Five to Love Him (Phoenix Immortal: Hive #1)

7. LEOPOLD

seven

T he bed in my childhood room was a tiny little bit too short, especially if I kept all the pillows and my old teddy bear Bruno in bed with me. It meant my feet usually ended up dangling off the end, which was why I had started wearing socks when turning in.

The problem with going out for drinks and having someone mate on you was that you forgot such mundane things as your sleep socks. However, Principal Farrow came to the rescue, and that was totally my fault. I’d forgotten to set my phone to silent before going to sleep, and the principal had my number.

My eyes didn’t work well in the mornings, but I saw the screen, a bright patch of color, and with some effort, I managed to accept the call.

“Yeah?”

“Leopold! You’re up. I’m glad.”

“What?”

“It’s Headmaster Farrow, your favorite headmaster. Good morning!”

“Farrow?”

He clucked. “You’re supposed to say good morning back, Leopold. It’s the kind of thing we very much encourage in our student body, and it’s important to lead by example.”

I turned, still half asleep. “Fuck, my feet are cold.”

I shot awake. Had I really just complained about cold feet to a vampire?

“Are they? That is too bad. Did you consider socks? Some of our teachers have decided to take the little ones into the wilderness—camping.” His voice took on an ominous tone as if camping were tantamount to satanic sacrifices. I was on the same page with Headmaster Farrow there. “I have to sign off on purchase forms for such adventures, and one of the items was heating soles! Apparently, you put them inside your hiking boots. You could probably put them inside your socks, or even better yet, you could get a heated blanket. I heard those are rather quite popular with older humans. And we will keep on practicing saying good morning back later, hmm?”

“I didn’t mean to curse at you or bitch about my feet,” I said and struggled into an upright position, hugging Bruno to me. His face was withered and squished in on one side. Bruno was about my age, going on thirty, and he’d held up well.

“I’m not so delicate that I would wither at such remarks, dear. Let me assure you, yours were not even enough to shock my old nursemaid, may she rest in peace. Speaking of hiking, I decided to take a pilgrimage several centuries back. To, ah, to see what might fall by the wayside of such paths and not be missed. At any rate, I met a man in one of the inns along the path, and his feet were all blisters. He cursed like the Devil himself had rubbed his cock all over that pilgrim’s tongue of his. Mind, the pilgrim had no heated soles either.”

“Uh-huh.” I looked at the alarm clock on my bedside table. “Principal Farrow, it’s seven-fifty.”

“Thank you, but I’m aware. Have you secured employment yet?”

“Between last night and now?”

“Yes.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and booped Bruno’s head with mine. “No. I was busy. It can wait a few days, right? You can’t tell me I don’t get a few days.”

“But of course you do, Leopold. Only the thing is, I would like to hire you. I think it would be beneficial for me to finally take a secretary, train them up, inspire them, and make it so every student on campus knows and trusts them. Leopold, I think that secretary should be you.”

“Me? You want me to be a secretary of all things?”

There was a pause. “Are you frowning upon the skills of secretaries? Leopold, historically, secretaries have done more for progress than the traditionally male bosses they have been serving. Looking down upon the profession, especially in human circles, feels terribly misogynistic, and I would have thought better of you. Know that I would not ask you if I did not think you capable, if I did not think you had it in you to inspire fear in the student body. You see, if you inspire fear, I can be the nice one, and maybe everyone can finally, finally move past this evil headmaster syndrome. Wouldn’t that be terribly nice, Leopold?”

“Didn’t you just say you want the student body to trust your secretary?”

“Ah. Yes, that’s right. I want them all to trust in the fearsomeness of my secretary. You have this idea of a good cop and a bad cop, and you can think of it like that, the reliably fear-inducing secretary, and then me, ready to console our young students so that my guidance will fall on fertile ground. This is what pedagogy is all about, after all, ensuring that those with their brain still in development hear you well. So what do you say? Wouldn’t you want to walk these hallowed halls of St. Auguste and aid me in making our students become well-rounded adults?”

“Uh. Maybe? I guess. I don’t really know. I went to public school, and our locker rooms were almost as smelly as our bathrooms.”

“I am sorry to hear it. You will have access to the staff bathrooms, of course, and our janitorial staff keeps everything spick and span. I understand you cannot start right away, but how about you come by for a few hours before noon? Then take a bit of a break before your class with Instructor Arick—oh! I will tell the kitchens to prepare a cake for you! We can have cake after class with your classmates. I think it would be good for them to see how quickly you have found gainful employment in our world. You know, ordering cake and such will be one of the things you get to do soon, but this time around, I will do it.”

“Hold on just a second there.” I had Bruno in a death grip, and my mind still struggled to follow Headprincipal Farrow’s high-speed train of thought. “I don’t think I’m secretary material. I’m not scary.”

Farrow cleared his throat. “You have quite the resting bitch face, if you’ll excuse the colloquialism. Instructor Arick—one of them more than the other—fervently agrees with me on this. Has no one complimented you on it before?”

“On my resting bitch face?”

“Yes!”

“No.”

“Oh, what a shame. Can you be here at ten, half past ten?”

I pulled my legs up so that my feet were under the blanket. “I have a breakfast date with that hive. They mated to me or I’m being hazed. Not sure which.”

That actually made the Headprincipal shut up for more than two seconds.

