Chapter 3
“And you’re sure they denied you?”
“Yes, Mother,” Pippa said into her phone for the eighth time in half as many minutes, fighting her irritation by fidgeting with the items on her desk. Clicking pens, picking some dust out of her keyboard, sliding her handwritten nameplate back and forth within its plastic holder.
Philippa Beverly, Kenzie from HR had written in a bubbly script. The i’s were dotted with circles.
“But are you sure?” Mary Beverly repeated. “Some of the Ash Coven members like to slur their words.”
“No one slurred.”
“Or maybe they were talking about the previous interviewee. You must have missed something.”
“Mom.” One of Pippa’s eyes twitched as she stared at the paneled ceiling. Her ribs ached with the force of her sigh, and she idly rubbed her side. Although she felt much better than she had last night, a few twinges remained.
“They denied me,” she said. “Again. They said it was . . .” She paused and glanced around the office.
Most of the associates’ doors were closed, and those whose remained open were either pacing or flipping through depositions.
The assortment of assistant desks in the center of the office space held only Pippa and Juliette Cohen, who had enveloped her as a friend shortly after starting at Ivanov, Barry, and Cruz.
Geoff Davis—the third assistant—had just gotten up for another cup of coffee, and Jules was typing intently on her computer.
Anything more than a cursory look revealed the words “Kirk,” “Spock,” and “throbbing.”
Although no one seemed to be listening, Pippa kept her voice low as she spoke into her phone.
“They always say it’s because of him. His power is in my blood, which makes my application take forever. It’s impossible.”
Mary heaved a loud sigh on the other end of the line, as if readying herself for a battle. “They’ll change their minds. You have to keep trying. You’re good at this, Pippa. Don’t you want to have a career doing something you’re good at?”
“Of course I do, you think I used to dream about proofreading emails when—”
Mary didn’t seem to hear. “I don’t think you’d want your father’s faults to hover over you for you the rest of your life.”
“Faults” was a weak term, considering what he’d done, but Pippa kept that comment to herself.
Mary continued. “They’ll let you in. I know it.”
“What if they don’t?” It was the question that had been stabbing at Pippa for years. There wasn’t much else in her life that she could confidently claim as worthy of a solid future; if she couldn’t find success here, then where?
“They will.”
Sometimes, she wished for her mother’s optimism, even if it was just an overabundance of determination disguised as positivity.
Mary’s voice grew gentle. “And until then, you’re making New Hawkshead safer.”
“Yeah.” Pippa poked at her nameplate. The knowledge did give her some sense of duty, and purpose, and . . . hell, even pride. Every hostile creature she put down was one less murdered citizen. One less butchered pet. However, that never stopped her mother from—
“But you just have to keep trying.”
Yep. From saying that.
The twitch moved from Pippa’s eyelid to her temple, and she rubbed the spot hard with her thumb. She’d pulled her hair into a loose bun this morning, and as she massaged her scalp, several locks fell out of the clip and into her face.
“So what did you get last night?”
“A Tro’grath,” Pippa said, so delighted at the change in subject she had to remember to keep her voice low as she recounted the fight. “But there was something weird. It had stones. In its head.”
“Rude, Pip. I know they’re demons, but there’s no need to talk like that.”
“No, I mean it had . . . jewels. In its forehead. Almost like a circlet, but in its skin.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Have you heard of anything like that before?”
Her mother made a “Hmm,” and in her silence, Pippa could hear the warble of a television.
“I’ll ask my book group.”
Pippa’s chair squeaked as she leaned back in it. “You have a book group?”
“It’s online. We use videoconferencing. Pippa, I can hear your judgment.”
“No judgment, just surprise.” A little bit of judgment, as this was the same woman who had written every single one of her passwords on a piece of paper she kept within her folded laptop. But Pippa wasn’t going to bring that up now.
“You have a book group that’s all right with you asking about demons—”
A shadow moved into Pippa’s field of vision, just enough in the periphery for her to see expertly hemmed pants and a set of shining black shoes.
“—that, uh, aren’t in the . . . um . . . Player’s Handbook?” she managed. The black shoes didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “Hey, I gotta go, we’ll talk more tonight.” Her mother’s confused squawks cut out as she ended the call.
Pippa plastered a friendly smile on her face and turned to the person hovering at the edge of her desk.
