This seemed to amuse Dixon and he crossed his long arms in front of his chest. “You may have been back when Pete Sampson was alive. This is a whole new era for the Underworld Detection Agency, Sophie. Times are changing.” He cocked his head patronizingly. “You understand, don’t you, dear?”
I felt a snarl of anger as I looked from Dixon to Nina. “No, I don’t understand.” My teeth were clenched. My fists were clenched. And suddenly I had no idea what I planned to say to Dixon. All the expletives and polysyllabic words flew out of my head. “You can’t fire me,” I started.
Dixon’s lips and eyebrows resettled to a look somewhere between amusement and surprise.
“The UDA won’t run without me.”
At that moment Anson came slinking back in, dropping a thick file of demon transfer forms onto Dixon’s desktop. Both our eyes skimmed the bulging file.
“You were saying?”
Nina stepped forward and put her hands on my crossed arms. “Sophie,” she said, her voice uselessly low, “don’t do this.”
I shrugged off her cold hands and felt the anger glitter in my narrowed eyes. “Traitor,” I spat.
I spun on my heel and sped through the door, leaving a stunned—or amused, I wasn’t sure—Dixon and Nina in my wake. I was huffing and my eyes were watering by the time I hit the main hallway and ran into Lorraine, Kale skittering behind her. Lorraine threw her arms around me.
“Sophie! We miss you so much! Are you back?”
I sniffed into Lorraine’s shoulder and she pushed me away delicately. “Oh, honey, what happened?”
“I hate that stupid vampire!” I huffed, wiping my eyes on my shirtsleeve. I looked around at the smattering of demon faces and gave Lorraine a quick squeeze and peck on the cheek. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Are you coming back?” I heard Lorraine ask the back of my head.
I wagged my head in defeat, and mashed the elevator’s up button.
I alternated between tearful rage and tearful defeat as the elevator heaved up floor by floor. When the doors opened on the police office vestibule I was back to hopping mad and I made a beeline for Alex’s office.
“I need a job!” I yelled, once I found him at his desk.
He looked up with a sly grin. “And what are your qualifications?”
I flopped down in his visitor’s chair and glared at him. He held his hands up, seeming to shrink behind them. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. But I’m glad you’re here. We need to talk about—”
The snarl that I felt roil through me must have been audible because Alex dropped his hands and used one of them to rake through his dark curls.
“Okay, okay; what’s going on?”
I frowned. “Dixon fired me.”
“Again?”
I felt my eyes tear up again. “Not again. He just wouldn’t give me my job back.”
Alex sucked in a slow breath and I crossed my arms. “What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked.
“Ophelia.”
I felt the anger flail again. “Ophelia? I don’t want to talk about Ophelia!”
“I think she has something up her sleeve. I’m worried that she’s coming up with something big.”
I snorted. “Something big? Look, Alex, I know you’re all ghostly pale about your ex-girlfriend’s supposed powers, but so far all she’s done is throw around a few bugs and kick in my door. If she were really the murderous beast you tell me she is, wouldn’t she have done a little more than the hamburger flea circus?”
Alex came around his desk and sat on the arm of my chair, patting my shoulder gingerly. “Look, Lawson, you’re pretty worked up. Why don’t you just go on home and get yourself together—”
I couldn’t hear the rest of what Alex said for the steam blowing out of my ears. “Are you seriously going to patronize me right now?” I stood up, grabbing my shoulder bag and sending Alex wobbling to maintain his balance.
“I swear, you guys are all the same. It’s like one giant dead boys’ club around here and I can’t stand it!” I tore out through Alex’s office doorway. “I swear to God I’m going to strangle somebody!”
It was just after lunchtime by the time I got back to my apartment, cried, stomped on Nina’s leather jacket, and finished an entire box of Easter chocolates in an egg-shaped box.
Once the nuts-and-chews sugar rush subsided I decided to be proactive and got online. An hour later I had trolled the Internet and applied for jobs anywhere from Highly Organized Executive Assistant Needed to Food Tester Wanted. It wasn’t exactly that I lived paycheck to paycheck; it was more that paycheck to paycheck didn’t even begin to cover the bills. I huffed out a sigh and rummaged through the cupboards and fridge, hoping to find a leftover Santa-shaped box of chocolates. Finding none, I pulled a half cantaloupe and a carton of cottage cheese out of the fridge. I frowned when I heard someone clear her throat.
“Nina?” I called. “Are you back to stomp on my heart? Maybe you’d like to eat my new puppy?”
“Sophie! Down here!”
ChaCha looked up at the counter, shrieked, and ran out of the room. The last I saw of her was her tiny, rug-rat butt sliding under the couch. I looked down at my cantaloupe and let out an annoyed groan.