Sabrina's Clan (26 page)

“They have to feed,” Riley said, when Sabrina was visiting her and Chloe one weekend. “And they have to nest somewhere safe. It’s their two imperatives. They can only live off wild game for so many weeks, before the need for human flesh drives them crazy and they hunt and kill a human. Then we’ll know where they are.”

“It’s terrible to have to wait for someone to die in order to find them.”

Riley nodded. “Until your trackers pick them up, that’s how it must be. If it’s any comfort, the humans the gargoyles most often find are hunters, who are out looking for them in all the usual places. Hunters stand a better chance of fighting their way out and surviving.”

“Until we find the gargoyles, we can’t calibrate the trackers. The software has to know what it must look for.” Sabrina had lived through sleepless nights trying to resolve this basic dilemma. There was no way around it. They couldn’t give the tracker fake metrics to use. It would be useless. It had to measure the real thing before it could find more of them.

Everyone was tense, waiting for the first sign of the gargoyles to emerge. With the stirrings of spring and humans heading out into the great outdoors once more, it would surely be soon.

It was almost a relief to go to work on Monday and move among ordinary humans whose greatest concern was that the Knicks had lost, their mortgage was due, or their boyfriend was a jerk for what he did on Saturday night.

Cory Morse came into her office as she was setting her briefcase on the desk. He looked as though he’d had a sleepless weekend.

“Did you go home at all this weekend?” she asked him. “You look awful.”

“Would you mind stepping into my office, Sabrina?”

Puzzlement touched her. “Sure,” she said slowly. She was in and out of Cory’s office dozens of times every day. It was rare for him to formally invite her into it. She followed him down the corridor to his big suite. It was quiet on this floor. The support staff didn’t usually start for another hour or so. It was only the ambitious and busy executives who came in before the cleaners were done.

“Shut the door,” Cory told her as he moved around to his oversized chair. There was a permanent tilt on the back of it, because of his size and weight. He sat down and it gave a mournful squeak.

Sabrina shut the door and sat on the chair in front of his desk, the one she usually perched on. “What’s up, boss?” she asked, deliberately making her tone peppy.

“There was a board meeting held yesterday,” Cory said. He still wasn’t smiling.

“On a
Sunday
?”

“An extraordinary one.”

“I didn’t hear about it.”

“No.” He linked his hands together. “There’s no easy way to say this, Sabrina, so I’m going to get right to it. The Chair of Wentworth Kumatsu thanks you for your efforts on behalf of the corporation. Your services are no longer required.”

It felt as though the floor had dropped out from beneath her. The world swayed. Her lips were numb. Her hearing muffled. “What?” she made herself ask. Her voice was strained.

Cory picked up his phone and dialed a single number. “We’re ready for you,” he said and hung up. He looked at her. “Brad Shore, lead council for Wentworth, will be here in a moment. He has a severance agreement for you to sign. Then you’ll be walked back to your office to pick up your personal belongings. What you do not take with you will be packed and sent to your apartment later today.”

Sabrina couldn’t process it. “Why?”

“Your services are no longer required.”

The mindless repetition finally snapped her brain back into gear. “There has to be some reason, goddamn it!” she cried. “You can’t have all gotten together yesterday for drinkies and sat around dreaming up how to fuck up someone’s life for them on Monday morning!”

Cory flinched.

The door to his office opened and he looked up gratefully and got to his feet. “Brad will finish up here with you.”

“Cory!” It was a last ditch protest.

Cory hung his head, looking at the carpet. She thought he might even kick at it with a bit more encouragement. Brad Shore skirted around him, a folder in his hand, heading for the chair Cory had just vacated.

Cory glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. It was as though he didn’t want to look at her. Was he ashamed of this? She hoped so.

“I told you not to get involved with Jacob Summerfield,” Cory said.

“
That’s
what this is about?” she demanded.

Cory was scrambling to get out of the office, tugging at the heavy glass door and squeezing his way through the opening as soon as it would take him.

“Cory!”

He hurried away, not looking back.

