Switched: Brides of the Kindred 17 (59 page)

But let me tell you about that—and you might want to take some
notes. You might want to know what or
who
might be coming for you. That’s because you never can
tell who might be watching, even when you’re having the most
boring, awful, ordinary day of your life…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“
Oh my God, he’s being an asshole again. I’m telling you,
Leah, I can’t take much more,” I muttered into my phone as I sat
huddled in a stall of the employee bathroom at Lauder, Lauder and
Associates. I worked as a paralegal there and the lawyer I was
assigned to, Dayton Lauder the Third, was a real piece of
work.

Dayton always spoke in this booming voice, as though he was
addressing a crowd of admirers and he wanted the ones in the back
to be able to hear him. Unfortunately, most days it was just him
and me and I was most definitely
not
an admirer. That didn’t stop him from “yell-talking”, as my
friend Charlotte called it, all day long, though, and I ended most
days with a pounding headache.

If poor voice
modulation was the worst thing I had to put up with, I might not
have minded so much. Unfortunately, Dayton had other problems that
put the “yell-talking” one in the shade.

One problem was his
personal hygiene—or lack thereof. When most people think of a
lawyer, they imagine some sexy associate from The Good Wife with an
immaculate, pressed, tailored suit, neat neatly clipped hair, and
manicured hands.

Not Dayton Lauder
the third.

As a tax lawyer, he
didn’t really go to court much. He just sat in his office and did
paperwork so I guess he thought it didn’t matter how he came to
work.

Well, it mattered to
me. Or anybody that got too close to him.

My boss had a love
affair with brown, polyester suits. I say “suits” but in fact, I
was convinced he only owned one of them which he wore every single
day and never cleaned. It was rumpled and wrinkled and he wore it
with a stained white shirt that had dirt marks on the collar and
sleeves. Every time he waved his arms—he did this a lot while he
was “yell-talking”—a huge cloud of nauseating BO would waft out,
nearly knocking me over if I stood too close.

He
had coffee breath too—not too surprising since he had me brew him
several pots a day. Of course, I’m a paralegal,
not
a waitress but the economy sucked and I needed
the job. So I brewed the damn coffee and even fixed it just the way
he liked it—three creams and four sugars.

Now, people can be
socially awkward and not be horrible. But again, not my boss. He
shouted at me a lot and just that morning he’d actually thrown a
stapler at my head because I had stapled his papers in the top left
hand corner instead of putting the staple right in the middle.

What an ass.

After the stapler
incident, I had run to the bathroom where I was pouring out my
heart to Leah, one of my two best friends.

“
Oh, Zoe, I’m so sorry.” Leah had a soft, sweet
voice—everything about her was soft and sweet actually—that I
normally found soothing. But today, I was too upset to be
soothed.

“
He threw a
stapler
at my
freaking
head,”
I
emphasized.

“
That’s
awful,”
she
exclaimed. And then I heard her say, “All right, sweetheart, I’ll
help you find your pony in just a minute. Right now, though, Miss
Heidi is in charge. Okay?”

Leah works in a
private daycare center that specializes in mildly autistic children
and she’s better with kids than I could ever be. Talk about the
patience of a saint.

“
Kids sneaking into the break room again?” I asked.

She sighed. “Yes,
I’m sorry. Heidi is supposed to be in charge but they always seem
to want me. Makes it hard to take a break.”

“
I
shouldn’t be taking up your time then,” I said. “Let me let you
go.”

“
No—keep talking. You need to get it off your chest.” Leah
would make an awesome therapist, I swear, which is what she really
wanted to be if she could ever get back to school.

There was a clicking
on the line that I recognized.

“
Hang on,” Leah said, her soft voice suddenly filled with
dread. There was a pause and I wondered if it was Gerald, her
overprotective fiancée calling. Leah always claimed he had her best
interest at heart but over time he had become more and more
controlling until Charlotte, my other best friend, and I, were
really worried about her.

A moment later, Leah
came back on.

“
It’s Charlotte,” she said, her voice sounding light with
relief. “Should I put her on too?”

“
Of course. She must have gotten my message—I called her
before I called you.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh, thought it might
be Gerald calling you again,” I said as she merged the
calls.

“
Nope. He’s off on a business trip this weekend.” Leah’s voice
sounded light and happy—I wondered if she had any idea that she
sounded that way when her fiancée was gone.

“
Who’s on a business trip? Gerald?” Charlotte’s no-nonsense
voice came on the line, filled with disbelief. “And he trusts you
to be in the house alone all weekend?”

“
Of
course
he
trusts me.” There was a note of defensiveness in Leah’s voice that
worried me. I had never liked her fiancée and lately his nasty
attitude seemed to be getting worse. But now wasn’t the time to
stage a “your boyfriend is a controlling asshole” intervention.
Taking pity on her, I decided to turn the conversation back to my
current situation.

Quickly, I outlined
the situation to Charlotte. She’s a nurse practitioner working for
an orthopedic surgeon—he even lets her assist in some of the
surgeries he does. She has the best job by far of the three of us
but I can’t be jealous of her for it—she really busted her ass to
get where she is. Not that getting a paralegal degree is all
rainbows and unicorns but it’s not as complicated as what Charlotte
is doing.

“
Report him to Human Resources,” Charlotte said at once, when
I finished the near miss stapler-to-the-head story for the second
time.

I sighed. “We’ve
been over that—you know I can’t! His uncle and father own the
company. Human resources isn’t going to do jack shit about it!”

“
Zoe…” Leah didn’t like harsh language.

“
Sorry, Leah but you know it’s true. I just—”

Suddenly I heard a
strange gurgling coming from the stall beside me. Uh-oh—was someone
in there? Specifically, was Mindy the office tattletale taking
notes?

