Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Reuben

R euben stared out the windshield of his car for a solid five minutes before he remembered something. His fingers entered his breast pocket and pulled out the slip of paper. At least he could make sure Amber had his number, in case she changed her mind?

After far too long spent squinting and guessing, Reuben typed the number into his phone followed by two emojis: a stack of books and a pen. It wasn’t like he had another Amber in there; he simply loved adding emojis to everything. This did lead to him adding them where they didn’t really belong, and also to his terrible choice of a first text.

A single bat emoji.

Sure, it might have been a clever attempt to cover up his botched proposal. Movies and legends had vampires changing into bats all the time, after all. But Reuben sure couldn’t, nor could anyone he knew. He smacked his forehead, knowing he screwed up the moment he pressed send. So he sent two more messages. Back to back.

Reuben

I’m sorry. It’s Reuben.

Also, I don’t turn into a bat.

Both of which were unnecessarily serious and well punctuated. Reuben tossed his phone into the passenger’s seat with a sigh. Hell…he didn’t even know how to text a woman properly.

Reuben exhaled a heavy breath. He knew this would be hard. He was wearing his heart on his sleeve and let Amber see the truth behind the curtain. This approach wasn’t in the booklet that Stella had given him, but he couldn’t bring himself to deceive Amber with a lie. He needed this kind human to know that he wasn’t going into this wanting a relationship either.

He put the car in drive and began slowly making his way down the street toward his home. Out of habit, he scanned the road for any suspicious cars while the entire cafe scene played over and over in his head. How could he have done better? Amber had shown a level of interest in Reuben the individual that no one had shown in a long time. Every time her ears turned red or her thoughts began to tumble from her mouth, Reuben knew they were real.

He’d purposefully suggested suitable public places with a minimum number of people prone to gossip or violence. Neutral places where Amber would feel a bit more comfortable spending time with a vampire. It was imperative to the plan that she felt safe, rather than like she was caged in with a dangerous creature. But it was all for naught. He’d managed to scare her off by being too dang honest.

His hands gripped the steering wheel much harder than necessary. The look on her face when she realized he hadn’t been actually asking her out lingered in his mind’s eye and he shook his head in an attempt to remove it. “She told me she wasn’t there for a relationship either, so why did she run out on me like that?”

Truthfully, he knew the answer. He probably would have run out as well if someone had asked him to be their trophy boyfriend.

By the time Reuben pulled up to his garage and parked the car, he was thoroughly disheartened. How was he going to win over the voters? It felt like an impossible mountain he needed to climb with no legs.

* * *

Amber

A mber didn't stop panicking until she was safe in the familiar surroundings of her dusty apartment. She lay in her underwear on the faded couch with her arm draped over her face. “I’m an idiot!” she whined for probably the seventy-fifth time, followed by a low groan.

Truly, she couldn’t decide which action was more ridiculous: believing that Reuben had been asking her out on a date, or blasting out of the cafe and sprinting down the street as if being chased by a pack of angry chihuahuas intent on nipping her ankles. In a suit. A suit which lay on the floor in a heap as crumpled as her hopes.

Wallowing was one of Amber’s most highly-refined skills and she could have lay there whining the entire night if she had not been so rudely interrupted by the dramatic opening bars of the Jaws theme. Her phone had been abandoned on the cluttered table by the front door. It flashed the heartbeat light of a pending notification that she had zero desire to read, even if she had noticed it before. But that theme meant only one thing.

Gabriella.

“I don’t want to talk to you!” she yelled at her phone as she hauled her sulking mass off the couch and grabbed the offending device. “I’m not answering!!” she insisted…and then hit ‘answer.’

“Hello?”

“You better have taken the event seriously tonight and asked all of those questions I sent you. I expect to see scans of your notes from the evening in my inbox tomorrow morning.”

Right to the point, as usual. Amber stifled a sigh and attempted to keep her voice chipper. “Of course I did! And I will get them scanned before I go to bed. I’ve only been home long enough to catch my breath. Can’t guarantee you’ll be able to read them any better than the last batch you demanded, though.”

