I turned on my heel and started toward my building. Will followed the same direction, a foot or so back. Within a second he had caught up and fallen in step with me.
He offered me a polite smile and my hackles went up. I considered how to juggle my dog and my stun gun when Will decided to plunge a dagger into my heart/rape me/beat me/force me to watch an endless loop of How Stuff Works. He seemed like a perfectly normal guy out for a perfectly normal coffee run on a perfectly normal day, which meant, most likely, he was some sort of demon.
But then again, I was the spawn of Satan.
“Are you walking with me?”
“I’m walking near you. I happen to be going in that direction. I live right there.” He poked his index finger to the building in front of us. My building.
I raised an eyebrow. “Really?” Had he seen me come out? Did he have telepathic powers? “What apartment?”
“3C.”
I felt a little flutter in my chest. The previous resident of 3C—a sweet, dirty old man who had a penchant for slightly younger women in leopard-print spandex—had fallen in the stairwell and died. At least that’s how the story went.
I stopped in midstride. “How come I’ve never seen you around the building, then?”
Will took a sip from his paper coffee cup. “Why would you? Wait, is that your building, too?”
I crossed my arms. “Like you didn’t already know that.”
Will put up his hands. “Whoa, lady, I don’t know who you are and I have no idea where you live. I was just getting some coffee and walking back to my place. I’m not some kind of stalker freak.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. That’s why I said ‘I’m not some kind of stalker freak.’”
He looked earnest and offended.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just a little ... cautious.”
Will grinned, his hazel eyes doing a quick toe-to-head scan. “That’s okay. Paranoia looks good on you.”
I felt my cheeks flush so I looked at the sidewalk as I hurried back to the apartment vestibule, careful not to look back to see if Will was following me. ChaCha looked up at me and yawned, pushing her paws over my arms. “I’m going to teach you to be an attack dog, ChaCha. I’m going to get you a steak.”
I pushed into my apartment and checked the fridge. No steak.
“Okay, ChaCha,” I sighed. “How do you feel about Cap’n Crunch?”
I poured us each a bowl and set up my laptop on the kitchen table. I was one day out of a job and in desperate need of another. I eyed the newspaper heaped on the chair next to me, was about to type in the Web address for the Monster job search engine when I felt the tiny prick of anger nag at the edge of my mind.
“No.” I thumped my fist on the table and ChaCha jumped. “I am not going to take this lying down, ChaCha.”
She cocked her head at me, her velvety brown eyes reflecting my Cap’n Crunch box. “Dixon thinks he can just fire me? He thinks that I—me, of all people—am not UDA material?”
ChaCha leaned down on her forepaws, downward-dog style and growled deep in her throat.
“You’re absolutely right, ChaCha! I am the UDA!” I thumped my chest. “I’m going to get my job back. Today. They can’t run the Underworld Detection Agency without me. I made that company! Well, I made the color-coded demon filing system—and that is very important to the Underworld.” I stood up with a start, my chair flopping to the floor behind me. “I am going to march right now there and tell Dixon that I am taking my job back, and he can take his UDA material and shove it right up his bloodless—” ChaCha blinked up at me with those big doe eyes. “Tush.”
I marched into the bathroom, stripping my clothes off and formulating a fierce, wordy speech, pockmarked with profanities and three-syllable words, that I planned to take to Dixon. I imagined myself in a killer pencil skirt and sky-high heels, slapping my palm into my fist while Dixon cowered at his desk, nodding spastically, agreeing to every one of my demands. In my fantasy, I had luscious, waist-length hair and for some reason wore glasses that I whisked off and pointed at him as I narrowed my eyes and called him emasculating names.
In my fantasy, Dixon may not have been a vampire with two-inch long, scalpel-sharp fangs and a penchant for blood sucking and general throat-ripping-outing.
“Sophie!”
“Geez, Grandma!” I crossed my arms over my naked chest and yanked a towel from the peg by the door. “Can’t you knock or something?”
Grandma rolled her eyes. “Do you remember who used to diaper and powder that bottom of yours? It’s not like it’s something I’ve never seen.”
I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “Can we not talk about my bottom right now?”
Grandma looked indignant. “Well, you brought it up.”
“Is there a reason for this visit?”
Grandma’s lower lip jutted out. “Can’t a dead woman visit her granddaughter without being grilled?”
“I’m sorry, Grandma, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you ... in my bathroom mirror ... several years after you’ve died. It’s just that I have an important—thing—to take care of.”