Page 7 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

Rain began speckling Violet’s shoulders, and she threw her hands over her head to guard her hair. Once she had finally dried out after the last rainstorm, she’d spent over an hour at home curling it into waves before she came. Her makeup had almost taken that long too after she’d redone it from the catastrophic mess it had been this morning. She came to the cathedral ready for an interview on the spot, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Well, unless the rain completely destroyed her look first.

She tried the doors. They were locked.

Violet winced up at the sky where not an ounce of blue light could be seen, and a small moan escaped her. She looked back the way she’d come, thinking of racing for the bus stop in her overpriced stilettos. But…

She’d be eating nothing but instant rice and ramen all month if she couldn’t land a job. Zorah would fill the fridge with groceries and tell Violet to enjoy them, but Violet would feel too guilty to eat anything if she wasn’t contributing to the bills. And since it was just the two of them living together, Violet hated relying on her aunt for everything when she was a grown, capable, legal adult who could work.

The Fairy Post claimedthiswas where the owner would be—right here in this old building. It didn’t seem probable that anyone was inside,or that this was really an office, but Violet knew she’d never stop regretting it if she didn’t at least peek inside.

The grass was already sparkling wet, but Violet hopped off the stairs, mumbling an apology to her non-waterproof shoes. Her heels stuck into the ground as she wobble-hopped around the base of the building, crunching over hidden stones and glass. She came to a blown-out window, and she leaned forward to peer inside.

It was too dark to see. The rain picked up as she sighed, trying to imagine why this building was in such rough shape. It didn’t seem safe to try to get inside if locals were going around bashing in its windows.

“Forget it,” she mumbled. “This place looks like a death trap.” No job was worth this kind of risk.

She almost tripped when she turned to leave, and she looked down to find her stiletto heel stuck deep into the earth. With a huff, she dropped her purse onto the grass and tried to yank her shoe free with the hook of her toes. The only thing that could make this day worse would be if she had to step on wet grass in her nylons. She tugged again, hopping back with the other foot to balance, causing her heel to hit the windowsill. There was no stopping herself from tipping backward after that and rolling right through the window.

Her shriek was loud enough to shake the city as she fell. For a split second, she forgot how to breathe.

Her elbows hit the floor first, then the rest of her body unfurled like a thrown blanket. She laid there, blinking up at a dark room, hardly believing what had just happened.

Violet sat up and looked herself over, checking her elbows for scrapes, her knees, her rear. She released a high, sharp sound when she noticed the dust covering her best interview skirt. Then she sneezed. It echoed, and it occurred to her how huge the room was. It was also… completely destroyed.

She jumped to her feet and gaped at the broken furniture in the corners, chunks of drywall and stone, and the shredded wallpaper coating every surface. This didnotlook like an office.

She was in a deep basement, and the window was too high to climb back out.

Violet strode out of the ravaged space and up a trio of stairs, praying it was just a fluke, but the lobby was covered in broken glass, too. She nearly tripped over it trying to reach the large entry doors, but when she made it, she grabbed a cold handle and tugged. The doors squeaked a little, but they didn’t budge. There were no locks on the inside, and she hadn’t seen any on the outside, but somehow it was locked both ways. All the broken windows she could have reached had tightly fastened boards over them, drilled into place.

“Oh my gosh…” she breathed as she turned to take in the huge, unlit, creaking cathedral. “I’m totally trapped!” And like a genius, she’d left her phone outside in her purse.

Glass crunched beneath her heels. She nearly rolled an ankle with every other step as she rushed from room to room, looking for a way out. Every area appeared closed off to the outside world, and like it hadn’t been touched in ages. A thousand half-melted candles covered tall shelves, and old books with aged ivory paper were piled in mountains on tables like she’d found herself in some mad potion-mixing wizard’s hideout.

She entered a vast room that took up most of the first level of the building; a sanctuary. She wasn’t sure how she knew what it was. She didn’t remember being in a cathedral before, but that little voice inside her—the one that only came out when she was experiencing déjà vu from a life she didn’t remember—told her she’d been in a church, with a sanctuary like this one, at least once in her life.

Violet rubbed her temples. “This is the worst day, ever,” she decided. Her hair was wet again, she was sure her makeup was smeared, and now she was covered in dust and stuck inside a building she stupidly mistook for a newspaper publisher’s office.

“Idiooooot.” She dragged the word out, letting it sink in to punish herself.

“Hello?” she finally tried. Her voice carried up through the heights of the sanctuary and into the balcony above that wrapped the large room. Dozens of wooden pews had been pushed to the sides, making the space open and lonely without furniture. A dais filled the front, covered with more dusty candlesticks. It might have been a pretty place once—she imagined the lights on, the pews set out, warmth in the air, and a congregation of people singing hymns. But now…

It looked like a vampire’s lair.

She sighed and turned back the way she’d come, returning to the lobby and going for a large set of stairs covered by an aged emerald carpet. “Hello?” she called toward the upstairs rooms. She headed down the first hall, peeking into doors that were open. “Hello…?”

A lamp was on.

Violet stopped outside the door. A wooden desk inside was stacked high with newspapers. The cozy room looked completely out of place in the gloomy cathedral. Cut out articles were pinned to a wall, and a ceiling-height chalkboard filled the other side with notes: headlines, dates, names. She took two steps in, spotting a familiar article flapping in a stormy breeze creeping in from the open window. It was pegged to the wall just like all the others, but… She knew that headline.

Violet had written that article.

“This has to be a joke,” Violet breathed. Her heart began to thud, her heels sliding back toward the door as she took in the other columns, realizing there wasn’t just one article of hers, there weredozens. Articles she’d written while working at The Sprinkled Scoop. They were tucked in around other columns penned by various journalists who’d only dabbled in the story Violet had spent so much time obsessing over. Articles about the strange occurrences of young women waking up in various places around the city over the last six months and being unable to remember how they got there, their pockets sometimes full of small rocks. Some were half starved to death like they’d slept for days without waking up to eat. And in two cases… In two of the twenty-seven cases, the women were found dead. Killed of starvation while comatose, turning the memory-thief case into a possible murder case. People were saying the streets were haunted.

Violet lifted a slow hand to her mouth as it dawned on her: Whoever owned this office had to behim; the criminal she’d been writing about. The one creeping from shadow to shadow, snatching young women and erasing their memories with some form of scientifically advanced drug—or some unexplainable, mythical trick from the ancient times. She hadn’t ruled out either possibility in her research.

She released a breath and backed out of the room. Suddenly the broken furniture downstairs didn’t look like an accident. In fact, everything in the cathedral looked like there’d been a struggle.

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