When Darkness Calls

Chapter 5: The Interview

POV: Lucien

I signed the last document and a sharp pain shot through my skull.

The pen dropped from my hand. "Not again," I muttered.

My fingers dug into my temple as another wave hit, harder this time, and my vision blurred at the edges. For a second my eyes burned hot, and I knew without looking that they'd gone red.

I gripped the edge of the desk and forced myself still. "Get a hold of yourself," I said through my teeth.

The pain climbed higher, and I shut my eyes, breathing slow until whatever clawed at the inside of me settled back down.

When I opened them again, the red was gone.

I stood and walked to the glass wall that split my office from the interview rooms, just to get some air.

Through the glass, a woman sat with her hands folded tight in her lap, answering questions from someone in HR.

So I stopped walking.

Her face looked familiar, too familiar.

Then she turned her head, and the pain in my skull just stopped, all of it, gone.

Then I froze. It couldn't be her, I said to no one but myself.

I stepped closer to the glass and watched her laugh at something the interviewer said.

That face. Those eyes.

I'd seen them last night, at the bar, arguing with me over a table like she owned the place.

"You're not that important," she'd told me, and walked off before I could answer.

The HR woman picked up a sheet of paper. "Elena Carter?"

The name hit me, familiar somehow, though I couldn't place why yet.

I turned from the glass. Then I saw Kael. He was at my door seconds later. "You called, boss?"

"Who's in that room?”

He glanced through the glass. "Don't know her personally."

"The name."

He checked the paper in her hands. "Elena Carter."

My jaw tightened. "Five years ago I had you find everything on a girl, a schoolgirl."

Kael's eyes narrowed. "I remember."

"What was her name?"

He thought for a second, then his eyes widened. "Elena Carter."

I looked back through the glass. "Bring me that report."

"On it."

He left, and I turned back to watch her answer another question.

"I worked as an assistant before my company cut staff," she was saying, voice too soft to fully catch.

She looked nervous but not helpless, and then she smiled at something the interviewer said.

Five years fell away from me right there. A school uniform, a bicycle, and a girl who almost got hit by a car.

I'd had Kael dig into her back then because something about her had caught my attention, and the report came back thin, ordinary family, ordinary background, nothing unusual.

I'd left for the demon world not long after and forgot her completely. Until now.

"Boss." Kael was back, holding the report out.

I opened it and there she was, eighteen years old, same eyes staring up at me.

I looked from the photograph to the woman behind the glass. "Five years," I said under my breath.

Kael studied my face. "Do you know her?"

"I've seen her before."

"Where?"

"Five years ago, the girl from the report."

His eyebrows went up. "That's her?"

"Yes."

He glanced through the glass, quiet for a second. "So she's the one you had me investigate?”

"Yes."

I closed the report. "I need to know why this is happening."

Kael frowned. "What?"

I looked at Elena through the glass. "The headache."

His expression changed.

"Wait," he said slowly. "Are you saying the woman in there is the same girl from five years ago?"

"Yes."

His eyes moved back to Elena. "The same girl you had me investigate?"

"The same one."

He was quiet for a moment. Then his gaze returned to me. "And your headache disappeared when you saw her?"

"The moment I saw her."

Kael stared at her through the glass. "So the girl from five years ago is the one who stops your headache now?"

"That's what I need to understand."

"What are you going to do?"

I watched her gather her things. "Keep her close."

"To figure out what's happening?"

"Exactly."

Inside the room, Elena stood and shook the interviewer's hand.

She grabbed her bag, and as she moved toward the door, I watched her carefully.

"Do you want me to stop her?" Kael asked.

"No."

"Then what?"

"Let her finish."

The door opened and Elena stepped into the hallway, checking her phone, no idea I was a few feet away behind the glass.

She turned in my direction and I stepped back fast.

She walked right past. The calm in my head stayed.

I waited until she was gone. "She's hired."

Kael blinked at me. "You didn't even sit in on the interview."

"I don't need to."

"That's reckless."

"Probably."

He tucked the report under his arm. "Should I tell HR?"

"Yes."

"Just like that?”

"Give her the position."

"Which one?"

"Junior executive assistant."

He stared at me for a long second. "You're serious right now."

"Very."

He walked off, and I stayed by the glass, watching the hallway where she'd disappeared.

A few minutes later she showed up at the reception desk, and the woman there handed her something with a smile.

"Congratulations, Ms Carter, we'll reach out with the details."

Elena grinned and thanked her, then headed for the exit.

I watched until the doors swallowed her up.

My phone rang, Damon's name on the screen. "Yes," I answered.

"Where are you?"

"My office."

"Kael says you just hired someone."

"I did."

"Without sitting in?"

"She was interviewed, just not by me."

Silence, then he laughed.

"You're acting strange, even for you."

"I've always been strange."

"Who is she?"

I looked toward the empty hallway. "Someone I met yesterday."

"At the bar?"

"Yes."

"You hired a woman from a bar fight?"

"That's not why I hired her."

"Then why?"

I looked down at the report still in my hand, her eighteen-year-old face staring back at me.

Five years of forgetting her, undone in one afternoon. "I need her close, Damon."

He went quiet. "My lord, are you sure about this?”

"I don't know what she's connected to yet."

"And your answer is to bring her into your company?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

I closed the report slowly. "Because I need to find out why everything changes when she's near me."

I hung up before he could ask anything else.

The office felt too quiet after that, so I walked to the door she'd disappeared through and stood there.

The woman from the bar. The girl from five years ago.

Elena Carter, standing in my building without the first idea who I really was.

I lifted my phone and called Kael back. "Whatever it takes," I said, "make sure Elena Carter stays.”