Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Before I could say anything, the two of them backed away, Tamsin wiggling her fingers in a little wave. Then they strolled off down the hallway.
My hands shook a little as I pushed away from the wall and straightened my cardigan.
I had to get out in front of this. One look at that pamphlet, and Ms. Crenshaw would terminate my employment herself while the rest of the board watched.
But maybe…maybe I could implicate Sunil and Tamsin.
All I needed was twenty minutes. I could run down to Supplies and Procurement, grab something incriminating from the same ritual I’d used to summon Sukariel, and hide it in Sunil’s desk.
Then I could accuse them of trying to frame me.
It was a desperate gamble, but it might work.
Mind spinning, I hurried to Ms. Crenshaw’s office on wobbly legs. “Good morning, ma’am,” I greeted her breathlessly. “I got here as quickly as I could, and I’m ready to help in any way I can.”
Glancing up from her phone, Ms. Crenshaw studied me expressionlessly. The windows behind her looked out across the still waters of a dark lake, wreathed in mist. “Ready to help?” she repeated.
“Yes, ma’am. You needed me here ASAP, your text said.”
“I needed my coffee here ASAP.”
I hesitated, nonplussed. “Oh. Of course. I’ll go right now.”
“There’s no time for that,” she said with a hint of irritation. “The executive board is meeting in”—she checked the slim watch encircling her wrist—“ten minutes.”
I wouldn’t have time to frame Sunil and Tamsin after all. “Of course, ma’am,” I mumbled, trying not to tremble visibly. Working moisture back into my mouth, I then asked, “Why is the board meeting on a Saturday?”
“Recent events require an urgent response,” she replied cryptically.
Her phone dinged quietly and she looked down at its screen.
“Management is working overtime to redirect global attention from what is happening in New York, but Their efforts can only go so far. If we do not solve our own problem, and soon, They will do so for us. And believe me when I say that none of us want that.”
I swallowed.
Ms. Crenshaw checked her watch again and then stood. “Let’s go.” Helplessly, I was swept along in her wake as she strode purposefully out to the hallway, her three-inch heels tapping out an intimidating rhythm as she scattered interns and acolytes before her.
The executive boardroom on the thirteenth floor was hell on earth, literally.
Thanks to sorcery well beyond my comprehension, the long rectangular space sat in one of the more accessible dimensions ruled by the Lords of Sin and Vice.
Crossing the threshold for the first time was a daunting experience, though nothing changed that I could sense.
The room was as blandly corporate in its aesthetics as anything else I’d seen in the building, furnished primarily by an imposing table made of black stone that had been polished to a mirrorlike sheen.
It was the view, however, that really brought home the fact that we weren’t in Midtown anymore.
One wall was made entirely of glass, and beyond it stretched a blasted and barren landscape of shattered rock beneath an angry, bloodred sky.
A few stunted trees clawed at the air with skeletal branches, surrounded by uneven ground riddled with cracks that emitted bursts of yellowish steam.
Gaunt horrors flapped ponderously through the air on leathery wings while, in the near distance, a mob of naked people was herded along by gray-skinned demons wielding crooked spears of blackened iron.
Staring out at the grotesque scene, I followed Ms. Crenshaw to the head of the table.
Waiting there was a single imposing chair upholstered in black leather, and as she sank into it she waved me to a smaller chair that sat behind her, back against the off-white wall.
Mr. Samuels and Ms. Yamada were already seated to either side of her, their assistants stationed behind them.
Scarred features expressionless, Deborah honed a wicked-looking knife, its blade rasping slowly against the stone in her other hand.
Opposite her, Lydia didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands in the absence of obvious blood spatter.
She kept touching her skirt and hair and blouse as if surprised to find them clean.
In front of me, Ms. Crenshaw tapped her silver fountain pen against the leather-bound notebook in front of her and stared out the windows at the hellish view.
An intern with a wispy, adolescent mustache tried to give me a cup of coffee, but I waved him away absently and he moved on.
I heard Deborah ask him if the beans were fair trade or if they’d been gathered by the broken hands of the company’s vanquished foes, and the intern stood there, blinking, while two more circulated through the boardroom, offering drinks and pastries with their usual smiling, dead-eyed efficiency.
The room filled as people trickled in and took their seats.
My chest tightened when Sunil and Tamsin appeared, but rather than look at them, I studied everyone else.
There were thirteen chairs around the table, twelve of them intended for the individuals who ran the New York office of Dark Enterprises.
Down both sides sat the directors of each department in the building: Janitorial Services, Security, Supplies and Procurement, Personnel, Transportation, Human Resources, Client Services, Research and Development, Analysis and Logistics, the Repository, and Investor Relations.
The single remaining chair lurked at the far end of the table from Ms. Crenshaw, an ominous focal point reserved, I assumed, for Management whenever They dropped by.
