Under Attack

“Well, no. Not yet. I just have an interview. Is Elizabeth here?” I looked at my watch. “I was supposed to meet her at—”

“You’re the new girl. I’m Avery. Here,” Avery leaned under the counter and tossed a blue smock at me. “This is yours.”

I glanced up and noticed that underneath the Dead Milkmen, Eat Your TV!, and A is for Anarchy buttons, Avery was wearing a similar smock over her black mesh shirt and just-past-her-butt-length plaid skirt. Her ensemble was completed with over-the-knee striped stockings and shoes with soles the size of loaves of bread. I estimated without them, she’d be about nose- height to me.

“So, I’m hired?” I asked.

Avery blew a bubble and snapped it, shrugged. “Guess so. Elizabeth had to study for a final. She told me to show you the ropes.”

“Oh, okay.”

Avery looked again at the smock in my hands.

“Right,” I said, dropping my briefcase and pulling the hideous thing over my head. Avery leaned forward and clipped a red plastic name tag to my smock. It read TRAINEE in big white letters.

“Excellent,” I muttered under my breath.

“Your breaks will be at ten and two, and you can take lunch from twelve to twelve-thirty. You need to vacate the break room between twelve-thirty and one o’clock because that’s my lunch and I have to meditate.”

Avery tried to pin me with a glare, the brown of her eyes picking up the faint sparkle of her heavy dark eyeliner. “Got it?”

“Sure.” I nodded, my eyes wandering to the hunk of quartz suspended from a leather tie around her neck. She fingered it, tapped it with her black-painted fingernails.

“Do you know about the healing power of crystals?” she asked me in her bored, nasally voice. “They are especially good for keeping away evil. There’s a lot of evil in this town, you know.”

You mean beyond the rows of size-twenty-four flower-printed rayon pants? I wanted to ask. Instead I said, “Evil, right. Noted.” And tried to keep a straight face.

Avery blinked at me. “You seem like someone who is closed to the occult. I can read your disbelief all around you; your aura is white, cloudy. You’re lacking a certain consciousness. You have mistrust. People like me”—she closed her bruised-looking eyelids—“are at one with all beings in all worlds.”

I thought of the hordes of centaurs, demons, vampires, zombies, dragons, and banshees I had processed in my time at the UDA. I thought of the blood bags in the office fridge, of my evenings spent chaining up Mr. Sampson before nightfall. I looked around the swarm of people’s pants, and wanted to cry.

Chapter Thirteen

I had managed to make it through my first day at People’s Pants unscathed. I was still mad at Nina and Alex and wavering between giving my grandmother a piece of my mind if she knew about my Satan-as-dad bloodline and breaking it to her gently if she didn’t. Either way I wussed out and hid in my bedroom after work, eyes wide open until I heard Nina come in and watch a few late-night episodes of The Nanny, murmuring to Vlad, who must have been with her. Eventually I fell asleep and the next morning I skipped out of the house (with my blue smock jammed in my purse) before Nina came out for breakfast.

My cell phone chirped as I navigated the stockroom, wrinkling my nose at the smell of dampness and unnatural fibers. I checked my phone’s readout, saw Nina’s name, and clicked the silence key, feeling a pang of anger tinged with sadness as I did so. I knew it wasn’t her fault that I was spending my afternoon knee deep in polyester rather than knee deep in hobgoblin slobber. I knew she was just doing what Dixon asked of her and she probably felt as miserable as I did, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my anger, especially when she went all goo-goo- eyed the second Dixon walked into the room. Nina called two more times and the phone buzzed once more. I was about to thumb the power-off button when I noticed that it was Alex calling. I palmed the phone for three rings before I decided to answer.

“Hello?”

“Are you feeling better?”

Any sense of love or calm I felt from Alex zipped out of the phone and fell flat on the floor. I felt my nostrils flare. “Did you call me just to check up on me? Because as a matter of fact, I’m feeling way better. I’m eating bonbons while reclining on the couch. I’m considering throwing a pot roast in the oven a little later. Does that suit you?”

“Actually, no. I know what happened the last time you tried to cook pot roast.”

I stamped my foot against the amusement in his voice.

“So you’re still mad at me.”

I made a sound halfway between a grunt and a growl.

“Well, fine. All I need you to do is listen, anyway. So, what I said about Ophelia. I really think she has something bad up her—”

“The cellular customer you are trying to reach currently hates you. Please try again later.” I slammed the phone shut and jammed it in my smock pocket the same time Avery came into the stockroom, lounging in the stairway, studying me.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

I started to restack the heap of pants I had knocked over. “Yeah, I just need to get these out to the floor.”

“No,” she said, gesturing to the smock pocket. “Everything okay with your boyfriend?”

I clamped my jaws shut. “He is not my boyfriend.”

Avery shrugged. “Whatever. It’s clock-out time.”

I followed her to the break room to clock out and gather my belongings, but before I could leave Avery stopped me at the front door, the keys to People’s Pants dangling from a fluorescent pink, squishy cord wound around her wrist. Her purple eyes flashed over my purse.

“What?” I asked.

“We need to do a check before any employee leaves,” she said. “It’s company policy.”

I looked incredulously at our stock. “You think I would steal pants?”

Avery shrugged again—seemingly her standard answer to most questions. I blew out a sigh and handed over my purse. She poked around with a dutiful sense of disinterest and then handed it back to me.

“Who checks yours?” I asked.

She held up a tiny wristlet, big enough for a bus pass (if you folded it long-wise) and a tube of mascara.

“I don’t like people pawing through my stuff.”

By the time I got to my car I was fuming again and the parking ticket flopping jauntily on my windshield did little to lighten my mood. I looked around my gritty surroundings. Though much of China Basin had been rehabbed with the development of the ballpark and a clutch of waterfront lofts, People’s Pants and its industrial neighbors seemed to have been forgotten in the effort. The funky charm of the city was choked out here by aluminum door frames and plate-glass windows pinned with aging iron bars. The nearby waterfront was dotted with palm trees and streetlights, but back here, the ocean fog hung heavy and dark. Even the employee parking lot—a slab of gravel underneath the 101 Freeway—looked grey and sad, cast in shadows from the highway.

I drove home with the radio cranked up, but even the jaunty beat of the pop star du jour did little to soften my bad mood. I was cursing under my breath and had given way to obscene hand gestures by the time I pulled into underground parking.

Hmm. Maybe I did have a little devil in me.

I stepped into the apartment vestibule and Will was there, holding an enormous white Styrofoam Jamba Juice cup to his lips, his other arm lost up to his elbow in the apartment 3C mailbox. The edges of his wide grin poked out on either side of his cup.

“Hey there,” he said kindly.