Page 19 of Born Wicked
“No interview process?” I ask, but immediately shake my head. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. I just need someone now.”
“I think you’re going to like this one,” Jon says. Not sure what to think of the smirk that’s hiding in the corners of his eyes and the slant of his mouth. I’m still figuring Jon out. “She’s waiting for you in your office.”
“Perfect,” I say, hoping that it’s true.
I push open the door to my office, and sure enough, there is a woman sitting on the chair in front of my desk. She’s holding an iPad in front of her, and she taps away at it so furiously I’m impressed. I mean, it would be literally impossible for human fingers to type something out that fast.
Instantly, her head pops up and her eyes meet mine.
“Hi Dr. Doe,” she says. Her voice is… upbeat. A bright smile fills her face, she has an enthusiasm about her that’s undeniable. She stands up and extends her right hand. “I’m Holly Blackburn and I’m really excited to get started. Your dad here is kind of intense, but I like him. And I’m looking forward to getting to know you, too.”
I have to take a breath for her after she finishes it all. She says everything with such enthusiasm and speed even my vampire brain is having a hard time keeping track of everything that just came out of her mouth.
“Yeah, it’s nice to meet you,” I say, trying to keep up with her.
“I’ve already imported your calendar into my iPad, so any meetings you input, I’ll see them here. I can set reminders for you, and make any phone calls that you need me to. Jon said you need some help getting the blood trade figured out. I tracked Echo down, and she’s agreed to come have a meeting with us in two hours. Is she always that snappy?”
A relieved chuckle makes its way from my chest. Thank the dark. I’ve only known her for thirty seconds and I can already tell she’s exactly what I need. “Yeah, Echo doesn’t like too many people. It’s just the way she is.”
“Okay, good,” Holly says with a relieved laugh. “I thought I did something to piss her off, so, if she’s just that way, that makes me feel a lot better.”
I look back at Jon, who just gives me a smile and arches one brow. It’s almost as if to say,see?
“I’m pretty sure the blood supply issue is becoming a crisis, so I have some ideas on how we can quickly restock the supplies,” Holly says. She pauses for two seconds as she looks up at me. “Although, I guess considering the circumstances, maybe we better wait on that for a couple of days. How long do you think it will take all those toxins to get out of the water?”
“How…?” I begin to say, and then shake my head. It doesn’t matter how she already knows all this. Jon knows everything I know. “Never mind. We have people on it, they’re running tests. Already, there are only traces of it in the water, but still, there are traces. We have test subjects coming in every six hours. We’re running lab work on them so we can tell when the toxins are finally out of their systems.”
“Cool,” Holly says as she looks back down at her iPad and begins tapping furiously again. “I’ve already got a flyer made up, all I have to do is put in the date and the time. I’m working on a mailing list of different businesses and schools we can send this out to. Just give me the word, and I’ll blast it out. We have somewhere in the hospital we can accommodate a bunch of people, right? And I assume the required staff to do a blood drive like this won’t be an issue, right?”
Damn. She’s a blessing from up above, or maybe down below. I don’t know how that fits into the vampiric world.
“Yeah,” I answer her. “We have all that. And thank you. You are a blessing.”
“Aw,” Holly says, and she literally places her hand over her heart. “Thank you. You’re so sweet for saying that.”
Jon chuckles behind me.
Seriously, Holly is so upbeat and perky, her presence fills the room like pink tinted helium.
“I really am so excited for this job,” she says moving on, hardly even taking a breath in between any of her words. “I was already on the fence about moving to Chicago. I mean, I heard a rumor about what Chicago was like, but I really didn’t believe it, because you know, it’s Chicago…” She says in this kind ofduhtone. “But man, Los Angeles was getting a little bright, you know? So when Jon reached out to me I was like, yeah, I’m ready for a change.”
“How in the world did you find her in Los Angeles?” I question as I turn back to look at my father.
“I know how to use LinkedIn,” Jon says in fake indignation.
“What, is there some kind of vampire side of LinkedIn?” Because I asked for a vampire assistant.
“Don’t question my ways,” Jon teases. “Just be grateful I got you just what you asked for.”
“Oh, I am,” I say as my eyes widen and I nod my head. “This week is going shockingly well. I’m kind of afraid to breathe wrong or step on a crack in the sidewalk. For once, it feels like things are finally working the way they’re supposed to.”
“And Superintendent Day hasn’t even been poking around for days,” Jon points out.
“See? Maybe the world is finally righting itself.”
The next threedays make my life exponentially easier.
Holly is amazing. Like seriously, she’s the most amazing thing I could have dreamed up currently. She’s insanely organized, and I swear she knows what I need before I even say it or think it. Our meeting with Echo goes perfectly. Sure, she gives me crusty looks, and she doesn’t seem particularly happy to be here, but my offer for her to take charge of the blood trade in Chicago? Well, money talks. She agrees to take lead on it. And when someone brings in the results of the most recent blood work showing the tiniest traces of toxins left in our latest test subjects’ blood, it just gets even better. They give me a projection that the toxins will be out of every human’s blood within the next forty-eight hours.