Chapter 16 #2
“Probably not,” she admitted. She was frankly terrified. Hence the power skirt. “But it’ll be my boss’s name on the paperwork, not mine.”
Her mother didn’t look any happier than Morgan was about that answer. “And what exactly are you hoping to do with them?”
“Get them to invest lots of money in the company and then spend some of it on salaries, some of it on over-hopped IPAs at happy hours no one wants to be at, and most of it apparently on marketing platforms. Hopefully, there’s a ‘Step Three: Profit’ involved in there.”
“I didn’t follow most of that, but good luck with getting their money. They have way too much of it,” her mother said. She paused for a moment and then added, almost wistfully, “Can I see your outfit?”
Morgan reluctantly pulled the blazer, pencil skirt, and satin pussy bow blouse out of the Macy’s bag, waiting for her mother to make a face.
“I know, I can’t run in the skirt,” Morgan started to say, remembering all her mother’s acidic comments on other women’s outfits. “But I couldn’t find pants that worked with the blazer—”
“You’re going to look so polished,” her mother said quietly. “A real professional.”
“Oh.” The rest of the excuses died in her throat. She blinked back a sudden mistiness.
“Try not to get their attention,” Fiona continued. “Don’t meet their eyes, if you can avoid it. Shower really well, wear deodorant, and if you have even a tiny wound or scrape or even a bruise, cover it with the strongest scented antiseptic you can. Apparently, it tastes really bad.”
“I mean, it does taste really bad.” Morgan managed a small smile.
“Ugh, I kept telling you not to nibble on edges of your scabs when you were little.” Fiona smiled a little herself.
“It was easier than having to collect any bits that fell off and burn them,” Morgan pointed out.
“I didn’t want people getting ahold of your blood! I was trying to be a good mother!”
Fiona’s idea of a good mother was a lot different than Morgan’s.
But then, if Morgan had spent as much time with people actively trying to kill her as Fiona had, maybe she’d have felt differently.
Half the adults that had wandered through her childhood had ended up dead in one grisly way or another.
Fiona had kept her kid alive. But she had done it at the cost of never taking a turn as field trip chaperone.
Morgan had wanted, just once, for it to be her turn for her mom to be field trip chaperone.
“I know,” she said, instead.
* * *
The clock said 2:03am when her phone rang.
“’llo?” she said groggily before suddenly snapping awake. There were only three numbers she’d allowed to bypass her do-not-disturb, and the owner of one was sleeping in the bedroom next to hers. In the living room, Rix started to bark.
“You were right, Morgan!” her mother crowed. Her crow squawked in the background.
“That it’s either too early or too late to be calling unless someone died?” she asked. She could hear Luke frantically trying to soothe Rix before the neighbors could start pounding on the walls.
“Not yet,” her mother said cheerfully. “Your rival is almost certainly using Infernal influence.”
“Oh good.” She hadn’t actually given much thought to what it would mean that other demons were involved, beyond how to use that against Brad and her mother.
Hopefully this would be enough to keep Fiona busy long enough to get Luke safely home.
“So you can go all Shadow Council on them and I can go back to bed?”
“Unfortunately not.” Her mother sighed. “All the evidence is circumstantial, and everyone involved appears to be mundane. Which means we have to catch them in the act before I’m allowed to even reveal the existence of the Shadow Council.”
“Oh.” Was that enough to keep her busy? Or would she keep looking? To Morgan’s dismay, Rix nosed the door open and bounded up on the bed, looking anxious. “I don’t want to be unhelpful here, but you do realize it’s two in the morning? I have to get up for work in four hours.”
“I’m sorry, darling, I forgot.” Murder squawked something. “But there was something—do you think you might be able to infiltrate them?”
“Infiltrate. My company’s rival. So what, I can hunt down demons for you?”
Luke, who had followed Rix, caught her eye in alarm.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His glamour included abs that belonged on an underwear model, and she briefly wondered if they mirrored his actual abs.
Then the panic in his face threw cold water on her libido.
He was freaking out and she was perving over his abs and she was a terrible person.
“Yes, exactly—maybe you can get a job there?”
“Mother, you can’t get a job at some random tech company with no notice.
” She ripped her gaze off Luke and tried to focus on her mother’s ridiculous demands.
It had taken her a four-month search to get the job at her current company, and that was only because she’d been willing to work literally anywhere that would hire her.
“Just walk your resume over and hand it to the girl at the front desk. They like gumption, I know I’ve heard that.”
She reached out and squeezed Luke’s hand, while trying to keep her tone sufficiently light. Demons avoided lying by misdirection. “Do you even realize how much of a cliché you’re being right now? That’s not how you get jobs these days. I don’t know if that’s how anyone ever even got jobs.”
