to be. Go back to your procedural interview.”
“Meadow, please.”
I ran off in the direction of Specialty Books, not registering for several minutes that he’d used my first name for the first time.
* * *
Thank the deity of your choice it was Book Club Night.
Book Club Night meant standing behind the Specialty Books coffee bar while I made teas for the vampire members who enjoyed them. I will admit Andrea was a little busier with the mixed coffee drinks, but I made plenty of Follow Your Bliss and Book Time Blend (relaxing merrypip with a touch of AB negative—great for contemplative discussions). Jane was running late, which was highly unusual. She lived for book club because it took her back to her days as a children’s librarian. So Andrea and I kept the heavily discounted drinks flowing while the members sat in the circled chairs, laughing and talking among themselves.
About twenty of the usual suspects were there, plus Hannah, Miss Novalee, Miranda, and Libby, whose human fiancé had taken the night off work so he could watch their sons and give her a chance to spend time with other vampires.
Andrea carefully poured a little nondairy creamer additive into a bloodychino. “So you told Dick and Jane about the whole private-eye thing, right?”
I paused. With all the mess involving Peter Crown, I’d almost forgotten about Mr. Bollinger. I nodded, pursing my lips. “As much as it pained me to add more to Jane’s plate. She said it’s not illegal for people to send private investigators looking for adult children who have very pointedly not communicated with them for years. Creepy and invasive, yes, but not illegal. So unless I want to send them some sort of scary legal letter through the Council office, there’s not much I can do.”
“And do you want to send them a scary legal letter?” Andrea asked.
“Part of me would love nothing more than to just really let them have it with cold, emotionless language. And have one of the Council’s legal aid lawyers do it, so they know I aired the family’s dirty laundry to a stranger.” I gasped dramatically and clutched at my imaginary pearls, making Andrea laugh. “But that’s the sort of petty instinct that I’ve worked so long to move past. Plus, I think ignoring them is a much more effective message. They made it clear years ago they wanted nothing to do with me. I felt the same, and still do. The fact that they changed their minds? Not my problem. All I can hope is that maybe Bollinger was so put off by my dropping fang in front of him that he’ll back off and not bother me again, which… is doubtful, but I’ve been told by some people that my relentless optimism is considered one of my most charming traits.”
Andrea pursed her lips into a discomfited expression, so I added, “I’m sorry. Jane told me you’ve had some… issues of your own with your family. I’m sure this is bringing up all sorts of feelings for you.”
“No, speaking as someone whose parents cut her off just for associating with vampires when I was still human? It’s important that you handle this in whatever way leaves you feeling happy and comfortable. For me, that meant sending my parents a photo of me in full fang, a copy of my marriage license to a vampire named Dick Cheney, and a letter informing them that I hoped they’d made some sort of arrangements for their twilight years, because I certainly wasn’t going to take care of the people who’d disowned me without a second thought.”
My chin retreated into my neck for a moment. “Dang.”
“It was very cathartic,” Andrea said. “But that was my process, not yours. You have to do what’s best for you.”
I leaned into Andrea’s side as she wrapped an arm around my shoulder. For years, so many self-help books and pop therapists and a handful of “helpful” acquaintances had sent me the message that I had to forgive my parents for closure and my own personal development, that holding a grudge was bad for me. But every time I considered communicating with my parents, it made me so angry that it set me back even further. I was working toward living without all the festering emotional issues my parents left me with. It seemed illogical that the end goal of all that effort was a relationship with said parents.
To hear Andrea tell me that the whole point was to make me happy was exactly what I’d needed for years.
“Thank you,” I said, blinking back tears.
“No matter what you decide, I’m here for you,” she told me.
“Even if I want to send my parents a picture of me in full fang while wearing a Bride of Dracula costume?”
“I will be there with my phone, readying the most alarming filter available,” she promised.
I patted her hand. “You are the best friend a girl with staggering family issues could ask for.”
Jane rushed through the front door, looking incredibly frazzled. “I’m so sorry, everybody. Council business kept me. Does everybody have a drink? Good, let’s get started.”
