I exhaled in relief as the ancient elevator shuddered to a stop and the doors slid open.
The office was filled with gray cubicles and people either working at their desks or darting between corner offices, stacks of paper or trays of coffee in hand.
All the visible walls were glass, but the shades were always down for some reason. It wasn’t like vampires couldn’t take their supplements for the light sensitivity. I really didn’t get that one.
I weaved through the cubicle maze and arrived at my desk, which was really a chair shoved up against a filing cabinet behind Marigold’s actual desk. I stared longingly at her glorious, four-foot-wide expanse of smooth laminated wood, so unlike my own tilted metal surface that creaked anytime I wanted to fill out any paperwork.
It wasn’t that the Union didn’t value me. In fact, Kiki gave me plenty of contract work as an assistant. I’d get a cut of the contract payment, and even though it wasn’t a ton of cash, I knew I was one of her top eighty favorites in this department — it’s a big deal.
Marigold said I’m practically skyrocketing to the top. Just twelve more years of hard labor to go!
The thing was, the Union was the main employer of nearly 90% of all Cuts. Run by the Cuts, and made for the Cuts. The Union handled medical, insurance, housing, investigative processes, police work, imprisonment and schooling. This corporate office alone had one hundred floors and over two hundred satellite locations in Southern California. Each state had their own offices, too.
I was in the Investigative Department. Because one day, I was going to be a detective.
I should have stayed home, yes. Or seen the total chaos of the lobby, turned on my heel, faked an illness and returned home. In my soul, I knew it would have been better. I had enough cheesecake to last me the day, and enough coffee to give me the strength of ten gods and at least three panic attacks before noon.
But, no. I sat down at my filing cabinets.
That was my third mistake.
2
“Aster!” Kiki’s voice boomed across the massive department floor, over the high-pitched scream of the telephones and cool, level voices of our Customer Service and Emergency Response teams.
My boss tore around the corner and toward me, purple hair flying behind her. “You have a request.”
My jaw dropped open. A request?
Oh, I could squeal. I nearly did, but choked the sound down. The result was a weird burp-squeak that I hope was drowned out by the phones.
Kiki gave me a flat, unimpressed stare. “Long Beach. One hour. You’re taking the train. Union cars are all spoken for.”
“Yes ma’am,” I replied, saluting her.
“Don’t do that,” Kiki ordered with zero humor in her eyes. She dropped the files on my cabinet and whirled away.
I grimaced.
Marigold peeked from around the corner, grimaced, and then enthroned herself at her mansion-like desk. “You really need to stop the saluting, hon. It’s awkward. You know Kiki hates awkward.”
Her tinkling, accented voice draped over me like honey. Sticky. And making me feel like I needed a shower.
Marigold appeared to be a fifty-three-year-old former Southern Belle who wore the fanciest clothes and the most perfect makeup, and who annoyed me with her beauty and grace on a daily basis.
I say ‘appeared,’ because in the supernatural communities, one could never quite tell.
“Are you still alive?” I snapped. “I thought the mortician was coming for you yesterday.”
Marigold swiveled her chair to face me. Her long, perfectly blown-out blonde hair swayed around her shoulders.
Vampires, shifters and witches aged very, very slowly. And faeries could live centuries and do who-knows-what, though they choose to stay away from our world.
Occasionally, the fae will thrust ambassadors out of their portal and force them to say hello, but we didn’t see much of them. However, I’d heard some were thousands of years old.
Gross.
The point was that I had no idea what mixture Marigold was. She was working at the Union, so she couldn’t possibly be full-blooded. But there was something about her that hinted she was something more than us average Cuts.
I’ve asked, and she refused to tell me. The hussy.
She winked, her pink lips pursing as she repositioned her gum to blow a bubble. “You’re a very strange girl, Aster. Go get that request, hon. You deserve it.”
I pointed an accusatory finger at her. “Don’t you dare give yourself any credit for this. You only stopped me from quitting three times. That hardly counts as help.”
She blinked innocent blue eyes. How did she somehow look older and younger than I am? It was creepy. “I know that, silly. You put in the work! Go do your thing, girl.”
I rolled my eyes and reviewed the request form. It was filled out by a Mr. Creed, who reported that his safe had been tampered with, and he couldn’t get the thing open now. He suspected supernatural intruders, and wanted someone to come down to collect possible prints, take his report, and open an investigation.
For some reason, he added my name in the official Union request. The odd thing was that I’d never met a Mr. Creed before. Or done a report like this in the field. I was usually in the field as an assistant. Or a driver to the assistant.
Important stuff like that.
But he’d heard my name somewhere, and this type of fieldwork wasn’t too hard. We were simply required to make contact with the petitioner and assist in any way we could. Then, we’d bring the files back to the detectives and officers, who then opened an investigation.
After reading through, I asked Marigold a few questions about Union standard procedures. There were so many checked boxes and jargon-filled disclaimers on the form, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible.
Five minutes after, I left the Union and took the glorious public transportation, faux-leather briefcase in hand. I got off at the downtown station and used my phone’s spotty GPS to guide my legs to the Long Beach address in the files.
When I arrived outside the gated apartment complex, a heavy sense of foreboding soured my stomach like bad chicken. The old structures were covered in peeling paint and cracking wood. Like most buildings by the coast.
Beer bottles, dumpsters and the occasional body littered the alleyway on one side. I assumed the bodies were sleeping people and not corpses. When it came to alleys, you just never knew.
Crushing my unease down, I whistled cheerily as I pressed the button of apartment #5. I made sure to have a friendly smile on.
Not too much teeth. Very professional.
Hello. My name is Aster King from the Union Investigative Department. I’m here on request for a Mr. Creed. Why yes, I am single.
I continued to ring the bell for about ten minutes before I was convinced no one was home. Next, I did what anyone would.
I broke in.
Yes, yes. I know. That was my fourth mistake.
Here’s the thing. On the request form, Mr. Creed ticked the checkbox next to ‘If I do not appear to answer, you may enter my home.’
Now, if I didn’t make contact with Mr. Creed, I didn’t get paid. Marigold confirmed that, too. And that meant less cheesecake next week.
Hence the fence-jumping and the door-pounding that followed.
It was easy to climb the wrought-iron security gate. I nearly caught my pants on one of the decorative spikes but avoided it like a pro. After tracking down his apartment and banging on the door for several minutes, I made a call.