Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

III. Bill Looks Up

I looked up.

From overhead on the roof, Florian was waving down at me. His mouth was moving, too, but no sound was coming out.

I realized then that the glass ceiling must be soundproof. When it had said on the Azure Tech website that all efforts were made to ensure employees had the most distraction-free living space possible, they had not been kidding.

I realized also that, since, the building belonged to Mr. Blue, according to Florian's very traditional vampire rules, he could not enter, until Mr. Blue invited him in person.

Wt are u doing here? I texted frenetically. How did u get here so fast?

This was a far preferable way of communicating with Florian than actually having to speak in person. When I was looking down at my phone and typing, it was much easier to focus on how angry and grown-up and not-needing-this-drama I was, rather than on how vaguely glamorous he was looking with his hair blowing in the wind and the scarlet-trimmed tails of his trademark black pleather trenchcoat whipping about, while my inner teenager screamed "What if he came for meeeee?!" at the top of her lungs in the background.

(For her, you see, there was only the only possible reason for anyone to show up on a slick glass rooftop at three in the morning, after travelling several thousand miles in a night, and it was not because he really really needed to know where I'd been keeping the toenail clippers and the propofol for the cats.)

Above, Florian grimaced in response and began typing laboriously into his own phone. I waited, willing myself not to glance up too often. After all, it wasn't like I was glad to see him! I had a meeting (my first ever!) to get to in less than an hour or so, and I was losing precious time for sleep.

Complications, he sent, after some time. I would say don't trust anyone, but you've got that part covered much better than your aunt ever did. Don't text me again. Not secure. See you soon.

Then he knelt down very deliberately, pulling a big piece of neon purple sidewalk chalk out of his coat pocket, and began to scrawl something on the rooftop:

BBB

I stared upward in bemusement. I mouthed "What?!" up at him, to no avail: Florian only shook his head, got up off his knee, and walked right on past my section of the roof, out of view.

I lay back heavily on my blue-dressed bed, and kicked at the immaculate wall, staring up at those letters.

Was it encouragement? (Be Brave Bill?) An insult? (Be Back (Soon) Bloodsack?) A reproach? Or was he just deliberately messing with me? On reflection, I decided I wouldn't put that past him. You probably didn't get past ninety as an immortal without developing a certain cat-like attitude of superiority towards your former fellow humans, still stuck on fortune's wheel: a certain ability to selectively ignore what common feelings you still shared with them.

I mean, I couldn't imagine being five hundred or older, like Florian said he was, and still getting attached to anyone willingly. I'd had enough of it for one lifetime already, and I wasn't even eighteen yet.

After about twenty minutes, a light rain began to fall, and the chalk message, already faint, was slowly washed away. I was still scowling up at the ceiling when my morning alarm sounded, my feelings in a state of turmoil.

Somehow, I got myself to the meeting, but I could tell by the scornful glance Dustin Wood gave me as I walked into the conference room that I hadn't really met his opinion of the dress code. Whatever. It wasn't like anyone had provided me with a uniform. Yet. (And I wasn't about to ask, because blue has never been my color.)

"Am I early?" I asked Rude Omri, who was leaned over the opposite end of the table, intent on some arcane technological task. "Where is everyone?"

"No," said Rude Omri matter-of-factly, without looking up. "You're ten minutes late."

He stared down at his tablet and performed a few more conjurations over the conference table, to no visible effect.

"It's just us," said Rude Dustin, grinning at me from where he was seated at the opposite end of the table.

"But – " I said.

"Mr. Blue downsized last month," said Rude Omri. "We are now staffed entirely by me, Dustin, and a team of invisible elves, who make all the clerical errors. Here's your company tablet. Be careful with it."

And he slid a very expensive-looking tablet down the length of the table in my general direction.

"About that," I said, grabbing the device right before it flew off the edge of the table. I wasn't even going to ask about the elves – I was fairly sure he'd been joking, and frankly, after the shock of last night, I didn't want to know right now if he hadn't been. "The website didn't really say much about what Azure Tech makes. What do you make?"

"That's need-to-know information," said Dustin. "Why do you need to know?"

"Well," I said. "I have to put something on my resume when I leave, don't I?"

"Point," said Dustin, after some reflection. Then he got a funny gleam in his eye and grinned at me in a very unappealing way. "How much is that information worth to you, Sabilla Vane?"

"Men's razors," barked Omri shortly.

Dustin glared across the room at him. I was beginning to suspect they didn't much like each other.

"Oh," I said, widening my eyes, because it was clear that Dustin wasn't going to provide me with any more information if I continued to show evidence of any intellect. "Only razors? What's the Tech part for, then?"

"They're smart razors," said Dustin, preening. "They're tied into the IOMS."

I blinked.

"That's – " began Dustin.

"Internet of Marketable Stuff," said Omri.

At that, Dustin bristled – there really wasn't another word for it. He jumped down off the table and began to walk rather menacingly towards Omri. "Hello, lambchops?! I was explaining it to her."

"Watch yourself," snapped back Omri. "Mr. Blue isn't a fan of violence, and he's always watching."

Those words seemed to keep Dustin at bay: although before he had seemed quite inclined towards violence, now he didn't advance any further. "What's your problem, Om-boy?" he snarled across the room, "Wrong time of the month again? Why are you always being such a killjoy?"

"Just stop being such a tick and I won't need to be."

While they began to quarrel back and forth in a very peculiar fashion, using all sorts of strange names and insults, I powered up the tablet Omri had given me, and managed to find the employment contract Mr. Blue had tried to review with me yesterday.

It was all perfectly innocuous, except for the last two lines, which were followed by a perfect replica of my signature (I'd had to sign and submit a number of documents with my online application, all of which Florence had assured me were perfectly trustworthy - at the time I hadn't been thinking very clearly at all, and the local burger and coffee franchises back home might have well possessed a right to my eternal soul by now, for all I knew, as a condition of pre-employment.)

These lines read:

I hereby agree to remain within the premises of Azure Tech for the next 120 days without egress of any kind, save in the case of extreme medical emergency, to better further my professional development and safeguard the interests of the company.

Signed,

Sabilla Vane

And that was the moment when I really knew for certain, all questions of pride and self-sufficiency aside, that I had just made a spectacular leap from the frying pan into the fire.