Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Beckett
Isighed as I sank into the leather couch. A fire crackled in the fireplace, warming the room, though I barely felt it. (Vampires ran cooler than humans and other supernatural races due to our… nature.)
Abigail Marshall.
While she’d already proven herself to be a competent and skilled employee, she’d also already become a liability—and the biggest one I’d encountered in recent years.
It was necessary to keep my existence a secret from humans. Going public meant being involved in local supernatural politics and keeping public portrayal of supernaturals in my mind as well as being aware of how my actions affected it.
In short, it meant responsibilities. I’d had enough of those in my long life.
Abigail would be the first nonmagical human to know I was a vampire in decades. I was careful to keep her kind at arm’s length, and used supernaturals for any tasks that necessitated knowing what I was. The man who had hired Abigail, for example, was a wizard.
And yet, I’d agreed to keep her on.
Outside an owl hooted. Glancing out the window showed the moon at its zenith, full and high in the sky.
I’d never been what one could consider soft, but perhaps it had happened with time? There’d been something so earnest in her gray hazel eyes that I’d actually broken the ‘no humans’ policy willingly.
I’d suspect she’d bedazzled me or used a subtle kind of magic, except my house was charmed to the attic shutters and Abigail had the subtlety of a church bell at noon.
I tapped my fingers on the arm of the couch.
I wasn’t overly worried that she would blow my secret.
She was far too professional and competent to spread the word of what I was.
Additionally, as a vampire I had an affinity for blood.
I didn’t have a shifter’s sense of smell that could scent the biological changes humans underwent with different emotions, but I could sense her heartbeat.
It hadn’t stuttered or changed when she’d said she would keep her silence.
Amusingly, it had jumped the hardest when she realized I meant to fire her.
I stood up and slowly strolled over to my desk, which was piled high with financial statements and investment information. I started paging through it, looking for anything that would spark my interest, when my cell phone chimed with an incoming text message.
I checked it, but it wasn’t a business text, but a group chat I was in with a handful of vampires in the Midwest.
It was a rather unique group of male vampires that ranged from the vampire leader of the Midwest to me—a solo vampire who had hoarded more wealth than I’d ever need by investing other vampire Families’ funds—to a reclusive vampire who lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and ran a Sasquatch gift shop just because he could.
The bond that tied us together was our desire to stay current with modern technology, our powerful natures, and our distaste for vampire kind’s obsession with the past.
Tonight’s text message was from the said gift shop owner.
Ed
Anyone have a tech guy they can recommend? My computer is infected again. That’s it send it I said stop transcribing you box of junk by King Richard himself you cursed thing
The message cut off abruptly as Ed likely figured out how to stop the voice-to-text function of his cellphone.
As I finished reading, a reply came in.
K. Drake
I’d ask what websites you were visiting to catch another computer virus, but I have a feeling I might regret it.
Ed
It was an alien spotting website. Makes you think that maybe aliens infected it just to keep the word from spreading, eh?
K. Drake
Ed. It is very important to me that you know aliens aren’t real, right?
Ed
Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that a lot of sasquatch folks branch out into interest in aliens, too.
K. Drake
You are the oddest entrepreneur I’ve ever met.
Smirking, I decided to chime in.
That may be, but as his personal investor allow me to assure you he is very successful.
Ed
Yep! ‘Squatch pays the bills, that he does!
K. Drake
Stop encouraging him, Beckett.
I chuckled, then tossed my phone aside before settling in to my desk, intending to immerse myself in the financial world and stop fussing over the new human in my employment.
Yes, perhaps I was becoming senile in my old age and this was all a mistake. Or maybe I was bored with the regularity of my life, and Abigail Marshall would be a refreshing change.
It seemed only time would tell.