Black Magic's Prey: Siren Song, #1

Chapter 1

In my junior year of high school, I had to read Moby Dick for Honors English. It was a terrible book, honestly, but I loved the opening line: Call me Ishmael. Even at the tender age of fifteen, I knew I’d have to adopt similar language as soon as I was released from my foster home. I wouldn’t be introducing myself like most people: Hello, my name is Theresa Cooper. Instead, I resigned myself to the cagey, nonspecific greeting, Call me Tess. You’d be surprised how few people prompt you for a last name. People are so busy, they only want the minimum information about you.

So they know to call me Tess. They know I’m an HR consultant and some know I live in a 1963 Airstream Overlander. That’s usually when their lip curls ever so slightly and they decide they know all they need to about me. I’m not complaining. Right out of college, I paid fourteen thousand in cash for a hundred and seventy-six feet of living space and the freedom to pick up and leave town whenever I needed to. And when you’re being stalked by evil, you need to on a pretty regular basis.

In an odd way, I’m lucky to have acquired my stalker so early, before I had invested in a career, bought a house—all that. I knew when I reached adulthood that living in one place, having a stable nine-to-five, having a relationship... these things were not for me. Instead, I used online universities and took freelance part-time work. I had PO boxes, remailing services, not to mention those high-rate check cards instead of a bank account. It’s a hassle, all of it. But it worked. I’ve had fifteen stalker-free years—long enough for me to get my degree and build a damn fine career.

Human resources isn’t the job field I would have pictured for myself, traveling from city to city, mitigating people’s work-related squabbles. But I’m surprisingly good at it. The company I contract with sends me a file for a company, usually somewhere in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I make an introductory phone call to the client and then I’m in my truck on the way to the worksite. Nobody bothers me, nobody questions me, and nobody remembers me after I’ve gone.

Well, almost nobody. My neighbor, Caroline, surprised me this morning—at five-thirty to be exact—by bringing me a birthday cake. She lives in the massive Winnebago in the lot next to mine and is the only other long-term tenant under the age of sixty-five. She decided we would be friends the day I moved in, and I’m so glad she did. It took me a while to come around, not being used to having friends or trusting anyone. Hell, if family’ll drop you the second you become inconvenient, what investment does a friend have in you? But I was wrong about her. It’s nice having a friend, someone you can talk to and who will listen without automatically assuming you’re a liar. It’s nice to have cake delivered to you first thing in the morning too, and chocolate at that. It’s even nice inhaling someone else’s cigarette smoke and chatting about life’s little annoyances.

Caroline tapped her cigarette in the tumbler filled with water, skillfully flicking the ashes only in the cup and not on her piece of cake. Marco’s still sleeping, she said, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth, angling it toward the open door. He’s been better about sleeping until it’s time to wake up for school, thank Christ. Do you know that old bitch from two rows over came pounding on my door last night? You know the one with the bratty grandson?

I only had time to raise my eyebrows and part my lips before she rattled on. She said Marco shouldn’t be playing with his Little People toys cuz they were a choking hazard. No wait, it gets better. She held up a hand as if I had, or even could have interrupted her. "She said those toys are better for older children, you know, kids her grandson’s age. And she’d be happy to take them off my hands if I wanted. You know, for safety."

She dropped her cigarette into the water glass, blowing out the last of her smoke. So I told her to piss off with her bullshit parenting tips. Because looking at her blank-eyed, paste-eating grandkid, she had nothing to offer me in the way of advice. Do you know that kid was still breast feeding up til he was three? I guess that’s when the state took him away and the grandparents ended up with him. Ugh... She reached for another cigarette from her pocket and mumbled, Giving me parenting advice...

I’m sorry I missed it, I said with a smile. I only had a small piece of cake and had already finished it. My day was going to be a long one and I didn’t want the sugar crash. I also felt mildly guilty because today was not, in fact, my thirty-fifth birthday. It was just the made-up birthday I used. I told Caroline a lot, including some basic information about my stalker. But I couldn’t bring myself to give her my real birthday, or anything else she might feel compelled to enter into a search engine.

Yeah, you were still at work, I reckon. How’s that going? Any juicy stories from these people? Caroline shook her shoulders at me, sending her humongous breasts waggling back and forth suggestively. Like most big-boobed girls, she only wore a bra when absolutely necessary, and an impromptu early-morning birthday party did not qualify.

I laughed at her and blushed a little. No sexual harassment on this one. Just some lady who thought she could do whatever she wanted because she was pretty and then filed a lawsuit when she didn’t get her way.

Ah, one of those. Caroline nodded her head knowingly.

I better get going. I stood up and reached for the cake box to put it in the fridge but Caroline beat me to it.

You go on to work. I’ll clean up and lock everything when I go. She smiled and came in for a hug. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed me tight against those massive boobs. Then her hands moved down to my waist and she leaned in for one brief, open-mouthed kiss, one I returned, enjoying the taste of cigarettes on her tongue. It was only a second or two, but I knew it would be the best part of my day.

Come over when you get home. I’m dropping Marco off at my parents’ for the weekend.

