Impervious (City of Eldrich Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter 11

W
ith a jerk,
the elevator car stopped and the door slid open on the third floor.

Like many old buildings, city hall was rumored to be haunted, with the third floor at the center of most of the stories. Meaghan didn’t care. She’d known people over the years who had experienced unexplainable things. She hadn’t. Whether that had more to do with them or with her, she wasn’t sure. Meaghan would worry about ghosts if and when she saw one. And if she was right about the fireworks to come, at least a few of the living people in the building were scarier than the dead ones.

Haunted or not, city hall was a beautiful old building, rich in detail and character, unlike the ugly sealed brick-and-glass boxes she’d worked in before. The windows even opened. Encounters with the supernatural seemed a small price to pay for fresh air.

A few steps from the elevator, a glass-and-wood door marked “City Solicitor” in ornate gold script stood open. Meaghan walked into an open reception area containing two desks. A young woman sat behind one of them. The nameplate identified her as Kady Cressley. The nameplate on the other desk read “Natalie Segretti.”

Kady gave Meaghan a glowing smile and jumped to her feet. “Ms. Keele?”

Meaghan smiled back. “That’s me. And it’s Meaghan, okay?”

“Got it.” Kady walked around the desk. “I’m Kady.” She wore jeans and a plaid hoodie. “We are so happy you’re here. Especially Jamie. I don’t think he wants to be the big boss anymore.”

“Yeah, I got that feeling. He was way too eager to bring me stuff when I hurt my foot.”

Kady tried to muffle a laugh. “Oh, he’s so ready not to be in charge. Let me take you to your office. Natalie’s around here somewhere. She’s the office manager.”

A four-person office needed a manager? Meaghan wondered if Natalie could be the queen bee she suspected lurked somewhere in the building. But that wasn’t the feeling she got from the way Russ and Jamie spoke about Natalie. They seemed to like her quite a bit.

Kady led Meaghan down a short hallway and gestured at the open doorway. “Here’s your office. Not as big as the downstairs offices but a lot more fun.” She giggled. “At least I think so.”

Meaghan walked through the doorway and her mouth dropped open. The small office was round. Meaghan realized she was in one of the turrets. Light streamed in from three directions through six windows, tall and narrow to compensate for the curve of the walls. Even with the gray rain clouds hanging in the sky, the office was filled with natural light. Meaghan couldn’t wait to see how it looked on a sunny day.

“Do those windows open?” Meaghan asked.

“They sure do,” Kady said with obvious pride.

“Wow. I’ve never had office windows that open before.” Meaghan laughed, delighted with the space. “I’ve never had a round office either.”

“Not big.”

“Who cares,” Meaghan said. “It’s round.”

Meaghan had never fallen in love with a room before. The space felt right. It felt good.

It felt like home.

She shook her head, chalking up the rush of feeling to the general weirdness that seemed to be swirling all around her. It was stress-induced, she was sure, manufactured by the too-rapid transition from the life she’d long known, a bad case of nerves caused by being abruptly dumped into a whole new life.

Kady giggled some more. “I know, right? That’s what I thought the first time I saw it. A bitch to furnish, though.” She stopped and looked at Meaghan, waiting for a reaction. “Sorry.”

Meaghan raised an eyebrow. “You know, I’ve heard that word before. Even used it a few times. Sometimes I use much worse words.”

Kady relaxed and her smile returned. “That makes things easier. Natalie and I both swear like dock workers. Drives poor Jamie nuts.”

Meaghan dropped her purse and umbrella behind the desk and Kady took her on a tour of the rest of the small office suite. They crossed the hall to the small copy room and smaller file room. According to Kady, the door at the back of the file room led into a larger storage area carved out of the unfinished attic. It was always kept locked, more for the safety of people who might enter than to protect anything inside. The storage area was only partially finished and surrounded by unreinforced floors and exposed stone walls. One wrong step and you’d find yourself dropping in, literally, on the mayor, whose second floor office sat below.

