Chapter 7 Elijah
Elijah
‘Molly,’ I call as she walks past my door.
She stops and steps backwards a few paces until she’s in my line of sight. Some curls have fallen out of their clip around her ears.
‘Hm?’
‘Oh, I, do you have a moment?’
She squints, but steps closer, still not entering the little room I call home for eight hours a day. ‘Depends. What do you want?’
I think I much prefer this Molly to the polite, efficient one who trained me those first days at Drummond. This Molly is honest, snarky and seldom nice to me. Usually, only Dylan talks to me like this, and now that I’m thinking about it, his bluntness may be one reason I like him so much, too.
Molly leans her hip and shoulder against the door frame, and I can’t help but notice that curve of her waist, the apparent silkiness of her green blouse. I wonder what it would feel like under my fingertips.
‘Well?’ she prompts, and I sit up straighter in my swivelling chair.
‘Right. Can you help tell me what a–’ I glance down at the laptop screen ‘–VPN is?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Help ticket.’ I point at my computer, though she can’t see what I’m looking at. ‘Someone claims their new desktop doesn’t have VPN capabilities, but I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘Mmm. Google it,’ Molly says, and turns on her heel to walk away, but I call for her to stop.
She does, glancing over her shoulder, blonde curl hanging there.
I did try to google it, only it seems there’s not just a single VPN that companies or individuals use.
Thus, I need to know the correct one. And where to find such a thing to give it to the individual.
‘I did, I just, I’m at a loss.’
‘Kenneth can help you,’ she says, and winks before waltzing away.
She’s been helpful since our talk, for the most part, at least. She’s spent time training me each day, and has usually answered questions when I have them.
All politeness has gone out the window, though, replaced with this smirking devil, amusement in her eyes when she denies me.
I chase after her, quickly catching up as she heads for the kitchen. Devi raises her eyebrows at us as we pass by.
‘You see, I’ve already asked Kenneth, and he referred me back to you,’ I explain. ‘And this ticket is from a manager in the sales department, so I really ought to learn how to fulfil the request.’
‘Yes, but you’ve already reached your question allotment for the day, so you’re just going to have to figure it out, Eli.’
Eli. She’s taken to calling me this since learning about my apparent ineptitude. She sounds like my brother. Nobody has regularly called me Eli for over a hundred years.
Exasperated, I sigh as I follow her into the kitchen. She heads straight for the water dispenser where she pushes a button to pour steaming liquid into a black and white checkered mug. When I say nothing, she raises her eyebrows and smiles, pleasant and–dare I say–smug.
On another day, I would just accept this and wait to ask her tomorrow when my question allotment resets. It’s not another day, though. It’s Friday, and I’ve already messed up in various levels of disaster this week.
First, I accidentally deleted a user’s company email address when I was meant to just ‘release an email from jail’.
I still do not understand this email prison concept, but Molly fixed it for me with no shortage of grumbling.
Since Monday, I’ve also downloaded files from three emails–two fake phishing scams, one real one–and when Kenneth, who sent the phishing tests, confronted me about it, I compelled him into forgetting my blunder entirely.
Molly did have to remove the malware from my computer, though, which she did while making me admit I’d been foolish half a dozen times.
If all this wasn’t enough, I accidentally changed my password and no amount of turning off and on the computer would prompt me to reset it.
I did ask Kenneth to help me, only he said he was busy, but that Molly was probably free (surprise to none, she was not).
I’d already compelled him the day before, so I didn’t want to mess with his brain again.
Devi did help me, and for that I was grateful.
But I am in desperate need of a win before the weekend, and this VPN problem would be exactly the thing if Molly would just help me one last time.
‘It’s two p.m. on a Friday. Most people have called it for the week–you should just pretend to be working like everyone else,’ Molly says. She dunks a tea bag in the water, the drink’s spicy aroma filling the space between us.
‘Please, Molly?’
‘No.’
I laugh–I can’t help but be startled and a little bit charmed by her complete lack of manners. ‘You’re heartless,’ I tell her, and it makes her eyes sparkle.
‘Well, maybe.’ Molly shrugs, and turns to me fully, her round hip against the counter.
I heave a big breath that only serves to remind me how delightful she smells, distracting me momentarily from my rising distress.
