getting some coffee and walking back to my place. I’m not some kind of stalker freak.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. That’s why I said ‘I’m not some kind of stalker freak.’”
He looked earnest and offended.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just a little ... cautious.”
Will grinned, his hazel eyes doing a quick toe-to-head scan. “That’s okay. Paranoia looks good on you.”
I felt my cheeks flush so I looked at the sidewalk as I hurried back to the apartment vestibule, careful not to look back to see if Will was following me. ChaCha looked up at me and yawned, pushing her paws over my arms. “I’m going to teach you to be an attack dog, ChaCha. I’m going to get you a steak.”
I pushed into my apartment and checked the fridge. No steak.
“Okay, ChaCha,” I sighed. “How do you feel about Cap’n Crunch?”
I poured us each a bowl and set up my laptop on the kitchen table. I was one day out of a job and in desperate need of another. I eyed the newspaper heaped on the chair next to me, was about to type in the Web address for the Monster job search engine when I felt the tiny prick of anger nag at the edge of my mind.
“No.” I thumped my fist on the table and ChaCha jumped. “I am not going to take this lying down, ChaCha.”
She cocked her head at me, her velvety brown eyes reflecting my Cap’n Crunch box. “Dixon thinks he can just fire me? He thinks that I—me, of all people—am not UDA material?”
ChaCha leaned down on her forepaws, downward-dog style and growled deep in her throat.
“You’re absolutely right, ChaCha! I am the UDA!” I thumped my chest. “I’m going to get my job back. Today. They can’t run the Underworld Detection Agency without me. I made that company! Well, I made the color-coded demon filing system—and that is very important to the Underworld.” I stood up with a start, my chair flopping to the floor behind me. “I am going to march right now there and tell Dixon that I am taking my job back, and he can take his UDA material and shove it right up his bloodless—” ChaCha blinked up at me with those big doe eyes. “Tush.”
I marched into the bathroom, stripping my clothes off and formulating a fierce, wordy speech, pockmarked with profanities and three-syllable words, that I planned to take to Dixon. I imagined myself in a killer pencil skirt and sky-high heels, slapping my palm into my fist while Dixon cowered at his desk, nodding spastically, agreeing to every one of my demands. In my fantasy, I had luscious, waist-length hair and for some reason wore glasses that I whisked off and pointed at him as I narrowed my eyes and called him emasculating names.
In my fantasy, Dixon may not have been a vampire with two-inch long, scalpel-sharp fangs and a penchant for blood sucking and general throat-ripping-outing.
“Sophie!”
“Geez, Grandma!” I crossed my arms over my naked chest and yanked a towel from the peg by the door. “Can’t you knock or something?”
Grandma rolled her eyes. “Do you remember who used to diaper and powder that bottom of yours? It’s not like it’s something I’ve never seen.”
I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “Can we not talk about my bottom right now?”
Grandma looked indignant. “Well, you brought it up.”
“Is there a reason for this visit?”
Grandma’s lower lip jutted out. “Can’t a dead woman visit her granddaughter without being grilled?”
“I’m sorry, Grandma, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you ... in my bathroom mirror ... several years after you’ve died. It’s just that I have an important—thing—to take care of.”
“Well, my thing is important, too!”
I wanted to strike at Dixon while the fire still roiled in my belly, while the profanities and words like dedication and commitment to UDA excellence still flitted around in my mind. I leaned over and turned on the bath tap. “You know, Grandma, let’s take this up later, okay? Let’s make, like, a date. Bathroom mirror, say about seven o’clock? Does that work for you?”
The steam from the tap started to cloud the mirror but not before Grandma’s eyes narrowed and she blew out a long sigh. “Fine. Mine can wait. I just hope what you have to do is important. More important than having a conversation with your dead grandmother whose time on this planet may be limited ...” She sniffed, though her eyes remained dry.
I leaned on my toes and kissed the mirror. “Thanks, Gram, I knew you’d understand. And you’re already dead, so the walk-the-earth thing isn’t as guilt inducing. Good try, though!”
I jumped in the shower with the sound of Grandma groaning behind me.
I didn’t have a pencil skirt or a pair of glasses, but I had the sky-high heels down. Nina had given me a pair of Manolo Blahnicks for a birthday two years ago and I had never worn them. I pulled them out of their box now, examining their narrow, chest-piercing heels, and tossed them on with a businessy black skirt and a no-nonsense French blue button-down. I took a few steps, wobbled uncomfortably, and managed to make it to the front door without breaking an ankle or getting a nosebleed.
Things were starting to look up.
I pulled my hair into a severe-looking French twist in the hallway mirror. I let a few strands fall loose around my face when I thought the look was a little too Russian prison warden, then grabbed my shoulder bag and blew a kiss to ChaCha.
“Wish me lucky, baby girl!”
I practiced my speech the entire way to the UDA but seemed to get less and less confident the closer I got.
It was barely a voice, a weird flutter in my mind, but it stopped me. I sucked in a deep breath and gave myself the once-over in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see my grandmother’s exasperated face glaring back. When I didn’t, I straightened my blouse and hopped out of the car, walking—with purpose, as Gram used to say—to the police station vestibule.
“Sophie!”
I whirled and saw Alex over my left shoulder. “Hey, Alex.”
“What are you doing here?”
I put both hands on my hips. “Getting my job back.”
He strode closer to me. “They’re giving you your job back? That’s great!” His smile was wide and genuine.
“Not exactly. But I’m taking it back.”
The smile fell from his lips. “You don’t have the stun gun on you, do you?”
I raised an annoyed eyebrow. “I’m not going to Taser him! Unless he really pisses me off.”
Alex looked alarmed.
“I’m kidding. I’m just going to tell Dixon that he made a mistake in letting me go. The UDA needs me. I do good work. And once he reinstates me there will be no hard feelings.”
Alex crossed his arms in front of his chest. “So you promise you won’t use the stun gun on him? Not that I care if you want to do a little vamp-shock; I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Why does everyone think I’m going to fly off the handle all the time? I’m a completely rational, calm human being who just happens to want to reclaim her rightful position among San Francisco’s undead.”
I stopped when I noticed the police station had dropped into silence, all heads turned toward me. I rolled up on my tiptoes and peeked over Alex’s shoulder, catching the wary eye of Chief Dugan. I went flat-footed again and shook my finger in Alex’s face. “That was your fault. I am calm and rational.” The elevator dinged and I jumped inside, watching the door slide shut on the San Francisco Police Department, its clutch of officers and alleged felons staring at me like I was the crazy one.
The closer the elevator dropped to UDA, the farther my heart dropped into my belly. I practiced a few deep- breathing exercises I had learned on a late-night infomercial and went through my speech in my head. When the doors sprang open on the bustling UDA, I was shaking my finger at no one and had worked my anger back up to a frothy lather.
The purple velvet ropes were bulging as all manner of the demon Underworld hopped from foot to foot—or hoof to hoof—waiting for their turn at the windows. Most clutched their paperwork, some passed the time by
