Assuring her this would be all the time I’d need, I returned to my desk. I had shut down my computer and was stowing my lunch things in my bag when Shandra returned. She was delighted I’d managed to complete the report.

  “Now, I’ll be able to get it in on time,” she said.

  Bitch. I had never turned in a report that would make her overdue. Her words made me wonder if any of our joint projects had been turned in late. They made me wonder if mistakes were all I’d been blamed for.

  The dragon hissed with annoyance, scooting out from under my chair and into my bag as I turned to go. It didn’t need to try and squeeze, but shrank itself to the size of a chihuahua and settled itself on top of my empty lunch box. When it was ready, it poked its head out the top of my bag and looked up at me.

  “Well, my report’s done,” I said, “so you won’t be late on my account.”

  As I picked up my handbag, I hesitated.

  “How about you?” I asked, softening my expression with concern. “Do you need any help finishing up? I could stay back—”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Shandra waved my offer aside. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  I pretended reluctance. “Well, if you’re sure…”

  Shandra flashed teeth and bright-eyed surety in my direction, placing her coffee to the left of her keyboard and settling herself into her chair. In spite of her attempt to look relaxed, her voice was tight with tension and her smile brittle.

  “It’s all good. I’ve got it under control.” She dismissed me by turning curtly toward her screen, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she typed in her password.

  I hovered as though undecided, then slung the bag over my shoulder and left the office. I didn’t need to look back to know Shandra was already saving my pristine calculations into her private folders. My guess was she’d have our report turned in, complete with ‘my’ incorrect figures, before she went home.

  The dragon sighed and rested its head on the edge of the bag, no longer annoyed. It knew what I was up to…and it approved. I was finally defending myself. My claws might be different, but they were just as sharp. I hushed it as I caught the bus.

  Claws, indeed. If the dragon wanted to see claws, it should take a look at Shandra. Shandra had claws.

  The dragon made a raspberry noise and the closest passengers looked around. I looked over my shoulder, pretending someone else had made the noise. At the same time, I pushed the dragon’s head below the top of the bag.

  Other people could hear it? The dragon was just as surprised as I was.

  We rode the rest of the way to our stop in silence, the dragon careful to keep its head down. Who knows what other people would do if they saw it?

  The dragon said it would eat them all. I told it that such an action was inappropriate. It thought about another raspberry, but looked at the passengers getting off at the stop with us and decided against it.

  I thought about sticking my tongue out at it. It raised its tail and gave me a mental picture of its butt. I started giggling as we walked toward home, and the bus pulled out behind us.

  I thought I wouldn’t sleep. I pruned the rose bushes, weeded the garden, and clipped the edges. I vacuumed the floors, scrubbed the bathroom, and did the ironing. The dragon watched all this activity with a kind of sleepy interest, the weight of its gaze settling over me like a blanket.

  As I was cooking supper, I realized I was being watched again. The thought worried me and I pulled the blinds, wondering if I’d locked the back door.

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  The dragon yawned, blinked its eyes, stretched out on its side, and the feeling of being watched disappeared.

  “You!” I snapped, and watched its eyes flash open again. This time when I felt its stare, I recognized it for what it was. “You nearly drove me insane.”

  The dragon smirked and yawned again, eyeing off my supper. I set the plate down beside it so we could share, and it let me run a wondering hand over the soft leather of its closely meshed scales. Once we’d eaten, I discovered I really could go to sleep after all.

  The office was buzzing when I arrived the next morning. It went deadly quiet when I came through the door. Shandra had obviously handed in her report.

  She met me at the desk, leaning forward to whisper, “The boss wants to see you in his office.”

  I looked at her, trying to look puzzled and concerned. When neither of these expressions would settle, I settled for worried. Worried was easy.

  I could do worried no problem because, while Shandra had obviously fallen for my trap, I had no assurances the plan would work. If the boss was mad enough, he could fire me without listening to what I had to say, and if he did that, I had lost it all.

