Sabrina stared at him. There was a high buzzing in her ears. “So they could be firing me for wearing nail polish?”
“I understand you’re a gifted employee. Wentworth does not generally offload resources like you without cause. Please read through the severance agreement and sign the last page.”
What cause? She hadn’t done anything that would raise a brow…except for Jake. Were they really going to fire her because she was sleeping with someone they didn’t approve of?
“You can’t tell me either, can you?” she said stiffly, picking up the gold pen Brad had pushed toward her.
“As I am representing Wentworth at the moment, no, I can’t.” He rested his hand next to the agreement as she flipped through to the last page. “You aren’t going to read it?”
“Why should I?” she asked. “I’ve seen these before. I’ve even signed a couple. There’s nothing in it that will give me the leverage to argue against this.” She signed where the little sticky flag said she should and threw down the pen and got to her feet. “I’ll go get my bags,” she said stiffly.
“Actually, you need to wait for a security guard to escort you,” Brad said quickly. “And I’ll need your pass and phone and the company laptop.”
She pulled the lanyard from around her neck and tossed it onto the desk on top of the agreement. “My phone and laptop are in my office. If you want them, you’d better come with me. I’m leaving this place with or without the guard.”
Brad scurried to catch up with her. For once, Sabrina was thankful she arrived at the office well before anyone else did. There was no one to witness her humiliation.
As she reached her office a security guard met them. She didn’t like the way he had his hand resting on the butt of his gun, as if she had metamorphosed into an armed and dangerous criminal in the last five minutes. She had smiled at him on the way into the office this morning, for heaven’s sake!
He took up a stance inside her office, a pace away from the desk.
Brad stood quietly in front of the desk as she pulled open her briefcase and yanked out the laptop and her business cell phone. She put them both on the desk and looked around the office. There were so many personal items in here. Flowers, paintings, lamps, even the armchair was hers. She had made this job her life.
“Do I get a carton to pack things in?” she asked, the hard knot in her chest expanding to an aching ball.
Neither Brad nor the guard spoke.
She reached for the phone on her desk, to call Jake or Nyanther. She wasn’t sure which one she would call first. She wasn’t thinking beyond the need to talk to them.
The guard stepped forward, reaching for his gun. Brad said sharply, “No!”
Sabrina dropped the phone and stepped back, her heart thudding. She stared at them. “I’m just going to call my boyfriend. I need a ride home.”
“You can call from a payphone once you leave the building, ma’am,” the guard said stiffly.
A payphone? In this age of cell phones?
She was starting to shake. Adrenaline and more. She could feel tears forming in the back of her eyes, making them ache. No way, no fucking way, was she going to cry in front of them.
She picked up her briefcase and upended it, so all the paperwork she had completed over the weekend slid out and scattered over the desk like oblong snowflakes. Pens and clips and her calculator, lipstick and Kleenex…it all rained on top of the paper with little pattering sounds.
None of it was hers anymore, or if it was, she had no further use for it.
She shoved her handbag into the briefcase and headed for the door.
“You’ll have to walk behind me,” the guard told her, gripping the handle before she could open it.
She took a deep breath. Then another. Then she nodded.
The guard opened the door.
Brad Shore gripped her arm, just long enough to halt her. “I didn’t say it,” he said quietly, “and I will deny it even under oath.”
She nodded again. She understood. She just couldn’t open her mouth to speak right now.
“You were seen with two men, out in public. One of them the Summerfield fellow and that caused enough flutter as it was. There were photos and that killed you.”
“Whose photos?” Her lips were stiff. She could barely speak the words.
“Paparazzi. The corporation had to pay three thousand dollars to buy them all.” He shrugged. “Be glad the meeting was in-camera, Sabrina. You can survive this.”
Brad Shore was not only married with three kids, but also entertained whores in his office, some of them the cross-dressing males from the cabaret. This was the man who was telling her her career would survive a moment in a café on a Saturday morning, when one man had held her while the other kissed her?
