Under Attack

Chapter Eleven

I pulled on a pair of yoga pants and tossed on a sweatshirt, winding my bed-head hair into an unemployed-girl updo before yanking on my sneakers and finding ChaCha’s leash. I did a few obligatory stretches before striding proudly out the front door with ChaCha prancing in front of me in all her pink-studded-collar glory. We were three-quarters down the first city block when ChaCha abruptly flopped over onto her little doggie side, closed her eyes, and started snoring.

I gently tugged at her collar. “Come on, ChaCha. It’s time for a walk, girl! We’re still walking! Come on, girl!”

“The little thing is pooped,” I heard.

I whirled around and grinned when I saw him: tall, with Men’s Health muscles, short, ash-blond hair that spiked up around his scalp, a deep olive complexion highlighted by the flecks of gold sparkling in his hazel eyes. If my brand-new dog hadn’t been playing dead on the sidewalk I may have recognized him.

“We’ve hardly gone a block!” I said.

The guy leaned down, his polo shirt sliding back and revealing a strong neck and traps that could choke a pony. He uncapped his water bottle and poured some out; ChaCha sprang back to life, popped onto all fours, and drank gratefully.

“She was just thirsty.”

I felt like a heel. “I feed her and give her water. She had water before we left, I swear. It was even bottled—no tap!” I said, certain that CPS—ChaCha Protective Services—was going to spring out from behind the potted palm and nab me for tiny animal cruelty.

“I’m Will Sherman,” the guy said, standing up and offering me a hand to shake. “And I believe that you’re a good pet parent.”

I shook his hand, oddly grateful for the positive judgment from a complete stranger.

“I’m Sophie. And you’ve got an accent.”

Will smiled, his cheeks tinting a shade redder. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

I liked the way he stretched out the words, the relaxed lilt of his voice.

“Yep, it’s true. I’m from Oregon.” We both did that mildly uncomfortable small-talk chuckle. “By way of England.”

“Ah.” I smiled into his bright eyes, cocked my head, and then my stomach started to sink. “You look familiar.” My mental Rolodex started to go and I tried to place him—with a horn, from the UDA office; with a knife from one of my many near-death experiences; with a fra-paccino from the local Starbucks. I prayed for memory to lodge itself in the normalcy of a Starbucks but nothing stuck. “I feel like I know you from somewhere.”

Will grinned. “Wow. And I was going to use the ‘if I could rearrange the alphabet’ line.”

I felt my brows furrow. “What?”

“I would put ‘u’ and ‘I’ together. You know, if I could rearrange the alphabet.”

“What?” I said again.

“You weren’t picking me up? You know, with the ‘don’t I know you?’ thing? That wasn’t a line?”

I felt the corners of my lips pull down. “No! Geez, no. I really thought I knew you. Or had seen you or something.”

Will looked away, sheepish. “Sorry.”

“So, do I know you in a non-flirtational, non-coming-on-to-you kind of way?”

Will frowned. “Well, when you say it like that you take all the fun out of it.”

“Never mind.” I bent to scoop ChaCha up, but Will stopped me with a soft hand on my arm.

“Sorry. You might have seen me around.” Will shrugged. “I’m local—now. We’ve probably run into each other a hundred times and never even noticed. It’s a small city.” He grinned; his teeth were shockingly white and straight, except for two on the very bottom that crossed a little, giving him a semblance of little-boy cute.

I forced a smile. “I guess. Anyway, thanks for the water. Seems to have done the trick.”

ChaCha was nuzzling against Will’s pant leg now, sitting on his shoe and looking up adoringly at him.

“Ready to finish our walk, girl?”

ChaCha popped onto all fours and trotted around my ankles, winding her leash around my calves and into a pink-studded tourniquet.

“I think your dog is trying to tell you something.”

I looked down at ChaCha, who did indeed look like she was trying to tell me something as she sat down, smugly licking her genitals. I stepped out of my leash lasso and scooped up my traitorous pup.

“You may have won this one, dog,” I told her with a nuzzle, “but when we get home, you’re hitting the treadmill.” I looked back at Will and offered a friendly smile. “Thanks again.”

“Sure.”

I turned on my heel and started toward my building. Will followed the same direction, a foot or so back. Within a second he had caught up and fallen in step with me.

He offered me a polite smile and my hackles went up. I considered how to juggle my dog and my stun gun when Will decided to plunge a dagger into my heart/rape me/beat me/force me to watch an endless loop of How Stuff Works. He seemed like a perfectly normal guy out for a perfectly normal coffee run on a perfectly normal day, which meant, most likely, he was some sort of demon.

But then again, I was the spawn of Satan.

“Are you walking with me?”

“I’m walking near you. I happen to be going in that direction. I live right there.” He poked his index finger to the building in front of us. My building.

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?” Had he seen me come out? Did he have telepathic powers? “What apartment?”

“3C.”

I felt a little flutter in my chest. The previous resident of 3C—a sweet, dirty old man who had a penchant for slightly younger women in leopard-print spandex—had fallen in the stairwell and died. At least that’s how the story went.

