6. Quinn #2
My fingers fumbled, because apparently composure had decided it had done enough for the morning. Then the chain came free. As I removed the necklace, my skin suddenly felt naked. Swallowing, I laid it in his palm.
His fingers closed around the pendant, and some of the violence went out of his face, showing what was underneath.
Relief, maybe. Grief. Recognition so intense it bordered on pain.
He looked down at the coin in his hand.
Then, with a short breath that might have been a laugh in a less disciplined man, he said to James and Helena, “Congratulations. You’ve already resolved one fifth of my case.”
That got an actual smile out of Moira.
Mr. Virelli glanced at me once more. “Let us hope you prove to be equally efficient with the rest.”
I stood there, bare-necked, breathing a little too fast, while everyone else started moving again.
Marvin was gaping at me, a little shocked, a little awed.
Devon leaned in and whispered, “What the hell?”
Still looking at the dragon, I whispered back, “Professionally? I think I’m having a great day.”
James Payton’s office was larger than my entire apartment and somehow less personal than my toaster.
That was my first thought as I sat in one of the leather guest chairs, trying to look appropriately chastened while every cell in my body continued to dance.
The office had views. Cinematic, Manhattan-was-built-to-impress-you views.
The kind that made you understand why rich people became convinced God especially liked them.
The art on the walls was almost certainly expensive and even more certainly chosen by someone who billed by the hour for curation.
The desk was massive, dark wood polished to a mirror shine, and almost completely empty except for a laptop, a legal pad, and a crystal dish holding paper clips.
James Payton stood with both hands braced on the back of his chair, looking down at me as though trying to decide whether I was a liability, a prodigy, or a migraine that had passed the bar.
“What,” he said at last, with terrible calm, “possessed you?”
I folded my hands in my lap so I would not accidentally gesture too enthusiastically and make things worse. “I understand it was inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate?” he hissed.
“Yes, sir.” I kept my voice even. “I also understand why it looks reckless.”
Moira, posted against the bookcase with a legal pad in hand, looked down so quickly I knew she was hiding something. Helena Wallace sat near the window, one ankle crossed over the other, examining me as if I were a new species on Earth.
“I had a client,” James continued, “a very high-profile client, in the middle of his initial engagement with this firm, and you decided that was the appropriate moment to negotiate with him in the middle of the corridor.”
“He negotiated back,” I offered.
James closed his eyes briefly.
It was possible I wasn’t helping.
The thing was, I understood the nature of the problem.
I really did. It was about optics, protocol, seniority and chain of command.
In theory, I respected that. In practice, a dragon had shown up demanding the necklace I’d bought for three dollars at a thrift store, and the universe had practically slapped an opportunity into my hands.
I wasn’t a complete idiot. I knew to grab it.
“Mr. Payton,” I said, aiming for respectful rather than repentant, because one of those I could do honestly.
“I understand that I inserted myself into a situation involving a major client. I also returned a missing family heirloom, secured a direct role on the team, and got him to commit to a letter of recommendation in under two minutes. So, while I accept that my process was unconventional?—”
“Unhinged,” Moira murmured, still looking at her notes.
“—I do feel the result merits some nuance.”
Moira coughed into one fist to hide her laugh.
James turned to her, a weary expression on his face. “Would you like to take over?”
“Absolutely not,” she said.
Helena said nothing, but when I glanced at her, I found her watching me over steepled fingers with a look I couldn’t quite read.
Not warm, exactly. More like she’d expected me to apologize prettily and had instead found herself listening to someone build a closing argument from the defendant’s chair.
James sat down at last, which somehow made him seem more dangerous.
“This is a respectable law firm,” he said. “Not a poker table. We do not train our interns to spot leverage in real time and lunge at clients.”
I nodded. “Understood.”
“And yet you did precisely that.”
“Yes.”
“And if he’d taken offense?”
I thought of the dragon in the hallway. The hard line of his mouth.
The exactness of him. I could still see the moment when his face had changed when he saw the necklace in his hand again, all that heat diminishing and something that looked very much like grief taking over his expression.
He hadn’t struck me as the sort who admired recklessness for its own sake.
He’d struck me as a man who respected usefulness.
“He didn’t,” I said.
“That was luck.”
“No,” I said before I could stop myself.
Utter silence descended on the room.
I felt my own pulse once in my throat and made myself continue, because if I’d already stepped off the ledge, there was no point pretending I hadn’t.
“It wasn’t luck that he wanted the necklace,” I said.
“If I’d just handed it over, he would’ve gotten the heirloom back and that would’ve been that.
Which is good for him, and I was always going to give it back, but it wouldn’t have changed anything for me or for this firm except one less problem in the hallway. ”
James’s face remained unreadable.
I pressed on.
“He has a family restitution case. I had an heirloom from that family. He believes in boons—agreements—and everyone in that room knew it the second he said it belonged to his horde. The only thing I had that mattered was timing. So I used it.”
Moira lifted her head then.
I could feel Helena’s eyes on me.
James leaned back slowly in his chair. “And if we now had a furious dragon client who felt manipulated by one of our interns?”
“Then I imagine you would be telling me I was fired.”
Moira made a small sound that might have been a swallowed laugh again. James ignored her.
I tried, because I wasn’t suicidal, to add something slightly more contrite.
“I know it was a gamble,” I said. “I do. But I also know I’m here to practice law, not become the world’s most efficient floral maintenance specialist. If I see an opening I can ethically take, then I will.”
James rubbed his jaw and let out a long-suffering sigh. “You realize you’ve made it very difficult to punish you.”
I didn’t smile, even though I really wanted to. “I can work with that,” I said.