  “Don’t worry.” Shandra had obviously taken my silence as fear, and my hesitation as justifiable terror. She placed a sympathetic hand on my shoulder and gave me a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure you’ll be all right.”

  I wanted to slap her right there and then, but I was too busy pinning the dragon to the bottom of my handbag so it didn’t leap out and claw off her treacherous face.

  I knew I was in trouble before I went into the office, just how deep the trouble was I didn’t know until I closed the door behind me.

  “Don’t bother taking a seat,” the manager said. He sounded tired. “Your fired.”

  I stood there and stared at him for a long minute.

  “Effective immediately,” he added.

  When I continued to stand there and say nothing, he tapped the printed report sitting on his desk.

  “This time Shandra said she hadn’t changed a thing. Your work is riddled with mistakes. If we’d based any sort of financial planning on it, we’d have been sunk. “

  When I remained silent, he continued.

  “It’s not the sort of mistake I can hide or overlook. You’ll have to go.”

  “That’s not my report,” I said.

  He drew a breath, stopped, looked at the report beneath his hand, looked up at me.

  “It is your report,” he said. “Shandra dropped it off with hers, like she usually does.”

  His tone implied I was somehow negligent, that Shandra’s delivery of my files was yet another way she’d been covering for me.

  “My report,” I told him, “is at the bottom of your in-tray. I dropped it off yesterday afternoon while Shandra was on a coffee break.”

  The manager gave me a sharp glance, then reached for his in-tray. He found my report where I’d said it would be, and sat back to read it. He did not invite me to sit.

  I sat anyway, watching as he worked through it from cover to cover. He didn’t make it to the bottom of the first page before picking up the one Shandra had delivered. Glancing back and forth between them, he started reading once more. Not wanting to disturb him, I sat very still. Ten minutes passed in perfect silence, and then he looked up.

  “What are you trying to do?” he asked. “Bankrupt us all?”

  I did not let his question shake me. I shook my head.

  “No, but I believe Shandra has not been submitting the reports I’ve been giving her.”

  “You’ve been giving her your reports?”

  I sighed and felt myself blush red as a beet.

  “A few weeks ago, I was feeling down and not very sure of myself. Shandra offered to help me. I thought she was a friend.”

  To my horror, I felt tears prickling at the corners of my eyes. “I trusted her. She wanted to put our reports in together. She said it would save you time.”

  I stopped, gulped down the urge to cry, forced my emotions under control. The manager was staring at me, doubt in his eyes.

  “I emailed the report to your secretary, so you’d have a time-stamped version from my email address,” I said, “and I’m sure the techs can trace what happened on both our machines after it was sent.”

  “Tracey,” he called. “Can you come in here, please?”

  The secretary appeared, looked embarrassed when she saw me sitting in the office. She looked like she wanted to say something to me, but the manager didn’t give her a chance.

  “Did you receive an email from Claire, yesterday afternoon?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Could you forward it to me, please?”

  “I’ll do it now.”

  Tracey left, and I waited. The manager looked expectantly at his computer screen until it chimed to signal an incoming email. While he opened it and read it, I waited some more. After a moment, he raised his head and looked at me.

  “I’d like you to wait in Ms. Smiley’s office, Claire. I’ll have Tracey take you. I trust you can log in from there?” When I nodded an affirmative, he summoned his secretary once more. “Tracey, can you please set Claire up in Ms. Smiley’s office?”

  Tracey cast me a curious look, but responded only to her boss’s request.

  “Yes, sir.” Turning to me, she said. “If you’d follow me, please?”

  Her tone was cool, but not unfriendly. Her body language said she wasn’t sure how to approach me, that my place on the food chain wasn’t yet clear. I was glad I wasn’t the only one feeling a little confused.

  As we were leaving the office, the manager added one more request. “When Claire is settled, can you ask Shandra to come and see me?”