Nerds, Words & Werecats (Witchwolf)

Chapter 1

LANDON

Everything sucked.

That was all I could think as I stared over the kitchen island into the living room.

Most of the apartments I’d looked at in California had been open concept, and I suspected it was nice and airy and comfortable when you really lived in a place.

Yes, it was mostly to disguise the fact that even the expensive places were tiny, but someday, I could stand in the kitchen chopping chocolate for hot cocoa, and talk to my guests in the living room at the same time.

It would be lovely.

It would.

It was just that right now, it sucked.

The living room was full of boxes, and I didn’t have any chocolate or guests. Even worse, I was eating off a paper plate, because the moving company had mislaid the box that held my china.

My grandmother’s china, that she’d specifically left to me in her will, as much as that had annoyed my brother.

My dead grandmother, the only member of my family who hadn’t betrayed me.

Just thinking of the old-fashioned blue toile pattern with the willow trees and the . . . fuck, I wanted to cry.

But I didn’t have time for that. I needed to eat my eggs off my fucking paper plate, and then get to my new job. I’d timed the walk from my apartment to the Crescent office building, and I wasn’t cutting it close yet, but it was my first day. I couldn’t be late.

I needed this job.

It was my fresh start.

My only shot at a life that didn’t include my fiancé, who had slept with my brother and decided he was a better catch than me.

My brother, who’d asked the asshole to marry him right in front of me.

And maybe worst of all, my parents, who had told me that what was done was done, and I needed to get over it already, because it “wasn’t right” to tear the family apart over something so small.

Something so small as complete betrayal, right.

When a headhunter had brazenly emailed me at the software company I had worked for, something had snapped to attention in my head. Not just a job opportunity for a better, higher ranking, much higher paid job than the one I had, but a job opportunity all the way in California.

There was no better way to escape my Boston family, was there?

So I’d talked to him, when I’d never agreed to talk to someone about another job before. Unlike my family, I was built loyal. I’d gotten my job right out of college and stuck with that company despite it all, until then.

When I skated through two interviews and Crescent had offered me the job, I had packed my things, hired a mover, and left without telling a single member of my family what I was doing.

I hoped they fucking choked on it.

But that was the past, and all the way across the country. Now was my first day as the head of IT at Crescent.

I pulled my brand-new cell phone, with its shiny new phone number, out of my pocket to check the time. I had to give up on the eggs.

That was fine; eating was making me queasy anyway. I’d never been the best with people, and right now, meeting new people sounded like torture. Meeting a whole office of new coworkers?

I’d met my former fiancé, Geoff, at the office. Yeah, he’d worked in sales while I was in IT, but that didn’t change anything.

Last time I’d made a friend at work, I’d lost everything.

Well, not everything. The other people in IT back in Boston had been incredibly sympathetic about the mess, and I’d kind of considered them friends.

I tossed the paper plate half full of scrambled eggs into the trash can and headed for the door.

Halfway there, I stumbled over one of my boxes, knocking down a stack of my old journals and came up muttering curses to myself.

Then I wasted precious minutes gathering them up when I should have just thrown them away before moving.

Who wanted cat poetry? It was too damned easy to imagine Geoff laughing at me for both the tripping and the poems. I wasn’t the world’s most graceful guy, and he’d always found that uproariously funny.

I thought house cats were always supposed to land on their feet. How come you land on your ass so often?

In retrospect, it was a lot easier to see that he was a jackass and I was better off without him.

Still lonely, though.

At least he wouldn’t make fun of how many books I had anymore. So what if I was a nerd? Nothing wrong with that.

But he was my asshole brother’s problem now.

The Crescent office building was bright and airy, just like my apartment, only not overrun with moving boxes and misery.

The company was owned by werewolves, something they’d been very up front about, concerned that a little cat shifter like me might be overwhelmed with the constant feeling of predators breathing down my neck.

