Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The inner lobby of Christopher Nystrom’s office is worse than the downstairs lobby. Worse here, meaning expensive and like a place Mateo should be shot for occupying.
The walls are covered in ugly abstract art that either took someone ten minutes or ten years to make.
A literal golden door bars them from accessing the office beyond.
The far side of the room houses a plastic-lipped receptionist baked into the wall in a to-go-style window.
His orange-tan face gives Mateo a head-to-toe look, purses his lips to say something passive aggressive—for sure—but then catches sight of Topher.
That smile stretches back into place. Despite Topher’s tumbled bedhead and mouse-on-uppers energy, he’s got some inherent money-scent this man is sensitive to, and they proceed to have a polite conversation.
“Conference room three,” Plastic-Lips Man says before a soft chime sounds. Inexplicable. Until the golden doors start to swing open.
They’ve been deemed worthy.
Behind the door is aggressively boring. Rows of cubicles form an endless grid.
The edges of the room are lined with glass-enclosed offices with wall-to-ceiling windows letting in the too-bright day.
Everything’s transparent. You couldn’t scratch your nose without it being visible from seventeen different seats.
Absolute hell. It’s the first time in his life Mateo’s grateful for the dark, burnt-hair-smelling back room at work.
Conference room three sits tucked in a far corner—or as tucked as you can be with an unimpeded view of the world around you.
A massive table takes up most of it and reflects the sun painfully.
Mateo walks to the window, taking in the insane view.
There’s water all around Seattle, but this is sparkly California water.
“There’s drinks and food and stuff,” Topher says, flitting about the room, trying to get an angle all around the office, presumably to spot his father.
“Where?” Ophelia asks because she can always be counted on when free is involved.
Topher seems to have forgotten that he spoke, pressed to a glass corner on tiptoes with his head on swivel. “Where?” he repeats, diverting his attention back to them in confusion.
“Where’s the drinks and food and stuff?” Ophelia drops into the seat at the head of the table, because of course she would.
“Oh, sorry. Sorry.” Topher throws one more forsaken look toward the glass wall before focusing. “I’ll go get … or I’ll find someone … or …” He’s locked in an infinite loop of existential indecision, seesawing between the door and the lone phone at the center of the table.
A towering man in a relentlessly navy but well-tailored suit stomps up to the conference door.
He’s in his fifties or sixties and composed of a series of tightly stacked cubes.
Square head, broad chest, graying hair in a nothing style that is also a square.
No particular point of interest to call out, so he probably loves Ralph Lauren’s fall catalog.
In size alone, it’s hard to conceive of his relation to Topher.
Something on Mateo’s face alerts Topher, and his loop is broken as he turns and wilts.
The guy—Christopher Nystrom Sr., for sure—points at Topher and then hooks a thumb to the left. He doesn’t perceive Mateo or Ophelia, only gives Topher the constipated expression of someone who’s been waiting hours even though they’re early for his four-hour window.
Topher whirls back to them, hands held up …
as if either of them has made a move to follow and he needs to stop them.
“I’ll be right back. I didn’t get to explain anything.
Or, I mean, I didn’t want to on the phone.
And I probably need to explain some things.
I mean, I don’t think he’ll be very receptive if he doesn’t know what’s going on. ”
“It’s okay,” Mateo soothes, and Topher flits out of the room, carefully closing the door behind him so it doesn’t so much as click.
The dad is already gone. He hadn’t waited for Topher’s brief words to them, so Topher has to hurry after him.
During Topher’s pitiful work shift, Mateo had thought the power walking was a weird Topher quirk.
Now he thinks it has to do with keeping up with his jerk dad.
“He’s a peach,” Ophelia says.
“Seems really supportive too.” Mateo takes a seat, running his tongue along his sharp teeth. Demon doesn’t like the asshole dad much either. “Did you see what happened in the car?”
“The weird swirl of stuff on Topher exploded out right before the truck fishtailed,” Ophelia says, her gaze still following Topher. “Then it slowly came back.”
They’d been pretty sure about the curse, but now they’re for-sure-for-sure that it’s real.
“Get anything off the dad?”
“Not him specifically.” Ophelia rummages in her purse, extracting a cherry lip balm and applying it over red- painted lips before continuing.
“There’s a lot of weird energy around here.
I’m not sure if he’s the one practicing or it’s just someone else in this office.