Dick followed her through the front door and gave Andrea a fierce kiss, then disappeared into the office, where Gabriel was doing the books. It was highly unusual for Dick to greet Andrea and not give her some over-the-top and stupidly romantic compliment. Andrea and I were both sort of frozen in confusion, watching in dismay as Jane dropped into the chair at the head of the circle without even taking her purse off her shoulder. She launched right into her prewritten discussion questions about Wuthering Head Shots. This was not how Jane normally approached book club. It was a social outlet for her, a chance to relax and connect with other people who loved bo
oks, to touch back to a simpler time in her life. While everybody else in the group appeared to be having a good time, Jane looked like she was sitting through an extended meeting with her accountant. I was so disturbed by this development that I stayed behind the counter for the entirety of the meeting. Jane closed with an announcement of the next book club selection, a women’s fiction about a family that owned a mermaid show in Florida. She left the group to say their good-byes and joined us behind the counter.
I slid a mug across the polished wood toward her. “Calm Your Ass Down Blend. Drink up.”
“But this is the stuff that sent Gabriel into a coma,” she said, drinking it anyway.
“I’m only making you one cup. Besides, remember what you said about Gabriel radiating anxiety?” I said, waving my hands toward the general area of her body. “Your radiation is a chaos of anxiety, fear, and just being pissed off. You smell like salty licorice, and you know how I feel about licorice, even the fancy Scandinavian kind.”
As the book club members filtered out of the shop, Andrea turned a stern face on Jane. “You blew through book club like it didn’t matter, Jane. You were late. You didn’t engage. And you gave them the wrong book for next month. The mermaid-show book is the October selection.”
Jane groaned, propping her forehead on her hand. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll send them a corrected e-mail. And they didn’t really notice because most of them are just happy to be out of the house for the night, but you can’t do that again,” Andrea said. “ ‘Half-assed and distracted’ is not the kind of experience we want to give our customers.”
“I know, I know.” She sighed. “Thank you, Business Jiminy Cricket.”
“Is this about Weston interviewing Peter Crown tonight?” I asked.
Jane’s face fell by degrees. “He’s interviewing Peter Crown?”
“I passed Crown on my way out of the office. He looked, well, delighted to be included in Weston’s report.”
“Well, that’s just great,” she hissed. “Especially since tonight, Dick and I were sent an official sanction by the national Council office for ‘failing to protect the office’s technical infrastructure and risking digital infiltration by outside parties.’ ”
She slapped a very scary-looking letter on the counter with the Council’s seal embossed at the top.
“Is there, like, a ‘three strikes and you’re fired’ system?” I asked.
“No, it’s more of a ‘stop screwing up and embarrassing us or we’ll make you disappear’ system,” Dick said as he and Gabriel emerged from the back office. Gabriel wrapped Jane in his arms and sniffed her, clearly picking up the tea’s scent of apple blossom wafting off of her. He looked at me and mouthed, Thank you.
“If it makes you feel better, while Crown was getting all psyched up for his interview with Weston, I made a veiled reference to the fact that Crown was dumped by a geriatric,” I said.
Jane’s shoulders jerked with a shallow laugh. “I love you. You know that, right?”
I nodded.
“So Weston sent a preliminary report to the national office about the virus thing?” Andrea asked.
“It would appear so,” Dick said. “But that’s pretty standard when you have an incident while there’s an auditor in your office. You’re pretty much on your best behavior during an audit, so if you have a screwup of any magnitude during that time, the Council’s assumption is that your office is a disaster area when you’re un-scrutinized.”
“But we’re not a disaster area,” I protested. “I’ve heard things from the archivists in other regional offices. The head representative in Las Cruces? Lost a human intern. Just lost him somewhere in the office. And then tried to blame alien abduction. Portland had a biohazard incident a couple of months ago and almost started a second Black Death. By comparison, we’re wacky but functional.”
“Fortunately, the virus didn’t do any real damage, so the letter is just a warning. But we have to tighten things up if we’re going to get through Weston’s inspection,” Jane said.
“Which is going to be difficult since we apparently have someone inside our office who wants to cause problems for us while Weston is here,” Dick said.
“I know that shouldn’t hurt my feelings, but it sort of does,” Jane grumbled into her tea.
“You’re sure it’s not just some prank that got out of hand?” I asked. “Some of the programmers in the IT department have a pretty odd sense of humor.”
“Honestly, I thought about that,” Jane said. “But they’re all so terrified of Gigi’s ability to track their activities that they wouldn’t try anything. I happen to know this because last night each of them voluntarily showed up to my office to give me a sworn statement saying, ‘We’re so terrified of Gigi’s skills that we wouldn’t try anything,’ and gave me their passwords, allowing me to search every little corner of their computers.”