“Go fuck yourself, Brad,” she said stiffly. “Use a hot poker to do it.”
* * * * *
The sun still hadn’t risen above the tops of the towers when she got out onto the pavement. Workers heading for their offices pushed past her with annoyed sounds as she stood in the middle of the sidewalk, unable to think of what to do next.
She fumbled inside her handbag and retrieved her private cell phone that she rarely used. She had to think to remember Jake’s number and she had to redial three times because her hand was shaking and she kept getting the numbers wrong.
“Hello?” Jake said uncertainly.
“Jake, it’s Sabrina,” she said. The shaking was getting worse.
“What’s happened?” he said quickly.
“I…I’ve been fired. Can you pick me up?
Silence. “Oh, sweet Jesus….” he murmured. “I’ll be there in ten. Don’t move.”
* * * * *
He got there in eight minutes and Sabrina had never been more grateful for the insane way he drove through downtown traffic than she was right then. The Jeep pulled up next to her with a jerk, blithely taking up one and a half of the two service bays at the front of the building.
Jake threw himself out of the Jeep and came around to her side. “Come on,” he said gently and opened the door for her and helped her up into the passenger seat. He tossed her briefcase into the back and went back around to the driver’s side and got in.
Then he leaned over and unsnarled her seat belt for her and clipped it shut.
Sabrina leaned against him, her strength evaporating.
Jake held her while she cried and he never, ever made any comment about her ruining his handmade shirt with her mascara. She would remember that forever.
Chapter Twenty
“My uncle would hire you in a heartbeat, you know,” Jake said. He put the refilled coffee cup in front of her and picked up her hand once more.
“Probably not,” Nyanther said, his voice low. “Severance packages for executives at Sabrina’s level are legal concrete. There will be non-compete clauses in it. Unless your uncle hires her for her typing skills, he can’t touch her.” He brushed her hair back over her shoulder and touched her arm.
Jake grimaced.
“Can they really fire her for something so stupid?” Riley asked everyone else at the table.
Everyone was there. Even Nick, who sat at the top of the table, his chair turned so he could cross his legs, in typical English fashion. Chloe was sitting on Damian’s lap, chewing on a teething ring.
“For what she does in her private life?” Nick asked. “Probably not. That’s why they wouldn’t give her an official reason.”
“Her service agreement will have some sort of fuzzy language in there that covers them if she wants to contest it,” Nyanther said. “I spent months working with lawyers to write the same sort of agreements for the executives in one of my corporations, so I know exactly how and why they’re worded. Starry-eyed new employees never think about the future the way lawyers can.”
“I didn’t,” Sabrina said. “I was so thrilled to get the job I would have signed anything to keep them happy.”
“Exactly,” Nyanther said.
“It’s so unfair!” Riley cried. “If she’d been a man they would have bought her a round of drinks!”
“If she had been a woman in my tribe, we likely would have given her the cup to drink from, too,” Nyanther said, with a little grin. His grin faded. “It is no longer those times.”
“This is what you meant, about it being so hard to adapt, isn’t it?” Sabrina asked him. “All these calcified, built-in cultural biases and prejudices that no one can change.”
Nyanther picked up her other hand and kissed it. “Not all the differences are bad.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t think about what to do next at all,” Nick said.
Sabrina looked at him. “Give myself a break?”
“The severance is incredibly generous,” he pointed out.
“To keep her silent and make her go away,” Jake said darkly.
“Yes. It gives you time, though,” Nick said. “You were already working two full-time jobs keeping up with the communications network and everything else you have set up. So don’t jump into another job. Let the corporations find out via the grapevine that you’re a free agent and sprint to hire you…and they will. In the meantime, you can do just one full-time job and live a more normal life for a while.”
Damian blew out his breath. “Like there’s anything normal with our lives.”
