“Well, I’m afraid we’re behind our projections so we won’t be able to use company funds for this,” Hayley said. “But won’t his family feel so supported by all your personal donations!”
“What the hell?” said Ronaldo as he opened a container. “Escargot, steak tartare, and… ice cream? Are these, like,Tim’s favorites or something? I’d thought he was normal, for a marketing guy.”
She shot Luke a questioning look as they left the group behind.
“Snails and raw meat are traditional mourning foods,” he said defensively. “And I liked the ice cream. Should I have not added it?”
She would have replied, but his bracelet suddenly caught his eye and all the color drained from his face. The obsidian circle was glowing faintly with some kind of scratchy runes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. They were so close!
“It’s too late,” he said, looking grim. “They know I’m missing.”
6
Morgan tried not to panic. “It hasn’t been long, we’ll just—”
“Heads up, folks, this one’s confidential, so I’m taking the phone room,” Kelly announced as she ducked into her office to grab her laptop.
“Shit.” She’d failed him. Herself, she meant. She’d failed to get herself out of this mess. She felt worse about him, though.
“Heeey, Morgan,” Ronaldo oozed up next to her. “You’re sort of marketing-ish. You can make this LinkedIn video fancy for me, yeah? I used to ask Tim, but, well, obviously. It’s not that hard, I just don’t have time.”
She was not going to make his personal video. She was not going to inform him that her time was also valuable, or that good video editing was, in fact, hard. She was also not going to pitch his phone in the toilet, or scream, or rage quit, which were all things she’d rather be doing.
Hayley emerged from the kitchen, taking a sip of vinegar-flavored coffee and making a face.
“Morgan and I are going on a—a—” Luke stumbled over the human phrase. “Coffee run. What do people want?”
“Oh, I was just going to ask if someone could do that,”Hayley said. “Tall blonde skinny iced latte with soy, two pumps of caramel, three and a half pumps of cinnamon dolce, cold foam, and a pistachio drizzle, please.”
“Iced green tea,” Kelly requested as she headed for the phone room. “No ice, just leave it on my desk, please. I’ll Venmo you.”
“Nothing for me, you don’t want to know how often they clean those machines,” Carter said darkly.
“I’m just saying, this new homeopathic coffee is the way to go. All those particulates are weighing you down,” Ronaldo informed her, wagging a bottle of something transparent and inexplicably lime green.
Luke smiled charmingly and nearly dragged her out by the elbow.
“Was that a rescue?” she asked when they were on the sidewalk.
“We need a new plan,” he said. He looked at the ground, suddenly awkward. “Maybe a little bit of a rescue.”
He probably just didn’t want to deal with having to sense her desperate desire to not be in the office anymore.
“How do you know they know you’re missing?”
He held up his arm. The glow from the bracelet was starting to die down.
“Whatever the demonic equivalent of Slack is can cross the planar boundaries?” She’d cursed being tethered to her phone by late-night messages often enough.
“Nothing is slack, it’s extremely tense,” he said. “My boss isnot happy.”
She was still reeling from the funeral and Ronaldo and everything else. She tried to steady herself. “Talk me through this. What does that mean? Are they going to fire you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? They know I’m loose on this plane, and I don’t have anything to show for it.” He started to pace nervously. She gently directed his pacing in the direction of Starbucks. “But I can’t stay here or your mom will kill me.”
“Maybe we can use that?” Morgan fretted. “We make you look a little beat up—you say you got loose but a Shadow Council fixer caught you and sent you back?”
