Page 1 of A Malicious Menagerie (Fangs & Fables #1)

The Offer

“ W atch it,” a man growls behind me. He shoulders me out of the way, his white coat and air of importance marking him as a doctor.

“S-sorry,” I stutter, catching myself against the wall and wincing as the water in my mop bucket sloshes over the edge. The man doesn’t spare me a backward glance, his coat flaring behind him like a superhero cape as he makes a sharp turn down a side hall and disappears.

I straighten up and stretch out my back with a sigh, feeling closer to my grandmother’s age than my actual twenty-two years.

By the time the sun is rising and my night shift is over, my joints hurt, my eyes are dry and crusty, and my hands are chapped and throbbing.

All I want is to climb into my bed and never leave it…

At least, not until tonight when I have to wait tables at Chucky’s Diner.

I take the bus twenty minutes to my stop and slog the ten minutes to Nan’s row home.

Somehow, it always feels uphill no matter whether I’m coming or going.

After a quick breakfast and a lukewarm shower—one of these days I’ll get the water heater fixed, I swear, but like most days, today is not that day—I slide into my twin bed with a relieved sigh.

My bedroom hasn’t changed much since I was a teenager.

Taking down the old band posters and mathlete medals hasn’t been high on my priority list. Now they seem like silly things to worry about, but once upon a time, they were the things that made up my whole world.

I’ve just dozed off when a shrill sound startles me back awake.

I sit up with a gasp, and it takes me a bleary minute to realize that it’s my phone.

I pick up the brick of a flip phone that I affectionately call “Old Reliable” and glance at the screen.

My heart stops abruptly when I see the three dollar signs on the caller ID, but I force myself to answer. “Hello?”

“Hello, Ms. Carmichael?” a saccharine voice asks. Like she doesn’t know very well who this is. Like she doesn’t have my phone number memorized by now. “This is Rebecca Hill from Sunny Shores Retirement Village.”

“Rebecca, hi, how are you?” I reply, trying not to sound like her call almost ended my life.

And also like that ridiculous name doesn’t make me want to snort every time I hear it.

I tried to keep Nan at home after her stroke, even dropping out of college my freshman year to take care of her.

Still, by the time she broke her hip, I had to admit that she needed more care than I could give her at home.

Sunny Shores was the best nursing home I could afford.

“I’m great, thank you for asking,” she chirps. She never bothers to ask me back, which is likely for the best. Who knows what might come out of my mouth? “I just wanted to check in. It seems that you were a little short on this month’s payment for Darla.”

Just like last month, and the month before that… “I get paid Friday,” I tell her, the script well-rehearsed at this point. “I can send the remainder of the balance then.”

“I understand,” Rebecca soothes in her best customer service voice. “But I do need to let you know that there will be a late fee.”

I grit my teeth. Normally, I try to be even-keeled.

Pleasant and patient, not one to rock the boat or draw any negative attention.

But today, I’m just tired and over it. “I know, Rebecca,” I snip.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, I pay the late fee almost every month. You’ll get your money when I have it.”

There’s a long pause, and I try to dredge up some kind of guilt or embarrassment for my behavior. But honestly, I don’t really feel much of anything. I can’t remember feeling much of anything for a very long time. “Ms. Carmichael,” Rebecca says, then hesitates. “Anna.”

My ears perk up with a vague shadow of curiosity. Rebecca has never called me by my first name before, hiding behind a shield of formality and fake respect. “Yes?”

Still, she’s silent for so long that I pull the phone away from my ear to check that the call hasn’t disconnected. I hear her voice rattle through the speaker and press it back to my ear just in time to hear her say the word “unorthodox.”

“Sorry, what’s unorthodox?” I ask, trying to catch up.

She huffs, the most unprofessional sound I’ve heard from her in the dozen phone conversations we’ve shared. “What I’m about to offer. I know it’s unorthodox, but there is a… benefactor.”

“A benefactor,” I echo, confused. I know what the word means, I guess, but I’m not sure how it fits into this conversation.

“A rich man,” she clarifies, “who helps people struggling to make ends meet. People like you.”

Gee, thanks, I think wryly, but I manage to keep it in my head. “Why would this rich man want to help me?”

“It wouldn’t be for free. He’s looking for someone to do a job for him. His last employee just quit.”

My eyes narrow suspiciously. “What kind of job?”

I swear to God, if this girl is trying to set me up with a pimp or a sugar daddy…

“Nothing untoward,” she promises me dryly. “But it would more than pay for Darla’s bills each month.”

“Give me a number,” I challenge, and when she does, I have to catch myself before I topple out of bed. That’s more than I make with all three of my jobs combined. A lot more. “To do what ?” I sputter, my mind again conjuring up a room that looks like something out of 50 Shades of Grey .

“First, are you interested?”

“Rebecca,” I growl through gritted teeth. “How can I know unless you tell me what I’ll be doing?”

She sighs. “All I know is that he has a collection of rare animals. He needs someone to take care of them.”

“Rare as in…” I hesitate, not wanting to put the word illegal out there .

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I’ve never seen them. All I know is that anytime he needs someone to take the previous caretaker’s place, he calls Mr. Drennan—that’s my boss—and Mr. Drennan tells me to offer the job to the right person.”