Sunil had taken a chair behind an unfamiliar Black man in his forties, balding and bearded and smiling blankly at nothing.
This was Ms. Kettering’s replacement, I realized.
Had he been a middle manager promoted to the board, or did the company have a storage locker filled with spare executives?
Sunil noticed me looking and leaned over to Tamsin, seated next to him, whispering to her while casting glances in my direction.
How could I stop them from exposing what I’d done?
At the far end of the room, the polished walnut door gently closed by itself and the soft sound of murmured conversations ceased.
All eyes turned to the CEO. “Thank you for coming in on a Saturday,” Ms. Crenshaw said crisply as she looked around the room.
“You are all aware of the events unfolding outside this building. New York is experiencing a series of incursions from entities unknown. Despite repeated attempts to divine the nature of these entities, we have remained in the dark—and lost a significant portion of our workforce in Analysis and Logistics, I should add.” She nodded to a little man seated halfway down the table whose gaze was curiously unfocused.
That was Mr. Ramirez, I assumed, who oversaw the small army of diviners, oracles, and scryers through which Dark Enterprises acquired much of its information.
He tilted his head as if listening to something but otherwise continued staring into the middle distance.
No one seemed particularly discomfited by mention of the deaths down on the ninth floor.
Burnout in A&L was generally pretty high—your average oracle only had three or four years at most before their mind collapsed under the weight of perceiving an endless series of probabilities.
After that, the company released them back into the wild where they became the people shouting at themselves on the sidewalk.
“Early this morning, however, two of our oracles received portents so powerful that they suffered irreversible brain damage.” A small stir went through those gathered around the table.
“Before they became unable to communicate, both prophesied a terrible doom falling across the world and the end of everything.”
Silence fell. Outside the windows, in Hell, I could see people screaming as the ground ripped asunder with a great gout of steam and swallowed those who tried to flee.
“ ‘The end of everything,’ ” repeated a handsome white man with slicked-back hair. From the silk dress shirt, pricey cuff links, and three phones arrayed in front of him on the table, I guessed that this was Mr. Mancini, director of Client Services. “What does that mean?”
“I am merely reporting what the oracles foresaw,” Ms. Crenshaw responded calmly.
Mr. Samuels shifted in his chair as he looked down the table at Mr. Mancini.
“Why our people finally received these portents is not clear, though it may have something to do with the celestial that appeared last night. We don’t know why it arrived, nor why it did so alone, but its extinguishment may have disrupted reality to such an extent that we were able to perceive something at last.”
“And we do not know why the celestial appeared?” That was Ms. Obiakaeze, the director of Transportation, whose colorful printed dress and bright red gele wrapped around her hair made the rest of us look drab by comparison.
Behind her, Tamsin shot me a faint smirk and then deliberately raised her hand.
“We do not,” Ms. Crenshaw replied. “It appeared to be battling something, however, before it died.” If she noticed Tamsin, she gave no sign of it.
Ms. Obiakaeze shook her head slowly. “If Heaven is involving itself, things will get messy. The city could be destroyed if an entire legion appears.”
Now Sunil raised his hand as well, looking eagerly from one board member to another as he prepared to sell me out. My heart rate accelerated so fiercely that black spots swam in front of my eyes.
A skinny old man in a tweed jacket cleared his throat and leaned forward.
“A number of artifacts in the Repository have started to respond to whatever is happening,” Mr. Venables informed us all in his quavery voice.
“One of my junior curators now has a gauntlet of unknown provenance grafted to her arm and has been shouting in ancient Aramaic while throwing bolts of lightning. Fascinating, though also quite hazardous.” Behind him, his assistant, Jianguo, rolled his eyes and went back to scrolling through his phone.
I closed my mouth, slowly, and hoped that Lex was okay.
“Let’s relocate the more powerful items to another plane of existence while we assess the situation,” Ms. Crenshaw instructed, to which Mr. Venables nodded in acquiescence.
The overhead lights flickered, and she glanced upward as she continued speaking.
“Over the past three days, we have seen an exponential rise in the rate of disappearances throughout the city. I presume you all noticed the measures we have taken to increase our protections here in the building, but even that will only buy us a little time against whatever is out there.” She paused before turning her attention to Sunil and Tamsin, both of whom still had their hands up.
“You have something to add?” she inquired coolly.
Sunil’s mouth opened, a triumphant gaze locked on me.
Abruptly, the lights flickered again and then failed altogether.
For the space of several heartbeats, the only light in the room was the crepuscular, bloody glow of the infernal skies on the other side of the glass wall.
When the lights blinked back to life with a low hum, their pallid illumination revealed a familiar figure seated at the far end of the table in the only remaining chair, spidery fingers steepled in front of its red suit, inky darkness coiling and pulsing above the starched collar of its pristine shirt.
My heart stopped beating as I stared down the length of the table at the Abomination. The end of the world had arrived, and it was going to devour us all.