“Sure. Makes me sound badass. It’s a plan.” He didn’t actually sound convinced. He looked around the street, full of cars and people bustling and what looked like an entire fashion shoot going on down one of the side streets, before changing the subject. “Your boss—so only the family eats the body, then?”
She stumbled. “What do I have to say to get it through your head—we don’t eat people on this plane!”
“They’re going to waste it?” he looked appalled.
“People aren’t food, that’s grotesque.” She sped up a little, hoping the folks passing them on the street hadn’t heard enough to parse the conversation.
“What’s grotesque was that entire meeting.”
“You’re criticizing human mourning rituals? You’re the one who wanted to steal his soul.”
“Number one, I wanted to buy his soul, it would have been completely consensual; no one was stealing anything.” He hurried to keep up with her. “Two, I was only going to receive ownership of his soul once he was done with it—it’s not like I killed him. And three, that wasn’t a mourning ritual, none of you were mourning!” She reared back, offended. “Who are you to say whether anyone was mourning or not?”
“I know what people want, remember?” He rolled his eyes. “And absolutely no one in that room wanted him back.”
That… was probably true. Her cheeks burned. How much would the office even speak of Tim after today? They’d arrived at the Starbucks on this block, so she covered her embarrassment with the embarrassment of trying to remember everyone’s orders.
“So what can you do?” she asked in a low voice as they waited in a corner. The din of conversation and indie-lite music covered their words as it was intended to. “Since we’re apparently going to need to improvise.”
“I’ve got a… limited budget.”
“X miracles a day?”
“It’s not like your money, it’s not that countable. It’s a certain amount of energy that can be spent on magic,” he explained. “It’s easier when it’s making people believe something they’re already inclined to believe. And before you ask, no—if I just try to control them into signing, the Deal doesn’t stick. Plus, whatever magic I do has to be in service of eventually closing a Deal, with a minor amount permitted to keep me functional enough to work. I can’t, I don’t know, make someone give me free hot liquids just because I want them. I’ll have to justify it somehow later.”
“Shame.” The barista was looking at the slip and making a face. Morgan guessed she’d just seen Hayley’s monstrosity. “Is it just mind control, then? How were you going to get Tim his leads, individually mind-whammy the entire leads list? What do you do if someone wishes for, I don’t know, a pile of gold?”
“Not just mental influence,” he said. “We can, in certain limited capacities, influence the relative probabilities of events on this plane. The two together can do a lot. A lot of the standard wishes are some combination of wealth,power, longevity, and attractiveness. We can make things fall out people’s way, and make them extremely persuasive and likable. We can make people’s bodies happen to be healthier. And if that doesn’t help enough, we go straight to making other people find them sexier. I can’t make gold appear out of thin air, but I might be able to make the back door of a truck with a bag of gold bars fly open as it passes you some time in the next week.”
“But then I’ll have stolen gold.”
“If you want to have gold without any risk of being accused of a crime, that’s a larger Deal. You needed to have specified.”
The barista signaled Morgan and she handed Luke one of the trays. His fingers brushed hers; he yanked them back. She tried not to be hurt—maybe physical contact made reading her desires more uncomfortable.
“But how does that work?” She led them back outside. “Tim couldn’t have grown extra souls—we only have the one.”
“Pushing around the probabilities creates a… tension? An imbalance between the planes. The more unlikely the thing we’ve done on the soul’s behalf, the more potential energy.”
“So if they just ask for a little thing…”
“But no one ever just asks for a little thing, they wouldn’t sell their soul for that. And even if it starts relatively small, the requests always get bigger. Humans are never happy with what they have; if they wish for a yacht and get a yacht, a week later they want a bigger yacht.”
“Are demons different?”
“Probably not. Maybe it’s the nature of desire, that fulfilling it makes it bigger.”
Morgan wondered how much of this her father knew. “But you’ve used magic here without a soul to tie it to.”
“It’s understood that most humans won’t agree to a Deal without some kind of proof,” he pointed out. “We’re allowed a few small miracles to prove we can do anything and win the prospect’s confidence.”
“You’ve got an expense account.”
“But,” he looked uncomfortable, “This isn’t a big Deal I’m closing. I don’t have a potential Deal at all.”
“And you’re only a junior guy,” she added. “You’ve got the budget to take the client out for a drink, but not dinner at Nobu or a box at Yankees Stadium.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
