* * *
After crawlingout of bed and making an iced coffee the next morning to get me started, I fired my laptop up and checked for any messages I might have gotten overnight.
I’d inquired at a few offices yesterday if they were hiring and wanted to see if they’d gotten back to me.
Instead, I found a message from Draven Leto.
Hmm.
Taking a sip of my iced coffee, I clicked to open the message.
Attn:[email protected]
Re:My Ad
Dear Ms. Durran,
After reading your email,it occurs to me that there are quite a few things that you don’t know about yourself. Please know, Ms. Durran, that I had no intention of taking up valuable ad space with a junk ad. I realize jobs are at a premium these days, and if I had the desire to play a prank such as that on someone in my circle, I certainly wouldn’t place it nationwide where every person with an opinion would come out of the woodworks and send zinging emails to my inbox.
Since you don’t believe that such an ad can be legit, I offer you proof. Take the ad around to your neighbors and see if they can see the ad. I’m betting they won’t be able to.
Once finished, email me back, and we’ll talk.
Regards,Draven Leto
I almost spitout my coffee.
What?
That was a bizarre request. Take it to my neighbors? And, what, like an obedient puppy I was just supposed to go bother my neighbors because some random weirdo asked me to? Just no.
But also... The request might be odd, but it sparked my curiosity. Why did he think that asking other people about the ad would prove something to me? And what point was he trying to prove?
I growled into my coffee, not sure what I wanted to do. I definitely didn’t want to disturb my neighbors over something so trivial, but I was also very curious now about what point Mr. Draven Leto was hinting at.
As I read over his words again, a smile slowly bloomed on my face. I decided I would play his game, if only to let him know, in no uncertain terms, that I didn’t appreciate being the butt of what had to be a joke.
I gulped the rest of my coffee down and slipped theMy Spirit Animal is a Tigermug into the sink, ran some water into it, yanked on some shorts and ran a brush through my hair. I slid into my slip-on tennies, scooped the paper up, grabbed my keys so I wouldn’t accidentally get locked out, and knocked on the neighbor’s door to the right of mine.
A harried mom with smooth, dark hair pulled back into a quick twist and dark skin answered the door. Her shirt looked like it had been gummed to death, there was spit-up on her shoulder, and she had dark shadows under her bloodshot eyes.
Yikes. Maybe I should offer to babysit her son more often.
I squirmed a little in embarrassment. “Hi, Leona.” I smiled half-heartedly. “Really sorry to bother you, but I’m clearing up a bit of a bet.” I placed a blue, nailwrapped fingertip against the Vampire’s Assistant ad. “You can see this ad here, right?”
Leona looked at where my finger was pointing, looked back at me, and looked back at my fingertip.
“Mia.” Her voice was steady and measured.
“Yes?”
“Can you hear Daniel?”
I could indeed hear her baby Daniel screaming in the other room now that her door was open. I cringed again. Bad timing.
“Yes?”
“Then you can understand that I don’t have time for any funny business, right?”