I smiled again and nodded, giving her a last squeeze before I pulled away. I grabbed my heavy tote bag and my keys and waved before climbing into my truck and heading off to work.

Caroline is not my girlfriend. And neither of us are lesbians. We’re friends. And friends can be affectionate with each other, even if the rest of the world wants to make judgements and try to slap labels on everything. She’s been living in the Winnebago since her soul-crushing, credit-destroying divorce and when I moved in to the lot next to hers, I guess she recognized the look on my face. She was right to think we had things in common. She with her abusive ex and me with my stalker, we both understood the value of keeping our business to ourselves. Let the rest of the world post their most private thoughts all over social media. Caroline had a no-contract flip phone and my iPhone was registered to an old woman with Alzheimer’s. Don’t judge me please. I always pay the bill.

The client I’m working with now, Excelsior, is a little farther away than the majority of the companies I contract with. Every morning I let out a disappointed sigh as the serene, pastoral Highway 67 merged onto the absolute chaos of I-35E at morning rush hour. Excelsior is a large nonprofit with a multitude of personnel issues and walking in those doors every morning exhausts me, more so even than other nonprofits. Those types of companies often don’t have their own HR departments. Or if they do, it’s one overweight lady who’s just wiling away the next three years until she can start collecting social security. Here’s a free tip: If you interview for a small company and they tell you we’re like a family here, run away and never look back. You’ll thank me later.

So far, I’ve resolved a lot of the issues at Excelsior with minimum difficulty, but today, we’re dealing with the hard one, and I’m ready to be done with the company, to be honest. Instead of actually managing their employees, all of the managers and even some of the employees have been forming little fiefdoms of bullying, abuse, and power plays. Now that I’m here, it’s been one senior manager after another playing the victim and using me as an under-paid therapist. All of their problems could have been easily avoided simply by acting like adults, which is why I hate most of them. I get through my days by keeping my face neutral and my mouth shut. If I do speak, it’s to say things like, "I don’t think should is a helpful word to use in this context, or, Let’s focus on the way forward instead of on past slights." I listen, I offer advice if it’s requested, and I keep secrets. The clients think that means I don't judge, so they like me. They sing my praises and write me good reviews on my contracting company’s website. But they're wrong. I judge them unrelentingly. Just silently.

The great thing about a work environment is that the prescription for correct behavior is clear and doesn’t vary much between offices. If you’re the type of person who can’t follow these simple directions—don’t touch other people, be respectful of noise levels, and for god’s sake don’t microwave salmon in the break room—then I think you’re a piece of shit who deserves to be fired, regardless of what the law says. But I never say that or even hint I believe it. Because, unlike most of my client’s employees, I know how to behave at work. 

Dwight was waiting for me when I walked through the double glass door. I don’t remember Dwight’s last name because when I tried to use it, he waved his meaty hand at me and told me they were a first-name-only shop. Because they’re like a family, you see. Dwight is the CEO and founder of Excelsior and I strongly suspected he started the company with his daddy’s money. He stood with his hands on his hips in the entry-way, out of breath from the brief walk from his office. He looked like something a cartoonist would sketch if asked to imagine the perfect redneck. Overweight and with small, piggy eyes, Dwight was the type of guy who probably had a hat with a Confederate flag on it and had at least contemplated buying those truck balls for his tow hitch. So gross.

I plastered my most convincing smile across my face and held out my hand. Good morning, Dwight. You look ready to go this morning. It was a statement, but I raised my pitch on the last word, giving it the sound of a question. No one can ask WTF as politely as I can.

Well, Dwight huffed. We’ve had another incident. His cheeks were mottled and red, both from his anger and from the effort of walking from his office. It’s an unfortunate complexion to have, really. I have the same one, but being a woman, I can coat my face with foundation and color corrector, mostly avoiding the tell-tale flush of anger. I have a lot of gratitude for the good people at the Clinique counter for my ability to remain employed.

Okay, I said soothingly. Let’s talk about it in your office. Can I grab some water for the two of us on the way?

I took note of the annoyed look I got from the receptionist in the too-tight blouse and gave her a knowing, if slightly sarcastic smile. No, sweetheart, I’m not going to discuss employee business in front of you so you can blab it all over the office. To drive the point home, I walked behind her desk and bent over her to access the mini fridge full of bottled water, grabbing two bottles and a whiff of her Chanel no. 5, the go-to fragrance for old women and weird hipsters in their twenties. Then I followed Dwight down the hall, feeling the daggers of the receptionist’s glare in my back.

I had barely bumped his office door closed behind me before Dwight started ranting. It’s bad enough she filed that bullshit lawsuit. That’s bad enough. But now she’s defaming my character on Facebook! He screamed the last word, smashing his fist into the wall for emphasis.

I flinched at the sudden violence of it, clenching my teeth to keep my face neutral. Any sympathy I may have had for his plight drained away immediately. I hated adult temper tantrums and Dwight threw at least one in front of me every single day.

He had contracted with me to negotiate the expedited separation of Cassandra Dixon, a well-documented incompetent employee with a bad attitude. She was initially put on a performance improvement plan, which everyone knows is a precursor to being fired. After some dramatic proclamations of I will not be treated like this, she filed an