Free The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire by Molly Harper

I pulled the red folder from the stack, careful not to cause another collapse. The folder tab was marked “Linoge.”
    That seemed random enough.
    I dropped back into my chair and cued up some Lorde on the music system, sliding my headphones into place. I opened the folder and found that most of the paper inside had been carefully blacked out with marker. This was not a genealogical archive folder. This was a disciplinary file. A really old disciplinary file. The paperwork inside was a photocopy, but the original had been old wrinkly parchment. What little text remained on the first page described a Pierre Linoge, a vampire who’d briefly lived in northern France in the eighteenth century but had been permanently disciplined by an earlier incarnation of the Council when his violent feeding frenzies threatened to expose the region’s vampire population. And while the names of his descendants had been redacted, the good news was that the heavy editing left only the barest facts visible, making it easy to pick out the vampire’s basic information that I needed to enter into the biographic program. I could at least give the index a test run.
    There was one strange footnote at the bottom of Linoge’s report. It was just a few lines of text: “Linoge’s feeding excesses are described as contrary to his character by other vampires of good reputation. His friends note that the attacks started after he parted company with [redacted], a human known for practicing magicks both light and dark. It is possible his indiscretion was due to her influence.”
    â€œOh, sure, blame the girlfriend,” I muttered, tapping the keys.
    Something about the file bothered me. Why the hell would they give us a file full of information on a dead vampire? In general, the “living” vampires were the only ones interested in tracking their descendants. And why bother giving us a file with so much information missing? Hell, the descendant information was redacted. What was the point? Maybe it was just thrown into the archive pile by mistake? It seemed unlikely, since the Council had put so much emphasis on securing the genealogical information.
    â€œIs it working?”
    Marty appeared at my elbow, making me jump, knocking a binder on top of the file. Marty was oblivious to my clumsiness, staring at me intently. I shoved the file into the binder and slid the binder into my bottom desk drawer.
    â€œOh, yeah, sure.”
    â€œGreat job!” he exclaimed. “Guys, we made the right choice for team leader!”
    Aaron and Jordan had their headphones in place and their hands on their keyboards. We probably wouldn’t hear from them again until they ran out of Twizzlers.
    â€œI’m sure they’re very proud,” I assured Marty.
    Slowly but surely, I was coming to realize that having a grown-up job mostly meant saying things I didn’t mean.

4

    Until you gauge the mood of your first staff meeting, it’s best just to keep your mouth closed and your head down.
    â€”The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace
    M y third day of work was momentous, not because my team managed to outline a programming proposal to submit to the regional director or because I saw Nik again but because I took part in one of the scariest freaking staff meetings in the history of employment.
    Around nine p.m. , just as we’d hit our stride workwise, frumpy, prematurely gray Margaret Coggins appeared in our office and informed us that our presence was required in the conference room, immediately. But she didn’t tell us why, which was ominous and super-unhelpful.
    Margaret was a human clerical worker who served as Ophelia’s assistant. She dressed like my fourth-grade Sunday-school teacher and seemed to have no measurable sense of humor. That made her exactly like my fourth-grade Sunday-school teacher. So far, our interactions with Margaret had been limited to