Morgan hadn’t even made it to their section. Zabloom wasn’t big enough for their own offices; they rented the corner in a tech incubator, dozens of small tech companies crammed elbow-to-elbow on rows of bench desks in multiple floors. Whenever someone was lucky enough to walk an investor through on the way to the Good Conference Room, the jealousy would waft like a middle school lunchroom. The couple of employees from the meal replacement company who had been unlucky enough to be assigned the desk bank next to the elevator perked up, clearly listening for hot gossip.
Morgan did not want to talk to Hayley about her traumatic experience. She smiled back wanly. “That’s so kind, I’ll keep it in mind.”
“I’ll forward you my favorite TED Talk on the power of restorative grieving,” Hayley promised. “And of course, if you need a therapy dog, Floofums would be happy to comfort you, wouldn’t you Floofums, yes, you would, my little angel.”
Floofums, who looked less like an angel and more like a pom-pom crossed with an enraged badger, bared his teeth.
“We’ll be having a moment of silence in a few minutes,” Hayley continued. “Would you say a few words? You were closest to him, after Brad, of course.”
Hayley patted her sympathetically on the shoulder, and then looked over that shoulder at Luke. She turned back to Morgan, quizzical.
“Yo, dude, you came back,” Vijay said as he brushed by clutching his habitual yerba maté gourd. He gently punched Luke in the arm. The demon looked nonplussed. “That was pretty gnarly last night. Glad you didn’t, like, totally bail.”
Hayley’s eyebrows were starting to furrow. Morgan took a deep breath and prayed that Luke could do what he claimed, because she didn’t know how else to explain why he’d been around after hours last night. “Hayley, you remember Luke, the new sales intern, right? The one the scholarship people sent us?”
Hayley’s brow was starting to change from a confused wrinkle to an angry crease when Luke stepped in, hand extended. Hayley took the offered hand automatically.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” he said with dangerous charm, his eyes momentarily flashing orange.
Hayley’s brow smoothed out again. “We’re excited to have you onboard! But so sorry you had to start at such a difficult time.”
Morgan slowly let out a breath, trying to make it inconspicuous. “I’m going to show him around, let him put down his things.”
“Oh, excellent. In fact, let’s make that official—you can be his Onboarding Buddy!” Hayley twinkled at them. “Now don’t take too long—memorial service in fifteen!”
“Fifteen minutes isn’t going to be enough time,” Luke said to her under his breath.
“No, it’s perfect. As soon as everyone’s busy, we’ll sneak into the phone room,” she whispered back. “Let’s just try to interact with as few people as possible between now and then.”
“Who’s your buddy?” Ronaldo had impeccable timing as always.
“Morning, Ronaldo. I am indeed his buddy, courtesy of Hayley.” Morgan forced a smile. At least if she invoked Hayley’s name, maybe Ronaldo wouldn’t go into some passive-aggressive status contest with her because he hadn’t been picked instead. “This is Luke, he’s the new sales intern.”
“Is that right?” Ronaldo gave Luke a dull-toothed shark grin and thrust out a hand. Luke took it. The handshake seemed to go on far longer than it should. Ronaldo finally let go. “Nice grip you’ve got there. You work out?”
“As necessary,” Luke said, his smile bland.
“I do ten miles most mornings, got a triathlon coming up. You should join me.”
“We’ll see,” Luke said.
“I need to show Luke around,” Morgan said. Ronaldo had never invited her to go running. Not that she wanted to go running with Ronaldo, at all, but it stung a little that they’d known each other for months and he was suddenlyall friendly with a total stranger. It didn’t matter. Luke would be gone before lunch. She’d have to make up an excuse about him flaking, but everyone loved a good scapegoat to rail at. “I’ll see you at the thing.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ronaldo said, his attention turning back to her. “Gonna be some great LinkedIn content there, real inspo stuff. I’ve got dibs, no posting about the same event, you know?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she promised as she steered Luke down the row of cubicles. Mostly because it had never even occurred to her to categorize a coworker’s death as “inspo.”
“Good to know coworkers are universal,” Luke whispered when they were out of earshot.
“Ronaldo’s the junior sales guy,” she explained. “Vijay says he doesn’t wash his hands in the bathroom, so you’ll probably want some hand sanitizer.”
“How long is a human mourning ritual?”
Right, they weren’t actually here to introduce the intern. “A full funeral is, like, an hour? If you don’t count the burial?” She wasn’t sure how long regular human funerals were, even though she’d been to a lot of her mom’s friends’ funerals over the years. Werewolf funerals went all night, and the selkie thing had involved a literal flaming boat. “But this is an office memorial, and the calendar invite says half an hour.”
“Is there something we can do to keep them out of the phone room for longer? What distracts humans?”
What didn’t distract humans? “Umm. We could pull the fire alarm. But I’m the office fire warden, I’ve got the stupid dayglo vest and everything, so they’d miss me and I’d get in trouble later. No fire alarm. Free food? Office workers are always distracted by free food, which is weird because it’snot like we can’t afford our own pizza. But where are we going to get food? And someone will want to know where it came from. Look, we’ll make it work, OK? We just have to kill a few more minutes.” He opened his mouth so she hurried to add, “Not literally. Don’t kill anything.”
