Georgia tugged at each cuff and straightened her tie. “It’s actually part of the job. Mr. Lambley hates the smell of the dry cleaners. He’s got a fund-raiser this weekend, and he prefers his tux broken in. A little lipstick on the collar only adds to the effect.”

  “You have to wear—” Gail was interrupted by a waiter setting a neon green concoction in a martini glass onto the table.

  “It’s an open tab. Get what you want,” Georgia offered.

  “What?” Gail asked as the music swelled into a hook. As the other person in a black jacket and white shirt waited patiently at the table, she finally took the hint and ordered a rum and Coke.

  “Is this really the best place to talk?” Gail asked again as the song continued.

  Georgia took a slow savoring sip of her dayglow beverage. “The best part about bars is that no one really listens to what is said, even if you’re supposed to be talking to that person, right?”

  Gail leaned in. “Is it always this loud?”

  Georgia kept looking past the brunette until she could give a slight nod to the bartender. As the waiter returned with a glass full of fizzy booze and an umbrella, Georgia rose to her feet.

  “We can go to the back now. Grab your drink,” she said quickly.

  Both girls darted to the back side of the U-shaped bar, past the magic zone where the girls who thought themselves most worthy jockeyed for prime stools with a clear view of the entrance—places with the added bonus of an occasional glimpse of just what sort of vehicle their potential prey left with the valet as the door opened.

  Gail paused as a living, breathing wall of human flesh stepped between the pair and a velvet rope, but Georgia didn’t even skip a beat. The bouncer slipped effortlessly to the left, sweeping the entrance free just long enough for the women to disappear under a VIP sign.

  Unlike the outer holding area, this section of the bar kept the volume at a decent level, and the neon and mirrors gave way to plush sofas and rich velvet drapes. In one corner a blonde in sunglasses and a miniscule black number lounged over the arm of her settee. Gail could barely make out a single arm in gray silk, the rest of the man attached remained doggedly obscured behind a divider curtain. The suggestive smile and constant giggling of the blonde, however, painted a pretty clear picture of just how well he must have filled out the rest of his outfit.

  A faint smell of smoke wafted from the blonde’s corner. Both Gail and Georgia wrinkled their noses at the same time. “I thought you couldn’t—” Gail said as they took over another table.

  “Couldn’t isn’t a word used much around here,” Georgia noted as she once more checked her phone. “Always on duty,” she sighed as she had to take a minute to type furiously on her screen. As the little device lit up Georgia’s face, Gail could just make out a touch of red in the corner of her otherwise flawless eyes. The interviewee decided to focus on her beverage as best she could until Georgia’s rapid-fire thumbs finally came to a rest.

  The blonde plopped her phone unceremoniously on her lap and chucked back the better part of the martini. “So, you decided to come back?” Georgia asked. “I had a good feeling about you.”

  Gail looked off to the corner with the blonde. “So are there, you know—?”

  Georgia nodded.

  “Over there?” she asked, nodding slightly toward the couple in the corner.

  “First day, and you can already pick one out,” Georgia said, beaming with pride. “Actually, once you notice one, it gets easy. It’s kinda like once you notice the arrows hidden in the FedEx logo. Once you find it, you just can’t not see it, right?”

  “There’s an arrow in the FedEx logo?” Gail asked.

  “Don’t worry, there’s time,” Georgia reassured her. “The one in the gray is a shy one. You won’t find him unless he wants to be found.”

  Gail leaned in and said as loudly as she dared, “He didn’t have a reflection.”

  Georgia laughed. “Of course he didn’t.” She pulled up her phone and took a quick snap of the other group. The blonde blew a kiss their way. Gail gasped as Georgia showed her a picture of an empty seat.

  “No reflection, no photos. Hell, they can’t even open the doors at the supermarket. I listened to some of the science suckers try to explain it once, but it was exceptionally dull and I tuned the details out.”

  “The blonde—”

  “Yeah, that’s Minnie. Don’t worry, you’re not her type,” Georgia dismissed. “You ever seen that movie Predator? Eighties classic . . . got Arnie in it?”

