Chapter 13 #2
Brad kept an open-door policy, but she thought that was mostly because executive podcasts suggested it was a mark of a good leader. Morgan wasn’t sure how much the open door was truly open, in the more figurative sense. His were the only walls that were opaque.
Brad had his feet up on his desk, AirPods in his ears, as he bounced a miniature basketball off the wall repeatedly.
She wasn’t sure if he was on a call or had left the earbuds in for effect.
She also wasn’t sure how Carter had survived in the adjoining office without murdering him for the repetitive thumping noise.
“I met with my contact at Forbes today,” she said. That was enough for him to stop throwing the ball at the wall. She wondered how much of the habit was his actual athleticism, and how much was that he’d seen dynamic business types do it in movies.
“And?”
She shut the door behind her, which sharpened his attention. “For starters, if you’re willing to approve the budget, the byline is yours. I can write it for you or we can hire a ghostwriter.”
He waved a hand. “Send me the draft.”
She nodded but turned as if to go. “It was interesting. She was talking about some of their other bylines, like GreenField UnLtd., and how they’d managed to get so much press so fast.”
The words GreenField UnLtd. caught his attention.
“She was pretty dismissive, really. Said it was only a hack,” Morgan said carefully.
“Hey, don’t dismiss hacks,” he said, straightening up a tiny bit.
“I know, I’ve learned from you,” she said, adding a smile.
She felt slimy inside, but this had to work.
She’d debated internally—it would have been nice to claim the idea had come from her contact, take the credit.
But she didn’t think he would take her as a credible source.
“So I went back through Tim’s email. Did you know he was college buddies with GreenField UnLtd. ’s sales head?”
She opened up her laptop and pulled up an email.
“No,” Brad said. “Tom never said.”
The man was dead, they’d worked together for at least a year, and Brad still couldn’t remember his name? She hoped they used Brad to power the microwave in the Infernal kitchen. And someone brought in leftover fish to reheat every week. “Tim.”
Brad made a go on gesture. She bit her tongue.
“Anyway, the week before he, uh, you know, his last week, he was talking to Hawk at GreenField. Who sent Tim something.” She paused to bait the hook. “It’s pretty wild.”
“But it worked.”
“For GreenField UnLtd., yeah, apparently.” Tim’s friend really had sent him a large file transfer link.
The link had expired, so Morgan had no idea what had been in it.
Brad didn’t need to know that, though. She’d debated giving him the ritual she’d gotten from her father’s article, but the last thing she wanted was for more people to have access to a real spell.
She was on thin enough ice as it was, and she didn’t trust Brad farther than she could throw him, which, given how little she could afford a gym membership, was not very far.
But that was all right. Brad wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to be hands-on.
He was a big picture guy. Dirty work like writing bylines and summoning demons was beneath him.
So she merely pulled up the diagram where it could look all arcane and spooky and didn’t hand over the laptop or transfer the file. “It’s… pretty out there.”
“Like, ayahuasca executive retreats out there, or exchanging blood with your son to live forever out there?”
Maybe it wasn’t that out there. “Like summoning demons out there.”
He looked disappointed. “You know daemons are just background processes, right? It’s like how you can’t eat internet cookies.”
She’d heard Carter complain about daemons in the programming sense but never had the courage to ask what they were or the interest to take thirty seconds to Google it. “No, I mean like actual demons, from the Infernal Plane, ‘make a Deal for your soul and get whatever your heart desires’ demons.”
He looked skeptical. But not as skeptical as the statement should have merited. “Tom was looking into this.”
She decided it wasn’t worth correcting him on Tim’s name again. “Yes.”
“And that’s where all the money GreenField UnLtd. is throwing around came from.”
“Not a hundred percent sure, but it seems pretty likely yes.”
“OK.” He crossed his arms over his seasonally inappropriate fleece vest, but didn’t throw her out of the office. “I’m listening.”
This was further than she’d been afraid she would get. “I didn’t want to waste your time, so I did the ritual.”
He looked mildly impressed. “That’s the kind of proactiveness I like to see.”
“But I figured, for something this important, you’d want to do your own negotiations. You’re the deal closer around here,” she said with a mental apology to Kelly. “Should I bring him in?”