Dick turned to me, frowning. “Hey, Meadow, how do you know that Weston was interviewing Crown?”
“Crown was telling me what he thought of me and Jane’s abilities to supervise me properly. And he was basically on a super-Sauron rant about how he would handle me if he were in charge. Spoiler alert: throwing me in a hole in the ground and topping it off with cement. And Weston intervened and distracted him, reminding him that they had an appointment.”
“Well, there’s a redeeming quality I didn’t expect.” Jane snorted.
“It was helpful, in his way,” I conceded.
“Well, I still don’t like it,” Dick told me. “I don’t want him messing with you, Meadow, getting you all confused. I don’t trust him.”
“Well, then you probably shouldn’t have rented him the apartment next to mine, Mr. I Don’t Screen Tenants Carefully.”
“Not going to let that one go, huh?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Back to the topic at hand,” Jane interjected. “Gigi has beefed up our security to cover the weaknesses we didn’t even know we had, so we’re already in better shape than most of the regional offices—which is what we put in our response letter to the Council sanction. Now we just need to keep vigilant about any other problems that could pop up.”
“How the hell are you supposed to predict problems in a complex as big as the Council office?” I asked. “The sublevels have sublevels.”
“We just have to do our best,” Dick said. “On an added note, you will be computerizing the card catalogue, because it’s considered a violation of storage protocol to have only paper records.”
“Weston told them that, too?” I exclaimed, feeling oddly betrayed. “But unplugging was what protected my archive computer.”
“Welcome to bureaucracy, sweetheart.” Dick sighed. “To help fend off further problems, I will wander around the office, thinking to myself, If I was going to cause trouble, what would I do? I feel like this is a skill I have been underusing.”
“You’re not wrong,” Jane told him.
“I know we’ve gone over it before, but we are sure Ophelia isn’t behind this, right?” Gabriel asked.
“Mostly sure. As in, instead of it being a fifty-fifty chance, I’m seeing it as sixty-forty in her favor,” Jane said. “Jamie really believes that she’s turned over a new leaf and she spends way less time trying to provoke me when she sees me. I think she actually enjoys just being a college student for now.”
“I know, it just seems like such a logical conclusion,” Gabriel grumbled, stroking his hand through Jane’s hair.
“Well, it’s more than sixty-forty,” Jane confessed. “She’s my future sort-of-daughter-in-law, and I’m trying to believe the best in her… seventy-thirty. I’ll stand at seventy-thirty.”
* * *
I walked home from the disastrous book club meeting feeling oddly disheartened. From the interaction with Peter Crown to the strange expectation I seemed to have that Weston wouldn’t give a full negative report of the virus situation, everything seemed to have gone wrong that night. Plus, Jane
was rattled, and she was rarely rattled. Anxious? Sure. Unsure of herself? Yep. But this sanction from the Council had distracted her from a literary discussion. This did not bode well.
As selfish as it seemed, I just wanted my world to remain as it was. I didn’t want destruction and chaos and uncertainty upending my workplace or my home. I wanted to be angry with Weston for sending in the report to the national office, even if Dick said it was standard procedure. And Weston was definitely a standard-procedure sort of guy. He was only acting according to his nature. Plus, being angry with him wouldn’t really do any good. It wouldn’t change his attitude toward Jane and Dick or how he behaved.
Emotional maturity was a real pain in the ass sometimes.
I walked my usual route to the Capitol lot, grateful for the distraction, something else to think about. I stared into the broken concrete like it could show me some secret purpose it was supposed to serve. I was sure there was some uncomfortable metaphor in my interest in it—a broken thing that was seemingly useless, waiting to be remade in some way, into something beautiful—but I had enough to think about at the moment and wasn’t willing to explore that just yet.
“Are you planning some act of vandalism I should be aware of?” a voice asked behind me.
I turned to see Weston standing there, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows.
“Again, I would like to point out how often you just happen to be in the same place as me, stalker,” I retorted, but there was no real heat in it.
“I’m walking home, to my apartment, which happens to be next door to your apartment.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered.
“You’re upset with me,” he observed.
“See, you’re getting better at social interactions already,” I said, throwing up my hands.