If I can’t get this one thing sorted, word might get back to Ryan that I don’t know what I’m doing.
It will be like my stint as a bartender last month all over again, where I compelled my manager to believe I was experienced, but found I would have had to compel a whole bar full of patrons if I was to hide the fact that I didn’t know the next thing about mixology.
I’ll be fired, and my nights are too precious to work a job during them. This is the best it’s going to get, which means I need to get better. It’s time for me to take matters into my own hands.
I didn’t want to have to compel Molly, not when she’s done so much for me, but a man can only take so much failure before he breaks, and I am just about there.
So, I press my palm against the countertop and dip my head and look her straight in the eyes.
The brown of them is a rich colour even with the fluorescents buzzing overhead.
Her eyelashes are curled and long, painted black, and her cheeks are a soft pink, growing pinker as I stare at her and say nothing.
‘What?’ she asks quietly.
My eyes betray me, dropping to her plump lips for only a moment, but I know she saw it. Fuck.
I set my jaw and channel all my vampiric power into my words. I can feel magic rising within me, circling around us before directing to the woman in front of me.
‘Please help me with my request.’ As far as compulsion goes, it’s a solid one.
I’ve compelled hundreds of humans in my life, though Gregory would say I’ve held back too often.
Well, he’d be proud of all the humans I’ve manipulated in the last months since starting this whole charade of re-entering the human world.
I ignore the way this thought turns my stomach.
Molly blinks, and I exhale, dropping the glamour from around us, the temperature falling with it. I expect that she’ll head for my office to show me through this VPN conundrum. Instead, a toothy smile takes over her face and Molly… laughs.
‘You are so freaking weird,’ she tells me before turning away from me, mug in hand.
I recoil, nothing about the interaction making sense to me.
I did compel her, right? I am certain I did.
And my record for success is 100 per cent in this department, but Molly is walking away from me, smiling like she thinks I am just as absurd as she thought I was two minutes ago. It doesn’t make sense.
‘Molly?’ I call, and I can’t help the smile that spreads over my own face.
She turns, staring back at me with a wry expression. Christ, she’s perfect, I think. And immune to my compulsions.
‘What?’
‘Tell me how to install the VPN,’ I command with the full force of my compulsion behind it.
Molly rolls her eyes. ‘Google it, loser,’ she says before walking out of the kitchen.
I call to her one last time and she lets out an exaggerated sigh before turning back and waving her hand for me to get on with it.
‘Thank you for your help this week,’ I say, and I mean it. I would swear her face softens for a millisecond before she shakes her head.
‘Try again Monday.’
I’m left alone in the quiet. The ice maker to my left drops a new tray into the bucket and the sound of Molly’s shoes on the floor dissolves as she walks away from the kitchen, away from my useless commands.
I’ve never heard of such a thing as this. Never have I met a human that I couldn’t beguile with my magic. Just to ensure I haven’t done something wrong, I go to Ryan’s office and repeat the request to him. He complies immediately, as easily compelled as he was in my interview.
When all is said and done, I sit in my office and stare blankly out the door where, as Molly said, everyone pretends to work for the last hours of their work week.
Devi and Molly mutter to each other about their weekend plans at Molly’s desk, both smiling.
Molly’s face lights up when she smiles that way.
Molly, who wasn’t even a little bit compelled to help me. She hasn’t even looked my way.
Oh, my family would be furious and completely beside themselves to hear this.
I giggle to myself–I can’t help it.
Molly, my Molly, is immune to vampires.
Instead of going to Dylan’s flat after work, I walk the few blocks to his building and use the mobile phone he gave me to call his. He answers on the third ring.
‘’Sup?’
‘Look out your window,’ I tell him, a little too loud before I remember that I don’t need to yell into the phone for him to hear me.
From the rectangle I know to be his office, Dylan’s messy head appears, followed by his exceptionally wide shoulders.
He squints at me, and I wave dramatically from where I stand below.
I haven’t been inside Dylan’s office building, but he spends more time there than I think is reasonable or healthy for a mortal with a limited number of years to live. As a werewolf, Dylan will live longer than his human colleagues, but only by seventy years or so.
‘Stop working,’ I tell him. ‘I thought people only pretend to work on Fridays.’