Page 1 of Midnight & Magic
Chapter One
She read the letter stuck to her door, “Please take further notice that within fourteen (14) days after service of this notice, you are hereby required to pay the above-listed amount in full or quit the subject premises.” The letter, of course, droned on from there, but she didn’t need to read the damned thing any further. It was an eviction letter, and she didn’t have a way to fight it. Sadly, now she had a choice: spend her last two grand on her shoebox rental studio, or eat.
She opened her door, placed her handbag, keys, and eviction letter on the console table, and looked up in the mirror. Her eyes appeared to be sunken in, and the bags around her eyes had bags, too. Sure, she was Italian, and the dark circles were hereditary, but the bags weren’t—not even for a vampire, but the stress she was under made her look less than her best. However, that was fine because they offset the double chin, which seemed to form the minute she hit 30. At least now she could lose the proverbial “Freshman 15” she never seemed to get rid of throughout college. Not eating would do that to a person. Of course, then she’d have an additional problem—loose-fitting jeans. Who needs anything to wear but sweatpants—right?
“Might as well pay the rent because salad is on sale.” She said to herself with a sigh.
She had about $40 left from her 401K; the negligible amount would suffice for a few cans of vegetable soup or even a little tempeh. Not that she was planning on going vegetarian—or worse—vegan. But at least her food would be substantially less without the high price of meat tacked onto the bill. But seriously? Who besides celebs and models leaves meat out of their diet because bacon—you know?
She decided she’d go to the store tomorrow after her job interview. This interview will be her last hope of landing a job before the heat and electricity bills become due. She didn’t think finding a job would have been this hard. She lived and breathed what she did for a living, and no one did the job like her. All her paying clients loved her flair for home interior design. But her ex-husband made sure she became blackballed by all the other designers looking for assistants.
Sure, she might find some sympathetic human to work for as a personal assistant. Still, after reading her resume and seeing she was part owner of a successful design firm, they placed said resume into the proverbial slush pile. She’d be highly overqualified, and no one would ever hire her for a starting position this late in her life. Plus, the pay cut would be drastic.
She liked humans; they seemed to be wonderfully unique creatures in her experience dealing with them, but as a vampire, it proved challenging to work with them. They were just too temperamental, especially if they didn’t have coffee. Plus? Her ex demeaned her by cheating and blackballing her before the divorce. So why stoop even lower and work with humans? It just wasn’t what vampires did if they could avoid it.
Camden Connell was an extremely successful business mogul on Wall Street, and he was in search of a personal secretary. Now that Cassidy had officially graduated from college, again, she thought that her business degree and working for one of the most successful vampires in New York City would be a decent fit for her new lease on life. She wasn’t exactly keen on the fact of working for the man. He was temperamental on his good days and downright mean on any other day.
But Cassidy needed to put her thoughts aside so they wouldn’t interfere with this chance at a paying job, not now, because her time had completely run out on her. And as if by luck, the personal secretary who is currently employed by him decided to retire. When Cassidy’s resume came across the PA’s desk, she instantly recognized the name. Cheryl was one of Cassidy’s best customers when she was a designer. Cheryl loved Casiddy’s work so much that Cassidy wound up redesigning the woman’s entire apartment. She had told Cassidy in confidence that she had put in a good word for her with the boss, and Cassidy prayed that the good luck that seemed to happen would go as far as her landing the job.
Chapter Two
Cassidy’s alarm blared through her bedroom at an ungodly hour. She deemed any hours before the sun was up an ungodly hour. Hence, she played the loudest and most annoying sound Apple provided on the latest version of their smartphone as an alarm. The problem was it echoed throughout the room, bouncing off of the paper-thin walls and hitting her all too sensitive ears. She moaned and hit the stop button on her iPhone to silence the intrusion. As a vampire, she didn’t require sleep, but she still hated being up 24/7. No vampire burns the candle at both ends because rest and relaxation please such creatures of the night.
“Why did I move to a city that never sleeps? Ugh!” she whined as she shuffled out of bed and padded to her bathroom. She turned on the shower and brushed her teeth while waiting for the water to get to her preferred scalding temperature. After half an hour, she had already gotten dressed and started on coffee number two as she hopped on the subway to get to Camden’s office.
The ride grew bumpy with each stop, and it proved rather long for New York transit and her nerves. She at least managed her coffee to remain in her cup or mouth as the ride swayed on. Reading the small square of newspaper proved to be a little difficult, though, so she gave up on it—hence the long commute. She clutched one of the handles in the standing-room-only ride and took a few deep breaths to calm the growing pit bottoming out in her stomach.
