The next morning, Michael and I drove to the office, stopping by a Starbucks to get my mocha and his latte. It was a dreary, wet day, and Michael agreed that such a grey day called for special coffees. Parking the car, Michael turned to me, giving me a kiss before getting out to open my door. After all, I was technically his manager. It might not look the best to see us together.

  That didn’t mean that we wouldn’t hold hands in the elevator on the way up to our floor from the garage. Yes, our floor. The company decided to let him train a new QCE on my floor as it was “an environment more conducive to learning” – a.k.a. Trevor’s floor was too rowdy, and they were temporarily losing access to a floor QCE. I was secretly hoping they’d send the new guy back down to Trevor after his training completed so Michael and I would be on the same floor.

  We entered the elevator on the garage level, and of course it had to stop at the main floor on the way. The doors opened and among the crowd was Sarah. I don’t know if she thought she was entitled to Michael’s affection or something, but she glared daggers at me as she entered the elevator. Michael squeezed my hand tighter – an assurance that he was there and that Sarah wouldn’t do anything in public. At least she didn’t work on our floor, she was still on the floor below working as a writer.

  It began in the elevator. The rumormongering.

  “Did you hear about that thing this weekend where people were getting bit?”

  “Getting bit? By what?”

  “By other people; keep up!”

  “I heard that it was some sort of mass hypnosis that went wrong…”

  And so on.

  It continued on our floor, theories buzzing in the air about the Sirens of Spring. Explanations ranged from “art-rave gone wrong” to “toxic fog” and just about everything in between. I stayed my usual, neutral self, masking how much it bothered me that people were talking about the event. With a wink from Michael, I went to my office. Through the window, I could see some of our coworkers approaching him.

  I couldn’t hear what was said, but he told me minutes later when he came to my office under the pretense of needing to drop something off. “They won’t shut up about it, like it’s the biggest thing to happen when there was only a few hundred people present at most. They keep cornering me, asking for my opinion. I’m just agreeing with all their wild guesses, hoping that they’ll leave. So far, I’ve heard ‘bad shrooms,’ ‘deepfake social experiment,’ ‘immersive theater…’ I could go on—”

  “Please do, this is entertaining,” I said.

  “Glad you’re having fun, Miss No-One-Gossips-At-Me-Anymore.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “‘Mass possession’ was popular, ‘Tik Tok challenge’ came up, but the closest one was probably the 5G claims.” At my confused look, he continued, “Some think it was a signal spike because people claimed to hear voices in their heads. For as off as it is, it’s the closest to the actual truth that I’ve heard. You don’t think…?”

  “No, there’s no way they’d guess at the actual truth.” I hoped I was right. After all, I didn’t believe in vampires for almost my entire life. “And what’re you doing when they ask your opinion?”

  “I’m just agreeing with everything. I probably look like a bit of a flake right now for it,” he groused.

  “You’re not a flake, Michael, and you know it. Just hold on, this will blow over like everything else does.” I stood, walking up to him. I crooked my finger for him to come closer, and he bent his head down. I kissed his cheek briefly, shocking him for a moment.

  “We’re at work,” he said, somewhere between shocked and dazed.

  “You needed it,” I winked.

  He smiled at me, his shoulders relaxing. “You crazy lady,” he chuckled.

  “Oh, I know. So crazy to kiss my boyfriend.”

  “I love it when you call me that.” His smile softened. “You better be careful or I’ll kiss you in front of everyone.” His gaze darkened, making me blush.

  “Rogue,” I teased back. “Go on now. I have to get started with quarterly reviews. Barf.”

  He chuckled at me, briefly blowing a kiss before turning and leaving the office.

  I started my meetings, most of them only lasting minutes at best. I was still fairly new to the position, and this was my first time holding the quarterly reviews by myself. Regardless, I felt like I did a fairly good job of keeping everyone on task in their individual meetings.

  Kelly, however, decided he needed to discuss every single miniscule thing that he saw problems with. I was supposed to be interviewing him, not getting a maintenance list from him. He went on, switching from building items I could do literally nothing about to complaints about his co-workers, thinking that everything he had to say was relevant. At least it was after lunch; facing him on an empty stomach would’ve been awful. I looked at the clock next to the door, praying for it to be 5:00 already.

  “… And Lisa keeps bringing those stinky tuna sandwiches for lunch; it makes the whole space reek of fish. If I wanted that, I’d be working at Pike Place instead. Bertram isn’t so bad except he chews with his mouth open, and he always has gum. He looks like a cow chewing cud constantly, it’s disgusting…”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Part way through the meeting, I began to feel a faint pressure building behind my eyes. Of course, Kelly would trigger a headache. I should’ve taken Tylenol before all of this. The pressure continued to build, slowly becoming an awareness. A tiny thread tightened between Kelly’s mind and my own. Instinct told me that I could tell him to do anything right now and he would.

  Is this… Curiosity overtook my initial fear. “Kelly,” I interrupted, the only way I could get a word in edgewise. “Pick up that pen and spin it in your fingers.”

  Without another word, he picked up the pen and began to twirl it in his fingers, his eyes looking slightly unfocused. His face went slack as if he hadn’t just been constantly talking.

  My hands began to shake, and I moved them from my desk to my lap to hide it. I broke the mental connection with only a thought, and Kelly blinked, his eyes beginning to clear. He took a breath as if he’d continue where he’d left off before, so I cut him off before he could.

