Chapter 6 #2
“So, as I’m sure you understand, we have an exciting challenge at the moment,” Hayley began.
Morgan froze. “Exciting challenge” was usually HR-speak for “we’re about to screw you over.” What had he done?
“Look, replacing executives usually takes several months,” Kelly said bluntly. “We need someone to hold down the fort until we find a new marketing head.”
Oh, no. “What… What would have happened if he’d quit?”
“Well,” Hayley faltered. “There’s usually at least a couple weeks’ notice.”
“There are some folks who can pinch hit as a temporary marketing head for a while,” Kelly said, her eyes sliding to Hayley. “But apparently there isn’t any budget for that.”
“I…” Morgan wasn’t sure what to say. She’d been interested in moving into marketing, yes, but not like this.
Not at Tim’s expense, and certainly not as part of a demon’s ploy.
Could she turn it down? Should she? In a burst of probably ill-advised honesty, she blurted, “I don’t actually know how to do Tim’s job. ”
“No one expects you to do Tim’s job,” Kelly said.
Her tone made it clear that she didn’t expect Morgan to be able to do Tim’s job.
“We’ll stick with the strategies he’d already put into place.
There’s an ad agency and a PR agency to handle the big things.
All you need to do is keep the lights on and the plates spinning.
If any big decisions need to be made, you’ll come to me. ”
Not exactly a vote of confidence. But still.
She felt a flutter of hope and quashed it.
Deals with the devil always came with drawbacks, and she hadn’t even agreed to this Deal.
She’d read enough blogs about navigating corporate bullshit to be cautious.
“I’m honored to be taking on new responsibilities.
Would there be any change in salary to go along with the additional duties? ”
Kelly didn’t flinch, but her face did stay awfully neutral. Hayley piped up, “I’m afraid all salary discussions will have to wait until after the next review cycle, but we appreciate you being such a team player!”
By “team player,” she clearly meant “total sucker.” There wasn’t any way to turn it down, no matter how they phrased it.
But still… it could be an opportunity. Even if they kicked her back to SDR when the new guy got there, she’d still have the skills to put on her resume.
A way out of cold calls and into something that she might enjoy.
Maybe even something the other parents at the reunion dinner would respect.
Well, not her parents’ reunion dinner. An office job was never going to compete with saving the world from arcane forces.
But maybe something someone mundane, like Gisele’s abuela, might congratulate her on. “And what about my current duties?”
“Well,” Hayley said slowly, as her brain tried to jostle around information that hadn’t been there before this morning. “You can work with the intern, Lu—Le—it’ll come to me in a moment.” She brightened again. “Now, isn’t that lucky timing!”
Kelly looked less enthusiastic. Morgan wasn’t sure whether that meant that she was less influenced by Luke’s magic or merely less convinced this was all a good idea.
“So, what do you say?” Hayley asked.
Really, did she have a choice? Even if she tried to escape, Luke might hex her straight back in. She might as well get the points for being a good sport. “You’ve got yourself a” —she flinched away from using the D-word at the last moment—“plan.”
Kelly smiled, an expression that didn’t reach her eyes. Morgan knew she could do a proper fake smile: she was too good a salesperson not to. She didn’t know whether Kelly didn’t respect her enough to try, or actively wanted her to see the falseness. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“What did you do?” she hissed at Luke as she retrieved him from the kitchen.
“I’m hedging my bets,” he hissed back.
“I don’t have all day,” Kelly said from Tim’s office door. “You can sit in here so you don’t distract everyone while we teach him how to take over your prospecting.”
There was brief confusion when everyone realized that no one had ordered a laptop for the new intern.
(“Can you, I don’t know, magic up one that coincidentally had been left in the back room?
” “Sure, right after you take me to Nogo.” “Nobu.” “Whatever.”) Fortunately, Zabloom’s onboarding procedures were such a well-established shitshow no one seemed to think the lack of equipment was odd.
Finally, they gave up and checked that Tim’s computer didn’t have anything particularly important saved locally (a couple of articles on how to cure scabies that Morgan really wished she hadn’t seen) and wiped that.
Kelly insisted on sitting in with them while Morgan demonstrated the pitch on a series of calls.
They went about as well as Morgan expected.
The first six didn’t even pick up. The next hung up as soon as she introduced herself.
Two more went straight to voicemail. The next let her get through half the pitch before informing her that their company was in the middle of layoffs at the moment and did not foresee hiring anyone again for at least a year.
They paused for a few minutes while the upstairs neighbors dragged a metal filing cabinet full of pebbles across a speed bump or two.
The last target cursed her out, including a creative expression she’d never heard before.
She made a mental note to add it to the private list she kept.
“All right, I think I’m ready to try,” Luke said after that one.
Morgan tried to signal to him with her eyes as Kelly raised an eyebrow.
“I usually wouldn’t let someone on the phone line until at least their second week, but if you’re that gung-ho…” Kelly said, leaning over to scroll down the list. She chose one of the names from the poorly rated section. “Here, you can try that one.”
Luke nodded, and shifted a little, settling into himself. He took a breath, turned his head so he wasn’t facing them, and then called the number. “Hello? This is Luke Harrioff with Zabloom, how are you today?”
To Kelly’s visible surprise, the prospect answered cheerfully. And they continued to stay on the line while Luke went through the entire pitch, not quite perfectly but close enough.
