“We shouldn’t be surprised. Miss Vampire keeps her own schedule. Never caring if she’s late or on time.”
Not true. I’m usually tediously punctual. That, and early. I’ve never not made a delivery on time. Except that time with the werewolves, but even that would have been on time if the recipient hadn’t already been dead.
Ignore. Ignore. You can’t win. He’s going to have an opinion either way.
He came to stand in front of me.
“I’m here, Beatrix. What’s so important that you called me in on my night off?” I asked, ignoring Tom.
It wasn’t too difficult. As a gnome, he only came up to my chest, but that didn’t mean he was harmless. He was like a squat tank, short but with muscles that looked like someone had stuck a bunch of rocks under his skin. He could punch his fist through a car door and then yank that door off the frame. I knew, I’d seen him do it when one of his clients refused to sign the acknowledgement form. Cute lawn ornament he was not.
He wore a skull cap to cover his pointed ears and curly brown hair. If his face wasn’t creased into a perpetual frown, I would have said he was cute, in a middle aged man sort of way.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.” He poked me in the chest. “What makes you think you can just do whatever you want?”
“Are you talking to me or just accusing me of crap that’s not true again?”
Sometimes it was harder than others to ignore the cranky bastard. This was one of those times I was destined to fail.
He frowned so hard that the skin on his forehead turned into a V.
“Self-entitled little brat,” he said.
“Name calling, really?” I leaned down. “You’ll have to do better than that. Shorty.”
His face turned red as his oversized hands bunched into fists at his side.
I fought the urge to take a step back. I knew he was sensitive about his height but hadn’t thought it would drive him to violence so quickly.
I touched the pocket with the silver knife in it for reassurance. If he swung at me, I was using my weapon. It wouldn’t do much good considering he was technically part of the fae. Iron would work better or maybe wood. It’s one of those gray areas that I haven’t been able to get a lot of information on. Yet.
“Think you’re so smart, don’t you, fanger?” His voice was nasty as he stepped forward until he had to crane his head back to meet my eyes.
This had gone on long enough. I wasn’t here to start trouble with my fellow couriers, even if they were itching for a fight. Mainly because I was pretty sure Jerry would frown on such a thing.
Couriers with broken bones couldn’t make deliveries.
All of a sudden I was done with the petty scrabbling. I didn’t want to spend one of the few nights I had off arguing with the gnome. It was exhausting, not to mention drama I didn’t need or want.
“What did I ever do to you, Tom? Every time we’re in the same room, you go out of your way to create trouble for me. I don’t recall ever doing something to earn this level of enmity.”
“Your existence is plenty.”
What did that even mean?
“What does that mean?”
He scoffed. “Like you don’t know.”
“I don’t. Believe me, if I did I wouldn’t be asking.”
My puzzlement must have gotten through to him because he stepped back and gave me an assessing gaze, as if he was trying to judge my level of sincerity.
I tried to show my confusion. It wasn’t hard because I honestly didn’t know what I had ever done to earn this level of hostility.
I’ve had my share of obnoxious coworkers who didn’t like me, but usually I’ve done something to earn it. Like that time I tied every pair of a fellow soldier’s boot shoelaces to another boot’s shoelaces.
She had it coming though. She told my battle buddy she was going to Hell because she thought she was the reincarnation of a vampire princess. I might have thought my battle buddy was bat shit crazy but that didn’t mean I’d let some stranger walk up to her and make her feel bad about it. Though, looking back I may have written off my battle buddy’s claims as fantasy a little too quickly. Who knew vampires and all this other shit actually existed.
