An hour later, I headed to work. I had been planning on dropping in at the library first, but when I got there, I found a sign that it was closed for an staff-wide meeting until noon. Nixing that idea, and given the mess that had happened at the coffee shop the day before, I decided to stop at a drive-thru espresso stand for a triple caramel latte and a sausage muffin. By eight a.m., I was walking into the office, muffin and coffee in hand, ready for the day.
Wren motioned to me, furtively glancing at the door behind her. “January, wait a moment before you go in,” she said in a low voice.
I frowned, setting my purse, muffin, and coffee on her desk so I could lean down. “What’s up? You look worried.”
“I don’t know if ‘worried’ is the word for it, but there’s a problem. Tad forgot to lock the door last night when he left and somebody broke in.”
“Oh gods, how bad is it? What did they take?”
“That’s not exactly the problem,” Wren said. “It’s more…what they left. I just wanted to warn you—”
At that moment, the door to the inner office opened and Caitlin stuck her head around it. “Is she—oh, you are here. January, you’d better get in here pronto. Tad’s fit to be tied.”
I blinked. “What did I do?”
“It’s not what you did but…just be prepared,” Wren said, standing to follow me in. She put up her sign and that sent my worry into top gear.
I followed Caitlin, wondering what the hell was going on. Had I done something? Had I forgotten to do something? I held my breath as I walked through the door, then gasped, sputtering as I caught sight of my desk.
The top was covered with vase after vase of red roses. A dozen balloons—red and white—were clipped to the back of my chair. And in what looked like dark red permanent marker, the words i won’t stop trying until you go out with me were scrawled on the wall over my desk.
“What the hell?” The numbness fled as a combo of irritation and anger took over. I stomped over to my desk, staring at the mess. Oh, the flowers were beautiful, and it wasn’t until I got there that I saw two boxes of chocolates sitting behind one of the vases, but this was ridiculous.
“Do you have any idea of who did this?” Tad asked, looking pissed out of his mind.
“Well, it wasn’t Killian. For one thing, he was with me all night, and for another, he’s already dating me.” I paused, remembering Val Slater from the restaurant the night before. “Oh crap, I wonder…”
“Wonder what?” Hank was standing beside Caitlin, a worried look on his face.
“I wonder if this is Val Slater’s doing. We ran into him at the restaurant last night and he and Killian just about had a pissing contest over me.” I told them what had happened, but then, I shook my head. “It might be him, but I don’t think a vampire would make such a splashy show. But he could easily get in—vampires can usually get into just about any place they want to.”
“Is there anyone else you can think of?”
Ellison ran through my mind—my ex—but then I shook it off. He was glad to be rid of me, and I had my doubts if he ever wanted to see me again. “Yesterday, that guy at the coffee shop? Rodger whatever-his-name-is? Maybe he figured out where I worked. Whatever the case, can you guys help me clear this stuff away? I don’t want it, don’t want to even look at it.”
“Let me dust the candy boxes for prints. We have a kit in the back,” Hank said.
While he slipped into the store room to get the kit, I turned to Tad. “I’m sorry about this.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m the one who put our entire office at risk by forgetting to lock up. I have no idea how that happened. I must have been…preoccupied.” He frowned, blushing. “I can’t believe I screwed up by leaving the door unlocked.”
There was more to it than him just feeling like he had screwed up. I was becoming more attuned to my coworkers and their feelings were starting to bubble over. I had the feeling I had inherited more than just my mother’s magical abilities. I suspected that I was a latent empath as well, but I wasn’t sure who to ask about that. Maybe Rowan Firesong would know. I made a mental note to ask her, then turned my attention back to the flowers that had eaten my desk.
Hank returned with a kit, dusting the plastic wrap that sealed the candy boxes. Meanwhile, Caitlin started removing the roses from my desk. She took a deep breath, burying her head in the buds.
“They’re wonderful. It seems a shame to waste them, but I understand you not wanting them around.” She held the vase uncertainly, looked at me.
I frowned. “Well, there’s a nursing home over across the street, I noticed. Why don’t we take them over there and ask the nurses to give them to the patients who get the least number of visitors? That might brighten their day.”
“Good thinking,” she said. “I’ll get Wren to run them over.”
I nodded, not wanting to touch them. There was something deeply disturbing about someone so desperate. If they had been from Killian, sans the message on the wall, I would have been overjoyed. A little flustered, but overjoyed. But creepy is as creepy does, and this was definitely on the creepy side.
Wren carried away the roses, carefully putting them in boxes so she could transport them without knocking them over. Hank finished fingerprinting the boxes of candy, but what prints he could find were blurry and about as useful as a pen without ink.
“What about the candy? What do you want to do with that?” Hank asked, staring at the boxes. I sensed a sweet tooth.
“If you think it’s safe, go ahead and eat it. I know it’s sealed still, but honestly? I don’t think I could eat a piece of it without panicking that it might be doctored.”
He stared at me for a moment, looking torn, then dumped the boxes in the garbage. “Good point.”
I found some cleaning spray in the store room and a roll of paper towels, but it didn’t seem to make a dent on the words that had been written over my desk. “What takes off permanent marker from a wall?”
“Let me search on that,” Caitlin said. After a moment, she said, “You can try several things. Spread white toothpaste over the marker and let it set for a few minutes, then wipe away. Another is baking soda, though they recommend baking soda toothpaste for best effect.”
“Toothpaste, huh?” I opened my purse and sorted through until I found the tiny tube of toothpaste I carried with me, along with a toothbrush. But as I stared at the scrawling words, it was obvious that I didn’t have enough toothpaste to cover it. “I’ll need more.”
“There’s a dollar store down by Tony’s Fish & Chips. They almost always have things like toothpaste. I’ll run down there and buy a couple tubes.” She retrieved her wallet from her purse and headed toward the door.
As I settled down at my desk, I couldn’t help but fixate on the scrawling text. It seemed so surreal that it was giving me a headache. “If I catch whoever did this, they’re going… Oh, hell, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant.”
Tad nodded, settling back at his desk. “One thing’s sure, I’ll never leave the office unlocked again. At least we learned our lesson without being robbed.” He turned away, no longer blushing, but his ears were a little red and I was getting curious.