  Gail shook her head.

  Georgia let out a little sigh. “Shame, it’s one of my favorites. Anyway, apparently our vampire friends are just like the aliens in that movie, only slightly less ugly. Go ahead, try your phone if you don’t believe me.”

  Gail pulled out her own phone, hands shaking. Sure enough, she too ended up with an empty sofa in her viewfinder. As she peeked over the tiny plastic shield, Minnie lowered her glasses to reveal bright red eyes. The interviewee responded by gulping down the rest of her drink. “It wasn’t a trick,” she squeaked.

  “I’ve found that dealing with this situation really requires the Band-Aid approach. It’s a lot easier to take if you just rip it off without warning,” Georgia said. She motioned to the shadows, and within minutes a fresh rum and Coke was slipped in front of the obviously paler Gail.

  “No reflection,” the little Serbian girl croaked.

  “Nope.”

  “Sunlight?”

  “It doesn’t set them on fire, but they will burn badly without protection.”

  “Bats?”

  “Can communicate with them but not turn into them.”

  “Stake through the heart?”

  “Allergic to wood.”

  “Immortal?”

  “As far as I’ve seen.

  “And they—?” Gail gulped and pointed to her neck.

  “Oh yeah, we are pretty much walking lunch boxes to little miss blondie. Well, we would be if we weren’t American. She thinks all of us taste like mass-produced junk food and subsidized GMO corn,” Georgia said, tipping her drink toward the now-interested flaxen bombshell.

  Gail let out all her breath at once, furrowed her brows, and stared at the empty sofa shot still filling up the screen of her phone. Georgia gently patted her on the shoulder. “It’s rather a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

  Gail nodded furiously.

  “Believe me, there is nothing they do that can’t be overcome with a little common sense and a well-funded bank account. Trust me.”

  Gail continued to stare at her phone.

  “Alcohol helps too,” Georgia continued.

  The phone just sat in her lap.

  “If it makes you feel better, I sat in an old man’s bathroom for two hours when I first figured it out,” Georgia offered.

  “This . . . is . . . insane,” Gail finally choked out. She sniffed her drink suspiciously.

  “I thought I had lost it too, but if you can just keep an open mind here, I think you can handle it,” the interviewer reassured her. “Vampires are just like the mob. They do a few questionable things, but if you follow their rules, they don’t bother you. They also tend to be secretive and have accents.”

  Blondie finally rose from her perch and drifted over to the living, breathing table. “Georgie, you brought a friend,” the blonde purred in a ridiculously thick Austrian accent. “She seems so sweet.”

  Georgia casually slipped her finger under her collar and lifted a chain up over her tie. Instead of a crucifix, a house key plopped onto her chest. “Minnie, how is your brother doing tonight?”

  “Oh, you know how he is,” she said, easing back a step. “So, this one is with you?”

  Georgia nodded slowly. “You know, Geoffrey keeps a reserve keg on tap here. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind sharing. Now if you wouldn’t mind, Minnie, I’m trying to do a little business.”

  “They have kegs?” Gail asked as the blonde slunk away in a huff.

  “It’s a slang term for a live goat. Many of the Eurofangs prefer imported livestock,” Georgia said matter-of-factly. She giggled as Gail’s eyes widened. “It’s the twenty-first century. They can’t just eat random people. It would be all over the Internet faster than the latest celebrity muff shot.”

  “Live goat,” Gail said, quickly eyeing the door.

  “Goats, pigs, horses . . . you name it. You would be absolutely shocked about the cows hidden in Harvard,” Georgia said knowingly. “They feed off blood, preferably very fresh, but it doesn’t matter as long as it’s a mammal.”

  “So they don’t have to, um, you know?” she asked, once more pointing to her neck.

  “We’re the lobster, really,” Georgia confessed. “You see, the truth is that most of them are very picky, pickier than any toddler or entitled socialite. Every person is unique and thus hard to predict flavor-wise, so most of them prefer a simpler diet that’s easier to control. The older ones, though, they don’t want anything but human, and it’s tricky to take care of them while upholding certain standards.”