“Your handwriting is a different problem altogether. But what do you mean, ‘catch your breath’? Did you do something stupid again?”

“Depends on how you look at it, I suppose.” Which was the incorrect answer, as the words were met with arctic silence from the other end of the phone. Amber could feel the wind chill through the speaker and shivered.

“Alright, alright. I went on what I thought was a date with one of the vampires from the event, and ended up running away when he asked me to go on further dates with him. I had misjudged the situation and I panicked.”

“You RAN AWAY?!”

The screech assaulted Amber’s eardrum painfully and she moved the phone away from her face to make the remaining inevitable assault more bearable.

“You managed to get yourself on a date, and then you RAN AWAY when handed the perfect opportunity for research on a silver platter?! You are lucky I’m already in for the night, or I would be getting in my car right now to come kick your butt myself!”

“It wasn’t a real date, though! He wanted me to pretend to date him so he could look good to the public or whatever. And I am one hundred percent not okay with being paraded around in public, Gabriella! Where there are people. I would have to mingle. One night of that was more than enough, thank you very much.” The expression of horror and disgust on Amber’s face wrinkled her nose so hard that a small blackhead she hadn’t noticed before began to sting.

But Gabriella wasn’t taking any of her excuses. “He offered the silver platter with no strings attached? You seriously need to get over this homebound hermit phase and do the research. Please tell me you at least got this man’s number so you can rectify this error? I am going to have to find another author to represent if you continue to struggle with producing a decent second book.”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

Again her agent’s voice began filling the air with the screeching of a banshee, but Amber had already stopped listening. This was going right back into the land of lectures she’d heard a thousand times already. She switched Gabriella to speaker and began clearing out the notifications on her phone, pausing when she saw a text from an unknown number.

Upon opening the thread, her heart skipped a little. The timestamp told her that Reuben had sent the messages after the rejection, which surprised her. There was no way in a frozen-over Hell that she would have texted someone after such a rejection. “Okay, apparently I do have it. I forgot I gave him mine and he texted me.”

The relief in Gabriella’s voice was obvious. “Okay, good. This is salvageable! You text that man back and tell him you’d be thrilled to go along with his plan, or you’ll be finding yourself a new agent. And you know that there are few agents as patient and understanding as myself. That would also mean revealing your pen name to another person.”

Gabriella was playing hard ball tonight, and it was effective. The thought of having to switch agents was horrifying. Even if she decided not to write another book, having to deal with the advertising and whatnot of Caribbean Skies was not something Amber was willing to do by herself.

“Okay, okay. I will send him a message and see if he’s still willing to proceed. Just…don’t fire me. I need you!” Amber clenched her teeth in annoyance at the truth of the statement. She hung up to a chorus of ‘you better’ and ‘don’t forget the notes’ and tossed the phone to the other side of the couch.

How, despite having zero interest in them, did Amber end up with such strong-willed women controlling her life? Wasn’t that a married man issue?

* * *

Mr. DeVito

A mber wasn’t the only one with woman problems. Mr. DeVito stood in front of Stella’s office door and wiped his clammy palms on the inside of his pockets. He already knew what her reaction was going to be to his report, and despite holding out hope that his text from last night would get a response…his text thread with the author remained lonesome. The little bubble had changed from ‘sent’ to ‘read,’ but that was it. Which made Mr. DeVito feel worse, because that meant Amber was deliberately ignoring him.

When he felt as if he had gathered enough courage, he knocked twice on the heavy oak door. His manager’s voice granted him access and he stepped inside, making sure the closing door didn’t slam before he stepped up and stood in front of the desk with his hands clasped behind his back.

Stella knew that trick and what it meant. She was the one who taught him how to hide his nervous hands, after all. “I’m going to hazard a guess that you were unsuccessful in selecting a human and convincing them to date you?”

“Your dang magic,” Mr. DeVito grumbled under his breath.

Stella barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes; no matter how many times she insisted that she did not inherit any magic, that didn’t stop him from accusing her of it every time her keen powers of observation caught him off guard.