“The right person being… desperate?” I offer cheekily.

“Motivated,” she corrects. “And young and fit. I remember you from when you moved Darla into the facility.”

I don’t know that I would call my skinny body with its matchstick arms ‘fit,’ but I can certainly lift heavy trash bins into the dumpster and walk five miles with a herd of hellhound poodles. “How often do you find yourself needing to recruit someone to fill this position?”

She hums thoughtfully. “Maybe… every six months?”

“That’s some high turnover,” I point out. “Do you know why they left?”

“Maybe they weren’t motivated enough,” she quips.

“Rebecca…” I rub my bleary eyes with a sigh. “This is a very generous offer. Too generous, honestly. What kind of animals could warrant that kind of pay?”

“Does it matter?” she retorts. “For that kind of money, it could be a tank full of sharks.”

She’s not wrong. Still, I did just recently apply for a job as a vet tech at the only practice in the city that told me I could qualify without starting as an assistant.

I could consolidate my hours and work two jobs instead of three.

Granted, that job doesn’t pay this well, but it’s also significantly less shady.

“Can I think about it and call you back?”

“Sure, but don’t wait too long. I’m supposed to offer it to someone else if you don’t want it. My number is—”

“Trust me, Rebecca, I have your phone number,” I interrupt dryly.

“Suit yourself,” she replies. “Talk soon either way.”

As I hang up and give my phone a bemused look, it dawns on me that she means I’ll either call her back about the job… or she’ll call me about another late fee.

* * *

The clatter and bang of falling plates is loud even in the crowded diner, and I cringe down at the mess of food scraps and glass shards littering the kitschy black-and-white tile.

Meanwhile, the customers at nearby tables go quiet, and dozens of eyes fall on me.

I duck down to start tidying my mess while internally berating myself.

It’s not the first time I’ve broken glassware at Chucky’s Diner. I am, after all, a terrible klutz. Ask anyone. But it is the first time I’ve broken plates when the eponymous Chucky himself is here. He’s not here often, but when he is, he tends to have a short fuse.

“Anna!” Sure enough, here comes my irate boss, his round face and balding scalp red with anger. “What the hell happened?!”

“Sorry, sir,” I mumble, feeling my face blanch and redden in quick succession. It feels like a serious grudge match—embarrassment versus horror. Who will win? “It was an accident. I’ll clean it up.”

“You’ve been distracted all shift,” Chucky huffs, hands on his hips.

And I can’t even defend myself because he’s right.

I’m supposed to hear about the vet tech job today, and I’ve been focused on my cell phone.

Chucky demands that we leave our phones on silent, and I was worried I’d miss the call.

It was the sensation of my phone vibrating in my pocket that startled me into dropping the laden tray in the first place.

“Sorry,” I say again, blinking back the tears that flood in. The last thing I need to do is cry in front of him. It would probably only make him angrier.

Though apparently, he can’t get much angrier. “You’re about to be real sorry. You’re fired. Clean that shit up and go.”

I twitch at his words and nick my finger on a sharp bit of glass. The pain barely registers. All I can do is gape up at him and stammer, “W-what?”

“You heard me. You’re fired. Get out.”

Slowly, I turn my head to look up at my coworker Barb. She winces but offers no support, her eyes flicking from Chucky to me and away. I can’t even blame her for not wanting to face Chucky’s wrath.

Slowly, I push to my feet, feeling again like I’m old beyond my years. Without a word, I tug off my apron, toss it on the counter, and walk toward the door.

“Hey!” Chucky yells after me. “What didn’t you understand about ‘clean that shit up?’”

I barely hear him, too numb to process the words. I just keep hearing the words ‘you’re fired’ over and over again.

Outside, I duck around the corner of the building to a side alley and plant my back against the grimy brick wall.

A tear escapes, but I dash it away impatiently.

It was a shock, sure, and I’ve never been fired before.

But crying over a waitress job I didn’t even like seems like a poor use of energy.

Especially when I might have something better on the horizon.

Suddenly, I remember what started this whole incident, and I hastily dig my phone out of my pocket. Why would I be upset about losing this job if I was going to quit anyway? And for a job doing something much closer to what I always dreamed of doing?

I’m so scrambled that I have to listen to the voicemail twice before the words “decided to go a different direction” finally register. After the message ends, I stare dumbly down at Old Reliable while static fills my brain.

Not only did I not get the job, but I just lost a significant chunk of income.

I was barely scraping by as it was. Even if it only takes me a couple of weeks to find a new job—which will be a feat in and of itself with the way my shifts are stacked like a losing game of Tetris—I’m going to end up way behind on Nan’s bills.

Where can I cut back? Food? I’m already on a nearly exclusive diet of ramen and off-brand peanut butter.

There’s just no more fat to cut from my life.

Suddenly, Rebecca’s words come back to me. “For that money, it could be a tank full of sharks.” Appropriate, since my belly feels like it’s full of vicious predators.

Without conscious thought, I thumb through my recent calls to the familiar three dollar signs. Before I can talk myself out of it, I send the call.

“Anna,” Rebecca answers in her usual chipper voice. “I was running out of hope. I was about to offer the job to someone else.”

“Don’t bother. I’m interested. What’s the next step?”