Sabrina turned to look at Brad Shore, the corporation’s senior and lead council. He was in his fifties, with silvered hair and the sort of deep set eyes that said he had seen everything and nothing more could ever upset him. She had never seen him smile, that she could recall.

“The corporation won’t tell you what this is about,” he said shortly. “The terms of your service agreement give them latitude to break the contract as long as the board is in agreement that it is necessary. The reasons would have been discussed in-camera and you will not be told what they were.” He pushed a thick pile of paper toward her.

Sabrina stared at him. There was a high buzzing in her ears. “So they could be firing me for wearing nail polish?”

“I understand you’re a gifted employee. Wentworth does not generally offload resources like you without cause. Please read through the severance agreement and sign the last page.”

What cause
? She hadn’t done anything that would raise a brow…except for Jake. Were they really going to fire her because she was sleeping with someone they didn’t approve of?

“You can’t tell me either, can you?” she said stiffly, picking up the gold pen Brad had pushed toward her.

“As I am representing Wentworth at the moment, no, I can’t.” He rested his hand next to the agreement as she flipped through to the last page. “You aren’t going to read it?”

“Why should I?” she asked. “I’ve seen these before. I’ve even signed a couple. There’s nothing in it that will give me the leverage to argue against this.” She signed where the little sticky flag said she should and threw down the pen and got to her feet. “I’ll go get my bags,” she said stiffly.

“Actually, you need to wait for a security guard to escort you,” Brad said quickly. “And I’ll need your pass and phone and the company laptop.”

She pulled the lanyard from around her neck and tossed it onto the desk on top of the agreement. “My phone and laptop are in my office. If you want them, you’d better come with me. I’m leaving this place with or without the guard.”

Brad scurried to catch up with her. For once, Sabrina was thankful she arrived at the office well before anyone else did. There was no one to witness her humiliation.

As she reached her office a security guard met them. She didn’t like the way he had his hand resting on the butt of his gun, as if she had metamorphosed into an armed and dangerous criminal in the last five minutes. She had smiled at him on the way into the office this morning, for heaven’s sake!

He took up a stance inside her office, a pace away from the desk.

Brad stood quietly in front of the desk as she pulled open her briefcase and yanked out the laptop and her business cell phone. She put them both on the desk and looked around the office. There were so many personal items in here. Flowers, paintings, lamps, even the armchair was hers. She had made this job her life.

“Do I get a carton to pack things in?” she asked, the hard knot in her chest expanding to an aching ball.

Neither Brad nor the guard spoke.

She reached for the phone on her desk, to call Jake or Nyanther. She wasn’t sure which one she would call first. She wasn’t thinking beyond the need to talk to them.

The guard stepped forward, reaching for his gun. Brad said sharply, “No!”

Sabrina dropped the phone and stepped back, her heart thudding. She stared at them. “I’m just going to call my boyfriend. I need a ride home.”

“You can call from a payphone once you leave the building, ma’am,” the guard said stiffly.

A
payphone
? In this age of cell phones?

She was starting to shake. Adrenaline and more. She could feel tears forming in the back of her eyes, making them ache. No way, no fucking way, was she going to cry in front of them.

She picked up her briefcase and upended it, so all the paperwork she had completed over the weekend slid out and scattered over the desk like oblong snowflakes. Pens and clips and her calculator, lipstick and Kleenex…it all rained on top of the paper with little pattering sounds.

None of it was hers anymore, or if it was, she had no further use for it.

She shoved her handbag into the briefcase and headed for the door.

“You’ll have to walk behind me,” the guard told her, gripping the handle before she could open it.

She took a deep breath. Then another. Then she nodded.

The guard opened the door.

Brad Shore gripped her arm, just long enough to halt her. “I didn’t say it,” he said quietly, “and I will deny it even under oath.”

She nodded again. She understood. She just couldn’t open her mouth to speak right now.

“You were seen with two men, out in public. One of them the Summerfield fellow and that caused enough flutter as it was. There were photos and that killed you.”

“Whose photos?” Her lips were stiff. She could barely speak the words.