“Very well, then. A more balanced life,” Nick said pedantically. “One with work and leisure.”
That was how it began. A simple decision not to decide. She would figure out her life next week or next month, perhaps.
In the meantime, she dived into the various projects and revenue streams she had been developing for the hunters, now able to work on them with her full attention. Finally, the first trickles of income began to appear and even Nick managed to smile when she showed him the anonymous bank account balance.
She also caught up on her sleep.
The decision got put off longer and longer, until it was inarguably summer, air conditioner units ran all day and night and kids knocked fire hydrants over and played in the spray, screaming in delight. The days grew longer, the nights much shorter and life went on.
“Still no gargoyles,” Sabrina pointed out, as she sat in Riley’s apartment, drinking chocolate egg crèmes with her, while she pretended to work on one of the trackers. “You said they would break out at any time, back in March. It’s June.”
“They must have taken human prey by now,” Riley said, staring out the window at the setting sun. It was getting close to nine p.m. and it was still warm. The windows were open. The vampire were as impervious to heat as they were to cold and she and Riley had grown up in the mid-west and preferred fresh air to canned coldness. Jake complained, only his complaints were about the lack of a sea breeze on hot summer days, like the reliable, cooling wind that came every afternoon on Long Island.
“Do you think, perhaps, they’re in some other part of the world?” Sabrina asked. “Outer Mongolia or the middle of Africa or the Amazon, where missing people take longer to be noticed?”
“They might be,” Riley admitted. “They could be anywhere and we could blow all our energy, time and money looking for them and that’s what I think they wanted us to do. While we’re busy hunting them, we don’t have time to rest and prepare for when they do attack.”
“That’s why you didn’t go haring off to Scotland like your mother did?”
“I don’t think my mother made a mistake, that time. They found the last two gargoyles and drove them out of their cozy nest. And they killed Valdeg.”
“Well, Nyanther killed him,” Sabrina said, for she had heard this story from Damian and Nyanther and she had read Damian’s essay, too. After reading the essay she had looked at Nick with new appreciation. Damian loved him with a rare devotion. There was much more to Nick that Damian’s dry recitation in the essay had merely hinted at.
“Potato, poh-tah-to,” Riley replied. “Jake and Ny are out beating the bushes in every known location the gargoyles have ever used and more besides. Nick and I are doing the same and asking questions, to get fresh news. We’re keeping it local only. I don’t want us spread out.”
“You’re expecting them to come to you, aren’t you?”
Riley nodded. She was looking out the window, still. It was fully dusk now and the buildings across the road were casting their very long shadows, making it darker. “They’ve stayed away for nearly a year. They won’t be able to help themselves. They want vengeance. It drives everything they do.”
Then she stirred and got to her feet and held her hand out for Sabrina’s glass. “Sooner or later, they’ll land back in New York. Somewhere upstate, their old hunting ground. They’ll feed, to try and draw us out. We are so much better prepared now than we were before Jake and Nyanther came along.”
Sabrina’s heart warmed. “All the hunters are, now,” she reminded Riley.
“And listen to you,” Riley said, calling out from the kitchen. “You never believed you might one day be sitting here with me talking about hunting supernatural creatures and running a dark net business venture of your own.”
“Some days it feels like that’s all we talk about,” Sabrina said. “Do you remember the night Nick arrived in our apartment in Pittsburgh? All either of us was worried about that night was passing finals.”
“I will never forget it,” Riley said. “My life completely changed that night.”
“Mine, too,” Sabrina said. “It just took a few years for me to notice.”
Something black and large fluttered outside the window, blotting the last of the daylight. Then the window exploded inward.
Sabrina threw herself out of the chair, scrambling to find her footing and reach the kitchen where Riley was.
Riley was just coming out of the kitchen, two more egg crèmes in her hands. She came to a halt, her eyes wide.
Rank odor washed over Sabrina. It was musty and reminded her of wet leather. There was another acidic scent mixed up in it that made her think of sulphur and rocks.