“
Hang on a minute, guys,” I told my friends in a low voice.
“I’m not sure I’m alone in here.”

“
Uh-oh,” Leah whispered.

I risked a glance
down but didn’t see any feet at the bottom of the stall. My heart,
which had started to pound, slowed a little. Whew—all safe, I had
the bathroom to myself to bitch!

“
Everything okay?” Charlotte asked.

“
Yup. All clear.” I sighed again. “Look guys, I know I complain
about my asshole boss—sorry Leah—all the time but this is the first
time he’s actually
thrown
something at me. I swear I don’t know what is wrong with
him!”

“
He’s a jerk,” Charlotte said bluntly. “And he shouldn’t get
away with it.”

“
Right,” I muttered. “And he wouldn’t if I had the guts to
quit. But I need this job too much—I’ll lose my apartment if I walk
off now.”

“
How about that other law firm downtown?” Leah asked. “I
thought you were going to put in an application there.”

“
I
did,” I said. “But they aren’t hiring right now. So I
don’t—”

Suddenly the
gurgling sound in the stall next to me started up again. Only this
time it was louder—so loud in fact it sounded like the toilet was
overflowing. And then I heard this weird music—kind of like a
trumpet blast only louder.

“
What the
Hell?”
I
muttered, pushing open the door of my stall. What was going in the
stall behind me? Was someone flushing the toilet and playing a
trumpet at the same time? And if so, who was doing it? As far as I
knew, we didn’t have any budding musicians at Lauder, Lauder and
Associates. When I bent down, I still didn’t see any
feet.

“
Zoe? What’s going on?” Charlotte asked.

“
Yeah—what’s that music?” Leah chimed in. Geeze, was it really
so loud they could hear it on the other end of the
phone?

“
I
don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”

Which was absolutely
the stupidest thing I could have done. But of course, I didn’t know
it at the time. This being pre-abduction, as I said before.

Carefully, I tented
my fingers and pushed lightly on the stall door. It swung open
slowly revealing…nothing. Just a handicapped stall with railings on
one side of the toilet and a sink with a mirror over it.

Wait…maybe not
nothing
.

The mirror over the
sink was doing something weird. And by weird, I mean it wasn’t
reflecting what I expected it to be reflecting—namely my
reflection. Instead, it had a swirling pattern going on—a whirling
ring of colors that spun outward from a single point. It looked
like one of those hypno-gifs you see sometimes where you’re
supposed to stare at it for two minutes and then close your eyes
and look away and you’ll see something you’ve never seen
before.

Well, I
was
about to
see something I’d never seen before—and it was going to change my
life.

Like a fool, I moved
closer.

“
Zoe? Zoe?” the voices of my two best friends pulled me back
to reality. I looked down at the phone in my hand and realized I
was just holding it limp at my side. When had I taken it away from
my ear? And how had I gotten so close to the swirling mirror? I was
standing right in front of it, almost close enough to touch
it.

“
Guys?” I started to lift the phone to my ear and that was
when the swirling stopped and a face appeared.

Not
my
face—that would have been
normal.

No, it was another
face—an alien face—and it was staring at me, right out of the
mirror.

I wanted to scream
but all of the air seemed to have left my lungs somehow. What the
hell was going on?

The alien face
looked at me speculatively. It was male—that much was clear. Strong
features and gold eyes with vertical pupils like a cat’s stared
back at me. He had cheekbones sharp enough to cut yourself on and a
nose that looked like it had been broken at least once. A neatly
clipped mustache and goatee framed sensual lips that looked cruelly
amused. He had even, tan skin—I could see a lot of that because he
appeared to be wearing a wife-beater type t-shirt that left his
muscular arms bare.

Actually, except for
the cat eyes, he looked strangely human. Well, except for the
horns.

Did I mention he had freaking
horns?

Because he
did—little short, sharp pointed ones, growing out either side of
his forehead.

I started at them,
dumbfounded, unable to speak for a moment. And that’s unusual for
me because I’m almost always shooting off my mouth.

All I could think was,
the Devil.
Oh my God, the freaking Devil was staring at me from
the mirror of the handicapped bathroom at Lauder, Lauder and
Associates and I had no idea what to do.

My
mind started going over all the things I’d done wrong recently.
Okay, I might have fudged a little on my taxes. Using my laptop to
check reports while I lay on the couch watching Sherlock reruns on
Netflix counts as having a home office—right? And then there was
the time I accidentally shoplifted a pair of socks. I forgot I had
them in my hand and walked right out of the store with them. And
then I was too embarrassed to bring them back so I guess I
basically
stole
them
but I didn’t mean to so—

Suddenly, the Devil
spoke, ending my train of thought as thoroughly as though it had
run into the side of a mountain.

“
Yes,” he said in a deep, growling voice. “She is
the one.”

The one for what? The one to drag straight down to Hell and
poke in the ass with a fiery pitchfork? Oh my God, was cheating on
my taxes and shoplifting socks
that
bad?

“
I…I’m sorry,” I stuttered but just then another voice—a
piping, high voice like a Disney animal—answered him.

“
If you are certain this female is the one His Eminence
requires, than I shall begin the transport at once.”

Transport? What
Transport? Instinctively, I began backing away from the haunted
mirror to Hell but then the swirling started again. And this time
there was a wind that went with it.

A sucking, howling
wind that dragged at me, pulling me towards the mirror.

“
Help!” I screamed, or tried to scream, anyway. My voice was
lost in the vortex as I was pulled closer and closer to the
mirror.

My feet left the
floor and I put out my hands, trying to stop my forward momentum.
My phone clattered into the sink and I could hear Leah and
Charlotte shouting on the other end of it but their voices seemed
tiny and distant.