8. Jagger
JAGGER
The glass walls of this office don't do much to muffle sound, and the word monster travels through them with perfect clarity.
I hear it from the lobby chair, which creaks beneath me every time I shift my weight.
The receptionist with the frozen expression pretends to study her computer screen.
The grey-haired man in the expensive suit leans across his desk and jabs his coffee cup at Sabine like it's a weapon, and something old and hot uncurls behind my ribs, something that predates language and operates entirely in the register of bared teeth and broken bone.
I don't move. Not yet.
Sabine's posture is rigid. I can read the tension in her shoulders from fifty feet away, the way she holds herself perfectly still the way prey animals do when they are trying to convince a predator they aren't worth the effort.
She isn't prey. She's the sharpest person I've met in years.
But this man clearly doesn't see that, and the thing behind my ribs uncurls a little further, and the runes along my forearms pulse with a faint heat that makes Claire the receptionist scoot her rolling chair three inches to the left.
I stand up. The lobby chair exhales with relief.
The walk from reception to the executive corridor takes me eight steps.
I don't knock on the glass door. I open it, and the entire frame rattles in a way that is not deliberate but that I don't regret, and I duck my head to clear the threshold and step inside.
The office immediately feels smaller. The aggressive modern sculpture on the shelf behind the desk, some kind of twisted chrome thing that probably cost more than my entire weapons collection, comes up to about my elbow.
The grey-haired man stops talking mid-sentence and stares up at me, and the blood drains from his face in a slow, satisfying tide that starts at his hairline and works its way down to his collar.
"Mr. Whitfield," I say. I have learned over the years that quiet is far more effective than loud, because loud tells people you are angry, and quiet tells people you are in control of your anger, which is considerably worse.
"This is a private meeting. You need to leave, or I will call security."
"Go ahead." I let the door close behind me. The latch clicks with a soft, final sound. "While you're at it, you should probably call your legal department, too. You'll want them on standby."
"Excuse me?"
I reach into the inner pocket of my leather vest, and Whitfield flinches.
Hard. The kind of flinch that moves his entire body backward and makes his coffee slosh over the rim of his paper cup and onto his pristine desk blotter.
I pull out a small, battered notebook that I keep secured with a leather strap, the one I use to track case law and statute references that are relevant to my line of work, and I flip it open to a page I bookmarked months ago with a torn receipt from a weapons dealer in the Narrows.
"Section 14, Subsection C of the Interspecies Cohabitation Protection Act, enacted three years ago after the Thornwall v. Derrickson Employment Board ruling. Are you familiar with it?"
Whitfield's mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
"I'll summarize. Any employer who threatens termination, demotion, or punitive action against an employee solely on the basis of that employee's legally recognized bond with a non-human partner is in violation of federal interspecies discrimination law.
The penalties are substantial. We're talking six figures in personal liability for the supervising manager, not the firm.
You, individually." I turn a page in my notebook, even though I have the relevant numbers memorized, because the act of casually flipping through documentation while a man sweats through his shirt is a performance I have refined over dozens of bounty negotiations.
"The Thornwall case set the precedent. The judge awarded two hundred and forty thousand in damages, plus legal fees, plus a public compliance audit that kept the firm's name in the papers for eleven months.
Their client list dropped by thirty percent. "
"That's... you can't just..."
"I can. Sabine Lin is my legally recognized mate under DMI Bond Registry filing number 4471-B.
The bond is documented, stamped, and magically sealed.
I have a copy of the certificate in my other pocket, if you'd like to see it.
" I don't reach for it. I let the offer sit, heavy and patient.
"If you fire her, or demote her, or restructure her role, or make her working conditions intolerable in any way that a reasonable tribunal might interpret as retaliation for her bonded status, I will file a Section 14 complaint before the end of the business day.
I know the forms. I fill out a lot of government paperwork in my line of work. "
Sabine stands slightly behind me and to my left, and she looks at the side of my face. I don't look at her. I keep my eyes on Whitfield, because eye contact is a currency in moments like these, and I am not about to break the exchange.
"Furthermore," I continue, and I close the notebook with a soft snap and tuck it back into my vest, "I want to make something clear about the word you used a moment ago.
The one that carried through your glass walls.
" I take a single step closer to his desk.
Just one. But one step from me covers a lot of ground, and Whitfield's lower back hits his credenza.
"My hearing is excellent, Mr. Whitfield.
Significantly better than human standard.
It's a species trait. Very useful in my profession.
" I let that land. I let him think about what my profession is.
His eyes drop to the tusk piercings, the scarred knuckles, the faintly lighted lines of runic script that trace my forearms where I've rolled back my sleeves.
"The Interspecies Dignity Amendment to Section 14 specifically addresses hostile language in the workplace directed at bonded partners.
That's a separate filing. A separate penalty. A separate audit."
Whitfield sets his coffee cup down on the desk with a hand that trembles just enough to be visible.
"I'm sure," I say, "that none of this will be necessary.
Because I'm sure you're a reasonable man who values the reputation of his firm and the loyalty of his most meticulous associate.
" I glance at Sabine. Just for a second. Just long enough to see the way her dark eyes have gone wide and bright with something I don’t recognize.
"I'll be in the lobby. I brought a book. "
I turn my back on him. This is deliberate.
Turning your back on a man you've just dismantled tells him he isn't dangerous enough to warrant your continued attention.
I open the glass door, duck through the frame, and walk back to the lobby, where I lower myself into the suffering leather chair and pull a battered paperback from my coat pocket.
The Siege of Ashenmoor, volume three of the Ironkeep Chronicles.
I've been looking forward to this one. The protagonist just discovered she's the heir to a dead kingdom, and there's a dragon involved, and I need to know what happens next.
Behind me, through the glass, I hear Whitfield clear his throat.
"Lin. That... that will be all. Take the day if you need it."
The drive back to her apartment is different from the drive to the office. Sabine grips the steering wheel at ten and two, same as before, but her jaw isn't clenched, and her breathing has settled into something slower and more even.
"You memorized federal interspecies employment law," she says finally, as we pull onto her street.
"Parts of it."
"Parts of it. You carry a notebook full of statute references in your vest pocket. Next to, I assume, several knives."
"Three. And a garrote. The notebook is more useful in most situations."
She parks the car with the same precise, controlled movements she applies to everything, each action measured and deliberate, and she sits for a moment with the engine off and her hands still on the wheel, staring through the windshield at the brick facade of her apartment building.
The afternoon light catches the sharp line of her jaw, the clean edge of her dark hair where it falls just below her chin, and I have to look away because the impulse to reach over and brush that hair behind her ear is so strong it makes my fingers ache.
"Thank you," she says. The words come out stiff, like she's forcing them through a filter of pride and self-sufficiency that doesn't want to admit she needed help. "What you did in there. With Whitfield. That was..."
"Standard negotiation."
"That was brilliant. He looked like he was going to faint. Gerald Whitfield the Third, who once made a senior partner cry in a board meeting, looked like he was about to pass out on his own desk blotter."
"He should invest in better glass walls if he wants his threats to stay private."
A sound escapes her. Small, sharp, caught between a laugh and a breath.
She covers her mouth with one hand, and her eyes crinkle at the corners, and I memorize every detail of that expression with the same thoroughness I apply to tracking fugitives across state lines because it is, without question, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen volcanic sunsets over the Ashfall Reaches and the bioluminescent caves of the Deep Narrows and none of them come close.
"Come on," she says, and she opens her car door. "I want to do something for you."
What she wants to do for me, it turns out, is my taxes.