Chapter Eight
Eight
I’ll be honest—I was left with some misgivings. It definitely seemed like I’d unleashed a supernatural horror on an unsuspecting world, and that probably wasn’t great.
With a shudder, the elevator started moving again.
I was spattered with blood, I realized as my shoes squelched against the sticky floor.
Looking down, I spotted the metallic disc and bent to retrieve it, rubbing a thumb across the tiny sigils that spiraled across its surface.
Before I could do more than that, the elevator stopped at the fourth floor and the doors rolled open.
Standing there was a small gaggle of employees from Personnel, their faces adopting identical expressions of surprise as they took in the blood splashed liberally across the elevator and the viscous, stinking oil smeared on my skin.
I pocketed the disc. “Mondays,” I said ruefully. “Am I right?”
They all laughed and nodded in commiseration as I exited the elevator, then crowded on, doing their best to avoid the worst of the blood.
As messes went at Dark Enterprises, it wasn’t bad.
Last month an intern had exploded all over the lobby, forcing us to slip and slide our way to the revolving doors at the end of the day.
The five people chattered to one another as the doors rolled closed, and I went looking for a bathroom where I could wash my face and wipe down my shoes.
Once I was presentable again, I delivered the crumpled envelope to the cheerful young woman in charge of disappearing unwanted employees before backtracking to the elevators.
I was absurdly relieved when the other, non-blood-spattered elevator arrived, and as I rode it back up to thirteen, I gave myself a little pep talk.
Everything is fine, I thought firmly. That Thing is gone, and it left your internal organs where they’re supposed to be.
That’s a big win. Sure, yes, it said it was going to devour the world, but that’s probably just a figure of speech.
There’s nothing to worry about and certainly no reason to panic.
Back at my desk outside Ms. Crenshaw’s office, I started sorting through her emails, marking as urgent those that required her immediate attention. It wasn’t even noon yet, but it felt like my first day as an executive assistant had been roughly twenty-eight hours long at this point.
Some indeterminate time later, an imposing white woman built like a pro athlete stalked into the waiting room. She wore the all-black suit and radio earpiece of our Security teams, and as she made a determined beeline for the open door to Ms. Crenshaw’s office, I smiled and asked, “Can I help you?”
She didn’t so much as glance at me as she strode past my desk. Thinking that I should at least make a nominal attempt to stop her from walking in on my boss, I rose to my feet and hastened after her. “Excuse me!” I called.
Paying me no mind whatsoever, the woman came to a halt in front of Ms. Crenshaw’s desk and announced, “We have a situation, ma’am.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Crenshaw,” I added as I hovered helplessly in the doorway.
Seated behind her desk, Ms. Crenshaw looked first at me and then lifted an inquiring eyebrow at the other woman. “A situation, Chief?”
“Five employees have gone missing from the building, ma’am.” The security chief’s voice was raspy, as if she smoked three packs a day. “More specifically, they entered an elevator on the fourth floor and disappeared before they reached the cafeteria.”
A chill swept over me as I listened.
“I see.” Ms. Crenshaw folded her hands together on her desk. “Do we know what happened to them?”
“Not yet, ma’am, no. The elevator was covered in blood, but far less than we’d expect to see if they’d been attacked. There’s no trace of them at all. They’re simply gone.”
“Haunts?” my boss suggested. “Or perhaps something happened while they were passing the eighth floor.” Home to Research and Development, the eighth floor routinely experienced dimensional implosions, catastrophic disintegrations, and widespread loss of life.
The only people who felt comfortable going anywhere near it were the weirdos who worked there.
The chief nodded curtly. “We’re investigating every possibility, but so far, we’ve drawn a blank. I wanted to inform you personally, though, in case you decide to institute specific security measures.”
Ms. Crenshaw considered this before saying, “Until we know more, I don’t see a need for a stringent response. Let’s monitor that particular elevator, however, in case it happens again.”
“Very well, ma’am.” The chief paused. “Oh, one more thing. Analysis and Logistics has detected traces of the Seraphic Conclave here in Manhattan.”
Ms. Crenshaw’s lip curled. “I’m not surprised. There are rats everywhere in this city.”
“One of their agents has been traced to Midtown, ma’am.”
