Fanged Benefits at Work

Chapter 1 Elijah

Elijah

No number of movies, long-running TV series, or books can really prepare you for what New York City is like. They don’t do justice to how loud it is, the general conflicting smells everywhere, or the sheer number of bodies walking, running, breathing, coughing, and playing instruments.

My estate was near a town I frequented, if only to hear the humans conversing at the bar.

I needed, from time to time, to remind myself that the world is still living and revolving even after I’ve seen it change over and over and over again through the days turned decades turned centuries. But it was nothing like this.

The city is wholly and completely different since the last time I set foot on these once-cobblestone roads–two centuries ago, give or take a couple of decades–and though Dylan warned me, I was ill-equipped for what would greet me when we made our way here.

‘Now, what do you do when someone asks you for help with their computer?’ Dylan asks for the dozenth time as we stalk down a sidewalk with more people and automobiles than I’ve ever seen in one place.

‘I ask them to turn it off and then turn it back on again.’ I attempt to veer us out of the path of a young man walking an absurd number of domesticated dogs. The animals all turn their heads, ears perked, to watch Dylan as we pass. I pull him closer to me by his elbow.

‘Stop fucking pushing me,’ Dylan snips. ‘Just walk normal, you’re fine. What do you say when someone says they aren’t getting emails?’

‘Turn off the email—’

‘No, you can’t turn off your email. You tell them to…?’ he prompts, as if I can remember the changing tides of technology when I didn’t get electricity until the ’90s.

‘To… unplug it?’

Dylan sighs, pinches his eyes shut briefly and shakes his head.

‘Tell them to log out. You know what? Just tell them to turn off the computer first and see if that works.’

We’ve apparently made it to our destination because Dylan pushes my shoulder, directing us into a small courtyard beneath the massive building, which appears to be made up of as much glass as it is metal. I wince at the sun already reflecting off the highest windows.

‘This building has a cellar?’ I ask.

‘Don’t call it that, say basement,’ Dylan says. ‘And yes, which is ideal because practically no sunlight will get to you.’

The practically is what really sells me.

My last attempt at gainful employment ended woefully quickly thanks to the bookstore having many windows.

I was powerless with all that sunlight filling up the store, and neither employers nor customers take well to finding the staff sleeping with a preternatural stillness at the front counter or between the bookstacks.

The little phone Dylan keeps on his person at all times beeps the marimba tune, and he curses.

I have my own device too, a cell phone. Dylan tried to get a landline installed at the manor a few years ago, around the same time he tried to get Wi-Fi installed, but I didn’t see the need.

There was also no air conditioning, which Dylan complained about when he came to visit every summer, but there were lots of windows, and always a lovely gentle breeze.

‘I have to run. Do you have your go juice?’ Dylan asks.

‘Yes, captain.’ I hold up the bright green metal bottle he gave me to store blood in.

Dylan squints at me, assessing head to foot, then nods.

I feel a sudden panic that he won’t be coming in with me.

Oughtn’t he show me inside? Make sure I’m settled?

Answer any probing questions I don’t have the answers to?

Dylan may be a werewolf, but he’s been living among humans his whole life; he’s good at this.

‘What’s the matter? You look sick.’

‘I don’t get sick,’ I say, though I feel like in this moment I could get sick if pressed. I lower my voice to a whisper. ‘What if I wreck this one too?’

‘You won’t,’ Dylan says, like he can see the future.

This job will be my third attempt in two months at a human career and if I mess this one up, my options will limit even further to late night janitorial or what Dylan calls ‘a lifeless remote job’. I need this to work.

‘Listen, you’re going to be great. They’re all going to love you and, hey, if worse comes to worst, do what you did to get the job in the first place, yeah?’ He wiggles his fingers next to his temple in his approximation of vampiric compulsion. ‘Be good.’

With a hearty thump on my shoulder, Dylan holds the phone to his ear and resumes his walk in the flow of people traversing to their own tall buildings around the city.

I can’t be too mad at him for leaving, not when he’s shaken up his whole life by letting me stay with him and attempted to educate me on the ways of the twenty-first-century human for these last months.

He’s a good friend, and perhaps my only one, though my family would have loud and ungenerous opinions if they found out I spent so much time with the werewolf who had wandered onto my property fifteen years ago and who just kept coming back.

I square my shoulders and readjust the scarf and hat shielding my skin from the sun peeking through the clouds of the morning’s grey sky.

Beneath all these layers, I’m wearing a grey suit, which is as boring as it is uncomfortable.

I told Dylan I ought to wear a nicer, flouncier sort of shirt with bigger sleeves and a few more frills at the neck, but he said under no circumstances could I dress like a seventeenth-century pirate.

He gave me the suit instead. Said I looked good. Sharp. Alive.

Someone staring down at their phone bumps into me, their shoulder knocking mine, but he doesn’t even look up from the screen to apologise; he just mutters a sorry and is on his way.

