our appreciation. What could be simpler?”
I caught the eye of a passing waitress across the room and signaled for the check. “You forget one thing,” I said. “I already have a job. And I’m very loyal to my employer.”
“You can’t be telling me you’re happy there.”
I hesitated. “I didn’t say that. But I am loyal.”
The waitress set the check between us. Jason reached for it, but I lifted a staying hand. “My turn. Besides—” I smiled at him sweetly “—we have an account here.”
His expression was dry. “Fringe benefit?”
“One of many,” I assured him.
We walked to the vestibule together and I waited with him for his car to be brought around. Jason helped me slip on my long, hooded silver fox coat. Yes, I wear fur. I get cold, okay? It’s fake fur, of course. It would be politically incorrect to wear anything else, even in Montreal, and even for a werewolf.
He drew the front of the coat closed beneath my chin, a charmingly affectionate gesture that made me smile. I wondered if he was in love with me, and then dismissed the notion immediately. But that would be interesting, and nothing interesting had happened to me in a long, long time.
“I’m in town for the rest of the week if you change your mind,” he said.
“About the job?”
“Or about going out with me.”
I smiled. “Goodbye, Jason. I had a lovely lunch.” I pulled open the door and hurried out into the blustery day.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and walked the block to the Metro entrance, my head held high and my shoulders back, enjoying the taste of the wind. I wondered what had gotten into Jason. Not, of course, that anything he’d said about my employment was untrue. I was badly used and underappreciated, and I certainly would have a far better future in almost any human company than with Clare de Lune. But Jason and I had been friends for almost a year, and he surely knew me well enough by now to realize I would never leave Clare de Lune.
Would I?
The truth was, it was a fascinating possibility. To live in the human world, as one of them…this was hardly the first time the fantasy had crossed my mind. Even as a child, when all the other wolflings would tease and torment me to tears, I vowed to get even with them. I would show them all. I would run away to live with humans, which was the worst, most denigrating threat I could think of. Today, I practically did live with humans, and it wasn’t so bad, particularly considering the fact that humans were, in general, a great deal nicer to me than my own kind had ever been.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more appeal the idea had. All my friends were humans. Jason was right: I had gone as far as I would ever go with Clare de Lune, which was nowhere. And I had so much more to offer. But if I worked for a human company…with my natural cunning and imagination, with my enhanced senses and with all I had learned about being the best in the business from the best in the business…why, within five years I could be running any human company that let me get a foot in the door.
And of course, such a thing was not entirely without precedent. Michael St. Clare, heir apparent to the entire St. Clare empire and future leader to us all, had only last year walked away from his family and his fortune to go and live with humans. He had even married one of them. As a group, we were still reeling with shock from that one. And I suppose that knowing how much distress Michael had caused everyone did take some of the appeal from the prospect of striking out on my own.
Still, it was a pleasant fantasy, and I smiled over it during the brief subway ride to the office. Unlike the subways in most major cities, the Montreal Metro is clean, safe and relatively enjoyable. The train took me back to the main business and shopping district, and I did not even have to go outside to reach my office. I followed the underground brick sidewalk past bright store windows filled with colorful displays, then hurried through the revolving door that leads to the elevators for Clare de Lune.
The offices that house the marketing division of Clare de Lune are like any other in the city, perhaps a little more expensive, a little more elegantly decorated. We use only the best, and the company has a great deal of money to spend. No one would ever know, upon entering, that it was an office managed by werewolves.
First of all, as I’ve mentioned, werewolves are not distinguishable from humans by appearance, except, of course, that they are a little more handsome, a little more beautiful and possess, I am told, a noticeably higher level of sex appeal than the average human. Second, in the Montreal office, we employ a much higher percentage of humans than anywhere else in the company. The fact of the matter is that, although werewolves are superior in many ways—again, no offense intended—when it comes to marketing our products to the human world, we are smart enough to rely heavily on humans.
The support staff and quite a large percentage of the junior account executives are human. All of the management and senior account executives are werewolves. But as I said, it looks like any other advertising office for any other company in any other city in the world.
Before I got off the elevator I heard voices, scraps of conversation that humans would have no idea I could overhear even if they had thought to conceal their voices from me. Did I mention the werewolf sense of hearing is also several hundred times more acute than humans’? And mine, without meaning to brag, is in the high range of normal even for a werewolf.
“Must be something big—”
“You can tell he’s important just by the way he walks.”
“Yeah, and that eighty-thousand-dollar limo doesn’t hurt any, either.”
“But why was he asking about her? Of all people—”
“Well, he’s waiting for her now and he didn’t look any too—”
“Trouble’s happening, you mark my word. Don’t you have any idea—”
“I’m just a secretary, I don’t—”
“You might be a secretary looking for a job before this day is over. You know what they say…”
By the time I was halfway down the hall, all the conversations—the interesting ones, anyway—had faded. The werewolves, who would have heard me coming from almost as far away as I could hear them, continued with business as usual, but I did not miss one or two furtive looks from them as I passed. The humans were far less adept at concealing their emotions. Their body language practically radiated danger. Something had happened to upset them, and I had a cold tight feeling in the pit of my stomach that it had something to do with me.
But there was no point in expecting anyone to enlighten me. The looks that followed me from desk to desk, from cubicle to cubicle as I passed made me wonder if I had food on my face, or something equally as embarrassing, and I even managed a quick sidelong glance at my reflection in a glass door—dark hair, fur coat, neat lipstick, no food. The wary looks followed me.
The human secretary who served me and three other people was conveniently not at her desk, so there was no hope there. Fighting trepidation, I rounded the corner into my own cubicle, expecting a “While You Were Out” message to solve the puzzle. I wondered if, in fact, I would like what it contained.
But there was no message on my desk. Instead, there