But again, I was a nerd. I’d grown up going to a huge overpopulated Boston public school, and had always felt like there were predators all around me, whether they were actual predators like werewolves, or just jocks who thought it was hilariously funny that I enjoyed reading, and liked to trip me in the school hallways when my nose was stuck in a book instead of paying attention to where I was going.

Frankly, werewolves worried me less. I’d never met one I hadn’t liked, and overall found them to be community-minded and pleasant company. It wasn’t like they ate house cats, let alone house-cat shifters.

Unless they were, I dunno, trapped in the Andes with no food, but at that point, all bets were off and I couldn’t blame anyone for what they did to survive.

The woman who’d performed my interviews and hired me was standing at the security desk, and when I walked in the door, she straightened and smiled brightly at me. “Landon! It’s so good to see you in person. Ready to see the office?”

I . . . was the head of HR actually going to do my onboarding? That was a little overwhelming. I’d already signed my contract, and it was a great one, but I hadn’t expected much more this morning than being told where my office was, and to get to work.

But I smiled gamely at her and nodded. “I am, Miss—”

“Oh please, it’s Maia. You can get people to call you Mr. Smith if you want, but around here, I’m afraid they’re likelier to make jokes about Agent Smith, especially with you being our new head of IT.

” She held something out to me: an ID card.

“We’ve got lanyards up in HR, but I figured I’d let you pick your own.

We’ve got the sunflower ones if you need it for any reason, some fun stuff, regular Crescent ones, or even plain black, if you’re not into decorations.

Or, you know, fun.” She glanced back at a handsome dark-skinned man talking to the security person at the desk, who was indeed wearing his ID on a black lanyard, then back at me, making an exaggerated serious face and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Don’t make me file a complaint with HR,” he called to her without even glancing up.

Her tinkling laugh filled the entryway. “So that Debbie Downer is Seth, head of security. I’m sure you’ll get to know him, since you’ll be the only person in the building who knows more about any form of security than him, what with being in charge of . . . firewalls? Is that what it’s called?”

“Part of it,” I agreed. “And I’d be happy to explain it to anyone who asks.”

Having worked in IT for many years, I already knew what the answer to that would be. No one wanted to know how the sausage was made, they just wanted the IT monkey to dance.

Seth’s head popped up, though, and he turned to look at me. “Seriously? Our last IT guy just said I needed to trust the magic. Which might have made sense if he’d been a fae, but he was a werecoyote.”

I rolled my eyes at the notion of it being magic.

The fact that it wasn’t magic was exactly why I’d been drawn to it.

Computers, math, science . . . they followed perfect quantifiable rules that never failed, except in predetermined exceptions.

They were predictable. Exactly the opposite of magic.

“It’s definitely not magic,” I denied. “It makes perfect sense, and I’d be happy to explain it.

I taught some basic security classes when I was getting my Masters, so I’ve already got a whole lesson plan if people want to know more. ”

His eyes lit up. “Really? That’s . . . let me talk to Jax. Maybe we can run some classes on company time.”

“That would be outside your contract, of course, and we’d pay you for it,” Maia added. “But I guess it would be nice if somebody’s laptop would work in meetings, instead of being infested with malware.”

They shared a knowing look, then sighed at the same time.

I would have asked, but I was sure I’d find out who the problem child was soon enough.

They inevitably brought their computers to me in the end, demanding to know why I’d given them faulty equipment, instead of thinking for a second that maybe skeevy porn sites were the problem.

At least Crescent was running a magical online store and not a software company. People who worked for a store had a reasonable excuse not to understand computers.

Maia showed me around the whole building, level by level, introducing me to the heads of each department, which was . . . okay, it made sense. I was going to be head of IT for this very large company. I needed to know the people in charge.

Still, it wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all. I’d basically been expecting what I’d gotten in Boston: a closet filled with spare parts and a whole lot of work-order demands.

Dance IT monkey, dance.

Instead, I got the red carpet. A tour through accounting and HR—where I nabbed an adorable lanyard covered in books—and sales and customer service, then the executive floor, where she took me right to the office of the CEO, Ajax Fyse.