Free The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire by Molly Harper Page A

her delivery of Ophelia’s “best wishes” and various signed employment forms, nondisclosure reminders, and parking validations. Since she didn’t mention my “little problem” in the parking lot—and my coworkers didn’t seem to know about it—I supposed part of Ophelia’s best wishes included the discretion she’d promised the night of the incident. I found that comforting.
    Jordan was reluctant to leave work while the code was flowing, so Aaron threatened to delete all of the Gaslight Anthem from her playlists and then lured her away from her desk with a trail of Twizzlers.
    â€œI don’t like things that make me uncomfortable!” she cried plaintively, as Aaron dragged her into the hallway.
    Marty shook his head at their antics while I grabbed a notebook. I wasn’t sure what sort of information session or potential massacre we were being summoned to, but surely someone should be taking notes.
    While we expected to be shown into the grim, windowless conference room of our orientation, we ended up falling in step with the herd of office drones past that door to a subfloor we hadn’t explored during the orientation. We entered a sort of shallow amphitheater, large enough to seat the sixty or so people shuffling about awkwardly, but not so spacious that you couldn’t make direct eye contact with the people standing on the dais at the front of the room. And those people happened to include Nik, who was standing behind Ophelia, a silent, expressionless tower of Russian, like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV .
    While Nik’s face remained impassive, I froze at the sight of him, stopping short so that Marty bumped into my back.
    â€œOh!” I exclaimed, as Marty grabbed my elbows to keep both of us from toppling over. “Sorry, Marty.”
    â€œThis seems to happen a lot,” Marty said, laughing as we dropped into our seats, just a few rows away from Nik and Ophelia.
    Nik’s lip drew back in the slightest of snarls, his eyes flitting toward Marty and me.
    â€œI’m a hazard to myself and others,” I confessed, giving Marty an awkward little smile, while not quite breaking eye contact with Nik.
    Aaron and Jordan were already sitting with their heads bent together, whispering, speculating about the subject of the meeting.
    Nik’s narrowed amber eyes stared a hole through Marty, who was blissfully oblivious.
    When all of the employees, humans and vampires alike, were seated, the lights dimmed, and Ophelia cleared her throat pointedly. I couldn’t imagine what had prompted her change from her usual “innocent teenage extra who wandered off the set of Mad Men ” wardrobe choices, but she was wearing a tight black silk blouse and black leather pants tailored so close I could have counted the change in her pockets—if she’d had pockets or bothered carrying cash, which she did not. With her hair slicked back in a high ponytail, she looked like a really classy dominatrix.
    The employees’ murmuring came to an abrupt halt as Ophelia crossed her arms and tapped the toe of her knee-high black leather boot. I glanced at Nik, whose eyes rolled ever so slightly toward the ceiling at Ophe­lia’s dramatics.
    â€œGood evening. I’m so sorry to have disrupted your work to call you here,” Ophelia announced, in a tone that suggested she wasn’t sorry at all. “Especially since our summer employees are just now finding their footing in our little family. But it seems that some of our staff are not as appreciative of our trust and generosity as I hoped they would be.”
    Marty and I shared a confused side-eye. It was natural, I supposed, to wonder whether your boss was talking about you in a situation like this. I tried to remember anything I might have done in the last two days of employment that might have provoked this response. But all I’d done was stab someone in the parking lot. No, wait, I had also