Nina waved dismissively. “They came with the bra. Where have you been? Dixon wants to interview everyone today.”
“Everyone?” I asked.
Nina fell in step with me as I snagged a bagel and headed toward my office. “Okay, that’s no big deal. I’m comfortable with my job performance,” I told her.
In my last four years at the UDA, I never failed to lock up my werewolf boss once. After Mr. Sampson, I kept the interim bosses abreast of standard operating procedure, and I acted as the go-between for the under and upper worlds when the banshee was filling in. Whoever had given her the job had failed to realize the fact that for mortals, laying eyes on a banshee means instant death—hence the usual warning scream. The upper world lost two baristas and a meter maid before that little snafu was fixed.
I took a big bite of bagel and spoke with my mouth full. “The interview will be cake.”
“Yeah,” Nina said, looking disgusted, “as you are a veritable poster child for the proper businesswoman.”
I looked down at my coffee-stained blouse that was now spotted black with poppy seeds. “I had a bit of a rough morning,” I said, swallowing.
“Well, it’s about to get rougher,” Nina said, eyes trailing.
“Steve,” I said with a grimace.
As usual, I smelled him before I saw him. Steve was a troll and one thing that everyone should know is that trolls smell—badly. Like a slightly more pungent combination of bleu cheese and belly button. At one point, Steve and I had one of those love-hate relationships. He loved me and I hated him. At least I did hate him. That’s not to say that I loved him now—far from it. But when someone saves your life, you tend to have a soft spot for him.
“Never fear, ladies and demonettes, Steve is here.” Steve’s small grey troll hands clutched his lapels and he grinned up at Nina and me, his yellow snaggled teeth glistening in the harsh fluorescent overhead lights.
“Wow, Steve, you look nice,” I said.
Steve was wearing a slick sharkskin suit. Shiny, pointed black wingtips stuck out from underneath his stubby pant legs and his pink-and-grey striped tie sat lopsided over his stout stomach. What remained of his bushy black hair was oiled down into a careful comb-over that did little to conceal the overwhelming baldness on his ill-shapen head.
“Steve thinks Sophie likes what she sees,” Steve said, waggling his bushy caterpillar brows. “Too bad that ship has sailed.”
Steve’s affections for me had been replaced—immediately and irrevocably—when he met Sasha, a busty paramedic who had a thing for short guys. She had lost her sense of smell over a previous Zicam addiction, so she and Steve were an odd, weird-looking match made in Underworld heaven.
“Steve is meeting with the new bigwig today.”
“With Dixon? Why?” I wanted to know.
“Good business practice,” Steve said assuredly. “Steve wants Mr. Andrade to put the face with the name Elpher Brothers Moving.”
Steve and his three-foot-high troll brothers ran the moving and operations company that serviced the UDA. While his height and smell didn’t exactly promote a sense of well-being or ability when it came to large furniture moving, Steve and his brothers had a surprising way of getting things done. I just hadn’t been able to figure out what it was.
“Steve would love to stay and chat, but business calls.” He jabbed a pudgy finger at the gleaming face of his gold watch. “Time is money,” he said as he strutted toward Mr. Andrade’s office. Nina and I peered down the hall as Steve reached his destination. We watched him arch up on his tiptoes, small arm extended, his fingertips just missing the doorknob. Undeterred, Steve sank back onto flat feet and swiftly began kicking the door until one of Dixon’s henchmen pulled it open.
“That little troll’s got—”
I clamped my hands over my ears and shook my head. “Don’t say it! I don’t want to hear about anything that Steve has.”
“I was going to say ‘an appointment,’ little Miss Mind in the Gutter. So what was so rough about your morning?”
“My grandmother appeared to me. In the bathroom mirror.”
Nina’s eyes went wide. “Shut up! You are so Jennifer Love Hewitt ghost whispering right now! Did you lead her to the white light, cross her over?”
“I’m serious!”
Nina thrust out her lower lip and pouted. “Me, too. It’s not like I have a whole lot of ghostly experience. What’d she look like? All skeletal and stuff ?”
I glanced at Nina, who looked positively titillated. “I always wished I could talk to dead people,” she said. I held up a finger and Nina grabbed it, glared. “Oh, you know what I mean.”
“She said I was in grave danger.”
“Original. What does she know?”
“She didn’t tell me much; basically, you know, ‘hey, how you doing?’ and ‘you’re in grave danger.’”
Nina’s eyes were far away. “And then she crossed over into the light ...”
“No, she went to breakfast. Possibly with Ed McMahon.”