2. Charlotte

Charlotte

The feeling of euphoria and freedom lasted all of five minutes. At least long enough for her to walk into the nearest cafe and get herself some coffee. As soon as she sat down, however, reality decided to intrude.

There were multiple texts on her phone and several missed calls, and the first one she answered was the one Charlotte dreaded the most.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Leonard Styles roared down the line. The lion shifter was bull-headed and elitist at best, misogynistic and blindly obstinate at worst. “That speech was an unmitigated disaster, if Grace doesn’t sack you, I will.”

“Given that she went entirely off-script,” Charlotte snapped, her pulse picking up again, “I’d have to agree. But as I just told her to shove her job up her arse, it’s your problem now.”

She hung up on him without waiting for a reply.

Of course, he tried to call her back, but Charlotte simply rejected the call. And the next five.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” some guy asked from the table next to her. “It’s fucking annoying.”

“I just quit my job,” Charlotte told him. “In fact, I think I told the head of the shifter council to shove it. My phone is on silent and in my handbag, so gimme a break, please? I’m having a bad day.”

He eyed her up and down, clearly not buying her story, so she took her phone out of her bag and showed him the screen where Leonard’s name was flashing determinedly.

“Now google to see who that is if you don’t already know,” she told him. “Even better, look up Grace Diaz, I’m sure you’ll be able to find multiple pictures of her with me in the background. In fact, after this morning’s shitshow, you’ll probably find a whole heap of crap about me and the poor job I’m doing writing her speeches.”

He snorted, reaching for his own phone while she rejected Leonard’s call again.

It was one thing to mouth off to Grace, finally venting the frustration she’d been harbouring for months. It was quite another to follow through with her threats. It would have been better if she’d held her peace for now, plotting and organising until she could have left on safer ground, yet Charlotte couldn’t truly regret her actions. She might be starting a new path a lot sooner than she’d expected, but it didn’t mean she was on the wrong one.

Rejecting Leonard’s call again, she flicked through her contacts, looking for the right one. Samuels, Saunders…Simpson! Yet just as her finger hovered over the dial button, Leonard called again, and her finger was close enough for her phone to detect, answering the call before she could stop it.

“Don’t hang up,” was the first panicked words Charlotte heard as she reluctantly drew the phone to her ear.

“Sir?” The voice sounded like the president of the shifters, but the tone was certainly not one she was expecting.

“There’s been a development, something neither of us could have foreseen, and yet we should have. Please, Ms Bailey, I need to meet with you urgently. If you agree to hear me out, I promise I’ll get you the job of your dreams, whether you help me or not.”

This didn’t make sense. The head of the shifter government, the most powerful shifter on the planet, was calling her, practically begging for help? No, it had to be a trick. Somehow, someone had hacked his phone — and got a voice actor convincing enough to sound like him.

“Ms Bailey, I am a proud man. A powerful man too. Do not make me beg,” he rumbled.

Yet wasn’t that exactly what he was doing? Her mind stuttered, unable to process what was happening. Today was just too much, even for her.

“Is that really you, Mr Styles? I’m finding it difficult to believe this isn’t a prank,” she finally replied.

A deep sigh sounded down the line. “A prank,” he said softly, sighing again. “I fucking wish it was.”

“Sir?” she queried again. “Are you alright? Do I need to call someone? Should I be instigating code black or something?”

Code black was a threat to national shifter security. Very few people had the authority to declare it, and while she wasn’t one of them, Charlotte was pretty sure she could get the ball rolling.

The quiet chuckle from her phone wasn’t exactly reassuring. “If I thought starting that shit-show would fix the problem I have, I would have done it, Ms Bailey, but I thank you for your concern regarding my welfare. Let’s just say something blew up in my face, something political, and I am in desperate need of your expertise. I’m sending a car to pick you up, just as soon as you tell me where you are. This isn’t something I want to say over an unsecured line.”

This whole day was just getting stranger and stranger, still, if she was going to jump down the rabbit hole, she might as well do it feet first. Charlotte gave him the address of the shop she was in, then ended the call with the usual polite responses. It would take a few minutes for the car to arrive, enough time for her to finish her coffee in silence.

Her phone continued to buzz quietly with calls, texts and notifications, but she ignored them all for several minutes, before finally setting the device to ‘do not disturb’. Over and over again, her mind tumbled through the events of the day, wondering where it was leading, and what could possibly be the cause of the meeting she was about to have.

It was ironic that the president had called her — a thought which made her brain stutter — the president had called her . Well, no, the president had called her for help . The yelling, abuse, and condemnation she’d dodged earlier was to be expected, but whatever was going on now? It had her equal parts disturbed and intrigued.

