I’d gotten the grand tour when I’d officially accepted SPI’s offer—and after I’d signed a nondisclosure agreement. In blood. Mine. The head of HSR was a voodoo high priestess, which took contracts and company loyalty to a whole new level. I was supposed to have started a week ago, but HSR called me last week to say that they needed to push my start date. They were still paying me, so I was more than happy with a week’s paid vacation before I’d even started work.
“Your office is in the main agent bull pen,” Jenny was telling me as she led the way to a pair of massive steel doors. She looked human to everyone else, but I knew that she was a river hag, though “water spirit” was the more politically correct term nowadays. Though river hags mostly looked like humans anyway—that is, if you took a human, made her skin the color of the Wicked Witch of the West, and exchanged dental work with a piranha. I always thought they had to live in a body of water. Turned out any size body would do, and I’d been told that SPI had a pool in the basement for its water-dwelling employees to use during breaks. You didn’t need seer vision to spot them; they left wet footprints all over the place. During my two-week orientation, SPI’s hallways had always been dotted with those Warning: Wet Floor signs.
SPI’s New York headquarters was located under Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The SPI complex was deep and wide—eight stories of deep and the entire park’s worth of wide. There was a subbasement, basement, parking area, then what was called the bull pen on the main floor that was ringed with five stories of steel catwalks connecting offices, labs, and conference rooms. The bull pen was filled with desks, computers, people, and not-people. The largest shift was on duty right now—the night shift. Even supernaturals who weren’t nocturnal tended to do their thing at night. Humans were essentially the same, but without the fangs, claws, and paranormally bad attitudes.
“Our seers have always been assigned the corner office,” Jenny was telling me.
“Corner office” was right. My office was against the wall, in the corner.
“Our seers have preferred to be seated where they can see everyone,” Jenny explained at my less-than-enthused reaction. “No one else would know the difference if one of our more physically imposing agents walked up behind them, but as a seer, you see everything all the time.” The woman giggled and smiled, her perky petunia lipstick framing a mouthful of dainty fangs that were at odds with her pink sweater set and pearls. “That must be terribly exciting. How I envy you.”
I stood absolutely still as a troll who had to be eight feet tall lumbered down the aisle next to mine and into the IT department’s cube farm. He sat down in an office chair that shrieked in a torture of steel. Of course, everyone else saw a slight, blond, and bespectacled man in a white shirt, tie, and khakis.
I swallowed. “Yes. Terribly.”
Some supernaturals who could pass for human didn’t bother with glamours most of the time. They’d just use clothing to cover their more identifying features. Coats or jackets to cover wings. Hats to cover horns or pointed ears, or sunglasses to cover larger or brighter-than-human eyes.
“The human employee breakroom is around the corner and through the first door on the right. And don’t worry about human-inappropriate snacks being left on the table. We have a strict rule about food in the office. Those employees who require what might be disturbing to our human colleagues have their own breakroom. Badge entrance only.”
“So . . . if there’s Girl Scout cookies on the table in the human breakroom, they don’t contain real Girl Scouts.”
“Correct.”
I’d been joking. I didn’t think she was.
When a supernatural was predisposed to see you as food, you had to go the extra mile to earn their respect. It was kind of like a human being told that they’d be working with a cow. Aside from the obvious lack of intellect—cows being dumber than a bag of rocks—there was the whole working with your food thing. Not much incentive for respect and teamwork.
The politics of an inter-species and inter-dimensional workplace promised to keep me on my toes. I was more than thankful for my two weeks of orientation training where I’d learned more than I ever thought there was to know about supernaturals, up to and including the best way to avoid being swallowed by an annoyed lindworm, and the proper etiquette for greeting a Bolivian basilisk. Very carefully.
Mine was an empty, sad-looking desk. The name plate on the desk read: “Irvine Schremp.” Jenny quickly picked it up with an apologetic grin.
“So what happened to Irvine?” I asked.
Jenny glanced around without moving her head. “Exsanguinated by a school of giant North American sewer leeches.”
I froze. “Drained?”
“Bone dry. They even sucked out his marrow. All in less than a minute.”
Breathe, Mac. Just breathe. Full medical coverage. Full medical. It’s a good thing.
While my eyes started involuntarily darting around to find the nearest exit—just in case, of course—I saw that on the desk closest to mine was a collection of items I wouldn’t have expected to see outside a horror movie or a psycho’s happy fun-time imagination.