Chapter 8
Idon’t have time for mistakes right now,” Morgan said. His shoulders crumpled a little and she relented. “What happened?”
“You’re going to be mad,” he started.
“Did you make a Deal?”
“… Not exactly.”
“Spit it out.”
He opened his mouth. Before he could say anything, something came galloping around the corner, a square of cloth dangling out of its mouth.
“Come back here!” Ronaldo chased after it. “Goat stew can be part of a high-protein diet!”
Morgan pinched the bridge of her nose. “Luke. Did you get Hayley a goat for goat yoga?”
“She wanted it really badly, and she asked me if I knew any goat-friendly instructors because you said I was from California, and I thought maybe if she liked me more…”
“Then she’d accept a Deal?” She was going to kill him.
“No one said that goats were kids!”
“No, kids are goats. It’s what you call a baby goat…” She trailed off at the expression on Luke’s face. “Luke, did you think you’d just summoned a baby demon?”
“Didn’t I?” He looked panicked.
“I don’t have time for this.” She took a deep breath. “Goats are native to this plane.”
“But the horns! The eyes!”
“I know the eyes are freaky, but they really do come from here. It’s OK. You just need to help catch the goat again before it eats more than Ronaldo’s khakis.”
He looked less panicked and more intimidated.
“But. What the hell, Luke? I told you not to try to buy our prospects’ souls so you went after my coworker? What were you thinking?”
“That I’ve been here for five days and we’re no closer to getting me home, and I can’t walk in there empty-handed!”
“I told you I’d help you, don’t you trust me?”
“No, I don’t!”
They stared at each other.
Outside in the main office, Carter and Ronaldo had cornered the goat by the copy machine. It bleated. The yoga instructor approached cautiously, holding out a protein bar as a lure.
“Humans lie,” he said quietly. “You lie all the time. I know it’s your job on the line, but this is my life we’re talking about.”
He was right. And she was so worried about her stupid marketing platform and her webinar and her promotion she hadn’t earned that she had lost track of that. “I’m sorry.”
He looked surprised. Maybe not a lot of people apologized on the Infernal Plane.
“This will be my top priority two hours from now. But right at this moment, I need to deal with this webinar or Kelly will want to know why, and we’ll be in more trouble. So, for now, can you go deal with the goat?”
“It’s really not from my plane? It looks like a baby.”
“It’s smarter than a baby. More likely to bite. Actually, I don’t know what your babies are like.”
“Very likely to bite.” He watched the yoga instructor try to tackle the goat. She was very flexible. The goat was stronger. “I don’t think I can use magic for this. But I’ll fix it.”
He squared his shoulders and went out to do battle, leaving her with ten minutes fewer to fix the deck.
“Shit!” She’d found the webinar deck in Tim’s files earlier—where had she put it?
There! She opened it, skimming through. No notes, of course.
Three pages of generic stats about changing employment trends, two pages of painfully obvious “hiring tips” he’d probably gotten off someone else’s clickbait article, and then the usual Zabloom pitch. At least that part, she knew.
The goat ran back past the window. Luke ran after the goat. Floofums ran after Luke. Hayley ran after Floofums.
The slides were all pretty general—could that still apply to a platform for the whole HR team instead of only the recruiters?
What did quantum computing even have to do with it?
She pitied anyone in the audience who had hoped to learn something substantial today, because Tim had clearly half-assed this, and she was about to half-ass what he’d prepared. Quarter-ass?
The goat found refuge under Vijay’s table. Luke stalked from one side. Carter, armed with a trashcan, snuck up from the other. Vijay absently reached down and scratched the goat’s ears.
She rearranged the slides into an order that made a little more sense. Deleted the bits that didn’t seem particularly relevant any more. When she looked up again, Vijay was triumphantly carrying the goat to the elevator.
A few more random stats from Google. That would have to do. She sent the file to Kelly and put her head on the desk.
Her phone rang. It was her mother.
She picked up the phone without picking up her head.
“You haven’t heard anything odd lately, have you?”
“Mother, I’m at work.” The goat’s bleating dopplered down the elevator shaft.
“Yes, I know, that’s why I’m asking. Maybe something at work about the businesses in the neighborhood?” Fiona’s voice was strange, like she was breathing hard.