Her smile became a bit more forced when she saw who it was.
Maxim Fucking Sheppard.
Pippa had to crane her neck to look up at him.
He really liked to loom. At about six feet tall, it came naturally to him, like he was a neolithic standing stone.
With his wide chest and near-permanent glower, he only had to be cloned and aligned with the solstice and no one would be able to tell the difference.
“I’d like those printouts now. Please.” His “please” at the end felt like trying to dab a bit of honey on a cactus to make it go down easier.
Pippa’s smile became more forced. “Of course.” She’d printed the files an hour ago and they sat on her desk, waiting patiently for this exact moment.
Maxim didn’t go away when she handed them over. He flipped through the papers, checking each one. “The Burton case?”
“At the back.”
“Ah.”
He closed the manila folder, but then continued to loom as if he had something else to say.
He had decently plump lips, the sort that could pull off a successful pout if they weren’t always pressed into a thin line that hinted at unaddressed constipation.
Now though, he was clamping down on the bottom one.
Was he . . . nervous? His hair wasn’t quite as coiffed as usual. It was normally styled with the type of carefree tousling only achieved after twenty minutes of meticulous arranging in the morning, but today a few blond strands stuck up as if he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly.
Pippa’s indignation hovered nearby, uncertain.
Was this the day she would find out if there was more to stony, yacht-ordering, cactusy Maxim Sheppard?
“You shouldn’t be taking personal calls in the office,” he said finally.
Never mind.
It wasn’t as if non-workplace activity was forbidden; Pippa had overheard more than one lengthy conversation about some spoiled child’s preference for a specific soccer team, or observed a game of table-tennis created with a makeshift net on someone’s desk. For shit’s sake, Jules was writing porn.
What Maxim had meant was “You shouldn’t take a personal call.”
Pippa bridled her anger and said, “Of course, Mr. Sheppard. Won’t happen again.”
Fuck, she hated calling him that, especially since he was only three or four years older than her. All that separated them was a handful of years and ninety thousand handfuls of cash that paid for a fancy degree.
Maxim’s jaw twitched.
Before he could say anything else, Pippa slid into her secretary role in an attempt to urge the conversation into the type that encouraged him away from her desk.
“Do you need anything else? More depositions printed out?” A colonic?
“I— Uh, no.” He walked away without another word. He couldn’t bother with a “Thank you,” or a “Good job, Beverly, I appreciate your work.” Not even a slight nod.
Before he slipped into his office, Pippa fought the juvenile impulse to chuck her plastic nameplate at the back of his head.
Jules spun around in her chair and scooted over to Pippa’s desk by digging the edges of her high heels into the carpet. She always dressed as if she were a lawyer herself: well-fitted blazer, pencil skirt, heels high enough to also function as weapons, her black hair pulled into a sleek ponytail.
Pippa thunked her forehead onto her keyboard, not caring about the alarmed chimes it created.
“Jesus, he has the social skills of a hornet,” Jules whispered.
“Unhh,” Pippa groaned against the space bar. At Jules’s supportive shoulder pat, she straightened, then deleted the gibberish she’d headbutted into her open email. “At least he looked frazzled. Made me feel a little better.”
Jules blew a soft raspberry through her lips.
“If I were him, I’d be frazzled too.” When Pippa frowned, she added, “Because of the— You forgot. About the dinner tonight. Seriously? The dinner where they’re going to announce who gets promoted to senior associate and gets the entire Crossly-Williams account, and will basically be a private lawyer to the second-richest family in New Hawkshead? ”
Oh.
Tonight, the entire firm—all thirty-odd partners, associates, assistants, and even the two janitors—would be attending a dinner to celebrate the achievements of the most tenured partner and reveal who would be rising to a higher level of snobbery.
Which was why Maxim had demanded more of Pippa than normal over the last month, asking for depositions and textbooks and taking on cases that would have broken someone who wasn’t utterly desperate for the new title.
“Only forgot for a second,” Pippa said.
Jules shook her head. “You’d think with three assistants, he wouldn’t be riding you so hard—” She grimaced. “Sorry, poor word choice.”
Warmth crept up Pippa’s neck and settled by her ears. Even though she’d never seen Maxim when he wasn’t wearing a suit and tie, she was pretty sure he was built underneath all that tailored black fabric.