Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
BOZ
We spoke on the phone, but I didn't see Santa again for several days. I didn't even hear him come and go, but each morning, I found a newspaper on the welcome mat outside my apartment door.
On Friday afternoon, I took the train to visit my parents for the weekend. I reassured them I could afford my new apartment, and no, I wasn't living in an abandoned warehouse or on the street somewhere.
Once that was settled, we spent Saturday shopping for business attire. Santa had given me the information for his tailor, but one look at their prices online told me I couldn't afford them. Off the rack suits on sale were more my style. My mom said the discounts would be even deeper after the new year, so I only grabbed the two cheapest for now.
After Sunday brunch and a race to see who could finish the Times crossword puzzle fastest (my mom), I took the train home. A delivery driver followed me up the stairs to my apartment. At first, I was a little worried, but then he stopped at my door. "Delivery from Santa."
I chuckled. "How did he even know when I would be home?" The food was from the nearby Chinese restaurant, and it smelled delicious.
I gave the driver ten dollars extra for scaring the shit out of me, and then I gorged until I was too full. Recognizing the start of a food coma, I hurried through my nighttime routine two hours earlier than usual. I fell into bed and slept so hard I dreamed of dancing with Santa.
Despite the early night and the great sleep, I woke the next morning feeling unprepared to face the day. This was my first day at a job that mattered, not some fast-food drive-thru position I could half-ass. I needed my whole ass for this job. Er, no. My ass shouldn't be part of my job at all.
I rose from my bed guided by sheer embarrassment and thoughts of Santa. His ass played a large role in his job, or so I assumed. I hadn't gotten to see him in action in the VIP room because he wouldn't take my money.
While the coffee was percolating, I checked outside my door for a paper. I'd let Santa know I would be gone for the weekend, but I was surprised to see the paper on my welcome mat, along with a paper bag containing a warm blueberry bagel. I must have just missed him when my alarm went off at six.
The bagel was fucking fantastic with my coffee. I needed to go grocery shopping, but I kept putting it off. Every time I got hungry enough to go, food arrived at my door. Still, it was on my list for Tuesday evening.
The only item on today's agenda was to survive my first day at work. I was a glorified accountant. Why was I suddenly worried about becoming someone's juice pouch?
By the time I left the apartment, the sun had already risen. I wondered where Santa slept like the dead for the day. I also wished I could join him there and pretend I didn't have a big, scary job orientation meeting at eight.
I waited at the bus stop outside our building and startled when a long black car pulled up minutes before I expected the bus.
"Are you Mr. Bostwick?" The brown-skinned driver with gray marbling his kinky hair wore a suit nicer than mine. I felt underdressed.
"Imperial Accounting sent me," he continued when I gaped at him like a fish. "That you? Looks like you." He held up a copy of my employee ID photo.
"That's me." I showed him my matching ID badge.
"Get in. You don't want to be late for your first day."
He was right. I hated being late. I didn't want to be an asshole and ask to see his identification, either. Kidnappers rarely wore nice suits (not that I'd met many, or any, unless I counted the vampire who dropped me), so I took a chance and hopped in the back.
The five-block drive took longer than expected. Traffic was backed up for blocks around my office building. Finally, we inched close enough to see a commotion in the street and on the steps of the vampire council building next to Imperial Accounting. I'd thought it would be empty during the day, but an angry mob stood on the steps outside with picket signs.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"They're protesting how a former council member was brought to justice. The empress herself visited a month back and dealt with the problem with a silver dagger to the heart."
That sounded brutal, but I kept my mouth shut.
"The council member killed humans, too," the driver continued. "They think he should have been tried and convicted before she took the law into her own hands."
"Her title is empress, and they think they can tell her what to do?" I laughed, and he laughed with me. That must have been the right thing to say.
Finally, we creeped forward enough to pull into a gated entrance. With a flash of a key card, the gate opened, and we pulled into an underground parking structure.
Once we were parked in front of the basement entrance, I gathered my briefcase, scarf, and gloves. I reached for the door handle, but it opened from the outside, my driver already there.