I stopped in midstride. “How come I’ve never seen you around the building, then?”

Will took a sip from his paper coffee cup. “Why would you? Wait, is that your building, too?”

I crossed my arms. “Like you didn’t already know that.”

Will put up his hands. “Whoa, lady, I don’t know who you are and I have no idea where you live. I was just 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. I belong at the UDA, I reminded myself as I pulled into a space.

Do you?

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 texting or flipping through the long-expired waiting-room magazines. Mrs. Henderson spun when she saw me, trotting over, her thick dragon tail thumping along behind her.

“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie!” she said, gathering me up in a scaly-armed hug. “They said you weren’t here anymore. I’m so glad you are.”

“Thanks,” I said breathlessly, feeling the crunch of my ribs against Mrs. Henderson’s heavy chest. I tried to squirm away and Mrs. Henderson gave me one of her wide, toothy grins—then thrust a sheaf of papers at me.

“Could you be a dear and process these? The kids are so impatient.” Her glass-marble eyes shot to two smaller, younger versions of herself slouched in the orange waiting-room chairs, working hard to look disinterested and bored as they played with his-and-hers Nintendo hand-helds. “I have to get Lola to ballet and Sam to baseball.”

I chanced a look at Lola, her slick, green-scaled belly exposed as her belly shirt—imprinted with the word SWEETHEART in tiny rhinestones—rode up. She was wearing a flitty black skirt over pink tights that cut off at the ankle, exposing her wide, flat feet.

As used to demonic life as I was, I had a hard time imagining this kid doing a grande plié.

I handed the sheaf of papers back to Mrs. Henderson.

“I’m sorry, I can’t. Maybe you can get Nina to help you.”

Mrs. Henderson looked horrified. “That vampire?”

“Sorry,” I called over my shoulder, aiming myself toward Dixon’s office. I raced down the hall—remembering to skirt a blown-up witch hole in the linoleum—and only slowed when I approached Dixon’s office. There was a stab of sadness mixed in with my rage; the old wood desk that sat just outside Dixon’s office—where I had spent so many years filing Pete Sampson’s papers and processing demon requests—had been replaced by a slick black metal version. In Dixon’s few days as head of the Underworld Detection Agency he had managed to do away with the standard visitor chairs and nondescript waiting-room couch and replace everything with slick, metal-and-black leather sling chairs and low glass minimalist tables. Even the spider plant that Sampson had nursed back from the dead the three times I almost killed it was replaced by a sleeker version in a square black pot.

“May I help you?”

A blond-haired vampire who hadn’t been there a half-second ago was sitting primly behind the large black desk, with elbows resting on the desktop, fingers laced. He had a pair of half-glasses perched on his long, narrow nose and looked vaguely familiar—one of Dixon’s henchmen, no doubt. The engraved nameplate at the edge of the desk said Anson Hale and I regarded him carefully. He did the same with me.

“I’m here to see Dixon,” I said, puffing out my chest a little bit.

Anson stiffened in his desk chair and then dropped his head, pretending to study a calendar. “Do you have an appointment?”

Anson’s words dropped off behind me as I stormed past him, heading straight for Dixon’s office. I had flung the door open and was staring, openmouthed, at Dixon and Nina when I felt a cold, viselike grip on my shoulder, felt the pinch of Anson’s icy fingers against the flesh at my throat. He yanked me backward and I felt his nose brush up against my chin. Then I realized he was poised to sink his large fangs into my neck. I felt my blood pressure drop and my bladder fill up.

“Anson!” Dixon’s voice was loud and firm. The second the word was out of his mouth Anson’s fingers left my shoulder, and I felt myself slump, my muscles exhausted after clenching so desperately even for those few seconds. My blood slowly restarted to circulate and I panted.

Dixon was still poised and unfazed, but Nina’s eyes were huge and desperately black. What are you doing? she mouthed.

“You must not bite our visitors,” Dixon said as he straightened his cuffs.

Anson’s lip curled angrily. “Well, she wasn’t listening to me.”

Dixon’s eyebrows went up sharply and Anson slumped away. I took the opportunity to look around the office—Pete Sampson’s old office—and stamp back the flood of emotion. The once chocolate-brown walls were now a deep burgundy. The twelve-foot panel of cement and rebar-reinforced back wall that once housed Mr. Sampson’s evening chains was painted over, the holes in the walls patched, the eyebolts replaced by ugly pictures of English foxhunts. I briefly wondered if they were a slight.

“Now, Miss Lawson, please don’t take this the wrong way, but your employment has been terminated.” Dixon turned to Nina, his thin lips pursed. “Did Nina not make that clear?”

“Oh, no, Nina made it very clear. That, and that you don’t think I’m UDA material.”

Nina put down the clipboard she was holding and took a few steps toward me. “Sophie, you have to understand—”

“I understand that you are siding with this—this monster over your best friend. I am not just UDA material—I am UDA!”