“Yeah,” I said, turning on my heel, “follow me.”
I tried not to pay attention to the hard set of the detective’s jaw, to the way his dark hair snaked over his collar, to the slight scent of juniper and Ivory soap that surrounded him. I’m so not doing this, I murmured in my head. Not interested at all. And then, when we turned a sharp corner and Detective Hayes’s hand brushed against mine, I thought, Well, maybe just for a second. We can just be friends, right? We should be friends.
I was about to name our firstborn when Detective Hayes fell into stride with me. “So, you work down here all the time?” he started.
I nodded. “Four years now. Forty hours a week.” I grinned. “Give or take.”
“Give” meaning there were always an extra couple of hours tacked on around the full moon when I needed to double-check Mr. Sampson’s chains and drop off a takeout box full of rare—as in raw—filet mignon. “Take” meaning there were always an extra couple of hours taken for lunch when Nina sniffed out yet another designer’s sample sale in China Basin and dragged me down to try on armloads of skinny jeans and boho shirts at ridiculous discounts.
Hayes looked around. “Don’t you find working here kind of … odd?”
“No more strange than any other office job,” I said, nodding to Pierre, a centaur who also did the filing.
Hayes paused. “Okay, like that,” he said, gesturing back to Pierre, his voice lowered. “How does a—a—”
“Centaur,” I supplied.
“How does that get to work in the morning? It’s not like he can hop on BART.”
I snorted. “Of course not. Pierre drives a Chevy.”
Hayes rolled his eyes, and I grabbed his elbow, leading him in a wide berth around a group of fairies and one pixie gathered around the water cooler.
“Just keep walking and don’t make eye contact,” I told him under my breath.
“Okay, wait. I might not know a lot about this stuff, but you’re telling me to avoid them?” He looked back, eyeing the pink-and-pale-green-clad diminutive group, their voices high-pitched and impossibly sweet as they chatted. “You can’t tell me you’re seriously afraid of Tinker Bell over there. What’d they do? Get fairy dust in your eye or something?”
I kept walking but faced Hayes. “Fairies are mean. Everyone knows that.”
Hayes remained unconvinced. “Mean? They’re talking about cookies!”
I stopped dead in my tracks as the fairy chatter died. “Uh-oh,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Fairies are very private. When disturbed by gawkers—”
“I wasn’t gawking!”
“—or intruders, they can react very violently.”
“Them?” Hayes swung around to the tiny, sweet-faced group, their wings twittering, littering the gray, industrial carpet with sparkly crumbles of pixie dust.
I grabbed Hayes by the arm again and yanked, hard. “Run!” I shouted in midstride, as the fairies—eyes narrowed, apple cheeks angry and flushed—flung themselves through the air toward us. Hayes and I ducked into an empty conference room, and he leaned against the door, doubled over, hands on knees. “Fairies are mean,” he said, grinning. “Who knew?”
“They’re a complete HR nightmare. Anyway, you should lock your doors when you leave here. And check your shoes. They can be surprisingly sinister.”
“I can’t believe you don’t find this the least bit weird,” Hayes was muttering as I made sure the coast was clear.
We stepped into the little foyer that housed my desk, a half-dead spider plant, and a red velvet fainting couch that Nina used for the (more than) occasional vamp nap. I gestured toward the closed door to Mr. Sampson’s office.
“Here we are,” I told the detective.
I knocked twice and then clicked open the door, poking my head into Mr. Sampson’s office. “There’s a Detective Hayes to see you, sir.”
Mr. Sampson looked up, his brown eyes velvety and inviting. He raked a large hand through his blond hair and then patted it back in place, cocked his head, and smiled at me, holding one finger up.
“Not a problem,” Mr. Sampson said to no one, his voice throaty, rich. “We’ll get that taken care of right away. Thank you. I’ve got an appointment right now. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to let you go. Yes—” His dark eyebrows rose, his eyes finding mine. “Certainly. I’ll have Sophie look into that.”
A rush of heat washed over me as I watched my name roll off Mr. Sampson’s lips. I clamped my knees together and vowed to give up reading romance novels for good. Really—my hormones had gone into overdrive.