A long, chilly silence descended. “That is more concerning,” my boss said at last. “And should not have been allowed to happen.”
The other woman shifted her feet on the pale carpet. “I’ll make sure this agent of the Conclave keeps their distance. Unless you want me to take more aggressive steps?”
“No. If we kill one of them, a dozen more will appear. Just make sure they leave our people alone.”
Giving Ms. Crenshaw a nod, the chief turned on her heel and paused when she found me standing between her and the door. Hastily stepping aside, I continued to hover ineffectually as she left the room.
“In the future, Colin, try not to let people barge in here.” Ms. Crenshaw’s voice was cool as she turned her dark eyes on me.
“Of course,” I said quickly, though I had no idea how I could have stopped that woman. She probably would have broken me in half if I’d tried. “Sorry.” Pausing for a moment, I added casually, “So, uh, these missing employees…”
“You know as well as I do that we lose people all the time.”
Swallowing, I nodded. It was certainly true that we experienced more turnover than your average company, what with all the destructive magicks and sadistic entities we dealt with on a daily basis.
Maybe those five people had disappeared for a reason that had nothing to do with the Thing I’d freed.
Yeah, that was it. “And the Seraphic Conclave?”
“An archaic collection of sanctimonious busybodies,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Their history stretches back a very long way. They see it as their sacred obligation to oppose the work we do, though they’re little more than hypocritical thugs.”
I pondered this in silence before asking, “Why are they hypocritical?”
Ms. Crenshaw leaned forward and picked up her phone from the desk.
“Because they wield the same magicks we do. They are descended from traitors and fools who forgot their obligations and decided instead to use stolen secrets for their own self-righteous ends.” She unlocked her phone and tapped rapidly on its screen.
“Examine every purge and witch hunt closely enough, and you will find the Conclave at the root of it.”
“And it’s bad that they’re hanging around Midtown?”
She glanced up at me. “I’d rather not see our employees murdered by a crazed idealist. It would be bad for our quotas. Now then. I’d like a Cobb salad from Capital Grille. Oh, and my meeting in Client Services is back on at two o’clock, so you’ll have to adjust my calendar again.”
Blinking at the abrupt change of topic, I scurried off to order her lunch and then undo all my hard work on her calendar.
For the rest of the afternoon, though, when I wasn’t imagining magic-wielding assassins lurking in Midtown, I couldn’t help wondering if my promotion might have, just possibly, killed several people.
I was still thinking about those employees from Personnel as I walked to the subway at the end of my first day as an executive assistant.
Sorry, I offered up silently, in case any of them were listening.
Had they been facing early retirement, I told myself, they probably would have made the same choices I had, but I still felt kind of bad about the way things had gone down.
Working at Dark Enterprises, it’s easy to become blasé about the foibles and peccadillos of the unnatural beings with whom we do business—this one only wants the blood of consecrated virgins in its coffee, that one keeps asking to “borrow” an intern—but it was hard to be blasé about something that tells you it’s going to devour the world.
Perhaps, though, things weren’t as bad as they looked.
Crammed into a seat on the train, I tried to convince myself that there had been some kind of misunderstanding.
When it said, “I’m going to devour your world,” maybe it was really trying to say, “I’m going to take the next five people who get on this elevator and then go away forever, fully satisfied. ”
That seemed unlikely, I finally admitted. Far more likely was the possibility that those five people had been nothing more than an amuse-bouche for the coiling, hungry shadows I’d unbound, a little something to whet the appetite before the main course.
Any way you sliced it, this looked bad.
Amira was already home when I entered our apartment and closed the door behind me. “Hey,” she greeted me as she popped her head out of the kitchen. “How was the first day in your new position?”
“Um. Okay, I guess.” Pulling the strap of my messenger bag over my head, I tossed it onto the sofa.
“Are you sure?” she asked shrewdly as she emerged from the kitchen holding a glass of water. “You don’t sound very sure.”
“I think I made a mistake.”
“Uh-oh. Was it bad?”
I’m going to devour your world now. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Yeah, it was.”
Sliding her arm around my waist, she pressed herself against my side. “Don’t worry about it. There was bound to be a learning curve, right? You’ll get the hang of things soon.”