“Leopold, focus. Did I understand correctly that you encountered hivelings and that they told you you were theirs? Their mate—I know they prefer a different term amongst themselves. Are you with them? No, of course you’re not. They would have kept your feet warm. Leopold? Answer me, please.”

“Yeah, I mean, yeah? They’re not here, but they said that about the mate thing. Tate and his secret boyfriend were there. We went to the Dazzle, and they were all chummy since the moment we walked in. They brought us nuts and made sure I got a special cocktail.”

“Young man, who allowed you to go to the secret underground by yourselves? I shall have a word with Tate as well. This is not the kind of adventurousness we want to see in our students, nor is it what I would expect from my secretary. You will have to do better in the future, Leopold. As staff, you must lead by example.”

“Tate’s roommate is some kind of ocean lizard. A swim worm?”

“You mean the man is a sea-wyrm?”

“Yes, that. He was there. And we can go where we please. It’s not like we’re underage or like the underground is dangerous.”

Farrow sighed. “I suppose not. But we like to do things a certain way here at St. Auguste. We put so much thought into designing our curriculum—at any rate, hivelings are so precious and so very caring. Very well done, Leopold. When are you meeting them?”

I checked the clock again. “Ten. Moonlight Diner.”

“Yes, very well. I want to advise you to wear a suit, but perhaps that’s a bit much. Unless you want to make a very good impression of course.”

“I threw out all my suits the day I dropped out of college, and I wouldn’t wear one to a breakfast date. Hey, about that secretary thing—”

“Yes, we can talk about that before class. We’ll still do the cake after class of course. Please invite the hive. They will probably want to be around a lot. Oh, this will be so exciting! Can I do anything at all to help with making the breakfast date a success? I will inform Hawthorne of course, tell them you are now in the employ of St. Auguste and a hive’s chosen one. They will be as delighted as we all are. I must tell Instructor Arick. But is there anything you need right now?”

I groaned. “Warm fucking feet and a night of uninterrupted sleep.”

Headprincipal Farrow hummed. “I will order you those heated soles and nice warm socks they pair with. Just don’t do any hiking. Especially no pilgrimages. Those are quite dangerous, especially if you stray off the path.”

“Sure?”

“Until tonight, Headmaster’s Secretary! And rest that bitch face for when you sit outside my office, hmm? I cannot wait for the students to be scared of you!”

“…sure.”

He hung up. Headprincipal Master Farrow was the weirdest creep out there, and I sure as fuck didn’t want to run into him on any hypothetical pilgrimage I wasn’t going to take if hell froze over and turned into a forest of naked demon ice sculptures. No thank you.

***

I’d just managed to relax again, had pulled the sheets up to my chin and snuggled Bruno to my chest when my damn phone rang again. Tate was calling, so I picked up.

“Hey.”

“Leo! Are you okay?”

I groaned. “I’d be better if people stopped calling me this early, but yeah.”

I heard him exhale a whoosh of air. “I’m glad. I mean, Ez said you would be, that no one would mess with a hive in love. Or something. Did you go to the Moonlight?”

“No. I went home. I’m meeting the guy—the guys at the Moonlight for breakfast, but I was planning on getting adequate sleep before that.”

“Right, sorry, but I’m about to be in class for most of the morning, and I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Are you going to be at St. Auguste tonight like usual?”

“Yeah.” Although at this point, I really contemplated skipping the class for one night. That might ruin Farrow’s plans for hiring me, and I considered that an added bonus.

“Okay, good. You can tell me everything then. This is a little odd, but people elope and get married in Vegas all the time. It’s like that, right?”

“The fuck?”

“But it is. Is the guy—the hive. Are they—or is he nice?”

“I don’t fucking know. You know him as well as I do.”

“Ez says hivelings are all super caring and fuss over their people. He said something about how lucky you are and how happy he is you’re taken now. I told you Ez is nice like that.”

More like Tate’s roommate was glad I most definitely wasn’t going to get into his way while he was traversing the path to a relationship with Tate at a snail’s pace.

“I still haven’t wrapped my brain around any of this, but I’m not the getting married in Vegas type of guy, okay?”

“Uh, okay. I mean, if I can back you up, I will. And I’ll make Ez back you too, although he was pretty firm about not getting on the hive’s wrong side, whatever that is.”

“Sure. Hey, you said you have a class to teach?”

“Three of them. Text me after breakfast! And congrats.”

“Yeah, I guess. Bye, Tate.”

I dropped my phone on the bed next to me and stared up at the ceiling where morning light had painted a pattern through the curtains. My window faced the street, but our neighborhood was a quiet one. There was no noisy traffic here to keep me awake, and I should have gone back to sleep, but there was way too much on my mind.

Farrow’s strange job offer for one, the hive for another. And yeah, Instructor Arick had told us all not to reject any type of mating just because it didn’t conform to the current day human dating standards, but it was still weird. Looking back, perhaps my first impression of the Moonlight Diner as a place to get laid wasn’t all that wrong.

“What should I do, Bruno?” I asked the bear. “I wanted to harvest the tomatoes today. Guess that will have to wait. Should I start looking for a job myself? Secretary, hah. I don’t think so.”

I turned on my side, checked my alarm clock. It was eight-fifteen. I decided to get up and shower, make some coffee. I had that supernatural app, Hawthorne, on my phone. The app itself wasn’t supernatural as far as I knew, but it was how that world ran. I knew I had limited access with my human account, but I’d seen the job listings page. It couldn’t hurt to check it out.