Page 45 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

Mor hadn’t budged.

So, she headed for his antique dresser and quietly pulled the drawer open. Inside, his clothes were neatly piled and organized by colour—if you could call black, white, and gray colours. She took the first sweater she saw—a relaxed gray one—and pulled it on with a sigh of relief, hugging her arms to herself to try and restore some warmth to her skin. She looked back toward the dark hallway, thinking of navigating this unlit cathedral at night.

She realized candles were stationed around the room—one in a holder—and a book of matches rested on the nightstand by the bed. She huffed a laugh and headed for it. “Sleep tight, you creepy vampire,” she said to the Master of Doom as she reached for the candle and matches.

A hand appeared and took a fistful of her sweater. Violet shrieked as she was yanked into the bed, her head hitting the pillow, her body pinned beneath a forearm. She dragged her wide eyes over to see Mor, holding himself up by his elbow, his eyes going in and out of focus. He held her to the mattress by his grip on her sweater—well,hissweater—and he gazed at her with half-open, still mostly sleeping eyes.

He gazed at her for a long time.

Violet swallowed, unsure if he was awake. Maybe he was one of those people who did things at night without knowing it. It seemed he wasn’t seeing anything, even though he was looking right at her.

But then he said, “You look pretty this way, Human.”

A bead of warmth dropped through her stomach where his arm rested. His stare was so brazen, so fearless. So totally asleep. Violet held her hands up slowly so she wouldn’t touch him.

“Doom,” she said. “I can’t touch your arm—”

Mor fell onto the bed, face into the pillow, and didn’t move again.

Violet released the breath she’d been holding and shook her head. She tried to use her sweater-covered-forearms to pick up his arm and move it off her. “Is he joking?” she muttered when she realized his fist was still tightly wrapped around the fabric of her sweater.

So much for being delicate.

Violet grabbed his bare arm and flung it off. She slid out of the bed and scooped up the matches, glancing back at her crazy boss one last time, only to see four pink fingerprint burns forming on his forearm in the exact place she’d grasped him. He hadn’t even reacted.

Once her candle was lit, Violet slipped back into the hallway and headed to the big open space where the stairs led down to the lobby. She felt very small in the enormous, dark room, lightly stepping over the creaky wooden stairs with her candle’s tiny light.

She reached the living room where Mor had left everything spotless. A blanket was tossed over the back of the nearest couch. She took it and laid down, then she blew out the candle.

The morning came with a rainstorm.

Violet tiptoed up the stairs to check on her boss. The Master of Doom was still fast asleep in the same position she’d left him in. She exhaled loudly. Then, instead of tiptoeing back down the stairs, she stomped and smacked the walls on her way, banging off everything in her path.

Still, the fairy didn’t wake up.

She made herself tea as the rain pounded on the foggy windows, and she carried the steaming mug to the living space. She’d found one of her old journals in her overnight bag, one she’d used when she first started at The Sprinkled Scoop. It took her a few tries to get the fireplace going. But when she did, she snuggled under the blanket in the fireside chair and sipped her tea as she flipped open her journal. She scribbled the first things that came to mind:

My name is Violet Miller.

I live with Zorah Miller, my aunt. I work for a crazy legendary creature boss who talks in his sleep and may erase my memories at any moment. If he does, this is a reminder of my name and whose family I’m a part of.

Mor probably can’t be trusted.

His weird fairy friends probably can’t be trusted either.

Violet tapped her pen as she thought about what else to write. She puzzled over everything she’d been through in the past week, from losing a job, to getting a job, to learning fairies existed, to having met the serial-attacker in person. She jotted a few notes down—everything she’d learned so far about fairies and the memory-thief.

After several minutes of writing, she set the journal aside and blew lightly on her tea. The rain raged against the cathedral, echoing in the ceiling heights, the sound mixing with the low crackling fire. Yet, as the fire’s warmth breathed over her, Violet realized she was relaxed. She should have been scared out of her mind with all that had happened.

Her gaze drifted out of the living space toward the stairs in the lobby. All was still, apart from the rain on the windows and the moving flames before her.

She headed back to the kitchen to make more tea and went up to the office.

Articles covered the room like wallpaper, uncategorized. A puddle of ink still stained the floor, along with half a dozen scattered pens from when she’d thrown them at Mor. She sighed and began tidying up. She carefully pulled articles off the walls and organized them into piles based on topics. There weren’t any file folders, so she set each pile evenly spaced apart atop the desk and started reading through them one by one.

The redhead guy’s face filled her whole mind, all at once. He seemed like a lunatic. Violet was sure she shouldn’t even be alive after she’d crossed him in person. A chill rushed up her spine as she thought about it. As she went over his words from their conversation in the alley; words she’d dwelled upon for nearly twenty-four hours.

Just like that, she was sucked back into it. Lost in the story. In the evidence that didn’t add up. In the absurdity. The young women who had been carefully left in different parts of local park woods. Never in the same spot. Never on the same day. Everything seemed spaced out, evenly. She lowered her handful of articles to her lap and stared at the wall.

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