“Paparazzi. The corporation had to pay three thousand dollars to buy them all.” He shrugged. “Be glad the meeting was in-camera, Sabrina. You can survive this.”

Brad Shore was not only married with three kids, but also entertained whores in his office, some of them the cross-dressing males from the cabaret. This was the man who was telling her her career would survive a moment in a café on a Saturday morning, when one man had held her while the other kissed her?

“Go fuck yourself, Brad,” she said stiffly. “Use a hot poker to do it.”

* * * * *

The sun still hadn’t risen above the tops of the towers when she got out onto the pavement. Workers heading for their offices pushed past her with annoyed sounds as she stood in the middle of the sidewalk, unable to think of what to do next.

She fumbled inside her handbag and retrieved her private cell phone that she rarely used. She had to think to remember Jake’s number and she had to redial three times because her hand was shaking and she kept getting the numbers wrong.

“Hello?” Jake said uncertainly.

“Jake, it’s Sabrina,” she said. The shaking was getting worse.

“What’s happened?” he said quickly.

“I…I’ve been fired. Can you pick me up?

Silence. “Oh, sweet Jesus….” he murmured. “I’ll be there in ten. Don’t move.”

* * * * *

He got there in eight minutes and Sabrina had never been more grateful for the insane way he drove through downtown traffic than she was right then. The Jeep pulled up next to her with a jerk, blithely taking up one and a half of the two service bays at the front of the building.

Jake threw himself out of the Jeep and came around to her side. “Come on,” he said gently and opened the door for her and helped her up into the passenger seat. He tossed her briefcase into the back and went back around to the driver’s side and got in.

Then he leaned over and unsnarled her seat belt for her and clipped it shut.

Sabrina leaned against him, her strength evaporating.

Jake held her while she cried and he never, ever made any comment about her ruining his handmade shirt with her mascara. She would remember that forever.

“My uncle would hire you in a heartbeat, you know,” Jake said. He put the refilled coffee cup in front of her and picked up her hand once more.

“Probably not,” Nyanther said, his voice low. “Severance packages for executives at Sabrina’s level are legal concrete. There will be non-compete clauses in it. Unless your uncle hires her for her typing skills, he can’t touch her.” He brushed her hair back over her shoulder and touched her arm.

Jake grimaced.

“Can they really fire her for something so stupid?” Riley asked everyone else at the table.

Everyone was there. Even Nick, who sat at the top of the table, his chair turned so he could cross his legs, in typical English fashion. Chloe was sitting on Damian’s lap, chewing on a teething ring.

“For what she does in her private life?” Nick asked. “Probably not. That’s why they wouldn’t give her an official reason.”

“Her service agreement will have some sort of fuzzy language in there that covers them if she wants to contest it,” Nyanther said. “I spent months working with lawyers to write the same sort of agreements for the executives in one of my corporations, so I know exactly how and why they’re worded. Starry-eyed new employees never think about the future the way lawyers can.”

“I didn’t,” Sabrina said. “I was so thrilled to get the job I would have signed anything to keep them happy.”

“Exactly,” Nyanther said.

“It’s so unfair!” Riley cried. “If she’d been a man they would have bought her a round of drinks!”

“If she had been a woman in my tribe, we likely would have given her the cup to drink from, too,” Nyanther said, with a little grin. His grin faded. “It is no longer those times.”

“This is what you meant, about it being so hard to adapt, isn’t it?” Sabrina asked him. “All these calcified, built-in cultural biases and prejudices that no one can change.”

Nyanther picked up her other hand and kissed it. “Not all the differences are bad.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t think about what to do next at all,” Nick said.

Sabrina looked at him. “Give myself a break?”

“The severance is incredibly generous,” he pointed out.

“To keep her silent and make her go away,” Jake said darkly.

“Yes. It gives you time, though,” Nick said. “You were already working two full-time jobs keeping up with the communications network and everything else you have set up. So don’t jump into another job. Let the corporations find out via the grapevine that you’re a free agent and sprint to hire you…and they will. In the meantime, you can do just one full-time job and live a more normal life for a while.”