“Who?”
“The demon.”
“Ha!” he leaned back again. “You almost had me going there for a minute.”
She’d hoped he wouldn’t have that reaction, but had expected it. She leaned over to the glass door and caught the waiting Luke’s eye.
“Brad, I’d like to introduce Lucareoth,” she said, ushering in the demon, still in human form.
They’d talked through a couple scenarios, ranging from Brad firing them both on the spot to Brad not even recognizing that he’d met his intern before.
Mostly, she was worried about how to explain why she’d summoned a demon on Brad’s behalf but Brad was only finding out about it now.
She hoped Luke’s mind-whammy powers were up to the task.
“Podcast kid!” Brad smiled. “You’re going along with this joke? Taking it a bit far. Is there a second punchline I’m waiting for?”
Out of sight of the glass door, Luke dropped his illusion.
“Whoa. Damn. I definitely did not ask for magic mushrooms in my mushroom omelet this morning.” Brad scooched his chair back.
“You’re not hallucinating,” Luke assured him. “Your world is much bigger than you dreamed. And your competitors are taking advantage of that.”
It was keeping him from freaking out or blowing them off, she could tell. The idea that someone out there had a shortcut he didn’t know about. But his eyes still narrowed skeptically.
“OK, nice make-up or drugs or whatever. But you can’t possibly expect me to believe something like this.”
“You need proof.” Luke’s lip curled.
“Yeah, little bit.” She didn’t miss him pinching his leg where he thought she couldn’t see.
From Brad’s computer came the classic Slack notification knock.
She held her breath.
Brad scanned the message. He blinked. He leaned in and read it more carefully. Then he looked up. “Kelly says she just booked a meeting with Walmart. I suppose you’re going to claim that’s you?”
Luke smiled mysteriously. “You still need to close it.”
Brad leaned back. “And you can help with that.”
“I could.”
“And all it would cost is my soul.”
“Are you using it?”
“Touché.” Brad smiled back. He wasn’t sure if he believed he had a soul, she could tell. “So how does this work? We start with NDAs?”
“We can start with NDAs. I’ll warn you—this is one contract you can’t have legal counsel review. But you seem like the kind of man who knows how to review his own contracts.”
Brad seemed like the kind of man who thought he could do any task he considered beneath him—if he could mansplain SEO to her, she was pretty sure he’d mansplain torts to a lawyer. At least, he would if the lawyer was female.
“So what’s the deal, then?” Brad smirked. “Fame and fortune in return for my immortal soul?”
“We prefer our Deals,” and she could hear the difference in the capital letter, “to be a bit more precise. Custody of your soul, not forever, but for a single century. And in return, your heart’s desire.”
“And what is my heart’s desire?”
They’d roleplayed this. Now Luke leaned forward, placing one hand on the armrest of Brad’s chair. His face nearly as close as a lover as he stared deep into Brad’s eyes. “10x.”
An exit strategy that delivered ten times the amount invested. And all the steps in between—the successful investment rounds, the multiplicative user base and revenue growth year-over-year.
“I want to be a unicorn.” Brad breathed.
Bingo. She wanted to high-five Luke, but she kept her face still. They worked so well together. This was so much easier with a partner. Friend-partner. Not-anything-else-partner. Keep it focused on the friendship—no, on the partnership.
“You can be a unicorn,” Luke assured him. Inside, she cheered him on. “New York Stock Exchange IPO, your face on the cover of magazines, TED Talk invites. All you have to do is sign.”
“All this from the podcast intern?” Brad said, his eyes flicking across Luke’s scales, his horns.
Luke opened his mouth to explain the half-baked story they’d concocted.
Brad cut him off. “Oh, I get it.” The CEO’s gaze switched to Morgan. “You sacrificed the intern and let the demon possess him. Cold.” His eyes flicked up and down her face. “Good hustle. I like it.”
She wanted to protest that she could never be that callous, but it was a better story than what she’d come up with. And it bought Brad’s respect. So what if he thought her heartless?
“Show me this contract,” Brad said. “Let’s see what you’ve got. Marketing girl, you get my pen.”