"The name's Rick. Please pass along a good word to Mistress Colette when you see her this evening."
"I … will?" He was already back in the car, pulling away from the curb and leaving me standing before a revolving door.
A locked door. I didn't know revolving doors could lock, but this one wouldn't budge when I pushed on it.
"Mr. Bostwick, please swipe your key card."
I found the camera above me and held it up to the lens.
"At the card reader behind you."
Of course, it was behind me. The shining red light. I swiped my badge over it, and it turned green. I wondered how many guards were watching the camera feed and laughing.
Thankfully, when I pushed on the door, it moved. A little further, and I could tuck myself sideways and slip from the doorway. The door continued moving on its own until the V-shaped interior lined up with the door opening.
It moved on its own. I was going to die of embarrassment .
My cheeks burned as I hurried toward the bank of elevators to my right. I glanced at my fitness tracker for the time. Ten minutes was plenty of time to reach my desk, I hoped. Beyond the fifth floor, I didn't know where it was. My heart was beating so hard in my chest that my vision wavered, giving everything around me a dreamlike quality. I made it into the elevator, up to the fifth floor, and out without incident, but I might as well have been in a different world.
Santa was right. Metal accordion plates covered the windows, preventing all sunlight from seeping in. Instead of the harsh purple lights of most businesses, the floor, and every hallway I'd traveled so far, glowed with soft yellow light from overhead globes.
A young woman in jeans and a t-shirt saw me gaping at the room and took pity on me. "Are you the new guy, Mr. Bostwick?"
At least she hadn't called me Blaine. "I prefer Boz."
"Oh, I know." She grinned and extended her hand. "I wanted the chance to sound formal before you banished it forever. I'm Kristin, analytics department head. Until we decide which team would fit you best, you're my direct report."
She looked far too young to be a department head, and I couldn't stop myself from asking, "Why are you dressed like that?"
She rolled her eyes. "Colette likes to tell everyone we're full business attire, but that's only for the stuffy night crew. During the day, comfort is key. You can wear jeans or dress pants, but no yoga or sweatpants. If you need to tie them to hold them up, I'll send you home to change."
I scrambled in my briefcase's outer pocket for a little notebook I kept there to jot ideas on the fly. I flipped to a blank page and started taking notes.
"As for shirts," she continued, "No swearing and nothing sexually suggestive. If your shirt starts a fight among the team, I might ask you not to wear it again, but for now, anything goes. And if you're wondering if something is suggestive, please err on the side of caution. Have you seen that painting of two rats kissing in bed?"
"No."
"I wish I were that lucky." She wriggled with a whole-body shake. "It's not that easy to forget."
She turned on her heel in her black ballet flats and motioned for me to follow her. She walked all the way to a glass-enclosed office and pointed to the desk just outside the door. "This is you." She pointed to the office door and grinned. "And this is me. You'll be under my watchful eye until sunset. Then, Colette wants to meet with you each day for five to ten minutes."
There were two names on the office door. "You share the office with Colette?"
"We hotel, daytime and nighttime. I work eight to sunset, and she checks my work from sunset to around ten. Pretty sweet vampire life, if you ask me."
"Why aren't you a vampire, then?"
She blinked at me.
"I'm sorry, was that rude?"
She burst out laughing. "No, but it's been a long time since anyone mistook me for human." She patted my arm. "I'm a leopard shifter, Boz. The lycanthrope condition and the vampire virus aren't compatible. I don't mind having a shorter lifespan if it means I can walk around in the daylight pretending I'm human." She chuckled again. "You get a gold star. You have made my day."
She led me into her office, where she placed a gold star on the chart beneath my name for Monday. Beneath the chart she wrote, "mistook me for human."
"Colette will laugh when she sees this!"
Even when I wasn't trying, I embarrassed myself.
She grabbed the office chair from behind Colette's desk and rolled it into the hallway. "Let's get you started on our computer system. Have a seat at your desk."
For four hours, she walked me through how to sign in, how to check historical global market reports and exchange rates, and how to track investment funds purchased by the firm's financial advisors.
"We found two corrupt vampires in our advisory division, so we're checking the department's work for the last five years. It's going to be tedious, and I don't envy you one bit."
