Owen, a cute young white boy with a shaved head—a graphic design student—dropped into the seat in the cubicle opposite her. “Hi, Stacey,” he said loudly. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m great!Sogreat.”
“Great.” He beamed at her. “That’s great.”
I turned back to my computer, hiding my smile. Owen and Stacey had been sleeping together for the past five weeks. They thought nobody knew.
Contrary to popular belief, office romances weren’t necessarily a terrible idea, especially for sprites, who weren’t known for their company loyalty in the first place. But, the way I figured it, if you were banging your colleague, you were more likely to show up for work, and you’d be far more cheerful about being there in the first place.
I’d seen the spark of interest in Owen’s eyes when Stacey moved onto my team, and I’d seen how she stared at him when he wasn’t looking, so I shifted their cubicles together and shipped them harder than a delivery from Wish. We were now six weeks into their affair, and both of them had shown up every day, on time. And neither of them had called out since.
At nine on the dot I stood up, did a quick headcount, and saw that everyone on my team was logged in and taking calls.
Business as usual. Everything was normal and boring. Perfect.
Smiling, I sat back down and started working my way through more emails.
“You tricked us,” Donovan’s voice growled in my ear.
Goddammit.With enormous effort, I forced myself not to react.
“That box carried us away, up to the top of the tower, and deposited us in a den of vampires.”
I frowned, and quickly put my headset on so I didn’t look like I was talking to myself. “Vampires? What are you—” I remembered watching the floor numbers flash. The elevator had taken Donovan and Cress to the thirteenth floor. “Oh, no,” I said, chuckling. “Not vampires. They’re lawyers. Vladovich and Sangine are a law firm.”
“Whatever you call them in this realm, it doesn’t matter. You deliberately evaded us.” Donovan’s fury vibrated off him, cold and intense. It felt like there was a freezer with its door open behind me. “You do not understand the danger you are in, Chosen. You have no understanding of your powers; you have no knowledge of the creatures who hunt you.” His voice lowered dangerously; despite the chill, I felt warmth spread in my belly. “Donotevade us again.”
I took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Fine,” I whispered. “Just… just stay back there, and try to be quiet.” With enormous effort, I went back to my emails.
Suddenly, the room darkened. A sinister, slimy feeling crawled up my arms.
Oh, no. What fresh preternatural horror?—
I saw him. Ah. Not a preternatural horror. Just a mundane one.
Richie Curran—tall and skinny and wrapped in a cheap shiny midnight-blue suit and a skinny black tie, with his long, greasy black hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and a supercilious smirk on his face—loped through the office.
I cringed, moving sideways a little, hoping my monitor would block me from his?—
“Susan!”
Fuck.
“SusanMoore,” he said, deliberately emphasizing mylast name. He sauntered past my team, coming to a stop right in front of my desk. Ignoring the chair, he leaned forward cozily, resting his hands on my desk. “How are you this morning, SusanMoore?”
I took the precious few seconds to finish the email I was drafting, glanced up, and raised a brow. “Why aren’t you with your team, Richie?” I went back to my emails, clicking, filing, deleting, not bothering to look at him. “Don’t you have any work to do?”
“Oh, I’m letting them fly solo for a few minutes. They’ll have to get used to being without my support soon, of course,” he said. “I thought I’d do a morning tour of the floor, seeing as I’ll be department manager of the whole Client Experience and Support Contact Center by next week.”
I huffed out a laugh. “There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, you know, Richie. You seem to have stomped over both, dragging your knuckles, and landed straight on blistering entitlement.” I glanced up, curling my lip—a perfect combination of vague disinterest and disgust. “You don’t have the stats to back up your claims of being the best team leader in the office, and everyone knows it. Nobody mistakes confidence for competence anymore, so this swaggery schtick won’t work.”
That wasn’t actually true. I knew better than anyone what it was like to be passed over for a promotion in favor of an incompetent, arrogant jerk in a suit whose only real talent was to steal your ideas and talk over you loudly. Unfortunately, sloppy bosses were still drawn to loud, brash confidence, favoring it over quiet competence.
The difference now was I’d gotten more skilled at manipulation. I found it easy to point out I was more qualified, more experienced, with a better track record at achieving results than any other candidate, and I was goodat making light-hearted jokes at the end of the interview about how I hope they’d be able to defend their decision in court.
That was the trick. As soon as your boss realized a discrimination lawsuit lurked on the horizon, they looked at the facts, and realized quickly who the best person for the job actually was. And it wasnevertheir whisky-sodden loudmouth friend.
Richie’s easy smile twitched for a second, but he glued it back on. “My team is thriving.”
