Under Attack tudac-2

by Hannah Jayne

  I took a big bite of bagel and spoke with my mouth full. “The interview will be cake.”

  “Yeah,” Nina said, looking disgusted, “as you are a veritable poster child for the proper businesswoman.”

  I looked down at my coffee-stained blouse that was now spotted black with poppy seeds. “I had a bit of a rough morning,” I said, swallowing.

  “Well, it’s about to get rougher,” Nina said, eyes trailing.

  “Steve,” I said with a grimace.

  As usual, I smelled him before I saw him. Steve was a troll and one thing that everyone should know is that trolls smell—badly. Like a slightly more pungent combination of bleu cheese and belly button. At one point, Steve and I had one of those love-hate relationships. He loved me and I hated him. At least I did hate him. That’s not to say that I loved him now—far from it. But when someone saves your life, you tend to have a soft spot for him.

  “Never fear, ladies and demonettes, Steve is here.” Steve’s small grey troll hands clutched his lapels and he grinned up at Nina and me, his yellow snaggled teeth glistening in the harsh fluorescent overhead lights.

  “Wow, Steve, you look nice,” I said.

  Steve was wearing a slick sharkskin suit. Shiny, pointed black wingtips stuck out from underneath his stubby pant legs and his pink-and-grey striped tie sat lopsided over his stout stomach. What remained of his bushy black hair was oiled down into a careful comb-over that did little to conceal the overwhelming baldness on his ill-shapen head.

  “Steve thinks Sophie likes what she sees,” Steve said, waggling his bushy caterpillar brows. “Too bad that ship has sailed.”

  Steve’s affections for me had been replaced—immediately and irrevocably—when he met Sasha, a busty paramedic who had a thing for short guys. She had lost her sense of smell over a previous Zicam addiction, so she and Steve were an odd, weird-looking match made in Underworld heaven.

  “Steve is meeting with the new bigwig today.”

  “With Dixon? Why?” I wanted to know.

  “Good business practice,” Steve said assuredly. “Steve wants Mr. Andrade to put the face with the name Elpher Brothers Moving.”

  Steve and his three-foot-high troll brothers ran the moving and operations company that serviced the UDA. While his height and smell didn’t exactly promote a sense of well-being or ability when it came to large furniture moving, Steve and his brothers had a surprising way of getting things done. I just hadn’t been able to figure out what it was.

  “Steve would love to stay and chat, but business calls.” He jabbed a pudgy finger at the gleaming face of his gold watch. “Time is money,” he said as he strutted toward Mr. Andrade’s office. Nina and I peered down the hall as Steve reached his destination. We watched him arch up on his tiptoes, small arm extended, his fingertips just missing the doorknob. Undeterred, Steve sank back onto flat feet and swiftly began kicking the door until one of Dixon’s henchmen pulled it open.

  “That little troll’s got—”

  I clamped my hands over my ears and shook my head. “Don’t say it! I don’t want to hear about anything that Steve has.”

  “I was going to say ‘an appointment,’ little Miss Mind in the Gutter. So what was so rough about your morning?”

  “My grandmother appeared to me. In the bathroom mirror.”

  Nina’s eyes went wide. “Shut up! You are so Jennifer Love Hewitt ghost whispering right now! Did you lead her to the white light, cross her over?”

  “I’m serious!”

  Nina thrust out her lower lip and pouted. “Me, too. It’s not like I have a whole lot of ghostly experience. What’d she look like? All skeletal and stuff ?”

  I glanced at Nina, who looked positively titillated. “I always wished I could talk to dead people,” she said. I held up a finger and Nina grabbed it, glared. “Oh, you know what I mean.”

  “She said I was in grave danger.”

  “Original. What does she know?”

  “She didn’t tell me much; basically, you know, ‘hey, how you doing?’ and ‘you’re in grave danger.’”

  Nina’s eyes were far away. “And then she crossed over into the light ...”

  “No, she went to breakfast. Possibly with Ed McMahon.”

  “We can learn so much from the dead.”

