Page 25 of Santa's Wish
"You might want to buy some cupcakes for dessert tomorrow. Gotta feed them if you want them to like you."
"Are they shifters, too?"
She nodded. "You're the only human right now, and Colette seems to think you'll be moving to the evening shift before long."
I shrugged. "I don't know yet."
"Wait until you meet the heathens." She laughed. "You might change your mind and beg Colette to turn you."
She left me on my own for the next few hours, but I suspected she was watching my screen from the dual monitors in her office. Once, she cleared her throat when I accidentally hit the wrong key, but then I backspaced and fixed it.
She startled me when her head popped up over myscreen around four thirty. "Time to rest your eyes for a bit, don't you think?"
My vision was a little bleary, but I was used to it after long hours of staring at screens.
"I forgot," she said. "Today is Memphis's birthday. If we miss the party in the break room, he'll hate me forever, and you by proxy. I've already told Colette you'll be a little late for your meeting, and she's cleared you for socializing."
"Thank you." The thought of people hating me before they even met me hit a little too close to my vulnerable heart. I wanted the people, er, vampires and shifters, here to like me. I'd lived enough of my life as the quiet nerd no one wanted for a friend.
The cubicle maze narrowed to a hallway with glass conference rooms on either side. Kristin stopped between two closed doors. The room on the left was dark except for a lit projector screen. The glazed glass kept me from seeing the screen itself, and the hallway was silent except for our footfalls on the thick carpet.
Kristin opened the door to the right, and the sound overwhelmed me. These rooms had fantastic sound dampening capabilities.
The party stopped for a moment when the door opened, and every eye in the room turned toward us.
"Kristin!" A brash young man with a high fade to a pompadour hairstyle raised a solo cup in her direction. "Happy birthday to me, am I right?"
"Yes, happy birthday, Memphis."
He was pretty in the way that usually caught my attention, but then he wrapped an arm around the pregnant woman sitting next to him and kissed her cheek. "Sekhmet could join us!"
"Nice to meet you." Kristin dragged me with her, shaking first Sekhmet's hand, and then Memphis's. I followed her example and shook their hands after she did.
"Sekhmet works downstairs in legal," Kristin said. "If we run into any trouble with the financial advisors, we'll be working closely with her."
"Is this Boz?" Memphis asked before Kristin had a chance to introduce me. "The whiz kid who stunned even Colette with his ability to do math in his head?"
I had? I didn't remember that, but then, I didn't remember most of my meeting with Colette.
"The one," Kristen said. "He's so far ahead of what I had planned for him to do this week, I'm going to need you all to bring me more projects for him."
A cheer went up from the other six people in the room, the rest of the "heathens," I guessed. Kristin introduced me, but I had never been good with names and faces. Never, until a face popped in through the door and my blood ran cold.
"Sekhmet, we need you on the conference call in five minutes."
It had been dark on the street a week ago, but Iwould never forget the face of the vampire who had stopped us and asked Boz to share. Even with his hair pulled tight to his head and his braid hidden beneath his suit jacket, I recognized him. I hadn't gotten a good look at the vampire who had lifted me off my feet and dropped me, but I blamed them both for what had happened that night.
Sekhmet rolled her eyes and pushed herself up from her chair. "Coming, Cassius." She hugged Memphis. "See you at home tonight."
Instead of following him into the hallway when she reached the door, she pushed it shut and turned back to us. "Fucking vampires, am I right?"
The heathens cheered again, raising their glasses. As much as I longed to join them, my future was becoming clear. I wasn't born a shifter. To keep this job I was beginning to love, I would have to become a vampire before too long.
"We should get back, too," Kristin said, motioning me to follow Sekhmet. Thankfully, Cassius was already gone, and I had my own meeting with a vampire to worry about.
CHAPTER 8
SANTA
