She turned around, sashaying her large, scaled behind out the door, her tail slithering on the floor behind her.
Nina jumped off her desk and shimmied into a lemon yellow sheath dress she yanked out of her handbag. “I swear, that woman!” she muttered.
“Nina—”
Nina raised what remained of her left eyebrow and then rubbed it vigorously until the hair started to grow back. “This is not my fault,” she said. “That woman was smoking. Smoking in my office!”
I sighed. “Mrs. Henderson is a dragon. She can’t really help it.”
“Oh. So I’m just supposed to sit here, breathing all that smoke for minimum wage? Oh, no.” Nina crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Not in this lifetime.”
She wagged her head, enviable locks of glossy black hair sprouting from her scalp, growing until she had a full head of waist-length hair.
I nonchalantly patted my Brillo Pad curls and lowered my voice, trying my best to offer a calming vibe. “Nina, you haven’t breathed in one hundred and sixteen years. You’re a vampire. And we don’t make minimum wage.”
Nina was unmoved. “You breathers are all so literal. Is it lunchtime yet?” She rose up on her toes and peeked over the counter that separated us—non-minimum-wage-making UDA staff—from them—the general demonic public.
“There’s hardly anyone here,” Nina said. “Let’s take a long lunch. Abercrombie is having a sale. And all their male models are topless.” She grinned. “And yummy.”
I looked over the counter and did a sweep of the UDA waiting room. It was crowded, shin to shoulder, with the usual eleven o’clock crowd of minotaurs, gargoyles, Kholog demons, and trolls. I rolled my eyes at Nina, stepped up to the counter, and yelled “Next!”
“Ugh,” Nina said, hopping up onto her stool. “You are no fun.”
By 4 P.M. I had authorized the existence of two immortals, rubbed enough slobber off a hobgoblin’s file to okay his power addition, and de-magicked a Salite witch who was caught trying to torpedo a Carnival cruise after she got salmonella at the captain’s dinner. I glanced at the dwindling line of clients in the waiting room and then out the window, watching the gray of dusk replacing the gray of fall in San Francisco.
“Nina,” I said, leaning over my station. “You’re going to have to grab the rest.” I nodded toward the window. “It’s time to go up.”
Nina blew out a sigh. “Kiss Sampson for me.”
I slid a THIS LANE CLOSED sign across my desk, rummaged through my shoulder bag, and unwrapped a Fruit Roll-Up before heading down the hall toward my boss’s office.
“Just another day in the life,” I muttered under my breath as I skirted the microwave-sized hole in the linoleum where a wizard exploded six weeks ago. Really, could operations be that busy?
Like I said, I don’t do magic. Hell, I don’t even know how to program the DVR. I can’t toss lightning bolts (so very witchy) and my flesh-eating abilities are limited to Popeyes Chicken and the occasional veggie burger. I don’t have superhuman strength or immortality or X-ray vision or even a body that looks all that good in a leather bustier (a requirement for the vampire chicks). I have a goldfish named Tipsy (well, had—there was a run-in with a Llhor demon, but that’s a different story) and an old Honda with a dent in the front. I can type eighty words a minute, make a mean pot of coffee, and chain up a full-grown man in thirty-four seconds flat.
That last one is important, since my boss is a werewolf.