“We-ell,” the prospect said, sounding a little doubtful. “I don’t know if we really need anything like that. But tell you what, I’m kinda curious.”
“Can I book you for a demonstration, maybe?” Luke asked, staring intensely at the laptop’s phone app. His eyes flashed.
“Sure, why not. Tuesday good?”
Morgan scrambled to pull up Kelly’s calendar and Luke found an open spot before pleasantly thanking his target and hanging up.
Kelly stared at him, eyebrows in her hairline. “That was… remarkably fortunate.”
“Wow, talk about beginner’s luck!” Morgan said, kicking Luke under the table.
Luke blinked, but he seemed to take the hint. His next several tries went to voicemail, until Kelly finally left them to make their way through the rest of the list.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Morgan grabbed him.
“The new plan,” he said.
“Tell me the truth. Are you the reason I got Tim’s job?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes.”
“I can’t believe you!” She couldn’t throw up her hands like she wanted to, because everyone could see them through the glass door.
She tried to keep her face normal, like she was giving him prospecting advice.
But she was going to kill him. No, she was going to let her mother kill him.
She’d let him sleep on her couch, and he was still trying to bargain for her soul?
“I said no, and it’s beyond not cool for you to not respect that. ”
“I’m not trying to buy your soul, it doesn’t work retroactively,” he said hurriedly. “I just wanted to balance things. I owe you.”
That sounded uncomfortably plausible. She could see how a demon might be uncomfortable with altruism.
But it could also be a total lie, and she knew which she would bet on.
“Oh, and they’re just going to approve that line item on the expense report because you felt bad.
Or were you planning to tell them it was to tempt me? Somehow?”
“Well, it’s only a temporary promotion,” he reasoned. “So they might think it was to whet your appetite. And it would take a real miracle to let you just keep it.”
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“That came out wrong,” he said hurriedly. “I just meant that getting a permanent position would take real power, but this barely needed a nudge. Kelly and Hayley both desperately wanted a fast solution, and you’re right there. And you said you wanted to do marketing!”
“Not like this!”
“Do you want me to make them change their minds?”
“No, that’s going to screw me over even more!”
“I—”
Kelly opened the glass door. “Yo. Work out your sexual tension on your own time before Hayley gets involved in your shit. Less bickering, more calling.”
Morgan’s ears burned as the door swung shut again.
Did it matter if he was lying about why he got her the promotion, as long as she didn’t fall for it?
Would she be a bad person if she let it happen?
She tried to decide as she showed Luke how to log calls in Salesforce.
She hadn’t had anything to do with Tim’s death.
People got jobs they didn’t deserve all the time, and anyway, he was right—it wasn’t a permanent position.
It was a chance to get some experience, nothing more.
Except she wasn’t sure she had the experience necessary to even get anything useful out of this.
“Fake it ’til you make it” had never been her style.
“So what number do we put in this field?” Luke was saying.
She pulled her attention back to the present. “Standard contracts start at $50K.”
He looked blank. “Is that a little or a lot?”
“Both?” she shrugged. “For a multi-billion-dollar company, it’s nothing. For me, that’s more than I make in a year.”
His eyebrows creased. “So what’s a soul worth, then?”
“Priceless!” she exclaimed.
“If it were priceless, we wouldn’t be able to buy them,” he reasoned. “How about another angle—I was taught that in some human cultures, if someone dies and it’s someone else’s fault, they have to pay. Is Zabloom going to pay for Tim’s death?”
“It wasn’t directly Zabloom’s fault, so I don’t think they have to pay anything,” she said slowly. “I guess if it happened because of, like, the building falling in or something, they would have.”
She paused to do a quick search online, trying to ignore the sounds from the floor above of a saw screaming like the souls of the damned.
Maybe it felt homey to Luke. Hopefully it didn’t mean her own parents would get a payout.
“Looks like the average settlement ranges from a few thousand to a few million dollars.”
“So that’s probably what a soul’s worth,” Luke said.
“What? No!”
Kelly was glaring at them again.
“Just finish calling your list,” Morgan said, exhausted.
They didn’t get around to eating lunch until after three.
By five, Morgan had a pounding headache.
Normally she wouldn’t dare duck out this early, but surely “my boss died and I had to take over his job and start managing an intern” was an excuse to leave on time on Friday for once.
Or maybe it was a reason she should stay even later, but if she stayed later, she was going to pass out on the desk.
“Don’t forget, everyone! The funeral is at 11:00am on Monday!” Hayley reminded them on her way out.
“Are we closing the office?” Vijay asked.
“No, bereavement leave is only available for immediate family,” Hayley answered cheerily. “But you’re welcome to take an unpaid day without penalty!”
“That was fun,” Luke said wistfully as they got on the subway.
“Fun.”
He winced. “I just meant—I was right, I like the pitching a lot better when I don’t have to close.”
“I’m glad you had a good time,” she grumbled.
“It was a good distraction from the fact that I’m basically doomed,” he sighed.
Her automatic impulse was to reassure him that he wasn’t doomed.
But she wasn’t actually sure of that. Worse, she wasn’t sure she wasn’t doomed along with him.
Human stories were littered with the warnings about what happened when you accepted magical aid.
Fairy gifts, genie wishes, monkey’s paws.
So what if she hadn’t made a Deal—she had said she wished she could do marketing in the earshot of a demon.
Who was to blame for what would come next?