One
Heath was in trouble, and for once, it was going to stick. Usually, when a vampire was in trouble, it was because someone neglected to do their job properly. They didn’t check a perimeter, or they didn’t run things up the chain of command before making a decision because they thought they could anticipate what their higher ups wanted. Once in a great while, it was because of something stupid, like losing count of the bullets you fired or failing to take into account human fragility when you had a non-vampiric entity under your command.
Over the course of his respectable two-and-a-half centuries of life, Heath had been in various shades of those sort of trouble more times than was worth keeping track of. He’d been in worse trouble, too.
But when he saw Hazel rushing down the hall with her tablet and a pile of folders cradled in her arms, he knew the trouble of his yesteryears paled compared to the trouble currently facing him down.
“Hold the elevator!”
Were he human, he might not have been able to throw his arm out to stop the door from shutting. As a vampire, he probably should have let the door shut, just to keep his life simple. But he wasn’t human, and he held his arm out without thinking, and Hazel and her patchouli and bergamot perfume flung herself into the elevator like she hadn’t just thrown herself into a matchbox with a predator.
He tried not to look at the woman as several folders slipped out of her hands and to the elevator floor, but not looking hardly helped the fact that he could hear her heart pounding from her sprint down the hall.
Much like he tried not to breathe as the small space filled with the scent of patchouli and bergamot which, on closer observation , was less likely perfume than the two incense sticks wedged into the sloppy knotted bun on top of the woman’s head. He supposed the source didn’t matter. The scents mingle with the faintly sweet smell that he just generally associated with her and created something heady and soothing that made the sharper edges of his mind soften.
But trying not to breathe and trying not to look at the woman were all moot points when she heaved a massive exhale and uttered a relieved, “Thanks, Heath.”
He stood straighter, clamped his tongue between his back teeth, and nodded once to the woman. “Of course, Ms. Hazel. No problem.”
But, there was a problem. Hazel was his problem, and the reason he was in trouble. Because somehow, in the years Hazel had been at the tower, floating casually in and out of Heath’s day-to-day, she had gone from a mildly uninteresting human with a bit of magic to a mild bamboozlement to an outright fixation.
He blamed the Cincinnati incident. That’s the first time they’d properly worked together. That’s when she’d become more than a face and a name. When he’d actually spent enough time with her to pick out her scent from the other researchers working in the tower.
She was still breathing heavily as she reorganized the papers from one of her runaway folders, which meant her heartbeat still pounded hard enough that it felt like it had settled in Heath’s ears, and that, in turn, sent his own heart going.
“Do you need a hand?”
The look the woman shot him was caught somewhere between suspicious surprise and simply venomous. Then she looked him up and down, her expression softening, and she said, “I can pick up my own documents, thanks.”
So he nodded again, turning to look resolutely at the doors to the elevator and trying not to think about the patter of the woman’s heart or her scent thickening the air of the elevator, or the sinking sensation he felt in his stomach as his semi-weekly check-in informed him he was still, almost certainly in love with Hazel.
Fuck.
He supposed the situation could be worse. They could be outside Caleb’s tower, where he might have to watch Hazel grow old. Instead, he just had to cope with the idea that the crafting woman barely noticed he existed.
Or you could actually talk to her.
But Hazel was upright now and tugging her pencil skirt back down to where it belonged, and, per usual, she seemed utterly lost in her own tangled web of thoughts. Most of these dealt with her arms full of paperwork, if her muttering has anything to go by, which meant she probably had no room to talk to him.
He took a breath anyway. Then—
“Do you know where Caleb is today?” She swung her attention at him with the conviction of a batter. “We were supposed to have a meeting, but he isn’t in his office.”
At least ‘Where’s the boss?’ was an easy enough question for him to answer.
“I think he’s on a walkabout at the moment. Something about stretching his legs.”
“Blast and tarnation.” The woman looked down at her armful of documentation and puffed. “Now how the heck am I supposed to get this stuff signed off?”