Natalie, Kady told her, kept the attic key. They found her in Jamie’s office, which sat next to Meaghan’s.

Natalie sat in Jamie’s desk chair, staring at his computer with a scowl. She muttered under her breath, reached down, and whacked the computer tower with her hand. “Work already, you evil piece of shit.”

Kady cleared her throat. Natalie turned to look at Kady and Meaghan standing in the doorway and smiled. She was in her early thirties, with wild auburn hair, curled in ringlets, and the greenest eyes Meaghan had ever seen.

Natalie hopped to her feet and came around the desk with her hand out. She was tall and curvy, like an ancient fertility goddess. Renaissance artists would have killed for the chance to paint her. “Hey, boss. Welcome aboard. Just knocking some sense into Jamie’s computer.”

Meaghan shook her offered hand. Natalie’s grip was firm and her hand so warm it felt like a heating pad. Jamie hadn’t been kidding about it being casual dress around here, Meaghan thought. Like Kady, Natalie wore jeans. She also wore a lavender T-shirt with “Humboldt Hydroponics” written in dark green Gothic script punctuated with a pot leaf, a spangly knit scarf around her neck, and black engineer boots.

Meaghan liked her right away. She never cared what her administrative staff wore, only that the work got done. Despite her wild hair and stoner T-shirt, Natalie exuded competence. According to Jamie, Natalie always got the job done, on time and with minimal drama.

“Kady give you the tour?” Natalie asked.

“Sure did.” Meaghan hesitated. What the hell was she doing here? At that moment, the realization of the enormity of the changes she’d undergone in the last few weeks, of how far she was from what she thought of as home, hit her like a fist. The room began to spin, gently at first, and then picked up speed, and now Kady and Natalie were easing her into a chair.

Meaghan, her eyes screwed shut, let the room come to a stop.

She felt Natalie’s warm hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

Meaghan opened her eyes. “Yeah, better.” She took a few deep breaths to steady herself and then tried to make a joke. “And I’m not even in the round office. I may need hand rails in there.”

Natalie laughed, but it sounded forced and she looked concerned. She and Kady exchanged a meaningful glance. Again, Meaghan sensed an unspoken conversation.

“Seriously,” Meaghan said. “I’m fine. Just got a little woozy for a sec.”

Natalie frowned. “Does that happen often?”

“No,” Meaghan said. “Not since high school choir. Don’t worry. I won’t be swooning all over the office. I’m fine.”

Natalie’s frown relaxed into a smile. “Has anyone ever told you you’re exactly like your father?”

Meaghan grinned back. “No. Not ever once in my whole life.”

“Yeah, right,” Natalie shot back. She turned to Kady. “Would you get Meaghan a cup of . . .” She turned back to Meaghan. “Coffee? Tea?”

“Coffee,” Meaghan told her.

“On it,” Kady said, and headed down the hall.

“Okay, lady,” Natalie said. “Let’s get you into your office and see if the computer guy did his job.”

Meaghan rose with care, but the dizziness was gone. A small fountain of fear bubbled in the back of her mind. She
was
exactly like Matthew. What if she was getting his disease now too? Did Alzheimer’s have a genetic component?

The fear must have shown on her face. Natalie said, “I don’t know if you believe in any of the ghost stories, but you’re not the first person who’s gotten woozy in that office. Bob, the guy before you, always got the wobbles in there. If he had to talk to Jamie, he’d stand in the doorway but wouldn’t go in. Otherwise he’d end up on the floor.”

“You’re saying it’s ghosts?”

Natalie laughed. “Oh, hell. I don’t know. But Bob had a bunch of tests done, an EEG and some other stuff, and they never found anything wrong. And he didn’t have the problem anywhere else.”

“So I shouldn’t worry,” Meaghan said.

Natalie nodded. “Right. You shouldn’t worry.”

And for whatever reason, maybe Natalie’s kind, open face, Meaghan felt the cloud lift.

She felt better as soon as she entered her little round office. “I’m fine in here,” she told Natalie. “No ghosts?”

