Page 4 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

She realized they were gathered in front of the mayor’s personal, offsite office building when a young girl in a private school uniform stepped backward, hugging an armful of books to herself. The girl’s wide eyes darted from one reporter to the next as they inched in, holding their microphones toward her face. The sight turned something in Violet’s stomach.

“You’re the former mayor’s daughter, right? What do you think of your father’s behaviour?” one of the reporters asked. Before the question was finished, Violet hurried over the sidewalk to reach them. She cut through the pack and found herself in front of the former mayor’s daughter. For a second, Violet wondered why she’d chosen to put herself in this spot. It had been a while since she was on this side of the cameras. She turned to face the reporters.

“She’s in elementary school,” Violet scolded the pack. “Let her go do her homework.”

A few reporters grunted; some rolled their eyes. One or two tried to reach around her with their mics, ignoring her completely. Violet pulled the newspaper from beneath her arm and held it up like she was going to smack the next reporter that didn’t back off. The journalist closest raised his hands in apology and finally took a step back.

“Hey, isn’t that Violet Miller?”

Violet flinched. Somewhere in her consciousness, she was aware of rainclouds moving overhead. Of darkness crawling over the street and cold drops hitting her cheeks and shoulders. Of reporters pulling out umbrellas to save their cameras.

There was a time Violet would have gladly smiled for the cameras when she was recognized. But not today. Today she’d been let go from her dream job. And before that, she’d stress-eaten a cinnamon roll on the bus ride that had ended up exploding all over her blouse. And now her hair was wild instead of in its original smooth ponytail, and she was being rained upon.

Once, she’d been proud to be the pretty, mysterious girl in the spotlight, but for the first time, she wanted to run.

All it took was one reporter in the group to ask, and suddenly half a dozen microphones were held inches from Violet’s mouth. She swallowed, lowering her newspaper weapon and blindly reaching behind her for the former mayor’s daughter. She tucked the girl in her shadow as she looked right into the cameras and said, “Yes. I’m Violet Miller. ‘The girl in the purple dress.’ If you want an interview, interview me instead. I’ll give you a good story.”

Ten questions fired in her direction at once. Violet felt the girl slip away behind her. The sound of the mayor’s office door slamming shut filled the air a second later. It was a small relief.

“Do you still forgeteverything?” asked the closest reporter, stepping forward and cutting off all the others.

Violet tried smoothing down her dark hair, knowing it was no use trying to look decent right now. She wrung her fingers as she tried to sort through the questions. She’d avoided interviews for the past year while she’d focused on her career. She’d done it believing she could be known for her journalism instead of her peculiar life story. But she could hardly think of answers past the realization that on this side of the camera was where she might be trapped forever.

When she finally reached the bus stop, Violet entered the plexiglass waiting shelter and plunked onto the bench. Rainwater gushed from her skirt and dripped off the ends of her hair. Thankfully no one was around to see her sopping wet, miserable state. She leaned back against the glass wall and closed her eyes, wondering if she might be lucky enough to just evaporate right there.

Paper and ink, blogs and facts, catchy titles, and trending hashtags. Big news and entertaining stories, fact-filled articles—especially about the weird and unexplainable. Those were the things Violet had lived and breathed for a whole year. She’d been following thememory loss casefor over half of her internship. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to let it go. There were still mysteries to be solved. People still needed answers.

She still needed answers.

Violet tugged a hand through her unruly hair and sighed. She unrolled the newspaper, glad she’d saved it from Fil’s recycling bin. Despite her rotten day, the sketches on the front page of The Fairy Post brought a smile to her mouth. They reminded her of children’s doodles; not super detailed, yet charming. As her gaze raked down the page, it snagged on a box of text at the bottom:

JOB POSTING

The writer of The Fairy Post is seeking an individual capable of being a somewhat decent secretary.

That was all it said. Violet turned the paper over. There was no job description, there was no office address or contact name. There was just a phone number in very small text.

“That’s it?” she mumbled. She flipped the newspaper open but found only articles with warnings of common fairy tricks, fairy sightings, and an odd crossword puzzle that wasn’t built with straight boxes but instead twisted around and connected at unusual points. There wasn’t a single word more about the posting, like the person who wrote the paper had gotten distracted and forgot to include it. Maybe Fil was right. The Fairy Post did seem a little unprofessional. Violet released a small laugh. She closed the paper and tucked it back beneath her arm. It didn’t matter if there was no job description. She didn’t want to be a secretary; she wanted to be a journalist.

Though… she needed to buy groceries this month. And she’d been eyeing a new pair of heels in a storefront window every day on her way to The Sprinkled Scoop.

And how in the world was she going to tell Zorah that she didn’t make the cut and was now jobless? Zorah would have a heart attack, then probably drive to her own surgery wing at the hospital and perform emergency surgery on herself. Then she’d come right back and smack Violet over the head for screwing up her life by not doingwhatever it takesto get the job she wanted.

Violet released a huff and pulled her phone from her purse, dreading the inevitable conversation with her aunt. She opened the newspaper and held it close to her face to see the phone number. It was almost too small to read, but she plugged in the numbers with her polished nails and cleared her throat, pulling the phone to her ear as it rang. And rang. And rang.

There was no voicemail—the line just clicked off. She tapped the corner of her phone, scanning The Fairy Post again. On the back, right at the bottom, the last article ended with:

—and if any faeborn fool has a problem with this, feel free to come meet me at the cathedral on Roll Street, and we will duke it out fairy to fairy.

Violet shook her head with a smirk. The writer of The Fairy Post was odd, but at least he or she had a sense of humour, unlike most of the journalists she’d been working with up until now.

The bus rolled up to the curb and Violet stood, dragging out her bus pass from her pocket. She boarded in silence, was met with an evenly spaced crowd of smelly city people who didn’t own cars just like her, and found a seat far at the back. When she was seated, she eyed the phone number on the job posting again. She tried dialling one last time.

It rang once.

Beep.

Heavy breathing came over the line.

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