  “Thank you for all of your insights, Kelly. I’ll be sure to pass on your thoughts. That concludes our meeting, you may go back to your desk.” He looked a bit perturbed at his dismissal, clearly misunderstanding the point of a quarterly review and having no clue what had just transpired. My stomach churned, and I knew if I still had a heartbeat it’d be thudding by now.

  “Michael, your turn,” I called from my office doorway. He looked up, smiling at first before he noted the apprehension in my eyes. His long strides brought him to my office, and I closed the door behind us.

  “What’s wrong?” he immediately asked, concern shadowing his features.

  I walked back over to my side of the desk, gesturing for him to sit down. If nothing else, it should at least look like we’re having a normal interview to everyone else who can see through the window. “Sit.” I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I think I hypnotized Kelly just now during his interview. I thought I was getting a headache and then suddenly the thread snapped into place. I just… knew.”

  I paused, feeling embarrassed of myself. “I might’ve made him twirl a pen just to test it out, and he did, eyes blank. It was the creepiest thing.”

  Michael leaned back in his seat. “Well,” he began with a light voice, “at least we know that one’s come in.”

  I couldn’t stop the gust of a laugh, his sarcasm half reassurance, half shared exasperation. “Oh, vampire life is fucking weird.”

  “You can say that again,” Michael agreed. “Hey, do you remember the story of when I first hypnotized someone?”

  My brows pinched together. “I think I remember you telling me, I just don’t remember what was said. There was a lot of talking that night.” Indeed, that had been the night that I had discovered Michael’s secret, the night my life changed forever.

  “There was. Crazy night. Well, when I first felt the hypnotic link, I was at the office too. I was talking to Garrett in accounting when I felt the tug. I pulled back so hard in my surprise that the guy nearly fell out of his chair from it. Dude was so confused – one minute he was sitting there talking and the next he flailed his arms to catch himself when nothing had touched him.”

  Michael continued, “Control takes time. And honestly, hypnosis was easy to get a handle on once I understood what was even happening.”

  I nodded my head, still counting my breaths. “Yeah. It just really caught me off guard and kinda freaked me out that I could do what I did. All the implications of hypnosis are scary, really. A vampire could make someone do anything – good, bad, or downright evil. I don’t want to turn into someone who uses others on a regular basis like that.”

  Michael reached across the desk, thumb stroking the back of my hand. “You don’t have to be, and you never would. Look at me, or Antun, or Syla. None of us use hypnosis all that often. You don’t have to either. You are the one in control, not your powers. You are the master, not the tool. And you are a badass.”

  I grasped his hand, squeezing his fingers with a grin. “Thank you. I needed that.” My mouth turned down again and I groaned. “Why do new things have to be so scary? It’s not fair.”

  “Maybe not. But speaking of fair…” His brows lifted comically high as his mouth split in a wide grin. “The Ren Faire is only days away now. Flower crowns, turkey legs, no spreadsheets.” He sighed in exaggerated contentment at the thought of what was coming.

  I couldn’t help the laugh. He was such a goofball, but he was my goofball. “It’ll be nice to step out of both the office and my mind for a while.” I looked at the clock, scoffing. “Kelly’s interview took so long that its already almost time to go home.”

  Michael turned to glance at the clock, giving his own small laugh. “Kelly does seem to like the sound of his own voice.” He looked back at me. “Why don’t we hurry up with this interview so we can get ready to go?”

  “Brilliant idea,” I beamed at him. And we did the interview, taking only minutes like it was supposed to. By the time we were done, I wasn’t going to have enough time to interview anyone else. Guess I’ll be doing interviews tomorrow too. Thanks, Kelly. I groused by myself in the office. It’s fine. After this I’m going home with my boyfriend to the house that we share with our best friends and my cat. It literally can’t get better than that.

  We got packed up and went down to the parking garage. Michael opened the passenger side door for me, closing it once I was inside. He was very much a gentleman, never letting me open doors if he could help it. I didn’t know whether to thank his parents or his love of Ren Faires and chivalry for that.

  On the drive home, I watched buildings swirl by in the rain-blurred windows. I kept thinking about Kelly’s interview. If it hadn’t lasted so long, I might’ve not known about my hypnosis power having developed yet. That tethering was one of the oddest types of pain I’d ever experienced. I wondered if it had to do with me not hypnotizing on purpose. At least, at first it wasn’t.

  Then I gave him that command, silly and small as it was. It had been harmless, just spinning a pen, but it had been too easy. I had crossed another threshold – one that I couldn’t un-cross. And that worried me. For being a vampire, I clung to my humanity like it was the only thing that could save me.

  Perhaps that’s what I needed, something completely not-vampiresque at all. Like the upcoming Ren Faire. Michael had tricked me into agreeing to dress up along with everyone else this year, and we had gone thrifting for the perfect pieces. With Antun’s 500 years’ worth of life experience, he had quite an assortment of trinkets and things that we could use for our costumes as well. “Are you sure?” I had asked. “These could legitimately be in a museum somewhere with the history they have. Any curator would go gaga for this collection.”

  “It’s just stuff,” Antun had said. “And what good is stuff if I have no one to share it with?” His smile was kind and bright, the kind of light you can only get from being your most authentic self.

  We drove out of the city toward Antun’s house – toward home – rain splashing against the windshield the entire time.

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