Chapter 7 #2
The sprites were all young and flighty, full-time or part-time students trying to fit a paying job around college, where they studied art or design or some kind of sports-related science. This job was a means to an end; they didn’t put much effort in. Bare minimum only.
The dragons were all older men and women—career call center workers, hoarding their knowledge of the outdated tech systems we used, grunting to each other moodily at their desks, and guarding their cartoon bobblehead figurines in their cubicles like piles of gold and silver.
The dragons always came in first, and none of them ever said good morning to me.
I always made a special point to call out to them as they arrived and started to log in.
All of them had been working at Base Budget Insurance much longer than me, and they always defaulted to their normal grumpy state first thing in the morning.
It never took me long to reestablish dominance, though.
I waved and called out to the head dragon, Thomas, and asked him how his mother’s colonoscopy went yesterday, then deliberately called Cherry over to ask her about her leave request, forcing her to leave her desk and come to my territory.
Office politics. I lived and breathed it. I used to play the most high-stakes version of it. Now, it was more like checkers instead of war games, but I had to take my kicks where I could get them.
Stacey, a kinesiology major at USF, was the first of the sprites to arrive, swinging her satchel off her shoulders and shaking out her honey-blonde braided hair. “Morning, Susan!”
I gave her a wave, deliberately not looking at Owen, another sprite, who walked very slowly in behind her. “Hi, Stacey. How was your spin class?”
She blew out a breath, and her bangs flew up. “So good. Juanita, the instructor, she killed me. I literally died. Rest in peace, me.” She dropped into her chair with a huff. “Oh. Hi, Owen,” she said, her tone deliberately casual.
Owen, a cute young white boy with a shaved head—a graphic design student—dropped into the seat in the cubicle opposite her. “Hi, Stacey,” he said loudly. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m great! So great.”
“Great.” He beamed at her. “That’s great.”
I turned back to my computer, hiding my smile. Owen and Stacey had been sleeping together for the past five weeks. They thought nobody knew.
Contrary to popular belief, office romances weren’t necessarily a terrible idea, especially for sprites, who weren’t known for their company loyalty in the first place.
But, the way I figured it, if you were banging your colleague, you were more likely to show up for work, and you’d be far more cheerful about being there in the first place.
I’d seen the spark of interest in Owen’s eyes when Stacey moved onto my team, and I’d seen how she stared at him when he wasn’t looking, so I shifted their cubicles together and shipped them harder than a delivery from Wish.
We were now six weeks into their affair, and both of them had shown up every day, on time.
And neither of them had called out since.
At nine on the dot I stood up, did a quick headcount, and saw that everyone on my team was logged in and taking calls.
Business as usual. Everything was normal and boring. Perfect.
Smiling, I sat back down and started working my way through more emails.
“You tricked us,” Donovan’s voice growled in my ear.
Goddammit. With enormous effort, I forced myself not to react.
“That box carried us away, up to the top of the tower, and deposited us in a den of vampires.”
I frowned, and quickly put my headset on so I didn’t look like I was talking to myself.
“Vampires? What are you—” I remembered watching the floor numbers flash.
The elevator had taken Donovan and Cress to the thirteenth floor.
“Oh, no,” I said, chuckling. “Not vampires. They’re lawyers. Vladovich and Sangine are a law firm.”
“Whatever you call them in this realm, it doesn’t matter.
You deliberately evaded us.” Donovan’s fury vibrated off him, cold and intense.
It felt like there was a freezer with its door open behind me.
“You do not understand the danger you are in, Chosen. You have no understanding of your powers; you have no knowledge of the creatures who hunt you.” His voice lowered dangerously; despite the chill, I felt warmth spread in my belly. “Do not evade us again.”
I took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Fine,” I whispered. “Just… just stay back there, and try to be quiet.” With enormous effort, I went back to my emails.
Suddenly, the room darkened. A sinister, slimy feeling crawled up my arms.
Oh, no. What fresh preternatural horror—
I saw him. Ah. Not a preternatural horror. Just a mundane one.
Richie Curran—tall and skinny and wrapped in a cheap shiny midnight-blue suit and a skinny black tie, with his long, greasy black hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and a supercilious smirk on his face—loped through the office.
I cringed, moving sideways a little, hoping my monitor would block me from his—
“Susan!”
Fuck.