“What do you mean around the neighborhood?” Oh god, Fiona had figured out Luke was her target.
“There’s something off around Union Square.” Her mother’s voice cut out for a moment.
She tried to play dumb. “Mother, there isn’t, like, a notice board.
There are hundreds of businesses in the neighborhood and I don’t talk to any of them.
” Her mother had no idea how the mundane world worked, or even how huge it was.
From what Morgan could tell, the magical community was a never-ending series of coincidences piled on top of each other.
From the other side of the line, she could hear Murder squawk.
And then there was the high-pitched scream that Morgan had come to recognize as Oh god a crow pecked out my eye. “Mother, are you in a fight right now?”
“Just a little one.” Someone oofed and Morgan was pretty sure it wasn’t Fiona. “Some wereleopards, I don’t think they’re even involved in the main case.”
“What main case?” Maybe it was something else? Please, may it be something else.
“I told you I didn’t want to get you involved.”
“Then why did you call me?”
“Because—” Her mother suddenly choked off a scream.
“Mother?” Morgan sat bolt upright. “Mother, are you OK?”
“It’s all right.” Her mother’s voice was tight with pain. “It’s in the shoulder again, I’ve got so much scar tissue there I can barely feel a thing.”
“Mother, you need to hang up the phone and get to a hospital!”
“No, no, I’ve got this.” There was a thud and a crack and a clatter as her mother dropped the phone. Morgan clutched her own, her knuckles white. There were a few more thuds and a moan, and then Fiona’s voice was back, a bit out of breath. “Your father will patch me up.”
“Why did you even call me in the middle of a fight?”
“I’m having trouble making inroads into the mundane business community and then I realized I had my own connection, and I didn’t want to lose the thought.”
“So you called me while fighting?”
“Well, I started to dial you and then they jumped me, but I’m pretty sure it’s because they’ve got some kind of pixie dust ring going. This is a total dead end.”
The tension headache was in full force. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what you’re looking for.”
Her mother sighed. “You have to understand, pumpkin, this is all very hush-hush. But we’ve got good reason to believe that one of the mundane businesses has been demon-summoning.”
Morgan froze, her bowels suddenly curdling.
“I thought it was someone in the community. It’s why I wanted you at that stupid dinner. Who would have thought it would turn out to be someone mundane? That’s why I need your help, pumpkin.”
“You think a demon is loose on this plane?” Morgan said, careful to watch her tone.
Her mother huffed a laugh. “Oh, if a demon were loose, I’m sure you’d have noticed.
You’ve heard some of the stories from your father’s research, and that’s only the ones I’d let him tell you.
There would be blood flooding the streets.
No, someone’s made a Deal, that’s all. But that alone has a way of casting ripples. ”
“Can’t you scry for that?” she asked, her mind racing. “Look for Infernal magic?”
“Don’t I wish.” She could almost hear Fiona rolling her eyes. “The really infuriating thing is that for whatever reason, Infernal magic itself is nearly invisible. So it’s the ripples we have to track. You haven’t seen any companies suddenly getting massively profitable out of nowhere, have you?”
Her mother had never read a stock market report in her life. “That’s not really my thing, mother.”
“Fallen stars,” her mother swore. “Well. Keep your eyes open, OK? Give me a call if you hear anything suspicious?”
“If any of our competitors suddenly get declared to be a unicorn, you’ll be the first I’ll call.”
“Unicorn? They don’t have unicorns on the Infernal Plane, are people summoning unicorns?”
“No, mother, the mundane business folks call a company a unicorn when they get a billion-dollar valuation—you know what, forget it.”
“You never did like unicorns,” her mother mused. “Not after that one bit you at Windsong’s birthday party.”
Someone groaned in the background and her mother continued. “Looks like they’re waking up. Gotta go. Call me if you hear anything.”
Morgan stared at her phone then put her head back down. How had word gotten out? Somehow, Tim must have tripped something while he was getting the summoning ritual.
Someone set something next to her elbow. She looked at the coffee cup and then up at Luke.
“I shouldn’t have called you a liar. I know what the human marketing says about us, and you had no reason to believe otherwise. And you’ve never lied to me. I don’t think.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Also, you really wanted the coffee. It was loud.”