  “Do you have to, you know?” Gail asked.

  “You’d be amazed how many blood banks have a back door, if you know what I mean,” Georgia said. “I have a friend that I’ve transitioned from stealing pharmaceuticals to plasma. At least this way, he’s actually saving some lives. Oh, I’m starting to get kitten face again. You’re still in shock, aren’t you?”

  Georgia was answered by the sounds of a straw slurping the bottom of the glass again. Gail nodded toward the waiter in the corner this time.

  “How can you be so nonchalant about all this?” Gail asked.

  “You mean besides the appletinis?”

  “Yeah! I mean, is this what is going to happen to me?”

  “Maybe. I’m not the only assistant out there and I’m sure everyone handles it a little differently, but yeah, we all get used to it at some point. It’s a job.”

  “And someone just grabbed your resume and swept you off to a bar one night, and poof, you ended up super vampire secretary?”

  “We prefer the term undead assistant, but no, my story didn’t start with a resume. Mine started with a mix-up over a Craig’s List ad and my roommate’s sex life,” Georgia said.

  “Oh, now this I’ve got to hear,” Gail said as she started on round three.

  3

  A little more than one year before happy hour at Klondike Bar, Georgia Sutherland found herself cursing at auto-formatting options as she tried her best to get her education bullet points to line up with the section she had copied in for previous work experience.

  “Stop tabbing over,” she growled as once more “university” rolled over to the next line. Across the room a pair of bold purple-and-white-striped knee-highs flicked over the edge of the sofa while their owner giggled continuously under a leopard-print velour blanket.

  “Oh, yes! I want you to tell me I’m a bad girl. Why else would you have to spank me?” the girl under the covers chirped as Georgia continued to fight with margins.

  “Alice, what did I tell you about using your inside voice?” Georgia snapped as she distinctly picked up three different euphemisms for male genitalia in a single minute span. Georgia slapped her forehead with her palm as she realized she had added herself as a “throbbing member of the National Honors Society” near the bottom of the page. After making the corrections, she quickly tabbed over to her e-mail to look for the daily update of Boston-area real estate. The lowest-priced studio within walking distance still made her cringe.

  “New job, new apartment, new life,” she hissed before stomping across the living room and into the repurposed closet that served as a kitchen/entry hall to their two-bedroom urban paradise.

  “Mmm, keep talking, sugar daddy,” the voice continued as Georgia checked by the mail pile for something. After she rummaged over each counter and the disaster zone otherwise called a dinette set, she finally saw a black plastic object encased in a case with little skulls and hearts.

  “If her phone is here—” Georgia mused.

  “Oh, I’ll tell you where my hand is,” the voice moaned.

  “Alice!” Georgia barked. “You have my phone again, don’t you?”

  “Gotta go,” Georgia’s roommate said as the cover went flying off the couch and joined its distant cousins of dirty socks and unidentified sweatshirt visitors. The girl under the covers deftly tugged her T-shirt down with one hand while the other gingerly set the phone down between a pizza box and the remote.

  “Boundaries, Alice,” Georgia snapped as she picked up her cell. “Do I need to get any sort of cleaning product?”

  Alice raised three fingers. “Scout’s honor, it’s clean. I’m not sure I can say the same on the other end. Paul was definitely making squidgy noises.”

  Georgia took a deep breath. “T . . . M . . . I . . .” she sighed. “You ran out of minutes again, didn’t you? You’re the one with the job, so could you please get something with an unlimited plan?”

  Alice broke into hysterical laughter, her mouth full of braces clicking against her lip ring. “You want me to pay for one of those rip-off contracts? Look, I can’t afford to keep us in this life of luxury if we don’t tighten our belts a little.”

  “Last week I had someone called Dirt Rat asking me if I could suck his cock while humming the ‘1812 Overture,’ Alice. That’s not exactly the kind of call I’m expecting midday.”

  “Oh, he’s harmless, and not bad-looking either,” Alice dismissed.

  “I was shopping with my mom!” Georgia snapped.

