A Highly Valued Employee

Chapter 4

Harmony arrived in the cafeteria for lunch, a few minutes after midnight.

The tables and chairs were half filled with both living and undead employees. The live ones ate meat and vegetables, and drank coffee, sodas or fruit drinks, while the vampires drank blood from large mugs.

Harmony sat at a table across from Fred, who ate a tuna salad sandwich and drank a fresh, yellow, pulpy fruit juice. Harmony didn't touch the mug of blood in front of her.

She said, "I've already had enough to eat tonight. I'm full.

"By the way, I think you ought to know, that I tried out one of your quick vamping lozenges, when I gorged on that guy Xander."

"That's good. Any results yet?"

"No. I killed him about two hours ago. Is it too early to tell?"

"Yes. Much too early."

Fred told her, "Wesley's got a job for me to do this weekend; so we won't be picking up any guys and getting laid, like a couple of airhead schoolgirls."

Harmony joked, "Speak for yourself girl."

"No problem. We can always postpone that 'til the following weekend."

Then Fred told her, "Wesley wants me to go to Sunnydale, and find out what's going on there, now that the Slayer's dead."

"Good. We'll definitely have to know that."

"Since you come from there, you're familiar with the place, so he wants you to come along with me. It'll be a three day weekend, from Saturday night to Monday night."

She smiled. "He wants me to come along?"

"I know what you're thinking Harm. Your fangs and my neck, far away from the Violence Restricted Zone."

"Do we have a great boss or what?"

"I agree, and he wants you to act as his fiancee's bodyguard."

"Bodyguard"?

"Yes. That's because he knows that he can rely on you."

"Right. He can rely on me to guard your body; whether it's alive, dead, or undead."

Fred said, "I don't think you understand the definition of the term 'Bodyguard'."

Harmony said, "That's how this vampire defines the term."

Fred said, "And so does this about to become vampire."

"'About to become'?"

"Yes." She told her, "I decided that you're right. I shouldn't be so inconsiderate, that I'll risk getting one of my co-workers fired. Since getting vamped is inevitable, I've decided to just get it over with."

"Oh! That's really great!"

Fred told her, "I've decided to arrange for a discrete encounter, someplace away from work, with a certain vampire guy in my department, who the girls call "Mr. Good-Bite."

Harmony laughed. "I know who you mean. Believe me, if I wasn't already a vampire...Wait a minute. Discrete encounter? Does that include...?"

"I'm going to be a vampire Harmony, and vampires are very bad girls."

"Right.

"By the way." Harmony added, "I think we ought to take Xander back to Sunnydale with us."

Fred asked, "Take him with us?"

"Well Sunnydale is his home. We can't leave him here, can we? He doesn't have any place to stay, and I don't know if he's got enough money to pay for a motel room."