Heath wasn’t sure this question was actually directed at him, especially because the woman still wasn’t looking at him as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and glowered fiercely at the folder she was opening to review. Despite this, Heath felt he was under some obligation to remark, because they were the only ones standing in the elevator, which was taking a great deal of time to arrive at its destination.
“I’m supposed to see him this afternoon. I can redirect him to you, if you want.”
“Sure, if he comes back, then knock yourself out! But the last time he left, he was gone for a week, and we were all stuck eating tacos forever. Then Colin got to him before me, and—” she gave a sharp inhale, stood straighter, which brought her to the wildly intimidating height of his collarbone, and snorted her exhale. “It’s fine.”
Don’t smile, all of his good sense warned his body. Because even though it was the way she was now rambling to herself under her breath that made him want to smile, he was certain Hazel would interpret it as a belittlement of her concerns and not an overwhelming sense of euphoria derived from how small and fierce she was.
An overwhelming sense of euphoria? You’ve been talking to too many researchers.
But it felt less stupid to call it that than ‘cute aggression.’
“—and all this hogwash about Valentine’s Day on top of it—”
“Valentine’s Day?”
This time, Hazel didn’t even look at him. “That’s what I said! Except I said it with less confusion and more irritation. But Colin got it into his head, and of course Natalie agreed—she would—and somehow the boss got a hold of it. I swear to God, Annabel’s the only sensible person around here.”
“What’s wrong with Valentine’s Day?” Now several sets of gears were turning in Heath’s head, and he wasn’t sure which set was supposed to be governing the rest of his body. But the part of him that still fixated on the confirmation that he still liked Hazel was suddenly grabbing the reins of the great machine that was his brain and using them to turn off the rest of his functions.
If there were some sort of office party being organized, then maybe...
“Nothing is wrong with it, Heath. It’s just that there’s far too much to do around here to be decorating the halls with paper hearts and handing out cards or flowers or whatever people do to make an oddly complicated mating ritual yet more complicated.”
All of his plans crashed and burned before they got off the ground.
Face as stolid as he could make it, he asked, “Not into the traditional courtship exchanges?”
She glanced at him, eyebrows drawn together, her fine, thin lips pressed together so that her usually prominent cupid’s bow had all but disappeared. “I mean, I’m not opposed. I just don’t see—”
The doors pinged before they opened, and beyond them, the expansive floor for Research’s main room unfolded. Cubicles and workstations dotted the room, and milling between them like little white mice through a maze were the two dozen or so spellcrafters and witches who remained on permanent retainer for Caleb Deseronto’s projects.
And sure enough, the place was covered in pink and red and white streamers.
“Well, that’s just great,” the woman at his elbow muttered, throwing her attention at the world beyond the elevator. And before he could draw a breath to ask her what sort of ‘I just’ she had meant, she was off, her short legs making great strides across the empty floor.
“Don’t you touch my desk with that streamer, Colin, so help me!”
Heath didn’t have time to see what Researcher Colin was or wasn’t doing to Hazel’s desk because the doors shuddered closed.
His own floor was decorated, too, and quite a bit more enthusiastically than even Research had been, and despite having no particular aversion to the holiday, he found himself disgruntled.
“Can someone please explain to me what’s happening?” He detached the random curling streamer that hung in front of the elevator door and dropped it straight into the trash as he walked by.
“Valentine’s Day.” The slim, young vampire who spoke flashed a fangless smile at Heath as he swivelled in his chair and gestured to the large swag chandelier made from the same streamers as upstairs. From the center hung a glittering gold heart and a fat Cupid-looking fucker with a tiny plastic bow.
“Thank you,” Heath drawled, “but now let’s pretend I already knew the context of the assignment and only need to be briefon the details.”