A smirk flickered across Reuben's face for a moment. “You’re not 100% right this time, though. I did manage to find someone, and I took her out for coffee.”

“And then you messed it up, didn’t you? Let me guess. You and your overdeveloped need to be overly honest told her that you weren’t interested romantically and only needed her to pretend.” Stella straightened a stack of papers on her desk while Mr. DeVito looked down at the floor like a scolded puppy.

“I thought as much. How hard would it have been to not be weird and treat it like you were actually interested? You were willing to take her out for coffee after a brief exchange at the event, so you might have ended up liking her for real after a few dates. Did you at least get her number? Or any backup numbers?”

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Stella had a point. Amber was pretty and interesting company, and the way she blushed and rambled at every little thing made her rather endearing. But he also had to admit that he was not in a place in his life where he was ready for a real relationship.

Mr. DeVito nodded, then shook his head. “I…got hers. But the rest of the humans showed little to no promise. The amount of times I shook a hand and felt them flinch was frankly insulting. If you didn’t use magic, did you have someone following me? You are more scarily accurate at guessing the series of events than usual.”

For the first time since Mr. DeVito entered the office, a bit of a smile and a chuckle broke through Stella’s stony expression. “Mr. DeVito, I’ve known you for a decade and you are easier to read than the top line of an optometrist’s chart. But all hope is not lost. I expected that it might take more than one attempt to find you a partner, so I had our research department compile a list of dating apps for you to download.

"I expect that you can find a suitable candidate in the next week or so. Let me reframe the plan for you. You will be the one pretending, and ask some humans on dates. Let it be real for them, and if you don’t feel like keeping them around after the election, then you can send them on their way. It’s only six months.”

“Dating apps? Are you serious? How are you so cavalier about my dating life?”

Stella slid a single sheet of paper across the desk to Mr. DeVito and leaned back in her chair, again crossing one knee over the other. “Because it’s not your real dating life. This is work. Think of it as politician practice. Tell the people what they want to hear. Make the right promises. All necessary skills for a successful political career.

"Obviously you don’t want to register under ‘Reuben DeVito’ when you download those, or you’ll attract all the wrong matches. Use your preferred nickname, and let me know as soon as you are successful. If you haven’t found someone by next Friday, I will have the events department organize something to get you around more humans in person.”

For a moment, Mr. DeVito was shocked at how callous Stella was about these humans and the public in general. He had gotten as far as he had on honesty and taking the title ‘public servant’ literally. The way his manager so casually told him to lie and sneak and play with emotions went against everything he stood for.

Yet…he shouldn’t have been shocked. There were reasons that the elf in front of him had become the powerhouse behind HOME’s curtain and kept it operating as long as she had.

Stella looked so pleased with herself, as if she was certain this plan was foolproof. Though that was because she would make the plan foolproof. If it took until Plan X, Y, or Z, she would ensure that supernaturals got their voice in law making, at least in this state. That was how Stella operated. She didn’t see roadblocks; she saw inconveniences which would either get out of her way or be pushed out of her way.

“And have you thought any more about security? The dating event went smoothly, thankfully, but only because we had so many guards. How long are you going to be reckless?”

Mr. DeVito shook his head. Stella lowered her eyebrows, but with nothing more than a ‘now be a good boy and get started on that’ and a wave of Stella’s hand, the vampire was off to his office to begin the next embarrassing chapter of the election saga.

Seated at his desk, Reuben took a moment to scan the list of apps and their descriptions, reading them out loud to the empty room. “Night or Eternity: generally used by more mature supernaturals looking for long term relationships. Moonlyte: Intended for short-term relationships or one-night rendezvous. Suckr: popular with the younger crowd. Ugh, these are awful. ” For around the sixty-third time in the last 24 hours, Mr. DeVito wondered if the election was worth the demeaning plan.

Then he remembered the feeling of starvation so strong it could crack the strongest moral code, and that was enough to prompt him to open the app store and begin Plan B. The last thing he needed was an even worse Plan C.