"I don't mind." Tedious had been my middle name at MIT. I only hoped I'd learned my lesson enough over the years and didn't overcomplicate the math.
We ate delivered Pad Thai in her office for lunch. "I'll introduce you to the heathens tomorrow. They're a good bunch, but they can be a bit rowdy. Do you bake at all?"
"Not really."
"You might want to buy some cupcakes for dessert tomorrow. Gotta feed them if you want them to like you."
"Are they shifters, too?"
She nodded. "You're the only human right now, and Colette seems to think you'll be moving to the evening shift before long."
I shrugged. "I don't know yet."
"Wait until you meet the heathens." She laughed. "You might change your mind and beg Colette to turn you."
She left me on my own for the next few hours, but I suspected she was watching my screen from the dual monitors in her office. Once, she cleared her throat when I accidentally hit the wrong key, but then I backspaced and fixed it.
She startled me when her head popped up over my screen around four thirty. "Time to rest your eyes for a bit, don't you think?"
My vision was a little bleary, but I was used to it after long hours of staring at screens.
"I forgot," she said. "Today is Memphis's birthday. If we miss the party in the break room, he'll hate me forever, and you by proxy. I've already told Colette you'll be a little late for your meeting, and she's cleared you for socializing."
"Thank you." The thought of people hating me before they even met me hit a little too close to my vulnerable heart. I wanted the people, er, vampires and shifters, here to like me. I'd lived enough of my life as the quiet nerd no one wanted for a friend.
The cubicle maze narrowed to a hallway with glass conference rooms on either side. Kristin stopped between two closed doors. The room on the left was dark except for a lit projector screen. The glazed glass kept me from seeing the screen itself, and the hallway was silent except for our footfalls on the thick carpet.
Kristin opened the door to the right, and the sound overwhelmed me. These rooms had fantastic sound dampening capabilities.
The party stopped for a moment when the door opened, and every eye in the room turned toward us.
"Kristin!" A brash young man with a high fade to a pompadour hairstyle raised a solo cup in her direction. "Happy birthday to me, am I right? "
"Yes, happy birthday, Memphis."
He was pretty in the way that usually caught my attention, but then he wrapped an arm around the pregnant woman sitting next to him and kissed her cheek. "Sekhmet could join us!"
"Nice to meet you." Kristin dragged me with her, shaking first Sekhmet's hand, and then Memphis's. I followed her example and shook their hands after she did.
"Sekhmet works downstairs in legal," Kristin said. "If we run into any trouble with the financial advisors, we'll be working closely with her."
"Is this Boz?" Memphis asked before Kristin had a chance to introduce me. "The whiz kid who stunned even Colette with his ability to do math in his head?"
I had? I didn't remember that, but then, I didn't remember most of my meeting with Colette.
"The one," Kristen said. "He's so far ahead of what I had planned for him to do this week, I'm going to need you all to bring me more projects for him."
A cheer went up from the other six people in the room, the rest of the "heathens," I guessed. Kristin introduced me, but I had never been good with names and faces. Never, until a face popped in through the door and my blood ran cold.
"Sekhmet, we need you on the conference call in five minutes."
It had been dark on the street a week ago, but I would never forget the face of the vampire who had stopped us and asked Boz to share. Even with his hair pulled tight to his head and his braid hidden beneath his suit jacket, I recognized him. I hadn't gotten a good look at the vampire who had lifted me off my feet and dropped me, but I blamed them both for what had happened that night.
Sekhmet rolled her eyes and pushed herself up from her chair. "Coming, Cassius." She hugged Memphis. "See you at home tonight."
Instead of following him into the hallway when she reached the door, she pushed it shut and turned back to us. "Fucking vampires, am I right?"
The heathens cheered again, raising their glasses. As much as I longed to join them, my future was becoming clear. I wasn't born a shifter. To keep this job I was beginning to love, I would have to become a vampire before too long.
"We should get back, too," Kristin said, motioning me to follow Sekhmet. Thankfully, Cassius was already gone, and I had my own meeting with a vampire to worry about.