Or multiple people. There’s too much energy for no magic to be happening, but not enough to pin it on one person.
Witches usually look like witches. Unless they know how to hide it.
” She gestures at Mateo, presently sporting the very ward she’s talking about to mask his demon stank.
“Oh shit. Someone’s been doing magic but also trying to clean it up,” Mateo whispers, examining the cubicles outside the conference room.
No one’s paying them any attention. Why would they?
If the curser were the too-pink guy in the ill-fitting DKNY button-up in the closest cubicle, he’d have no reason to think the pair of random people left to rot in a glass box were out to get him.
A knock on the glass directs their attention to the door.
It’s neither of the Nystroms. It’s a jacquard Alexander McQueen suit.
Black on black, so the iconic logo pattern is subtle and only visible when it catches the light.
Matching jacket and pants Mateo would murder a bus full of children going to a Sad Kids Who’ve Never Known Joy charity party to wear.
Beneath is a crisp white button-up. A double monk strap pair of Jimmy Choo’s with a rounded toe finish the look.
Flawless.
There’s also a guy in all that, but the wearer is an afterthought.
Mateo’s never experienced someone so well dressed.
Well dressed and bald. But in a stylish way.
Like it’s a choice and not an outcome of genetics.
Maybe both. He’s working it either way. He’s also staring at Mateo, waggling his fingers in greeting, and opening the door.
“Hey. Sorry to interrupt. Are you guys waiting on someone?”
“Your outfit is amazing,” Mateo says because it has to be said. He can’t think past it.
Well-dressed man smiles sharp lips, wielding a cupid’s bow that could cut metal.
It’s a good smile. Like he understands the soul-deep sincerity in Mateo’s words.
He’s gotta be early twenties too. All these wealthy guys his age should be pissing Mateo off, but this one gets a pass because he’s now the best human being Mateo’s ever seen.
“We’re waiting for Mr. Nystrom,” Ophelia says because she’s not being seduced by an outfit.
The guy’s artfully plucked eyebrow lifts. “Really?”
“We don’t seem the type?” Mateo says and is rewarded by that smile again and the guy stepping in, offering his hand. Which Mateo stands and shakes. “Mateo Borrero.”
“Ethan Robillard. New clients?”
“Mr. Nystrom Jr. is our client,” Ophelia says, surveying Ethan before introducing herself.
It’s a surprising level of interest. Nothing about Ethan lines up with the scattershot diagram of her tastes that Mateo’s worked out over the years.
She tends to like cutesy across all spectrums. Unless she’s seeing something in his aura—the thought he should have jumped to first.
“I’ve heard tales of drinks, food, and stuff,” she says, still angling for free things. Or a non-Nystrom-guided look around because she’s a genius.
Ethan seems amused. “We do indeed have drinks, food, and stuff. You’ve got time for a tour?” He asks Ophelia but then looks at Mateo.
“You tell us.” Mateo tilts his chin in the direction the Nystroms went. “Nystrom Sr. and Jr. went to chat. That an all-day affair?”
Ethan looks at his watch, one of those bulky things that represent the last stage of rich for any man, when they’ve run out of things they actually want to buy but recognize that the archaic devices hold power over olds. “Ten minutes until Nystrom the Senior’s in a meeting I’m also in.”
“How long will you be trapped in that?” Mateo asks.
“Scheduled for four hours,” Ethan answers readily. “Traps me till the end of the day.”
They’re being blown off by Topher’s dad. He never had a window to talk to them.
“We’d love a quick look around,” Mateo says.
With only ten minutes to spare, Ethan provides a very economical tour. The fancy-money-people office features a nap room, a chill room, and a room where one whole wall is expensive bottles of booze—where Ophelia wants to linger so Mateo gives her a we’re working look and she concedes.
On the main office drag, their tour guide indicates the boring old guys who can’t talk about anything but stock portfolios, the boring old guys who can’t talk about anything but tax write-offs, and a corner that holds a trio of younger guys who can’t talk about anything but sports ball of various forms. A whole floor full of people Mateo would rather fling himself into traffic than talk to, so it’s a real shock that Ethan seems so completely self-aware and funny about it.
They end up in a large kitchen-slash-cafeteria, a catered lunch still steaming in metal bins. Ophelia helps herself, a woman with no working definition of shame; she has two plates, and they both know that neither is for Mateo.