I wake up one morning to find Simon wearing a suit. That’s odd.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m going into the office, and you’re coming with me,” he says.
That idea makes me feel a little sick. The office is where I did the bad thing.
“It’s weird that the police haven’t come looking for Veronica the way they did for you,” I comment.
Truth is I’ve been getting increasingly nervous about getting in trouble for Veronica’s disappearance. I have the feeling it’s going to lead back to me somehow. I’m not a good criminal. I’m an opportunist. I don’t know if there were cameras in the office. I bet there were. Maybe not in Veronica’s office specifically, but in the hall. They’ll see her go in and never come out. They’ll want to question me about the cat, I’m sure.
As we drive to the office, I convince myself not to worry too much. The company is never going to admit the tech they have, and that means the police are never going to be able to solve any missing person’s case. It will be a closed room mystery forever.
I still feel quite guilty, though. If she got hurt, or if she didn’t manage to change back, or if… If a thousand different bad things happened, each and every one of them would be my fault.
I shadow Simon closely once we get into work. That’s what he wants anyway, and I figure it’s the safest option. People rarely talk to me when I am with him anyway. He has all the authority and gravitas and that makes others speak to him first. I’ve gone out of my way to dress as conservatively and book nerdy as possible to also help blend into the background. I’ve done everything I can to avoid detection, in other words.
I expected the place to be all tense and weird, but it’s just like any other day. People are bustling about working, or hardly working as the corporate case may be. The mood is pretty good, all things considered. We walk past a man in a white coat with a jelly donut that is trying its best to drip down his sleeve, but he’s wrangling it masterfully. He salutes Simon with the donut on the way past.
“People really don’t seem to care she’s not here,” I whisper to him.
“Quiet,” he says firmly.
He has a cooler with him, stacked with ice. We go right to his office, to his secret fridge, and he starts decanting all the ‘do not touchiest’ vials into it. He’s moving calmly, but with undeniable urgency. I wonder what his thinking is. Is he taking work things home? Or is he going to destroy the evidence of what was happening here? It’s probably both.
“Ah, I was told the two of you had finally decided to make an appearance at the office. Doctor Seek, Lydia. I’d like to see the pair of you in my office.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands erect as I hear a voice I never expected to hear again coming from behind me.
I whirl around to see Veronica standing there, every inch a human woman. She is wearing a pantsuit cut in a diabolically good way, the flare of the blazer making the most of the sway of her hip. Her blonde hair has been cut into an even more razor-sharp chin-length bob. It looks good. She looks incredibly good, actually. Given how rough Simon was when he finally made it out of wolf form, I am surprised.
“You can leave those samples where they are,” she says. “You won’t be working from home anymore. I’ve decided the risks of unsupervised science are simply too great.”
Simon takes me by the hand and pulls me close, but nods to Veronica, and the three of us proceed through the halls in a very disparate set of moods. Veronica is triumphant, while I am terrified. Simon is hard to read, but it is safe to guess he’s probably relieved she is alive and annoyed that he didn’t get to finish what he was doing.
“Close the door behind you,” she says as she walks around her desk and takes a seat.
She faces the pair of us with her hands clasped in front of her. Neither Simon nor I sit, and she does not ask us to. I have the feeling of being sent to the headmistress’ office, like I am in trouble, but not of the serious legal kind.
“I hunted and ate a rat,” she begins.
That’s it. I lose it immediately. How can I not laugh at such a bold statement? The idea of this polished woman eating a raw rat is far too viscerally intense for me to maintain composure.
I try to bite back my laughter, but it doesn’t work. After a second or two, Simon swats my ass hard enough to make me squeak. From then on, I content myself with muffled little giggles.
“I’m glad you find that amusing,” she says. “I can assure you it is one of the last things you will find funny for a very long time. What you did was erratic, capricious, dangerous, and frankly unfathomably cruel. But it was also wrong.”
I bite my lower lip in the effort not to show any mirth outwardly. I can feel Simon glowering at me so hard I don’t dare even look at him. I keep my eyes on Veronica. She’s the one I wronged, after all.
“I am sorry,” I say. “I really didn’t…”
“Didn’t mean to taint my beverage with a formula designed to rewrite my very DNA?”
“No, I didn’t mean for you to get let out of the bathroom,” I say. “That’s Simon’s fault. He wouldn’t listen, and then he wouldn’t let me go after you. I never intended for any real harm to come to you.”
“Oh? What did you intend?” Her voice is cold as ice.
“I suppose… I guess… I wanted to teach you a lesson.”