Having minimal experience interviewing for jobs with benefits, and terrible job-searching instincts generally, I did what he said and put on the suit.
I still needed to fix my hair, though. It still hadn’t fully recovered from my haircutting experiment a few weeks ago, stuck up in odd places in the back, and was in general extremely annoying.
I might show up to this interview looking and feeling like a fraud, but if I could avoid also looking like a Muppet I probably should.
Muttering under my breath, I stalked out of the bedroom and made my way to the bathroom, where my hair stuff was. Just as my fingers closed around my hairbrush handle, I heard a loud, throat-clearing noise from a few feet behind me.
“Excuse me.”
I froze.
I recognized that voice. It was burned into my memory from the night I learned my roommate was a vampire.
“Reginald?”
What was he doing here? And how was he here? Hadn’t Frederick said vampires needed an express invitation to enter someone’s home?
But my surprise melted away when I saw his face. In the handful of times we’d interacted, I had seen Reginald look amused, insolent, and bored. But I had never seen him look worried before.
He looked worried now, though.
Very worried.
“I’m concerned about Freddie. He’s—” Reginald broke off, giving me a quick once-over before his nose wrinkled in disapproval. “What on earth is that outfit, Cassandra?”
“Cassie,” I corrected. “And never mind my outfit. Why are you worried about Freddie?” My heart rate quickened. “Has . . . has something happened to him?”
He crossed into the living room and sat down in one of the leather armchairs, not even waiting for me to invite him to make himself at home. “I suspect so, yes. I haven’t heard from him since he left to meet with his mother and the Jamesons.”
I tried to suppress my rising panic. He hadn’t heard from him either, then. “And you’d expected to hear from him by now?”
“Definitely.” Reggie hesitated. “We kind of hate each other—”
“I’d gathered as much.”
“—but we’re also really close.”
I took in the worry lines creasing Reginald’s otherwise ageless brow. The rigidity of his shoulders. His clenched jaw. “I’d guessed that, too.”
“I don’t want to assume the worst,” he continued. “But I think it’s time we consider that they might have done something to him.”
So my worries hadn’t been irrational, then. “You really think so?”
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam is a force to be reckoned with. To say nothing of what Esmeralda and her family are capable of.” He paused again. “Esmeralda’s actually a total bitch, if you ask me.”
Normally, I hated it when men used the word bitch to describe women. In this case, though, it felt oddly vindicating.
“She is?”
“I don’t know her well,” he conceded. “Let’s just say the impression she made on me in Paris in the 1820s wasn’t a good one. I’m definitely glad Frederick’s the one she’s decided to marry and not me.”
Every interaction I had with Reginald made it that much clearer to me why Frederick found him so annoying.
I glared at him. “You’re glad she wants to marry him, are you?”
Reginald shrugged. “No offense, of course. Look her up if you like,” he added. “She’s got much more of an internet presence than most vampires do. Her social media accounts give a pretty good understanding of who she is as a person.” He paused, then added, “She’s pretty darn easy on the eyes as well, if you know what I mean.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I had to finish getting ready, and then I had to go humiliate myself in front of a hiring committee that would probably never give me a job. I didn’t care if Reggie stuck around for a while, but I didn’t have time to waste right now thinking about how attractive Esmeralda Jameson might be.
“I need to go.” I gestured to my suit. “I have an interview in two hours, and it’s far from here.”
Reggie stood up. “Want me to fly you there?”
“What?”
“I said,” he cleared his throat, enunciating his syllables very carefully. “Do . . . you . . . want . . . me . . . to . . . fly . . . you . . . there?”
I rolled my eyes. “I heard you. I just . . . wasn’t expecting the offer.” I paused and added, “So it’s true, then? Some of you can fly?”
Smirking at me, Reginald—without warning—started to float off the ground. He rose higher, and higher, until the top of his head nearly brushed the living room’s high ceiling. All at once, it felt like the room was spinning. It had been one thing for Frederick to tell me some vampires could fly. It was entirely another to actually see someone defy the laws of gravity like this.
“I try not to do this in front of Freddie very often, since his skills are so lame.”
I bristled. “His skills are not lame. His pineapples are delicious, I will have you know.”
He ignored my comment and began to do slow, leisurely laps around the room, stopping only to run his finger across the top of the bookshelf. To check for dust, maybe. He was clearly showing off at this point, but I couldn’t even be mad at it. It was legitimately impressive, watching him fly.
“You’re wrong, Cassandra. His skills are actually deeply, extremely lame insofar as these things go. But like I said, I’m not such an asshole that I would rub my cooler abilities in his face. At least, not more than once or twice a week.”
“How . . .” I watched, still awed in spite of myself, as Reginald slowly lowered himself back down to the floor. “How did you do that?”
Reginald shrugged. “I haven’t the foggiest. How do vampires do anything? It’s magic, I guess.”
“Magic,” I repeated, feeling stupid and slow.
“Magic,” he confirmed. “So. Want me to fly you to wherever it is you’re going?”
I considered the offer as much as my addled brain would allow and recognized that Reginald was being sincere in offering it. But I dismissed it as being a bad idea. I was already too distracted and worried by Frederick’s disappearance to be adequately prepared for this interview. If I flew up to Evanston with Reginald—without an airplane, no less—that would likely shatter whatever remained of my focus into thousands of little pieces.
Also, it was daytime. Flying might be cool and all, but people would be able to see us in the air. And what would they think when they did?