You’ve got this, Cassidy.
When the cart finally lurched to her stop, she made a mad dash out the door to avoid the tremendous rush that always followed when the car stopped. She hated the idea of being consumed by a crowd of people. Made her claustrophobic and sometimes a little disoriented. It was the worst thing in the world to be a tiny tug boat caught in the middle of a giant sea of people that ebbs and flows to a current apart from her own. She never seemed to go in the direction everyone else needed. Therefore, she’d been forced to wait for many people to get out of her way so she could walk two steps in the right direction. It’s a constant struggle to weave through the madness of the wave of society that always made her feel invisible. No one seemed to care or even be kind to let you go in the direction of your choice. And forget about trying to swim through the mess with someone else. If you aren’t locked at the hip, you are done for.
God, I hope things will be different sometime soon! Not having a job is killing me!
New York seemed the best place to hang her hat after her horrible divorce. Her father, or should she say sire at this point? She wasn’t sure since she hadn’t seen Alec Christianson in six or seven centuries. Calling him a father would be a stretch. After all, Alec didn’t owe her anything. He did his duty as a sire and taught her how to feed and control the insatiable thirst amid humans. Alec taught her well about the basics, but he also taught her a lot about relationships. He’d given her the best advice about marriage when he was in her life.
“You marry one person and divorce a completely different one, love. So chose well because we are the only creatures on this Earth that can commit to an eternity with our beloveds.”
It’s too bad that her ex didn’t share the same concept. To Eric, her ex, forever was until something better came along.
The whole mess proved too much. Cassidy wanted to become invisible. Nothing drastic. A decade or two would do her some good, and New York was the best place in the world, save Tokyo, to do it in. Cassidy missed Tokyo. She hadn’t been there since the late fourteenth century when her father took her to show her where he’d been when he was sired by Auntie Lil, or Lilith, the first woman, cast out of Eden as most knew her as. Those days seemed so much simpler than now.
Because now the asshole not only took away her promising career, but he also took away all of her friends. Well, at least she assumed they were her friends until they took his side when the whole debacle hit the fan. Apparently—at least to them anyway—vampires are supposed to figure out what happened in their seven-year marriage with at least seven years of therapy. Not one of them understood the betrayal. Of course, not one of them was married, either. All they saw in her was the willingness to give up and let him make someone else miserable. According to her sired family and supposed friends, vampires are supposed to mate for life. You are supposed to work everything out—no matter what. But that wasn’t something that she was willing to do with Eric after the betrayal. She caught him cheating in their marriage bed on Christmas Eve last year. That is the ultimate betrayal—at least to her. There is just no excuse for screwing someone else in our marriage bed. Since Alec knew about betrayal, given his love triangle with Lilith and Dracula, she hoped he’d understand why she left the beyond selfish vampire in her proverbial dust.
So, instead of staying in the stark coldness of Boston, Massachusetts, she tried to escape to New York among a bunch of people that couldn’t care less about her or her problems. The plan seemed perfect until she discovered that Eric had blackballed her from the jobs she loved most. Even starting at ground level as a personal assistant in the interior decorating world proved to be a tough job to find, thanks to him. And he didn’t possess a quarter of her talent. He was riding on her coattails. And sadly, they all looked to him because she had been stupid enough to invest seven years of her life building him up into something he’s not. What’s worse, she didn’t have to do this for him. The bastard should have been grateful, especially when she had her own career to build.
In those seven thankless years, he grew more and more ungrateful. Still, he knew Cassidy’s ties in the industry to be priceless. So the son of a bitch begged her to stay so long as she’d lower her standards and consider an open marriage—hence his warped way of thinking their marriage could be saved in that way. Of course, it depended on whether she agreed to his cheating. To her, that was no marriage—just an excuse to play house with instantaneous access to get his jollies off whenever he had an itch to scratch. And since he hurt her that deep, she didn’t want his jing-a-ling anywhere near her Christmas cookie after the Christmas Eve that she caught him—thank you very much!
She pushed through the revolving door and headed for the main reception desk.
“State your name and the purpose of your visit with us today.” The woman said to Cassidy without even looking up from her computer screen.
“Hi, I’m Cassidy Christianson, and I’m here for an interview with Camden Connell.”
The woman stopped typing momentarily to punch a few buttons on the telephone intercom at the right of her mouse.
“Cheryl, the 10 AM is here 40 minutes early. Do you want me to send her up?” She said into her headset while nodding. “Okay. Great.”
The woman then looked at Cassidy for the first time.