  I had barely settled into my chair when I blinked up at an impossibly tall vampire in an elegant suit who seemed to materialize in my office doorway. He smiled down at me, a calm, disarming smile, and stayed silent for a moment.

  “May I help you?” I asked.

  “Ms. Lawson, correct?”

  I nodded, scooting forward in my chair, my eyes glancing over my desk calendar, the stack of unopened files in my in-box. “I’m sorry. Did we have an appointment Mr.—”

  “Rosenthal,” the man supplied politely. “May I sit?” He did so without me answering. His movements were fluid and he settled in comfortably, his eyes focused on mine, his legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. I chanced a look over his head, one of those “What the hell is going on here?” looks that best friends share, but Nina—who had been standing just outside my office door—had just as silently dematerialized.

  “I don’t have an appointment. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble.” Mr. Rosenthal kept smiling. “I’m just here to observe.”

  I gulped. “Observe what?”

  “Mr. Andrade would just like to get a better feel for what it is all of his key staff members do.” His smile, meant to be disarming, was starting to give me the creeps.

  “Oh. Oh ...’kay.”

  “Just go ahead, go about your business. Pretend I’m not even here.”

  I took another look at Mr. Rosenthal, who now had a small notebook resting in his lap. He nodded encouragingly. I looked helplessly over his left shoulder, where Vlad was parading his team of VERM supporters down the hall, TAKE BACK YOUR AFTERLIFE! signs waving. I wondered if it would reflect poorly on me if I threw a blood bag into the hallway and let Mr. Rosenthal and the VERMers duke it out while I slipped out the back door.

  I clicked on my computer and dragged a few files from my in-box closer to me, hearing the deafening pulse of my heart.

  I have no reason to be nervous, I told myself. I’m good at my job.

  I flipped open the file on top of my stack labeled Active Vamps—Sunset—and the thick red cover knocked over my teacup, dousing the remaining files and two stacks of Post-it notes with day-old tea. I felt my face flush as I pillaged through a box of Kleenex, dabbing at the mess. Mr. Rosenthal remained silent and smiled serenely as he leaned down and wrote something on his notepad.

  I cocked my head, trying to hear Mr. Rosenthal’s low murmur. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I said.

  Mr. Rosenthal looked up at me, eyebrows raised. “Excuse me?”

  “I didn’t hear what you were saying.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  I heard the murmur again and held up an index finger. “That! Someone must be outside... .” I concentrated, hearing a low snicker.

  Mr. Rosenthal’s lips eased back into the smile that I thought was serene, but now I was starting to recognize as patronizing. “I assure you, Miss Lawson, no one is speaking.” He tapped his ear. “Supernatural hearing, remember?”

  I felt my face flush, felt my blood thicken and rush through my veins. Mr. Rosenthal’s smile seemed to take on a more sinister edge.

  “I heard that,” he said with a thirsty smile.

  I gulped; few things were more eerie than a fanged office superior who could hear the blood rushing through your veins.

  I sunk back into my seat and tried to continue my work.

  By the time Mr. Rosenthal stood up and brushed the imaginary creases from his impeccable suit, I had dropped the passport of a centaur who needed a sticker into the shredder, stapled the corner of my blouse to a deactivation request and mixed up the employment files for a Nichi demon and a Sousan demon. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if I didn’t send a baby eater to
a nursery and a protector demon to a demolition site. Luckily, the mistake was caught before the Nichi demon actually ate any babies, but still, Mr. Rosenthal cocked his head and then wrote something down on his notepad. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Nice save!

  After Mr. Rosenthal left, I slunk into my coat and buzzed Nina. “I’m leaving for lunch,” I said to her. “I need to end this misery at least for a little while. You coming? We could go by that Italian guy you like so much.”

  I could hear the low murmur of voices on Nina’s end of the phone, and then she said, “No, thank you. I’m not through just yet.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Nina?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice tight. “This is Nina.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Mr. Andrade is here in my office right now as a matter of fact. I’ll let him know that you bid him good afternoon.”

  “I bit him what?”

  I heard the clatter of the phone and then the dial tone. “Whatever,” I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder and slamming my office door behind me.

