Chapter 17: After Hours

The Night Compliance Office on a Friday at seven is a dark room full of monitors asleep.

I swiped my badge at the side entrance, and the lock clicked.

I held the door for a man who had never once been invited in.

"You may come in," I said.

"I noticed that was not a requirement for this building."

"I wanted to say it."

He stepped over the threshold with his coat over his arm and looked up at the ceiling tiles.

The hallway lights were on their night timers, one in three.

Our footsteps made no sound on the carpet.

"That's Brenda's office," I said. "That's the break room. That's Kyle's cubicle, with the donut crumbs."

"And that?"

"That's mine."

My desk was the third one on the left, with a green mug of pens and a stack of blue folders.

A sticky note on the monitor said *CALL BACK* with no name on it.

Under the desk, in its milk crate, were the eleven Morvath binders I had never returned.

He looked at the crate.

"You kept them."

"I'm sentimental about paperwork."

I hung my parka on the chair, and sat on the edge of my desk, and looked at him.

He stood with his hands at his sides, the way he did when he was trying to be good.

"No case," I said.

"No case."

"No form. No clipboard. Nobody in the building."

"Molly."

"Come here."

He crossed the floor in three strides and stood between my knees.

I took the lapels of his sweater and pulled him down, and kissed him until he made a sound against my mouth.

His hands slid under my flannel and spread across my back.

"I sat at this desk for seven weeks," I said.

"I read your file in the break room with a granola bar."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Vampire's Points System from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.