Page 1 of Fangs with Benefits

Chapter 1

Elijah

No number of movies, long-running TV series, or books can really prepare you for what New York City is like. They don’t do justice to how loud it is, the general conflicting smells everywhere, or the sheer number of bodies walking, running, breathing, coughing, and playing instruments.

My estate was near a town I frequented, if only to hear the humans conversing at the bar. I needed, from time to time, to remind myself that the world is still living and revolving even after I’ve seen it change over and over and over again through the days turned decades turned centuries. But it was nothing like this.

The city is wholly and completely different since the last time I set foot on these once-cobblestone roads–two centuries ago, give or take a couple of decades–and though Dylan warned me, I was ill-equipped for what would greet me when we made our way here.

‘Now, what do you do when someone asks you for help with their computer?’ Dylan asks for the dozenth time as we stalk down a sidewalk with more people and automobiles than I’ve ever seen in one place.

‘I ask them to turn it off and then turn it back on again.’ I attempt to veer us out of the path of a young man walking an absurd number of domesticated dogs. The animals all turn their heads, ears perked, to watch Dylan as we pass. I pull him closer to me by his elbow.

‘Stop fucking pushing me,’ Dylan snips. ‘Just walk normal, you’re fine. What do you say when someone says they aren’t getting emails?’

‘Turn off the email—’

‘No, you can’t turn off your email. You tell them to…?’ he prompts, as if I can remember the changing tides of technology when I didn’t get electricity until the ’90s.

‘To… unplug it?’

Dylan sighs, pinches his eyes shut briefly and shakes his head.

‘Tell them to log out. You know what? Just tell them to turn off the computer first and see if that works.’

We’ve apparently made it to our destination because Dylan pushes my shoulder, directing us into a small courtyard beneath the massive building, which appears to be made up of as much glass as it is metal. I wince at the sun already reflecting off the highest windows.

‘This building has a cellar?’ I ask.

‘Don’t call it that, say basement,’ Dylan says. ‘And yes, which is ideal because practically no sunlight will get to you.’

The practically is what really sells me.

My last attempt at gainful employment ended woefully quickly thanks to the bookstore having many windows. I was powerless with all that sunlight filling up the store, and neither employers nor customers take well to finding the staff sleeping with a preternatural stillness at the front counter or between the bookstacks.

The little phone Dylan keeps on his person at all times beeps the marimba tune, and he curses. I have my own device too, a cell phone. Dylan tried to get a landline installed at the manor a few years ago, around the same time he tried to get Wi-Fi installed, but I didn’t see the need. There was also no air conditioning, which Dylan complained about when he came to visit every summer, but there were lots of windows, and always a lovely gentle breeze.

‘I have to run. Do you have your go juice?’ Dylan asks.

‘Yes, captain.’ I hold up the bright green metal bottle he gave me to store blood in. Dylan squints at me, assessing head to foot, then nods. I feel a sudden panic that he won’t be coming in with me. Oughtn’t he show me inside? Make sure I’m settled? Answer any probing questions I don’t have the answers to? Dylan may be a werewolf, but he’s been living among humans his whole life; he’s good at this.

‘What’s the matter? You look sick.’

‘I don’t get sick,’ I say, though I feel like in this moment I could get sick if pressed. I lower my voice to a whisper. ‘What if I wreck this one too?’

‘You won’t,’ Dylan says, like he can see the future.

This job will be my third attempt in two months at a human career and if I mess this one up, my options will limit even further to late night janitorial or what Dylan calls ‘a lifeless remote job’. I need this to work.

‘Listen, you’re going to be great. They’re all going to love you and, hey, if worse comes to worst, do what you did to get the job in the first place, yeah?’ He wiggles his fingers next to his temple in his approximation of vampiric compulsion. ‘Be good.’

With a hearty thump on my shoulder, Dylan holds the phone to his ear and resumes his walk in the flow of people traversing to their own tall buildings around the city. I can’t be too mad at him for leaving, not when he’s shaken up his whole life by letting me stay with him and attempted to educate me on the ways of the twenty-first-century human for these last months.

He’s a good friend, and perhaps my only one, though my family would have loud and ungenerous opinions if they found out I spent so much time with the werewolf who had wandered onto my property fifteen years ago and who just kept coming back.

I square my shoulders and readjust the scarf and hat shielding my skin from the sun peeking through the clouds of the morning’s grey sky. Beneath all these layers, I’m wearing a grey suit, which is as boring as it is uncomfortable. I told Dylan I ought to wear a nicer, flouncier sort of shirt with bigger sleeves and a few more frills at the neck, but he said under no circumstances could I dress like a seventeenth-century pirate.

He gave me the suit instead. Said I looked good. Sharp. Alive.