“I… I don’t appreciate you making fun of me,” I sputtered, trying to appear calmer and more collected than I actually felt. “It’s not my fault I’ve never met a vampire in real life before.”
“Actually,” Fluffikins pointed out with a bemused expression. “You probably have. Just didn’t realize it at the time.”
My mouth fell open in shock.
“Let me guess,” Connie interjected, throwing a hand on her hip and staring at me just as intently as before. It was then I realized that she never blinked. “You’ve read all the old classics like Dracula, Twilight, Interview with a Vampire?”
“I mean, yeah. I’m an author. I like to read.” As much as I wanted to appear fine with this latest revelation, my instincts were still screaming at me to run for cover.
“Um, are we calling Twilight a classic now?” I added to lighten the air between us.
Nobody laughed at my joke.
Connie’s nose twitched as if she were going to sneeze, and then she said, “Normies get so much wrong, and by the time they finally get something right, it’s completely outdated.”
“Oh… kay,” I said, because it seemed she expected me to say something.
“Vampires don’t drink blood. Not anymore,” she continued. This is the point I realized that her chest didn’t rise and fall with the normal breaths of everyday life. Probably because she wasn’t alive. She was a freaking vampire.
I furrowed my brow and stared at her, partially in disbelief and partly in continued horror.“Then why did you just…?”
She cracked a grin for the first time.“To mess with you. Obviously.”
“Do you drink deer blood like the Cullens?” The better I understood the intimidating creature standing before me, the less I would fear her. At least, that’s what I hoped.
“No, dear. I’m dead. I don’t have to eat or drink anything at all.”
“So you’re more like a zombie?”
She waved a finely manicured hand at me dismissively.“No, no. I also don’t eat brains.”
Fluffikins hopped up on the table and cleared his throat.“Allow me to intervene. Otherwise this could take all day.”
We both turned toward the boss cat, awaiting an explanation.
“Vampires drain the life-force from humans to survive,” he revealed.
A shiver ran through me.“Yeah, blood.”
Connie shook her head.“It used to be, but not anymore.”
“Then what—?”
“Money,” they both said at once.
I thought about this for a moment but couldn’t reconcile what they were saying now with the stories I’d always heard about vampires growing up.
“In your ‘modern’ world…” Connie made air quotes here. “Money is immortality. If you have enough, you can practically buy your way out of death.”
“No, that’s not right. Rich people die all the time,” I argued, refusing to believe what she was telling me. She was right. It seemed I drew the line at vampires.
“Just the normies. Magicks can live forever, if we want to,” Fluffikins supplied. “It’s part of the reason everyone says cats have nine lives.”
“No, that’s not right, either. Mrs. Haberdash died just last week,” I mumbled, referring to my former landlady, whose death had begun my whole association with the Paranormal Temp Agency.
“She didn’t want to become a vampire,” Fluffikins clarified for everyone. “I did present her with that option before cementing our plan.”
“Prejudiced old hag,” Connie said, then added another colorful curse to top it off.
“If being a vampire is so great, then why wouldn’t she go that route?” I wondered aloud.
“Too many questions,” Fluffikins said with an agitated flick of his tail. “Connie’s role at the PTA is not what we should be focusing on here. You need a makeover.”
“There are certain things you must agree to live without,” Connie whispered, her eyes fixed directly on me. “You gain immortality, but for some the price is too great.”
“What’s the—?”
“Enough,” Fluffikins growled. “Just give her the look and get out of here.”
“I don’t like you.” Connie glowered at the cat.
He turned his nose up and scoffed.“I never asked or expected you to like me, but you have a job to do, so do it already.”
Well, at least it wasn’t just me that Mr. Fluffikins treated like crud. Still, I had so many more questions I wanted to ask Connie. Hopefully, I would get the chance later…
7
Having now been unceremoniously dismissed from the board room, Connie led me to a private office I hadn’t stepped foot in before.
“Is this yours?” I asked, glancing around the dark, windowless space. Rather than a typical desk and chair setup, it sported two elegant and expensive-looking club chairs separated by a marble-top end table and flanked by a deep purple shag rug.
She scoffed.“More or less, I guess. It’s more for staging than anything else, and usually that falls to me because Fluffikins is a bit of a sexist and old Greta couldn’t style her way out of a cardboard box.”
I looked at her askance.“Staging?”
It was a perfectly logical question to ask, but Connie came across incredibly impatient.“Makeup, scene-setting, glamour. It’s always me Fluffikins calls on when any beautification is required.”
“Why don’t you like him?” I risked asking. As much as the black cat bothered me, at least he was predictable. I had to stay on my toes around the Commerce Liaison. Whether or not she would actually try to drink my blood, everything about her flashed DANGER in big neon letters.
“It’s not that I don’t like him. It’s that I can’t.”
I rolled my eyes at her. Darn me and my wry reflexes.“Oh, okay. That clears things up.”
She turned away from me and walked up to the wall standing opposite of the seating area.“You already know too much as it is. They should have wiped your mind and left it at that. And Fluffikins definitely shouldn’t have brought you in for a second assignment when you did such a crap job with the first.”
I frowned.“Oh, I see. You don’t like me much, either.”
“I really don’t,” she agreed as she pushed aside a panel to reveal an enormous hidden closet.
I gasped at the gorgeous luxury wardrobe hidden within the junky office building. It stretched back farther than my eyes could see. It had definitely been expanded by magic. But what use did the board have for this enormous costuming department?
Connie breathed deep as she continued inside.“Wait there,” she barked. Meanwhile, I wondered why she’d chosen to inhale so dramatically when she clearly didn’t need to breathe at all. What was she trying to communicate here?
“I still don’t understand why I need a makeover,” I called, craning my neck to try to spot her among the multi-colored garments.
“You needed one anyway, with or without this assignment. You’re not supposed to wear your pajamas outside of the bedroom, dear.” Even from this distance her derision came across loud and clear.
I crossed my arms to hide my ratty T-shirt and silently fumed. This ornery old vampire made Fluffikins seem like Ms. Congeniality by comparison.
“How’s the search for the new Liaison to the Force going?” I called a few moments later in an awkward attempt to make conversation.
“Not so great,” she called back without the slightest hint of passion.
“Yeah, it will be hard to replace Parker,” I agreed. Secretly, I preferred him in the role of Town Witch, because it meant we got to be neighbors. I definitely felt safe with him on the property, and I enjoyed watching him through my window as he tidied up the garden between our residences.
“That incompetent hack?” Connie asked, then laughed cruelly. I was starting to suspect she didn’t much care for anyone.
From there on out, I stopped trying to engage her and instead waited quietly for her to return.
When she did, she held a stack of dark silken garments in her arms—mostly black with some deep purples thrown in for contrast.