“Oh, God. I never should have said that. Now you think I’m some crazy crystal grabber.”

Meaghan laughed and plopped into one of the side chairs in front of her desk, gesturing to Natalie to take the desk chair. “I’m from Arizona, remember? There are as many people down there packing crystals as there are packing guns. Ever been to Sedona? Maybe it’s an energy vortex.”

Kady appeared in the doorway with a white mug. “Energy vortex? There’s an energy vortex?” She looked worried.

“Nope,” Natalie replied. “Meaghan was telling me about Sedona.”

Kady and Natalie exchanged glances. There it was again. The unspoken conversation.

Kady handed her the mug. Meaghan had been expecting the typical crappy office coffeemaker sludge, but this smelled wonderful. Kady plopped a metal spoon, a couple of little white tubs of half and half, and a few sugar packets on the desk.

Natalie moved behind the desk, sat down, and leaned over to turn on the computer. Meaghan thanked Kady for the coffee. Kady then left to answer the phone, although Meaghan didn’t hear anything.

“Ears like an owl, that one,” Natalie said. “How’s the coffee?”

“Freaking fabulous. Got a Starbucks downstairs?”

Natalie let fly a booming laugh. “Oh, I’m better than Starbucks. It was your dad who started us on the high-end coffee habit. I replaced the espresso machine a few months ago, but he got us the original one.”

“Espresso machine? You juicing the whole building?”

“Nope. Just us. Sally and Nate over at Eldrich Brew would go out of business without city hall, but our coffee maker was here first, and we’re too lazy to walk across the street. Sorry about the plastic tubs. I had to pinch those from the mayor’s office. Leftovers from a reception or luncheon or something. We usually have a pitcher of cream, but I didn’t make it to the food co-op last night.”

“Cream? Actual cream? You’re as bad as my brother.”

At the mention of Russ, Natalie looked up at Meaghan and then looked down fast, her face red.

I’ll have to keep an eye on that, Meaghan thought. Her brother sleeping with her office manager could be awkward, to say the least. But Russ couldn’t unzip his pants without proposing marriage, so maybe Natalie merely had a crush on him.

Natalie scowled at the computer. “I told Eddie last week to get this damn thing set up.” She muttered under her breath, and smacked it, like she had Jamie’s computer. “There we are. Good to go.” She stood up and gestured towards the chair. “All yours, boss.”

“Where’s Jamie?” Meaghan asked as she sat down behind the desk.

“He had a hearing over in Williamsport. He’ll be back at lunchtime.” Natalie walked out of the office, then turned in the doorway. “Check your calendar. You’ve got a meeting in the mayor’s office at ten, and then you and Jamie have a two o’clock with the council director.” Natalie grimaced. “Emily.”

Ah. There was the queen bee. “That’s Emily Proctor, right?”

Natalie nodded.

“Down there or up here?”

“Oh, up here. I made a point of it,” Natalie said, venom in her voice.

“Good. Based on the look on your face when you say her name, I’m betting she’s a great big pain in the ass?”

Natalie snorted with laughter. “That’s what Matthew used to call her. He always made her come up here. Totally pissed her off.”

“But it makes a point. Anything else I need to know about? What about lunch?”

“The mayor will probably offer to take you out. We’d do it ourselves, but we wanted to wait until you got settled a little and Jamie’s around all day.”

“What’s the mayor like?”

Natalie sighed. “You want tactful or honest?”

Meaghan raised an eyebrow. “Let me hear honest.”

“Everyone calls him Mayor McCheese.”

Meaghan laughed so hard she almost spit out the sip of coffee in her mouth. “Oh, hell. That’s funny. Sad but funny. So, let me guess. Oily but kind of hapless?”

“Yup. He’s not a bad guy, just a schmoozy booster type. You know. Lots of rah-rah with the chamber of commerce but not enough spine to stand up to the council.”

“To Emily, you mean. Natalie, if you’ve got nowhere to be right now, shut the door, sit down, and give me the dirt.”

Natalie smiled and shut the door.