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Coffee maker - 800 dollars. That’s nearly the entire budget for the break room. Weekly donuts and birthday treats were supposed to come out of that budget. I dropped the expense report onto my spacious, and always tidy, desk. The ancient, though not as ancient as me, wood gleamed. I did not tolerate messes in my space. Other people could allow chaos where they lived but I would not.
I took the stairs to the breackroom. Voices of excited staff echoing up.
“It does espresso and cappuccino.” “And iced coffee!”
The smell of coffee soothed some of my irritation. I loved coffee almost as much as I loved blood. And I only needed one of those things. Bless the Turkish traders that brought it to Europe. I slipped into the break room silently.
“Ohh, is that for lattes?” “And macha!”
Beyond the exuberant crowd was the machine. The complex network of tubes connected to a plastic base covered in arcane runes and menu items looked like a rejected horror movie prop.
“It can even do fairy delight!” Deb from accounting pressed a button. The machine hummed, tubes bulged, and then with a fart of incandescent smoke and a smell like cotton candy, a cup and saucer appeared in front of the machine. The delicate tea-cup was filled with a shimmering and steaming liquid. When Deb took a drink her normally tan skin and dark hair started shifting through the rainbow.
Okay I can see where that is expensive. It’s not just a coffee maker, it’s making things out of thin air like…ohh what did they call it. Like a replicator from star-trek. That’s magic. Which considering this was a Fea owned research and design firm, it wasn’t really surprising. But it’s still not in the budget. Which means either it goes back or we all get in trouble.
“So this is what our entire budget for the year was spent on.” My voice cut through the chat, and the debate on who got to make something next. There weren’t many times being a vampire helped with an office job, but this was one. Very few creatures, human or otherwise, could continue to be so enthused when an old vampire let their annoyance be known. It’s like a mom voice but with a touch of magic. “And without the proper paper work.”
Debbie her drink behind her back. As if that would hide the fact she was currently a lovely shade of periwinkle. She does good work over in accounting so it can be forgiven that she’s being a bit silly. “Look, boss, we’ve all been working hard…”
Her voice trailed off under my stare. “Ms.Ryerson. I’m not your boss, that would be your supervisor, Yolanda. I’m in charge of expenses.”
Gwen, a witch from the research labs piped up. “Ms.Ryerson, we acquired it in a sale. If we had waited until proper paperwork was done it would have not been available at the truly fantastic discount we acquired it with.”
Either she’s going to be fired or get a promotion. I like it when someone stands up to me, and witches tend to be creative thinkers. I will check her personal file before making any real considerations. “And just how good of a sale was it?”
Gwen smiled slightly. “We paid less than twenty percent of the full price.”
I did the math quickly and blinked slowly. “It’s normally four thousand dollars?”
‘Yes,” Tony from Human Resources chimed in. This close to a full moon he was quite furry. “But it will save us money in the long term.”
“How?” If they were telling the truth, this was a truly expensive device. I honestly didn’t want to tell them to return it. While I had silenced Debbie, she had been right. We had all been working hard. They deserved something for their trouble. And I like being a mostly liked most of the time. Some of my kind treated humans and shorter lived para-humans terribly. Like their shortened life spans made them unimportant. But impermances was not the same as unimportant.
“Well, it includes all the supplies for one hundred years! No milk, coffee beans, cream, sugar or anything else.” Courtney’s veil moved as she spoke. The remnants of her death shroud still clung to her mostly skeletal form. She was from IT, had written several very informative e-mails about how to avoid phishing scams. “It was only supposed to be for fifty years but Gwen is a master negetiatear.
So Gwen should be in the estimating and ordering department perhaps. “That is indeed an accomplishment.”
“And it makes everything perfectly, Ms.Ryerson.” Tomas, one of the janitors added. He pressed a few buttons, and the machine’s tubes bulged and there was another opalescent cloud. The cloud cleared and revealed a tiny espresso cup, which looked comical in the janitors big hands. “Please, just try it Ms.Ryerson.”
I accepted the cup and took a sip. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to give a sigh of pleasure. Memories of Italy, of discovering coffee for the first time. Of a lover and painter I modelled for. “I assume, given that this is clearly a gnomish artifact there are no refunds.”
“None.” Gwen nodded. “If we tried we would only get the scrap price.”
“Then there is only one thing to do, next time President Kelenfey is in the office make him a dragon’s breath coffee.” I told them. I’ll find a way to balance the books. I want more this.