Page 59 of The Midnight Frequency

“And I want a meeting with you and Silas tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s not going to work, Mr. Lane.”

“Rearrange your schedule.”

“It’s not my schedule that’s the problem.”

“Tell Silas to change his then.”

“Mr. Lane, Silas is a vampire.” At his blank look, I added, “He won’t be able to leave his home until the sun has set.”

“Oh. Right. Well. At sunset then. Not a minute later. If he would just get a cell phone, this wouldn’t be an issue,” he mumbled to himself. “Remember, this is top priority. I don’t care if this place falls apart while you work on it.”

Except he did care. A lot. So I was going to need to keep up my already overwhelming work and add on these new tasks.

“Got it,” I agreed, nodding.

“I’d like mock-ups by tomorrow.”

“Then you’d better let me get to it.” I shot him a megawatt smile I didn’t feel.

“Of course. Of course. This is very important,” he reminded me again, this time from the doorway.

“Understood.”

With that, he made his way out.

I made sure I heard him mumbling a goodbye to Grum by the door before I dropped my elbows on the desk, leaned forward, and cradled my face in my hands.

The sound that escaped me I’d only ever heard before when Tess accidentally had a hellhound puppy follow her home from an underworld booty call with her on-again-off-again ex.

“In my experience, it’s never a good thing when someone sounds like Sweetie Pie.” Yeah, that was what she’d named the hellhound with leathery skin and red eyes that burped actual flames. She’d tried to keep the thing for a few days before she realized there was tame, there was feral, and there was creature from hell. She still had bite mark scars on her ankle.

“Mr. Lane wants me to learn to market, create a merch line, and revamp our social media accounts all in, like, sixteen hours.”

Tess whistled as she moved into my office. “This is about Silas’s show, isn’t it?”

“How’d you know?”

“I was doing my little scroll while I had my hair mask soaking in this afternoon.”

“You had your phone in the shower?”

“Who doesn’t have their phone in the shower? Anyway, it was like the third video that I saw.”

“Was it good?”

“Good? It was… electric. The likes and shares were crazy. You know how much people love a hate-to-love. And I guess there’s kind of that forbidden, voyeur aspect to it. Like they’re there listening to the flirting.”

“Flirting? They weren’t flirting.”

“Oh, please. The long pauses. How they kept saying each other’s names. The soft laughs.”

“Laughs of derision.”

“Babe,” Tess said, shaking her head. “Watch the edits. You’ll see it. Do you want me to see if I can get the designer I use for my merch to pull something off in this timeframe?”

“Please. I’ll bake you all the brownies you can eat. You know… after all this is handled.”