  I stepped into the hallway and Steve stepped out from the shadows, his small troll legs working hard to keep stride with me. “Sophie doesn’t look too happy.”

  “Sophie’s not in the mood today, Steve.”

  “Maybe Sophie would like a massage?” Steve laced his pudgy grey fingers together and stretched his arms over his head, releasing a symphony of pops and cracks and a fresh wave of bleu-cheese odor. “Steve is very good with his hands.”

  “Pass,” I said, pausing at the elevator and working the up button. “Besides, what would Sasha say?”

  Steve shrugged, his shoulders brushing the bottom of his long, pointed earlobes. “Sasha knows that she cannot hold Steve down.” He pushed out his chest. “Steve is just too much troll for one woman.”

  I glanced down at him, his wiry hair just brushing the top of my thigh. “I’ll say,” I murmured. “Really, Steve,” I said as the elevator door slid open with aching slowness, “I appreciate the offer, but maybe some other time.”

  Steve shrugged his troll shoulders, and dug his hands into his pants pockets. “Suit yourself. But just so you know, Steve won’t be around forever.”

  If only.

  The elevator doors opened on the police station vestibule and I was halfway out the front doors when I heard someone calling my name. I whirled and Alex caught the back of my shirt.

  “Hello to you, too.”

  Alex smoothed the part of my shirt he had gripped, the gentle touch of his fingers sending shock waves down my spine, making my knees go wonky. I shrugged out of his grip, afraid of dissolving into a pool of quivering Jell-O right there in the police station. “What do you want?”

  “Do you like baseball?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you want? To know if I like baseball?”

  Alex narrowed his eyes. “Geez, Lawson, can you give a guy a break?” He pulled two orange and black Giants tickets from his shirt pocket. I saw the fat baseball logo and felt my grin go all the way to my ears. I snatched the tickets.

  “These are behind home plate!”

  Alex looked blank. “And that’s good?”

  I gaped. “What do you mean, is that good?”

  Alex just shrugged.

  “You don’t like baseball?”

  He lowered his voice. “Let’s just say it was not the pastime it is now when I was around.”

  My mouth formed a small O. “Well, then you have to go with me.”

  Alex crossed his arms and grinned. “Is that so? You’re inviting me to a game?”

  I waggled the tickets. “Behind home plate. You can’t miss it.”

  He pulled the tickets from my fingers. “And you must have missed that these are still my tickets.”

  I felt myself flush head to toe. “Oh, right. So, you wanted to know if I like baseball, right?”

  Alex nodded, his eyes playful, smile wide.

  “Yeah.” I kicked at an invisible speck of dirt on the linoleum. “I could take it or leave it.”

  “So you don’t mind if I give the tickets to ...” Alex scanned the offices, tickets in hand, and I pummeled him.

  “I’ll drive. And buy you popcorn. And beer,” I said eagerly.

  “Throw in one of those giant foam fingers and you’re on.”

  “Done!”

  Chapter Six

  I squinted in the midday sun and followed the crowd of businesspeople down the block toward Loco Legs sandwich shop, skipping a little, working to contain my giddiness. A Giants game—and a date. A date! There may be romantic touching. And kissing. Kissing Alex ...

  I felt a low heat start in my belly and spread downward. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from breaking into maniacal giggles and focused on a list of predate activities—shave, pluck, tweeze... . It was somewhere between tweeze and spritz when I glanced across the street while waiting for the light to change and caught the eye of a man standing on the opposite corner. His eyes were small, lime Jell-O green—like mine. He raked a pale, freckled hand across what remained of his red hair—a frazzled mess of unruly curls.

  Like mine.

  He looked at me from across the street, and I saw him blink, saw his lips tighten, felt the thunderbolt of realization that must have gone through him roil through me.

  “Lucas Szabo.” The name settled on my dry lips and I was focused, rushing out into the intersection toward him. I felt someone clawing at my shoulder, felt someone try and grab the back of my jacket.

  “Stop, lady!” I heard.

  “What’s she doing?” someone yelled. “There’s a car coming!”

  “Idiot,” someone groaned.

  The admonishments seemed miles away.

