Chapter 15 #2
“We can absolutely ensure you get that partnership,” she smiled, doing her best to hide the exhaustion.
She knew a rum and coke was not the classiest of beverage choices, but she really needed that caffeine and she’d had to abandon her espresso martini at the previous bar after Luke had gotten slapped. “There’s just the matter of price.”
“What, is it going to cost my soul?” Her mark ran his hand through thinning red hair and smiled at his own joke. His slightly rumpled suit fit the cozy, expensive library vibes of this bar better than Morgan’s too-sexy dress.
“Well,” she started.
His eyes lit up. “Oh my god. I thought this was some kind of corporate espionage thing, but it’s not, is it?
I saw you with your friend over there, you keep whispering.
You two are totally roleplaying. What is this, Vampire: the Masquerade?
Are you pretending to be vampires? I haven’t played this since college.
Can I play, too? I want to be a werewolf.
Wait, no, a mage. I definitely want to be a mage, maybe one of those blood-based ones.
This is so cool. Can I text my friend? He’s next door, he used to be super into this stuff. ”
“Yes,” she said, giving up. “It’s a roleplaying game.”
“I knew it!” He pumped his fist. “Hold on, I’ll go get Trevor, we’ll roll up some characters.”
At least Luke was still talking to his chosen target, a Black man wearing a dark red blazer with more personality than the surrounding suits.
Luke’s body language was weird, though—all night he’d been alert, a circling shark.
Now, he leaned on the bar, one hand propping up his chin, but still listening.
He saw her looking and shrugged helplessly.
It didn’t look like a Deal being closed. She wandered over.
“This is my new friend Jamal,” Luke said. It didn’t sound like the intro to a Deal, either. She raised her eyebrows and he shook his head a fraction. “Jamal was here with some friends and they abandoned him.”
“That sucks,” she said.
“Well, they went off to a club and bottle service isn’t really my thing, you know?” said Jamal. “Nice to meet you.”
She shook his hand. “That’s not great of them.”
He shrugged. “They seemed cool enough in college, but money gets to people, I guess. But hey, it’s a really nice cocktail, and at these prices, it deserves to be drunk. I can enjoy it, talk to your friend here, and not call the evening a loss.”
She wondered what they’d been talking about, since Jamal didn’t strike her as one of the hungry business types they’d been stalking all evening.
“Your friend’s got a real gift, you know,” Jamal continued, taking a sip. “He’s amazingly in touch with what people want. I kind of wish I had his skills in my line of work.”
“What do you do, some kind of business thing?”
Jamal laughed softly. “The opposite. I work for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.”
“It’s amazing,” said Luke. He practically had stars in his eyes. “Did you know about this?”
“Yeah, I know about it,” she said. She patted his hand. “What would you need Luke for? I mean, the kids literally tell you their wishes, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s hard sometimes to tell if it’s what the kid really wants, or just what the adults are pressuring them for. I mean, we can tell they don’t actually want us to buy Daddy a new truck—most of the time—but sometimes it’s trickier.”
“Huh.” She cast a suspicious glance at Luke. He didn’t want to offer kids a trip to Disney in exchange for their soul, did he?
“They don’t have to pay for it, Morgan,” he said enthusiastically. “They just give it to them so they’re happy.”
He looked so happy himself, and then he looked down at his drink, crestfallen. He continued, “It’s not like my job at all, my job sucks.”
“How many of these have you had, buddy?” she asked, moving the glass away. “I think it’s time to get you home.”
Jamal chuckled. “Nice to meet you both.”
“You, too,” she said, maneuvering Luke out the door.
“Hey wait,” called her earlier target as she left. “I just statted up a dark mage with a detective agency and a blood-bonded hellhound!”
* * *
“Total failure,” she reported to Gisele, who had waited up for them, curled on the couch in a robe and her axolotl slippers with Rix and an e-reader full of fanfic. “We’re screwed.”
She collapsed on the couch. Luke collapsed next to her.
“I’m sorry, Morgan,” he said. “So sorry.”
“You got the demon drunk,” Gisele said, raising her eyebrows.
“Not on purpose,” Morgan sighed. Not that she was any more sober. “We’re back to Operation Damn My Coworkers. Shit.”
Her feet hurt so much. Stupid shoes.
“Can I help?” Luke asked. When she gave him a puzzled look, he gestured. “With your feet.”
“That’s not worth wasting power on.” A shame. It would have been nice. Tomorrow they were going to hurt even more.
“I meant I could, sort of, rub them?”
Her cheeks flushed. Oh my, yes, he could absolutely rub them. That would be amazing. Ly awkward. Amazingly awkward. Did he even realize how intimate that was for humans? Probably not. This was a terrible idea. “That’s really sweet, but they’ll be OK.”
He flushed and looked away. “I’m sorry. I misread—”
“No, it’s a really kind offer,” she rushed to reassure him.
He was drunk; he didn’t understand human customs. He had claws—did claw massages even exist?
Oh, no, if he realized that some humans had a thing about feet, like a sexual thing, he was going to be so grossed out.
He was probably grossed out in general by humans anyway.
Just because she apparently had a pervy thing for scales didn’t mean that he was into monster-chasing.
Because if his people were monstrous to her, surely it must go the other way.
She tried really hard to stop thinking about foot rubs and the way his warmer skin would feel against her hers.
Twice in one evening. She was a terrible person.
No more alcohol around Luke, ever again.
“Well, you got a package.” Gisele rescued her, tossing her a box.
“Oh!” Morgan confirmed the return address. “Actually, Luke, this is for you.”
“For me?” He looked confused. He opened the box at her prompting. He dug through the packaging to pull out a pair of axolotl slippers just like Gisele’s, only larger and in a lighter shade of purple than his natural skin. “This is for me?”
Morgan blushed. “Well, yeah. You seem to like Gisele’s a lot, and you were having a really hard day the other day, and I thought you might need a little treat. They weren’t super expensive or anything.”
She trailed off. He was staring at them in wonder, turning them over in his hands.
“You got these for me?” he asked again. His eyes glistened. “You sensed that—no. You couldn’t have sensed. You figured out that I wanted them without even being able to sense it? And then got them—why?”
“Because,” she tried to explain without making it that big of a deal. “Because—”
“Because you wanted me to feel better,” he finished. “Oh.”
He stared back down at the slippers in tipsy wonder. The little cartoon eyes stared adorably back.
She swallowed, realizing this had been a somewhat larger gesture than she’d intended. She couldn’t regret it, though. She hoped Rix didn’t decide to chew on them.
“So this is what it feels like,” he said softly, more to himself than her. He looked back up. “Morgan, I don’t know what to say.”
“Thank you,” prompted Gisele.
“Thank you,” he repeated. He looked at her, her face full of something she didn’t know how to interpret.
He was drunk, she reminded herself. She wasn’t sure how drunk, she didn’t know how many drinks he’d had or how they affected demons, but he was definitely turning into the kind of drunk who bought the whole bar a round and declared he loved them all. He wouldn’t mean it in the morning.
“You’re welcome,” Morgan said awkwardly. She needed to get out of here. Before she said something that she’d regret in the morning when her own inhibitions were no longer obliterated. “I better get to bed. Tomorrow I need to find something to wear that won’t get me fired or bitten by a vampire.”