“I never got comfortable lying to them,” she said, nibbling at the edge of her thumbnail and then shoving her hand in her lap as soon as she realized what she was doing. Most people lied to their parents, she knew.
Most people’s parents hadn’t pricked their children’s thumbs when they were eight and used the drop of blood to enchant a crystal to glow blue every time the child lied.
Most people would ask what she was smoking and if they could have some if she confessed that fact. Magic was not part of most people’s lives. As people like Morgan’s parents would very much prefer to keep it that way, it meant that, whileMorgan didn’t know how to lie to her mother, she spent a lot of time lying to everyone else. Near the end of high school, she’d managed to break the crystal—her parents willingly believed it was incompetence—but not the habit.
It would have been easier, of course, if she had been part of the magical world herself. If she had gone to Pendragon Prep according to plan, she might be off studying cryptids in the Andes like her uncle, or writing papers on communicating with the souls of the deceased like her father, or training to be a Shadow Council fixer like her mother, or at least dating some nice young mage who could add a little oomph back into the family gene pool. But no. She was a failure. No Pendragon Prep for her. Just a shitty public high school and a too-expensive communications degree from the City University of New York. Now, she was trapped in an open-plan office with greige carpet and incessant construction on the floor above, working for a startup with the nonsensical name of Zabloom whose business plan her parents couldn’t seem to grasp, no matter how many times she gave them the spiel. No one dreamed of being a sales development representative when they were a little kid, but she’d figured out a while back that dreams weren’t for people like her.
And her weekly SQL quota was now five percent higher than it had been this morning, so she’d better get back to work.
***
Are you EVER coming home?
Why was it that her mother’s texts made Morgan want to shrivel up, all salt-covered-slug-like, and her roommate’swhining felt affectionate? Probably because when she read them back in her head, she could picture Gisele grinning at her when she said it.
Soon, she promised.
She wasn’t quite sure why she’d stayed so late. It wasn’t that she was passionate about stalking HR executives across social media. But the look that Kelly had given her when she’d asked about her quota? Somehow it set off the same queasy feeling her mother was so good at eliciting. She was never going to be her mother, and if she was honest with herself she was never going to be Kelly, either, but the second one seemed more achievable. So she stuck to her knock-off Aeron chair, grimly poking through the fetid wastelands of LinkedIn, until even Ronaldo went home. The demolition team upstairs had long ago packed it in. She wrote witty cold email after witty cold email, working her way through her assigned contacts list. For each one, she tried to weave in some personal detail from the person’s social media, trying for thoughtful personalization without stalkerific threat. Catch their attention so she could schedule enough demo calls to meet her quota for the week. There was a weird satisfaction to continuing, and continuing, and continuing, ignoring thirst and the dull headache that had started to blossom behind her increasingly gritty eyeballs. She even spent a little time poking around the profiles of some of their competitors’ sales team; GreenField UnLtd.’s Head of Sales had an outrageous number of connections. He went by the name of Hawk and had a profile pic that looked like a K-drama star, and posted three times a day. Smarmy but a lot more charismatic than Ronaldo. She made sure Kelly saw her still diligently working away when the Head ofSales left for yet another fabulous party with her no-doubt equally glamorous fiancée. (She’d never met Kelly’s fiancée; for all Morgan knew, the woman rocked a super-butch undercut and flannel. But Kelly’s accessories were all always so magazine-perfect that Morgan couldn’t picture her with a partner who didn’t match. The rock on Kelly’s finger certainly implied she’d chosen someone with money.)
Morgan didn’t have anyone to go to glamorous parties with, even if she’d been invited to glamorous parties. The folks from the magical community regarded her with something too close to pity to ever be sexy, and the idea of trying to explain her mother or her life to someone mundane gave her hives. There had been some flings in college that fizzled out quickly, but Kelly’s engagement ring seemed about as attainable as Kelly’s VP title. Maybe less.
Moooorgan. The ice cream is going to melt
Morgan smiled at Gisele’s text.
Why did you take it out of the freezer dumbass?
I mean, I didn’t, then it would have actually melted.
This is figurative melting. Because it’s Thursday
and it’s almost 8:30
and I made the prettiest infographic today
and I’m ready to kick back and celebrate
but you haven’t left the office and we have
hot hot plans you’re messing up
We’re watching SyFy channel originals from
the early 2000s, that’s hardly hot hot plans
Are you kidding? They’re the BEST plans
but I can’t start the movie because you’re not here
and how am I ever going to find out whether the
ancient artifacts that are secretly buried under
Stonehenge will summon aliens like the tablet says
I’m going to eat the ice cream
all of it