“Susan Moore,” he said, deliberately emphasizing my last name. He sauntered past my team, coming to a stop right in front of my desk. Ignoring the chair, he leaned forward cozily, resting his hands on my desk. “How are you this morning, Susan Moore?”
I took the precious few seconds to finish the email I was drafting, glanced up, and raised a brow. “Why aren’t you with your team, Richie?” I went back to my emails, clicking, filing, deleting, not bothering to look at him. “Don’t you have any work to do?”
“Oh, I’m letting them fly solo for a few minutes. They’ll have to get used to being without my support soon, of course,” he said. “I thought I’d do a morning tour of the floor, seeing as I’ll be department manager of the whole Client Experience and Support Contact Center by next week.”
I huffed out a laugh. “There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, you know, Richie.
You seem to have stomped over both, dragging your knuckles, and landed straight on blistering entitlement.
” I glanced up, curling my lip—a perfect combination of vague disinterest and disgust. “You don’t have the stats to back up your claims of being the best team leader in the office, and everyone knows it.
Nobody mistakes confidence for competence anymore, so this swaggery schtick won’t work. ”
That wasn’t actually true. I knew better than anyone what it was like to be passed over for a promotion in favor of an incompetent, arrogant jerk in a suit whose only real talent was to steal your ideas and talk over you loudly.
Unfortunately, sloppy bosses were still drawn to loud, brash confidence, favoring it over quiet competence.
The difference now was I’d gotten more skilled at manipulation.
I found it easy to point out I was more qualified, more experienced, with a better track record at achieving results than any other candidate, and I was good at making light-hearted jokes at the end of the interview about how I hope they’d be able to defend their decision in court.
That was the trick. As soon as your boss realized a discrimination lawsuit lurked on the horizon, they looked at the facts, and realized quickly who the best person for the job actually was. And it was never their whisky-sodden loudmouth friend.
Richie’s easy smile twitched for a second, but he glued it back on. “My team is thriving.”
“You’re never with them. You get Carol to do most of your admin work while you swan around having unnecessary ‘meetings’ with your friends.”
“See? I’m a great mentor,” he said, puffing out his chest. “Carol is working hard for the chance to get my job when I’m promoted.”
I pursed my lips. “Except you told Daniel you would put in a good word for him.” Poor Carol was going to get walked over by another loud, entitled man, even though she’d been effectively running Richie’s team for the past six months.
“Ah, well.” Richie grinned, unashamed. “A little competition is healthy. I build people up, Susan. I encourage them to reach for the stars.”
I sighed. “I’ll give you some advice, Richie.
You seem quite focused on the wrong things.
” My voice dripped with disdain. “If you spent as much time actually supporting your team so they could do their jobs better, you would have already been offered the department manager promotion. Instead, you sleaze around the office talking to your creepy buddies all day. I’ve only been here six months and Yvette is considering me instead, because I’ve stabilized my team, reduced turnover to zero, improved our performance, and blown our KPIs out of the water.
Do you know how I’ve done it?” I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m at this desk every day, working hard to make sure I’m doing everything I can, so my team can do their jobs better.
That’s what a manager does. We work for our team, not the other way around. ”
Richie leaned back and laughed. “Nice speech. Did you learn that in the mental institution?”
I stiffened.
“With your fellow lunatic murderer buddies?” Richie gloated.
My mouth went dry. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. Woosh, woosh, woosh. A wild heat built in my stomach, a rumbling volcano deep within me—
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder and squeezed gently. “Chosen.”
Fucksticks, Richie wasn’t wrong. I was nuts. The evidence for that was right behind me, hiding under a magic invisibility blanket.
Richie, sensing blood in the water, smiled widely.
He bent back down to put his hands on my desk.
His neck stretched towards me, snake-like and grotesque; I forced myself not to flinch away.
He leaned in close, and inhaled through his nose deeply, like he was breathing me in.
“Mmm.” His eyes hooded. “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough yesterday.
Listen carefully, Susan Moore. You’ll tell Yvette you’re dropping out of the running for the promotion today,” he said slowly.
“Or I’ll tell the whole office who you really are.
I’ll tell them where you have been for the past two years.
I’ll tell them what you did.” His eyes glittered with malice.
“Nobody will be able to look at you with any respect ever again. You’ll always be the crazy old lady who tried to kill her husband. ”