Oh No! There’s a Dragon in my Bookshop (Getting Cozy with Demons #3)

Chapter 1

one

Cheated

My presentation flashes across the screen followed by my work frenemy’s name. It’s a blessing the boardroom is dark, or everyone would see the wild bitch come over my face and glare daggers at Patricia Evans.

The next slide has all my data on it, but it looks twice as bad, glittered up with Patricianess instead of the straightforward chart I had made.

Every carefully thought-out point I’d written in the meeting notes section is vomited from Patricia’s pink-lipped mouth with peppy precision, as if she wrote the words herself.

This doesn’t feel real.

It’s like something out of a movie.

I drag my hands down to my lap and pinch myself. The sharp sting barely registers against the thundering of my bleeding heart. Betrayal roars through my veins and a cold sweat gathers on the back of my neck.

The next slide is supposed to feature a selection of our best book covers and their market performance in different regions of the United States compared to other countries, but for some reason, she turned it into three separate slides.

Way to go, Patricia! Now we can’t compare the numbers side by side…

The next few slides show a selection of changes we could make to several covers to improve their performance in markets where we haven’t had much luck.

She’s added a few of her own suggestions that, at first glance, appear to be smart choices.

But having immersed myself in this data for months, I know that higher contrast, realistic covers do not do well in the Italian market.

“Book covers are like passports; some travel better than others. Germany? Loves dramatic fonts. The U.S.? If it’s shirtless and shiny, it’s already through customs,” Patricia delivers my joke to a bray of laughter from everyone around the table but me.

I want to throw up.

How could she do me this dirty?

More importantly, how did she do me this dirty?

Did I leave my computer on when I went to lunch? Did she coerce the IT guy to break into my files?

Did I accidentally save it to the shared work drive instead of my local machine?

I cringe, closing my eyes against my stupidity.

I did this to myself. I collated data for months on my laptop and then made the PowerfulPoint presentation on the damn work computer where it auto-saves to the shared drive if a local destination isn’t specified.

No. She didn’t have to steal your work. That was her fault.

I swallow back bile and watch the rest of my presentation play out. The lights come up and everyone claps. I manage a few, though my hands feel like lead.

“So, what’s the first actionable step here?” the CEO, Dan Michaels, asks.

Patricia looks stunned for a moment, and part of me hopes she falters—but I had created a “Likely Questions” slide at the very end that covered this. If she read those, she’ll know what to say.

She clears her throat. “We’ll want to reach out to the art department—”

Wrong!

I grind my teeth as I listen to her go on about shit she didn’t memorize correctly.

The next step is to contact our foreign distributors to alert them of the re-cover plans so we can get a fresh launch on their bookseller’s schedules.

Coordinating a release like this takes time, and we can’t just jump right into cover re-dos.

“That’s great,” Dan says, then looks at me. “Caitlin, could you help Patricia draft something up?”

My mouth opens and “Uh, yeah” comes tumbling out.

Dan beams. “Great. Let’s get moving! Authors to sign, books to sell. I want us to be a global competitor by the end of Q four.”

My gaze darts to Patricia, whose sweet smile seems to turn acidic when she looks at me. Our boss, Vick, moves through my line of vision and some last shred of self-preservation activates in me.

“Vick, could we chat in your office?” I ask, just loud enough for Patricia to hear.

He smiles, but it looks uncomfortable. His thick, salt and pepper eyebrows pull down into a grimace while his mouth tries to grin. It’s a smile that says, Oh no, I have to face a conflict I’ve been avoiding.

My guts turn to jelly.

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to catch you for our one-on-one,” he says, trying to recover some joviality.

He pats me on the shoulder and steers me out into the hall. I don’t give Patricia a backward glance, but something tells me that leer of hers just grew ten times, Grinch style.

The tan and blue corporate carpet hosts coffee and ink stains from years of hard work.

Each cubicle in the main office is pinned up with the editor’s current projects and past successes—or failures depending on how they choose to motivate themselves.

The white walls sport framed posters of our biggest books, like The Only Way Back and A Court of Crimson Crowns.

They give me little comfort as I perform what feels like a death march to the boss’s corner office.

He closes the door behind me, and I stare at his desk, collecting my trainwreck of thoughts.

How do I present the facts without seeming like some kind of tattler or sore loser? I’d built that presentation to show my value for the open Senior Publicist position, which Patricia probably just secured with the CEO’s stamp of approval.

Okay. Just tell it like it is. He’ll believe you. You have evidence.

“Cait?” Vick asks and my eyes focus on him in his chair. “Sit?”

“Oh, right,” I say, smoothing my pleated skirt under my stockinged thighs as I sit in the awkward, leather seat.