The leaner vampire shrugged, and the way he looked at Heath suggested the information he was about to impart should be considered common knowledge. “Us and Research are going to have a little party this weekend. The crafters suggested it, believe it or not. They must have wanted to get their three Fs in for the year.”
Heath stared at the other man. “Jesus, Firio, I can’t decide if that sentence makes you a bag of shit or just an idiot.”
“Why not both?” The third voice, female, honey-sweet, preceded the sharp click of a woman’s heels on tile floor, and Heath winced at the sound.
Vampires didn’t need to make sound when they walked unless they wanted to, and, but more than the sound of her own voice, Annabel Light loved the sound of her fucking shoes.
It was a sound Heath had nightmares about, and one that sent a stiletto rod of irritation straight through his vertebral foramen.
At the moment, the only redeeming feature of that voice and those clicking shoes was when Annabel snapped, “Porfirio, take that shit off our ceiling before I turn you into a dust-brush and do it myself.”
“Aw, Annabel! Don’t be such a stick in the mud! The boss gave us the all-clear!”
Annabel’s smile was not sweet as she planted herself in the center of the hallway. It was a very simple threat. “Sometimes, the boss makes decisions with only a single brain-cell, and when he does that, I have to be the one who cleans it up. So take that shit off the ceiling now.”
Firio scowled. “Heath, tell her the decorations can stay up.”
Annabel’s attention swung to Heath, and Heath decided his mind was a twisted and strange place.
Because Annabel Light was a beautiful woman. Blonde, the way most vampires were blond, with delicate pixie features that she could dress down to look sweet and dress up to look severely cutting, she could, and often did, tick the boxes of every vampire tom in the building. She was cunning, brutally efficient in what she did, and she could handle the wild mood swings of their boss with flawless execution. In short, she wasn’t just pretty to look at. She could take shit and deal it back out the way most people inhaled and exhaled.
And just looking at the woman killed all of Heath’s happy places.
He thought back to Hazel. Hazel, who wasn’t even a witch. Just an excellent spellcrafter with an obsessive need to solve a puzzle. And her large doe eyes with her long lashes, and the way her hair was either slicked back and pristine or, like this morning, a complete shocking mess. And how she didn’t give a shit whether she had shoes that clicked fashionably as she walked down the hall.
Hazel, who hadn’t even really looked at him past shouting to hold the elevator.
He thought about the look Hazel gave him in the elevator, and again he wondered what ‘I just’ would have been. Then he decided Annabel could stuff it.
“I don’t care if they’re up or not,” he said, shrugging as he moved past the large conference table and toward his office. “And since Annabel is rarely down here for less than half a heartbeat at a time,” he shot the woman a pointed glare over his shoulder as he caught his office door, “I don’t see why she should give a shit if the place is decorated or not.”
Firio made a victorious gesture with a fist. “Great! Anyone seen Tiff today? I’m gonna invite her to go to the party with me.”
And like a teenager whose balls had suddenly dropped, Firio was out of his chair and wandering down a hall in the opposite direction.
Which left Annabel.
The pixie-ish woman lifted an elegant eyebrow, and Heath wondered if he’d get a bruise on the spot on his face that she was glaring at.
“If you’re looking for me to ask you to this weekend, it’s not going to happen,” he told her.
“Heath, I’ve been hanged for twenty-four hours straight and I would do that again before I went anywhere with you.”
“So you’re staring at me becaaaause...?”
She smiled, fangless but biting all the same. “Just wondering if you’re as stupid as you smell.”
Pink painted nails pushed the button for the elevator, and she paused only to fluff the kerchief at her neck that made her look like a flight attendant before stepping into the room beyond the sliding doors.
Standing in the center of the elevator with her hands clasped in front of her, she took a soft but obvious inhale. Then, with a note of delight which made that gloating leer of hers one more level of obnoxious, she said, “Christ, I think you actually might be.”
Heath watched the elevator doors close, and he decided that what bothered him more than anything wasn’t that she was right. It was that there was no way Hazel would disagree.