A clawed hand bigger than her torso came down in front of her, blocking her escape. She screamed—she couldn’t help it. The panic was beating at her, trying to explode out of her. She lurched away from the big clawed hand, nearly losing her footing.
Another hand came down to meet the first, enclosing her.
Sabrina hunkered down, shivering. She was locked in. Above her, the foul-smelling creature’s head hovered. The skin was mottled browns.
“Don’t let him scratch you!” Riley shouted, still holding the egg crèmes.
Sabrina tried to calm herself. She tried to think.
The other big window had been smashed in, too. A second gargoyle, smaller than the one standing over her, was crouched down in the corner of the apartment, one clawed foot on the dining table because there was no room for him to put it anywhere else.
And in between the two of them was a third gargoyle. Small. Also crouched down on his hind legs, which made him Riley’s height. He tilted his head to look at her and Sabrina got the absurd notion the creature was trying to smile at her.
“Let my friend go,” Riley said calmly. “She has nothing to do with you, with your world, or mine.”
“Sabeena, the mate of the one who killed me, before?” The gargoyle lisped and hissed and he spoke with a Scottish accent, yet he was understandable. This, then, was Valdeg, the only one who could speak English because of what the gargoyles considered to be a speech impediment. A gargoyle cleft lip.
The creature that held her in the circle of his hands rumbled something. It seemed to come from inside his stomach and chest.
Valdeg tilted his head at Riley once more. “We have a message for the Sherwood.”
“I have a message for you—” Riley said.
“No!” Valdeg screeched, then added a sound that wasn’t English.
Sabrina cowered. It was an awful sound, sending ripples of fear down her spine.
Riley fell silent. But she didn’t react.
She was totally calm and her courage and containment was fascinating. Sabrina had never seen Riley working. She didn’t have her katana in her hands right now, although she was facing the enemy and she wasn’t backing down.
“Tell the Sherwood. Hunt us no more.”
“You had this conversation with my mother,” Riley said calmly. “I’ll give you the same answer she did. Stop hunting humans and we’ll think about it.”
Valdeg hissed his fury. “We deserve life as much as you.”
“You’ve had your life,” Riley said flatly.
The apartment door burst inward and Nyanther came streaking through, a short sword and the axe that Jake had made him in his hands. He wore the most implacable, deadly look she had ever seen on any man’s face.
“Watch out!” Riley screamed as Valdeg turned to swipe at Nyanther as he moved past, his claws extended.
Nyanther ignored her and kept coming.
“Valdeg!” Riley shouted and threw the egg crèmes at the creature’s eyes.
Valdeg shrieked and skittered backward, shaking his head and clawing at his eyes as if they burned.
Nyanther hopped over the arm of the one that held Sabrina, like he might have jumped over a low fence. The creature clawed at him and he arched his back and hissed…and stepped closer. He thrust the sword up, under the creature’s chin. It was already rearing backward, lifting itself up and out of the way. The sword point scraped across the hide.
“Run!” Nyanther shouted at her.
“Get the other one! It’s stuck in the corner! Throw the net, keep it contained!” That was Jake’s voice.
“Riley!” That was Nick. “Catch!”
Sabrina couldn’t see any of it over the big forearm of the gargoyle. She stayed crouched down, both thumbs on the screen of the tracker, frantically scrolling through the settings screen…there! She finished the setup.
As she finished, the forearms of the gargoyle that had been barricading her lifted away. The creature was rumbling in its chest. Talking to the others.
Nyanther hauled her to her feet and pulled her toward the center of the room, where Nick and Damian stood. In the corner, where the other big one crouched, Sabrina saw Jake was on its back, his sword raised, point down. It was trying to reach up and around its head to claw at him. Netting was holding its arm back. Riley stood in front of it, her katana over her head, ready to thrust the moment she needed to.
Sabrina's Clan Page 21