True to his word, Leonard’s car arrived in just under ten minutes. More than enough time for the coffee to begin to curdle in her stomach, only adding to the pain of the ulcer she was developing there.

To her surprise, the driver exiting the vehicle to open her door — a luxury she was not usually given — was one she already knew. Sean was Grace’s driver, and his presence only unsettled her further. If he was here, under the president’s orders, then where was Grace? As angry as she was at the woman, Charlotte didn’t want her harmed.

“Is Grace alright?” she asked, worriedly.

“Ms Diaz was in the best of health when I left her prior to coming here,” Sean replied courteously, holding the door open for her.

Rather than cause a scene on the sidewalk, Charlotte entered quickly, holding further questions until the man was behind the wheel again. As per usual, the screen between the driver’s area and the passengers was up, which was how Grace kept it, but she wasn’t Grace, so it was already down before Sean closed his door.

“Do you know what this is about?” Grace asked, before he could start the car.

Sean’s eyes met hers in the rear-view mirror briefly, before he returned his attention to preparing to pull the car into the traffic.

“I have a general idea of what is going on, but not the specifics of why you were called in,” he replied, hesitantly. “I’m afraid I am not able to give any details, as it would be a breach of confidentiality and security.”

In other words, she could ask whatever she wanted, but his lips would be sealed. As if to confirm that thought, the screen between them rose again, only she hadn’t pressed the button. Sean had.

Well, if that wasn’t a full stop, she didn’t know what would be. Turning to her phone, Charlotte opened the local news services, scanning them for anything that could tell her what was going on, but the media was full of the court ruling earlier that day, Grace’s bluster, and Charlotte’s spin. There was nothing new, although several sources claimed that something important was going on as several shifter leaders were spied arriving at the presidential mansion.

It only made things more confusing. Grace’s departure from the speech might result in some censure from other shifter leaders, especially as she was the elected representative of the shifters to the human government, but it would hardly be cause enough for her peers to be called to the mansion. Something else was going on, something that hadn’t hit the press yet, and it was clear whatever it was, was going to be big.

Did the president need another speech writer? Was that why she was being summoned? It was the only thing she could come up with, and yet he had practically begged her. Which didn’t quite fit. Most speech writers would give a limb to work for the president, so why would he specifically ask for Charlotte?

Acid climbed her oesophagus, making her owl squirm in pain. What Charlotte needed was data — and an antacid. Her ability to analyse not only the political landscape, but the potential reactions of her audience was one of the key reasons she’d risen through the ranks so quickly. Her ability to not only write the speech requested, but the one needed, had garnered Charlotte the reputation as someone to listen to, even if she wasn’t comfortable giving the speeches themselves.

Not long after commencing working for Grace, she’d begun taking on the role of public relations assistant as well. With Grace’s tendency to blow things up with her complete disregard for the consequences, and the lack of funding for a second assistant position, the duties had fallen to Charlotte, and she’d found the added responsibilities invigorating. And stressful. There was no avoiding the toll it had taken on her health.

Late nights, bad food, the reduced opportunities to simply shift and connect with her owl, as well as the constant demands on her time and attention — it had been challenging trying to balance it all. Yet at the end of the day, now that she was beginning to realise it was over, she couldn’t regret it. Charlotte knew she’d grown as a person, and she wasn’t just thinking of her growing dislike of Grace. Her ability to quickly spin the situation into a more positive context, her capability to stay calm in the face of the storm, and her instinct for reading her audience had all improved remarkably. Even if it was under fire and purely as survival techniques.

The one thing she hadn’t been able to do, was understand Grace’s capacity for stupidity.

That thought was still going through her brain as the car pulled up at the presidential mansion. She hadn’t even noticed them going through the gates, complete with security checks and the throngs of press congregating outside the protective barriers. It only showed how distracted she was, and Charlotte knew, if she was going to survive whatever she was about to face, then she had to have her head in the game.

By the time Sean opened her door, she was ready. All thoughts of her disastrous morning had been set aside, her jobless state was ignored, her irritation with Grace packed firmly in a box and put in a deep dark hole. As much as she’d mouthed off to the president earlier, she was now on his turf, and it was likely her entire career would hang in the balance.

Poised, she calmly exited the vehicle, allowed herself to be escorted inside by the wolf shifters guarding the door, and submitted to the usual security protocols. Wands, both regular technology, and magical powered, were passed across her body, checking for spells, weapons, and anything else they determined could be detrimental to the occupants of the building.

Once she’d passed through there, an assistant was waiting with a smile to guide her to wherever she was meeting the president. What she didn’t expect, however, when the simple door was opened for her, was to find the entire shifter government waiting on the other side.

What the fuck had she gotten herself into now?