“So, I know you’ve been vying hard for the Senior Publicist role that opened when Janice left.”

Shit, he’s jumping right in. I have to cut him off.

“Sir, if I may,” I say.

He nods. “I know, you’ve been putting in the hours.”

My blood pressure rises. It’s more than just hours. It’s been blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point.

“We’re so grateful you’ve been handling your accounts and the ones Janice left unmanaged from her swift departure.”

“But sir, please.”

“And you’ve been doing a great job; it’s just the thing is—”

Air burns in my lungs, a fire that only a scream will quench.

“Patricia has a more strategic mindset, while you’re more nose to the grind.”

“Patricia stole my presentation,” I say with an unhinged lilt as I slam my hands down on the arm rests.

Vick scowls, jerking his head back in surprise.

I take a deep breath and calm myself. “Sorry, sir, but that was my presentation in the boardroom, down to the very last stupid pun about passports. She stole it and put her name on it.”

He doesn’t say a word, just types a few things on his keyboard as my jelly guts liquify. He turns his screen around so I can see it as he points to an email.

“This is from Patricia on Wednesday,” he says.

There’s my presentation at the bottom, but it’s been saved with ‘Evans_Final_Edits’ at the end.

“She cited you, right here—” he points to another line—“as a contributor on the data collection, which was really important.”

“Data collection,” I scoff, and my throat tightens. “I reached out to our German and Italian contacts to source that information. I picked through all the POS exports. I did all the analysis on those exports. Then, I wrote the presentation. I did everything.”

My voice has climbed to unreasonable heights again, and I’m standing.

Vick leans back and sighs. “If it was yours, why didn’t you bring it to me sooner?”

“I…” Tears burn behind my eyes. “I was nervous. I’d done another pass on the slides from Mexico over lunch today and I was going to email you tonight. Just look at the dates of the files in the shared drive. Mine is going to be from Monday.”

Vick drags his mouse across the screen and highlights a line in the email.

“Cait was so great in helping me get this started—”

“Of course the shared doc was started on Monday. Patricia worked on it until the moment she emailed it to me yesterday,” he says.

My heart is like a jackhammer against my ribs.

“You can check the change history,” I blurt, my voice quivering. “It’ll show you, you’ll see my name all over it, every slide. Well not every slide, some of them she added that I didn’t have in there, and they were worse!”

He leans forward and taps the highlighted text with his finger.

My eyes dart to the screen and I read it again.

“Cait was so great in helping me get this started and inputting the analysis into cohesive slides for me to manage. She really is a great doer.”

That bitch.

“Excuse me?” Vick snaps.

My face heats as I realize that inside thought was an outside thought.

“I’m sorry, I’m just really—”

“Unprofessional right now,” he scolds. “You should be grateful she even mentioned you on such an important piece of work.”

This can’t be happening.

I fist my skirt with clammy hands. “But sir, it’s my work.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, then rubs his eyes. “Sit back down, Caitlin.”

I swallow past the tearful lump in my throat and take my seat.

“The mid-level Publicist role is being closed—”

I gasp, leaning forward to shout, “But that’s my role!”

He silences me with a hand. “You’re not being fired.”

I’m gripping the arms of the stupid leather chair so hard I think my nails have ripped through the material.

“We’re opening three new Junior Publicist roles that will report to Patricia. You would be put into that role—at your same exact pay rate and benefits—if you accept the title change.”

My tongue scrapes across the roof of my mouth. “But what’s the point? If it’s the same pay, and benefits, why call me something else?”

Vick sighs again and leans back in his chair. “It’s something finance is doing. Some new tax break for offering more entry level positions to help with the job market. The new juniors coming on wouldn’t have your pay or benefits, of course.”

How do I keep fighting? How can I prove it? He already seems so set in the belief that Patricia did that work, that she’s the senior material instead of me.

All because she had more confidence. And my winning presentation.

“You would report to her,” he says with a wince. “I’m sure it’ll be awkward for a bit, but I know you’ll be professionals about it.”

Don’t cry.

Don’t. Cry.

I nod a few times because I can’t talk yet without screaming. Finally, I work past the feral urge to claw his office apart.

“Could I please have the rest of the day off?”

He smiles in a sympathetic way. “Of course. I know this wasn’t the news you wanted to hear.”

Yeah, no shit.

I didn’t say that out loud, but maybe my face did, because the sympathy is gone from Vick’s smile.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I say as I stand.

“Do try to get some rest and calm down,” Vick says, and my pulse skyrockets.

I close the door behind me and rage swells in my chest. I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to fucking ruin Patricia Evans.