  “Well, if you were shopping for underwear again, I’m sure you could have worked that in—”

  “Alice! I don’t want to have to keep screening my calls for perverts, OK? I’m supposed to get callbacks for jobs, and I never know what I’m going to hear—and why, in the name of all things holy, would a man want to hear the ‘1812 Overture’ while getting a blow job?” Georgia ranted.

  Alice grinned like a Cheshire cat under her mop of orange and pink hair. “You kept him on the line, didn’t you? You dirty little minx!”

  “Only for a minute while my mom was getting a latte, but that’s beside the point—”

  “Well, you haven’t gotten laid for months. That’s probably why your job search is going so bad too. Frustration never leads to anything positive in the workplace. That’s what I always say.”

  “No, you don’t, and how would you even know what I’m up to?” Georgia protested.

  “Because the only one raiding the condom drawer is me,” Alice noted. “You also only shave your legs halfway up, and you’re constantly wearing a ponytail. The signs say that you are either married or not getting any. Hmm, don’t see a ring, do you?” Alice asked, prancing toward the closet-like kitchen. “Hey, are you going shopping this weekend, because the Chinese in here smells like pizza—”

  “Alice, please!” Georgia barked. She took a few deep breaths and flipped her ponytail back over her shoulder. As she felt fuzzy elastic, her face fell. “I’m wearing a scrunchie every day, aren’t I?”

  Alice walked over and placed a hand on each of her roommate’s shoulders. As she nodded gravely, Georgia stared right past her to the pile of dirty dishes overflowing the sink and the bills stuck to the fridge.

  “You know what you need?” Alice said, trying to maneuver her metal-studded face squarely into the sight lines of her roommate.

  “I need a job,” Georgia said.

  “True,” Alice agreed. “But you need something even more, hun.”

  “I’m not calling back Dirt Rat if that’s what you’re going to suggest next.”

  “Oh, hell no, I’m not giving you one of my good ones!” Alice said. “What you need is a makeover.”

  Georgia took in her roommate’s Wicked Witch of the West beach attire, gaudy makeup, and spectacularly unnatural hair color. “I need to finish my resume,” Georgia countered. “I should be working on the important stuff.”

  “Didn’t your agency tell you all about making a good first impression? Georgie, you’re going all jeans and T-shirt on me today. Next comes rocky road and sweatpants, and soon in a year or two, I’m going to have to sell you off to reality TV to pay the bills. Give yourself a little pick-me-up from the outside in!”

  Georgia scoffed. “I have interview clothes from my mom—”

  Alice pointed to the ponytail. Georgia rolled her eyes in return. “There is more to getting a job than a haircut,” she said as she broke away to go back to the computer.

  “Georgie, I hate to be the bearer of bad news—”

  “But you will anyway,” Georgia muttered as she pulled up her resume again.

  “Your resume isn’t going to wow anyone, no matter what you do. If I were you—”

  “But you’re not,” Georgia interjected.

  “I’d go for getting your feet in the door with good hair and a low-cut blouse,” Alice finished.

  “Wow, and here I was thinking we were in the twenty-first century.” Georgia sighed.

  “Your last job was selling doughnuts—just saying.”

  “High-end pastries,” Georgia defended. She turned back to the document that was supposed to define her life to this point. After a few minutes of good solid staring, she smacked her palm with her forehead. “You’re right, I managed to get fired from a doughnut shop,” she admitted slowly.

  Alice once more wrapped her arms around her stressed-out roomie. As she rubbed her friend’s shoulders, she offered up, “At least they were obnoxious hipster doughnuts.”

  “What does that have to even do with anything?” Georgia asked.

  “On the bright side, we’ve lost about five pounds each since you stopped working there,” Alice offered. As Georgia laughed, Alice rested her chin on top of her friend’s head and stared at the lines of retail employment filling up the screen. “Hey, I know I’m a terrible roommate, but—”

  “You’re not that bad,” Georgia admitted.

  “I’m the one who steals your phone for kinky Internet-based hookups, Georgie. I also may have lent your toothbrush to Paul once or twice—”

  “Oh my god, Alice!” Georgia snapped as she broke away from her friend. “You didn’t—”

 

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