He wears a suit much like mine, so much like it that I think it might even be the same one.

It must be common in the workplace, matching our bland, wool ensembles.

The sky is growing brighter by the moment, so I guess now’s as good a time as any to start the first day of being what Dylan calls a corporate gremlin.

Only, when I reach the door to the building, it’s not a door at all, but a series of glass panes within a larger, circular glass chamber. I blink, sure I’ve seen one in a film but unsure how one is supposed to interact with it. To be quite truthful, it terrifies me.

Another person brushes past me, this one not on their phone but holding paper cups in either hand.

She lifts onto her toes, bumping her hip against a metal post that beeps at the action, then uses her back to press against a more palatable glass door to the right of the rotating one. Now that I can do.

I’m headed for the more comfortable side door when a group of individuals approaches the building. They don’t hit their hips to the post, instead pulling out white rectangles much like the credit card Dylan gave me and using that to earn the same beeps before entering.

I do not have one of those white cards, but I pull out the plastic credit card and try that against the post. It makes no sound, so I try again, harder this time to the same end.

‘Excuse me,’ I try as a woman walks past me. She keeps walking, not even acknowledging me. I clear my throat and stand taller.

That’s another thing different about this place since I last visited: no speaking to strangers. The city isn’t exceptionally conducive to making friends.

I decide maybe I don’t need the post to beep, and instead try my luck pushing at the glass door, but when I try, it’s stuck and immovable, no matter how much force I use on the handle. Locked.

‘You good?’ someone asks behind me. I turn from my efforts on the door and find a human woman with a mess of golden curly hair pulled into a braid.

She’s got a few loose curls that rest on her forehead above eyebrows that are knitted together in confusion or concern, I’m not positive which.

All I can think is that she looks like sunshine.

‘Am I… good?’ I repeat. Is she asking after the nature of my person?

She raises one eyebrow above the other. ‘Yeah, do you need help or something? You can’t just get in through that door; you need a key.’

A key. I remember Dylan saying that sometimes keys don’t look exactly like keys any more. Sometimes they look like apps, or–ah, yes–like cards.

‘I don’t have a key,’ I say.

‘Well, then you can’t go in that door.’

‘Do you have one?’

She blinks at me. ‘Yes, because I work here.’

‘I’ll use yours then.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Oh, forgive me. May I use yours?’ My manners are not what they once were, my mother would say on account of me spending so much time with a dog. ‘Please.’

‘I can’t just let people in. You’ll have to call building security and get them to give you a pass.’ She gestures at a plaque on the wall with a phone number.

To do this, I would have to use the phone Dylan gave me, and I’m not entirely sure I remember exactly how to make a call on the little glass screen that contains so many additional screens within.

‘But I work here too,’ I protest. ‘Today’s my first day, and if I don’t get in soon, I will be late, and I’d like to be on time if you please.’

‘If I please?’ She laughs but doesn’t look all that amused. ‘I–you know what? Sure.’ The woman retrieves a white card from her coat pocket, hers attached to a long necklace of some kind, and scans the pillar, inciting the familiar beep. ‘Stop at the security desk to the left.’

I smile and bow, remembering when I am already halfway prostrate in front of her that Dylan said bowing is out of fashion in much of the world these days and completely incorrect.

Her eyes are expressive and like honey, and she looks at me like I’m the strangest creature she’s encountered all morning. A result of the bow, I presume.

Turning to finally enter the building, I pause, suddenly afraid that if I try to go in, I will be stopped by the magical forces that require me to be invited into a residence.

Public buildings seldom have this requirement, but I’ve been wrong before.

Better to cover my bases then. It’s my first day, after all.

I turn back to her again.

‘So, you’re saying I’m welcome here,’ I hedge.

‘Dude, what?’ She props one hand on her hip. Her suit is black, not grey. Another employee squeezes past us, scanning his key before gaining entrance.

‘You’re inviting me into the building. Correct?’

‘I’m not—’

‘Please invite me into the building,’ I clarify, in case my question wasn’t clear.

I would compel her to do this, but there are actually not that many rules dictating my kind, but one of them is that I cannot compel someone to invite me inside. It would go against the necessity of having an invitation, I suppose.

Her mouth hangs open, a gap between her front teeth visible behind cherry-red lips. I am bewitched by her teeth, I think. She closes her mouth, then shrugs.

‘Come on in,’ she says, and slaps her key against the beam again. This time when it beeps, I push on the glass door and, sure enough, it gives under my weight.

I pause to thank her as she performs the same ritual, but she brushes past me before I can, muttering something under her breath. She must also be late for work.

I unwind my scarf from my neck and remove the floppy, wide-brim hat from my head before stalking to the security desk to inquire after a key of my own.

The building is large, but I’m sure I’ll see her again. When I do, I’ll thank her. She seems helpful and approachable–maybe she’ll even be my first friend.