“Look, I don’t know how young people do things these days.”
“Exactly! You’ve never even had an office job—you were a private detective before you started working for the Shadow Council!”
“Well, you don’t have to get huffy.”
Every time it felt like they’d made any progress, it vanished soon after. Rix licked her cheek and whuffed in sympathy.
“Is that a dog?” her mother asked.
“You’re hearing the neighbors,” Morgan said quickly.
“You need a better apartment; your walls must be paper thin.”
“I’m hanging up now, Mother, before you try to tell me to stop eating avocado toast,” she said, clicking the red button.
“Your mother’s getting closer?” Luke asked, his knuckles pale where he grabbed the back of the chair.
“Yes, but it’s going to be OK. I sicced her on GreenField UnLtd. That should keep her busy. And you safe.”
“You lied to her. For me.”
She bit her lip. “I told her for you. But… I didn’t lie.”
“What do you mean?” Without his shirt on, it was easy to tell when his shoulders tensed.
“Because GreenField really is working with another demon, remember? That’s what I told Brad. You were there!”
“I thought you were lying!”
“You couldn’t tell?” Shit. She hadn’t meant to keep it from him, and when he didn’t bring it up, she figured it was a sore subject.
“No!” He paced away from her and then turned back. “I can’t read your mind. I can tell what you want, but not what you know.”
“Well, I can’t do either,” she snapped. Then she caught herself. He was right. She should have told him. This was her mess, she had to fix it. She deliberately brought her voice down. “I’m sorry.”
“Morgan.” He rubbed his face. “Look. Another Deal active in the same geographic area is a big problem, OK? If it’s from my House, then it means one of my coworkers is muscling in on my sales territory, and that’s bad. If it’s not my House, then it’s worse.”
“OK.” She swallowed.
“And your mother? I thought when we didn’t see her again, that she’d forgotten about this. But it turns out she’s been still looking this whole time? And you’re helping her?”
“I’m not helping her. I’m—” she stumbled. “Do you have a saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?”
“Is your mother your enemy?” he asked.
“No. Yes. It’s complicated.” Morgan closed her eyes and tried to sort it out. “I absolutely am trying to protect you from her.”
“But you’re helping her with whoever GreenField is contracted with.”
“You just said it was bad for them to have a Deal,” she pointed out.
“But that’s not why,” he said. “You’re doing it because you want her approval.”
Was she? “She’s never approved of me.”
“But you want her to.”
Morgan turned away. She said in a smaller voice, “Is that really so terrible?”
“I don’t know.” She heard him step closer.
“I know it’s not possible—I’m incompetent at all the things she values or respects.”
“Morgan, you’re not incompetent.” His voice was near her shoulder, softer.
She snorted. “I messed this up pretty bad, didn’t I?”
“Morgan,” he said, gently laying a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not incompetent. I sit next to you all day, remember? I see you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again as she turned. She felt like she was spending all her time apologizing these days. She knew it was because she was keeping too many secrets, and yet every secret she kept was to protect someone. “I should have told you, and made sure you understood.”
“Because humans mess up a lot,” he quoted.
Understatement. “Yeah. I understand if you don’t feel like you can trust me now.”
“I trust you.” His eyes were intense. Her breath caught. “And I believe in you. More than you believe in you, I think.”
“What’s going on?” Gisele mumbled from the doorway. “I heard your phone. Is the world ending in tentacles and flames? Did someone die again?”
The moment shattered. Luke stepped back quickly. Morgan pulled herself together. “No. Although my mom thinks I should go get a job at our demon-summoning rival. Get this—by dropping off my resume with the receptionist.”
“Oh lord,” Gisele groaned. “It is too early in the morning for this. Did she use the word gumption?”
“She did,” Morgan confirmed.
“Can we deal with this in the morning, like, the civilized-and-involving-daylight-actual-morning?”
“Yes, please.”
“All in favor of going back to bed?” Gisele raised her hand.
Morgan raised hers. Luke, staring intently at her, slowly raised his as well. Rix yipped in solidarity.
“Motion carries, meeting adjourned, demons aren’t vampires so no more meetings until the sun comes back up.” Gisele stumbled back toward her room.
Luke looked like he was going to say something, but then closed his mouth.
Morgan thought extremely hard about how much she wanted to put her head back on her pillow so she wouldn’t think about how she wanted to hear what he had been about to say.
Because if they had that conversation, it needed to be with his shirt on.
Luke and Rix padded back into the living room, leaving Morgan to slip into uneasy dreams about job interviews with a panel of sentient avocados.