Katherine

Megan whistled. "Abby, you minx! And here you had me worried that the evening was a bust. Oh, that wasn't the bad part, was it? I mean, you liked it, right? He wasn't all slobbery, was he?"

I blushed harder. I could still remember my shoulders scraping against the door and Hans' hands on my ass as he hitched me up so he wouldn't have to stoop to peruse my body with his lips. "It was good," I squeaked, and admitting that was horrible because now I had a whole new level of not normal to worry about.

I mean, what kind of person likes that? The only frame of reference I had was Megan, and while I know she's done some pretty kinky stuff, I also know she's pretty 'take it or leave it' about just about everything.

Honestly, after hearing her describe everything she's done, I'm pretty sure she gets off on getting her partner off, so if it's good for him it's good for her. But me? I'd passed on vanilla. I'd insisted Hans be aggressive, and baited him to be rough, and... hell, I'd flat out told him I'd wanted my clothes torn off and invited him to do it.

Admittedly, he'd thought I was talking about something else at the time, but I knew what I'd meant. What kind of woman wants that? Shoot: I was terrified of sex. And all the things I'd wanted Hans to do had been terrifying... so when the hell had being terrified become sexy?

There was something seriously wrong with me.

"Can we talk about this later?" I asked and I felt kind of shitty about doing it. "I haven't had time to figure out how I feel about it myself, yet." Which was true, but more to the point, hopefully a reprieve would give me the time to figure out what was safe to say about it.

"Of course," Megan said. She's so understanding. Whenever she finds whatever she's looking for in her long term relationship, I hope that guy appreciates how crazy lucky he is.

"Thanks," I said. Then I bit my lip and stared out the window, watching the houses flicker by as quickly as my thoughts. I wondered which ones had monsters in them. But this time, I wasn't just wondering about the human ones, the kidnappers and thieves and serial killers and murderous sadists. It was a whole new world out there, and I had no idea how to cope with that, so I did my best to focus on the short term.

I had to figure out how to protect myself from faeries. How to stop baiting Hans. What to say to Megan about wanting Hans to take the bait... and how to keep her the hell away from Mr. Salvatore. Somehow I felt that today -- just today -- was going to make this one hell of a long year.

When we arrived at work I was relieved to see that neither Mr. Salvatore's sports car nor Hans' civilian issue APC were in the parking lot. I needed the breathing room to figure out how to deal with them.

Megan and I walked to my office, but since her desk was outside I was left alone again when I went in. I didn't like it. At all. But at least my office didn't have any beds for bogeymen to hide under or closets for them to burst out of. And if they tried through the filing cabinets? Good luck to them; those had been locked and the key lost since before the office had been mine.

I sat down and booted up my computer. Then I stood and sat down again, Indian style, in case anything that might be lurking in the shadows under my desk was an ankle biter.

Then I stood up again and tried to build up enough courage to go under my desk so I could unplug the computer, move everything to the plug next to the door, and not have to sit at the desk at all.

That didn't happen, though. I pushed my chair back under the desk. I was a little vicious about it, too. If there was an ankle-grabbing goblin over there, I hoped I ran over its fingers.

Then I started to pace. Desks were overrated. Maybe I could get a laptop. That would make it easier to work while sitting on the floor with my back to the wall.

Although, since Hans was going to be my boss, and he knew what I knew, since he'd told me, I could probably count on a little slack if I wasn't as productive today as I might've been otherwise.

I'm not sure how long I spent pacing, trying to get my thoughts together. It didn't really work; my conscious thoughts are always a little scattered. But I must've done some subconscious processing, because abruptly I was done.

I stopped pacing and went to the windows. I usually kept the blinds closed for the same reasons I kept the curtains drawn at home: I really don't like the idea that someone could be looking in on me without my knowing. Now, though? Sunlight was my friend. I opened the blinds.

Mr. Salvatore's car was in the parking lot. So was Hans'. I swallowed. All I had to do was get through today and then my terrifying, creepy, vampire boss would be gone. To be replaced by my terrifying, hot, werewolf boss. But that would still be one problem down.

The thing was, I was scared of Hans in an entirely different way than I was scared of Mr. Salvatore. Mr. Salvatore had always creeped me out -- but if what Hans had told me about vampires was true, then it didn't even matter if Mr. Salvatore were actually a great guy and I was just crazy. If Mr. Salvatore got hungry enough, his humanity would abandon him. He would be driven by hunger and primal emotions, and then he might kill someone, or hospitalize them like he'd hospitalized Katherine last year. And it wouldn't matter how bad he felt about it afterward because they would still be dead or dying and I knew he wanted Megan.

I went back to my desk, took my chair and ran it back and forth a few times in case of hypothetical goblin fingers. Then, without sitting down, I logged into my computer and sent my most recent files to the downstairs printers. Having something to work on would help me get through the day, and having hardcopies to do my translations on would let me sit by the door, with my back to the wall -- and ready to leap outside if I heard anything untoward happening.

Then I sat by the door and waited. Usually when I sent files to the printer it was because Fumiko had stopped by with the .pdf of a new book, and she liked to do her rough translations on paper. So I knew that when the print job was done Jimmy would spiral bind it and rush it upstairs so he could make stammering small talk while handing it over to her. Which was good, because even though he was going to be surprised in finding just me instead, I had no intention of taking my eye -- or ear -- off of Megan while Mr. Salvatore was around. And that included going for a quick jaunt downstairs.

I took a few deep breaths and then I heard something that absolutely destroyed the calming effect I'd been hoping for.

"Hello, Megan," a muffled voice said on the other side of the door. Not Mr. Salvatore's voice, but another one that had flayed me into panicked knots over deadlines too often in the past for me to keep my tentative grasp on 'calm' when I heard it.

"Katherine!" Megan answered. "Hi!"

I scrambled to peek through the door's keyhole. Despite the lies propagated by TV, it wasn't a very good vantage: I could see the corner of Megan's desk and about half of Katherine standing next to it. Fortunately, my imagination was up to the task of filling in the missing bits.

Megan would be sitting with her legs crossed. Since she was talking to someone, she would be leaning toward Katherine. And since Katherine was her friend, Megan would be smiling.

"How are you?" Megan asked. "What brings you in today?"

Katherine... well, Katherine was pretty if you went for the whole 'I am the unholy union of a governess, a dominatrix, and that one person in HR who handles all of the off boarding interviews' vibe she puts off. I couldn't see her face now, but she'd always had short, dark hair and hard, grey eyes. She would wear long sleeves and high collars even in the summer -- today it looked like a black turtleneck sweater and a grey pencil skirt -- and usually had on a pair of delicate glasses that did nothing to soften her perpetually severe expression.

Katherine made a casually dismissive gesture. "I heard Mr. Salvatore was back and thought I would see if he needed my services still. However, it seems he has no intention of staying in the long term."

"Oh, I am so sorry, Katie," Megan said. "He told us all yesterday that he'd been ill and was moving away." I could hear the sympathy in Megan's voice, but that wasn't what took me aback. Katie? Seriously? I couldn't imagine Katherine tolerating such informal address from anyone without threatening to switch them with a riding crop.

"It's fine," Katherine said. "I wasn't entirely certain I would want to come back and work for someone who might just up and disappear again, anyway." She stepped closer and leaned against the edge of Megan's desk. "But I did know I might be able to salvage the day, however it went with Salvatore, if I stopped in to see you afterward. Are you coming to the club tonight?"