  I stumbled into the street, my eyes never leaving Lucas Szabo’s, until the raging howl of a Muni bus hurtling toward me gave me pause. I was rooted to the cement, the scream of the bus’s horn all around me. I felt the warm puff of smog as the driver yanked the bus to the side and the bus narrowly missed me.

  Suddenly everything was really loud. The city came back to life and I was standing in the middle of a San Francisco intersection. Cars whirled by me, honking, drivers glaring at me from their tinted windows. Pedestrians shook their heads at me, chalked my suicidal jaunt into the intersection up to drug use, to being one of those “city crazies.”

  Lucas Szabo wasn’t on the corner anymore.

  He wasn’t anywhere.

  My saliva tasted metallic; my head felt heavy, as if I had just come out of a drug-induced fog. I rubbed my eyes and ducked into the nearest café, abandoning my plan to eat at Loco Legs.

  I didn’t want anyone to see me.

  I flopped down in the nearest booth and hung my head, my fingertips making small circular motions at my temples. Am I seeing things now?

  No. He was there. He had been there, standing on the street corner, his eyes trained on mine.

  My father.

  “What can I get you?”

  I looked up to see a pierced, pale waitress snapping her gum at me. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and when she wound her ink-black hair around her index finger, I saw that she had a series of navy-blue stars tattooed on her hand.

  “Uh,” I said, “a burger. Cheeseburger, actually. And fries. And a Diet Coke, please.”

  The waitress scrawled my order on her pad and snapped her gum. “Coming right up.”

  When she was safely out of view I reached into my shoulder bag and took out my cell. I flipped it open to dial, but it shook in my hand. My entire body was quaking. I took several deep breaths and a few calming gulps of ice water. By this time the waitress returned, carrying my lunch.

  “Are you okay, hon?” she asked me.

  “Fine,” I said without looking up.

  “Sure thing,” she said, sliding the plate in front of me.

  Suddenly, I was ravenous. I took one bite of my burger and chewed hungrily, but when I tried to swallow, the meat stuck in
my throat. I felt a prick go up the back of my neck, felt the cold sting of sweat as it beaded along my hairline and then blanketed my skin. The whole café dropped into silence; all I could hear was the heaving beat of my heart, the whoosh of my own breath as it filled my lungs. I looked around slowly, my whole body feeling leaden and foreign. I turned a quarter inch to my left and I saw her, perched on a bar stool, her body facing me. Her posture was ramrod straight and her hands were folded daintily in her lap, her knees bolted together, legs crossed at the ankle. Her blond hair was nearly waist length and hung in brilliant waves over one shoulder. She smiled and her lips were full and berry-stained; her chin was defined and defiant. She stared at me with eyes that were an icy, piercing blue.

  She was the same woman from the coffee shop, and suddenly I knew without having to ask—she was Ophelia.

  It was as though she knew exactly what I was thinking. The second I came to the realization, her lips parted into a smile that was part sweet, part bone-chillingly sly and she raised one hand, arching her fingers into a prim finger wave.

  Ice water filled my veins.

  Ophelia turned around on her bar stool so she was facing away from me. I turned back to my lunch and the sounds of the café crashed over me. I looked down at my plate and clamped my hand over my mouth. My eyes watered, my stomach heaved.

  The top bun of my burger moved slowly, jerkily. My fries were covered with fat, yellow-white maggots writhing, falling off my French fries, dripping onto the table. I poked my burger bun with my fingernail and it fell aside, revealing my hamburger patty, my arched bite mark, and a hundred pulsing bugs.

  I let out a howl and stood up, scratching the electric-blue vinyl of the booth as I clawed for my shoulder bag. I knocked over my Diet Coke, heard the clatter of my plate as it crashed to the floor.

  “You’ve got to pay for that,” I heard as I ran through the café. “Hey, lady!”

  I fished a few bills out of my purse and tossed them onto the counter—right at the empty spot where Ophelia had been sitting a half second ago. I paused and looked over my shoulder at my lunch: my burger bun spilled open, the grilled brown patty lay on the floor in a pool of gelling grease. My fries scattered in a thousand directions. There wasn’t a maggot anywhere.