Simon gathered what I was saying. His face crumpled. “So, people don’t say anything because even though they have no idea these guys are bad, it’s the equation coming into play.”
I nodded eagerly. “The other departments are like prey while the set-up guys are the predators. Subconsciously, the other departments know they’re outnumbered by the werewolves.” Simon’s earlier words echoed in my head and caused me to say them out loud. “People can sense the banquet boys are different. They just have no idea why that is.”
I needed to quit my job; that much was certain. As night approached after Simon and I did more research on the lore of werewolves, it was obvious I couldn’t show up to work the next morning. I couldn’t possibly walk into the convention center and pretend nothing had happened at the employee party. I couldn’t not be afraid of my coworkers and what they were.
Simon had other ideas. “You have to go,” he said again, throwing himself onto a kitchen chair. He was watching as I rolled the seasoned ground beef into balls. I was almost finished with my task. Spaghetti and meatballs were for dinner. I had been the one to start everything from making a homemade tomato sauce to preparing the ground beef. All night Simon still prattled on, speaking of hypothetical game plans.
“Are you kidding me?” I demanded as I slipped the baking sheet into the oven. “Those guys turned into werewolves and you want me to show up to work tomorrow? What if they go horror movie crazy and kill me because I know their secret?” For having such a large overactive imagination, he sure wasn’t thinking this through.
“You work mornings and the guys are mostly scheduled nights, right?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, unsure where he was going with this question. I salted the boiling water for the spaghetti. When I looked at the schedule for this upcoming week, I was only doing my morning shifts with either Darren or Matt. The other guys were all scheduled four to midnight. Even though our shifts wouldn’t be overlapping, I didn’t want to come across Matt during my shift.
“They’re not going to kill you,” said Simon with certainty.
“You don’t know that.”
He waved off my concern with a lazy hand. “If they were gonna kill you, they’d have done it last night.”
“Do you not understand that our neighbor is dead?” My harsh tone caught Simon’s full attention. He suddenly looked guilty. “He’s lying in the morgue right now. Yeah, the guys didn’t kill me because Jamie wants me to join the group. But very easily this could end badly. We have no idea that they won’t kill me!”
Simon clasped his hands together. “So, we trick them into thinking you want to join the pack.”
Rational thought told me to send Perry a simple text explaining that I was abruptly quitting. But Simon’s logic had me pulling into the employee parking at The Forest Resort the next morning. I didn’t want to get out of my truck as I put it into park and shut off the ignition. Every thought that filtered through my head led me through the rough terrain of why getting out of the truck would be a bad idea. As luck would have it, I didn’t see a vehicle belonging to any of the guys I worked with. The only cars in the lot were Perry’s and a few others that I knew belonged to the kitchen staff. An unfamiliar light blue Pontiac was also there, but I didn’t recognize it as belonging to my coworkers. Darren and Matt weren’t scheduled until ten. By the time they were both around, I would purposely make sure to stay close to Darren the entire time.
Feeling completely safe with the idea of going to work that day, I ventured inside.
If Perry didn’t secretly want me eaten by his rowdy pack of werewolves, I was gaining the impression that he kept me around solely for the more feminine aspects of the banquet set-up job. That morning specifically, I spent my time vacuuming all entry ways—which were a lot given there were two large entrances to the conference center and a total of eight other doorways to the building—and cleaning windows. It was a job I had never seen Perry have Matt or Darren do. My first week working the department Jamie had half-heartedly shown me how to clean windows, but I had doubted he ever actually did them himself.
It was scrubbing the final window in the large ballroom that I felt as though I was being watched. A careful scan of the ballroom proved useless. The room was set up for a wedding. Thirty round tables with ten chairs at each table were set throughout the ballroom. All had linens and beautiful decorations of blue and white upon them. A large stage for the head table was set in the far corner. Decorations for the wedding were white and royal blue, the latter not looking as though it matched other shades of royal blue decorating the chairs and the linens at the head table. But that was a problem for the wedding decorators and not myself.
A dance floor that was put together in front of the pillars of the room took up a lot of space. I looked around the ballroom, the same familiar feeling of being watched taking over. The lights were off in the far end of the room, cloaking everything in darkness. It was another rainy day in Wisconsin; there was no sun shining in through the main windows to provide light. All I had to see were the few chandelier lights on.
Satisfied that no one else was inside the room, I turned around before letting out a loud squeal of surprise. Matt was suddenly behind me, less than two feet away. Granted, there were a set of doors behind me in the next room he must have entered, but he was so very quiet I hadn’t heard him make a sound as he approached.
He wasn’t supposed to be at work for another two hours. But here he was, dressed in khakis and a black polo with The Forest’s logo. Matt smirked at me. “You scare too easily.”
“Well, why are you sneaking up on people?” I shot back before becoming hesitant. It was only then that I remembered this wasn’t only Matt my jerk supervisor. Instead, this was Matt—my jerk of a supervisor who also happened to be a supernatural monster.
As he took a step forward, I took a large step back. It was impulse.
It was as though Matt suddenly understood my silent thoughts. His expression was emotionless as he watched me. “We need to talk.”
“I really don’t want to.”
“Is that so?”
I had been back-stepping, very careful to keep him in my vision at all times. My body accidentally knocked into a chair as I stepped back too far against a table. “Fine. You want to talk?” I swallowed my fear and tried to show bravery I didn’t have.
“Clearly, or else I wouldn’t have announced that we needed to talk,” replied Matt dryly.
I was grateful he was being his usual snarky self. This was the Matt I had grown able to deal with the last month. When he would occasionally give me a rude reply or say something mean in my presence, I usually offered a remark that was just as rude before walking off. Snarky Matt was familiar; he was someone I wasn’t afraid of. I couldn’t say the same for werewolf Matt. I didn’t know how to act around him.
We locked eyes. As his icy blues watched me, I had a couple hundred questions bubbling up in my mind. But only one slipped passed my lips. “How long?”
He didn’t blink. “I don’t follow.”
“How long have all of you been like this?” I couldn’t make myself say what they were. My thoughts flashed to what I saw on the rooftop that night. Their eyes had been a haunting yellow; their fangs had looked needle sharp. Each guy had monstrous, dog-like snouts.