“The special ones?”
She laughed, big and loud like always. “Honey, those disappeared an hour after I made them. No, these are regular ol’ run-of-the-mill brownies. No drugs included.”
“Damn.” We both laughed. Weed wasn’t my thing, though I’d smoked with Penny a few times when she was trying to get over a breakup. While my mom got married at twenty-one and settled down with two kids and a white picket fence, her younger sister dropped out of school at sixteen, hitchhiked her way around the country, and finally got certified to work as a radiology tech. One of her past boyfriends, a sixty-year-old billionaire with a bad ticker, had left her this house in his will.
Despite the fact that breakups were pretty common in her life, Penny didn’t really need to smoke. She was the most laid-back person I knew. Nothing bothered her. I, on the other hand, overthought most situations in my life.
Like what I was going to do now that I’d dropped out of law school.
There. I said it.
I dropped out.
I hadn’t told anyone yet, not even my aunt. But I had student loans coming due next month, an empty fridge, and two months of back rent that Penny was kind enough not to mention. I supposed I could go home, move back into the old farmhouse with my parents. But I didn’t want to. I loved living in Washington, D.C. I loved my friends, my part-time bartending job, my aunt, the whole Capitol Hill vibe. I just didn’t like law school. But if being a student was no longer my full-time job, I’d have to find something that paid the bills and let me stay here.
“Okay, well, gotta go,” I said, avoiding her curious look. She’d find out soon enough about my predicament. Aunt Penny didn’t miss much.
Across the hall, my three-legged cat jumped off the couch and met me at the door. “Hi, baby.” I picked up Bruno and cuddled him to my face. His purr started, loud and rusty and making his whole body tremble. Nothing gives love like a rescued shelter pet. Just holding him made my problems fade away.
I dumped some kibble into his bowl, found a slice of cold pizza in the fridge, and settled onto the couch.Okay, time to job search.
I fired up my laptop and started searching the help wanted sites. It couldn’t be that hard to find something. I lived in a major city, after all. But I did have a few basic criteria. It had to be a reasonable distance from my apartment. It had to pay a reasonable salary. It had to be a job I was both qualified for and at least minimally interested in. If it didn’t lead to a full-time career, so be it. I just needed to get out from under my mountain of debt. But as the hours slipped by, I realized that might be harder to find than I’d anticipated. Office work required experience I didn’t have. Restaurant work wouldn’t pay any better than the job I already had. Driving for a ridesharing company seemed sketchy, especially in the neighborhoods where they were looking to hire.
Finally I shut the laptop and put it aside. In desperation, I picked up the free newspaper insert Penny insisted on giving me each Sunday. I paged through the ads in the back, not expecting much.
But then suddenly, there it was. Four lines of writing and a website address.
Do you get along well with others?
Are you well-spoken, well-groomed, and well-educated?
Can you keep a low profile?
Are you interested in making $20K or more a month?
I scratched my nose. Patted Bruno. Read the ad a few more times and then figured that pretty much described me to a tee. The wording was odd, and there wasn’t a mention of job responsibilities, but at this point what did I have to lose? The twenty grand had to be a misprint, but the rest of the ad sounded worth exploring.
“What do you think, buddy? Dare me to try it?”
Bruno looked up from licking his leg and gave me a quiet meow. I figured that was as close to ayesas I was going to get.
The next morningI got the call.
The next afternoon I was walking into the swankiest penthouse I’d ever seen.
“Hello.” A thin, pale, gorgeous woman sat behind a desk. Designer dress. Pearls around her neck. Hair swept into a sleek chignon. Prada bag on the desk beside her. She could’ve been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty, with dark hair and eyes and possibly of Asian descent. She was flanked by pottery and sculptures, velvet-covered wingback chairs, and two unsmiling men. I’d been swiped with a metal detector and inspected by drug-sniffing dogs downstairs, and this whole scene was making me more unsettled by the moment.
Maybe I’ll just leave. I’ll tell her it was a mistake. I’m really not what she’s looking for.
But I wasn’t sure the men in the room would let me do that. Maybe I’d stay long enough to find out what the job entailed. I settled myself into the chair opposite the woman and tried to breathe.
“I’m Grace King.” The woman folded her hands on the desk.
“Victoria Dare.” Then, because she didn’t answer right away, I kept talking. “I’ve just recently...taken a leave from law school.”Sure, Vic, great idea. Lie about your situation right out of the gate.“I’m looking for some extra money right now and I thought…” Hmm. I wasn’t sure what I thought, since I wasn’t sure what the job actually involved. “I thought I might be a good match for you, based on your ad. I work as a bartender right now, so I’m pretty good with people. And I know how to keep things on the down-low, and…” Desperately I tried to remember something else she’d written, something else she was looking for.Well spoken, well groomed, and well educated.“Oh, and I have a bachelor’s degree in communications. I graduated with a three-point-eight GPA.” I pulled a wrinkled resume from my bag. “Here. It has my college transcript attached.”
Grace took the papers and smoothed them against the sleek wood of her desk. Then she gave me another long look. “Well, Miss Victoria Dare, I’m looking for a mistress dispeller. I’ve looked through the application you submitted online, and I think you might be a very good candidate.”
“A what?”
