“I’m hedging my bets,” he hissed back.
“I don’t have all day,” Kelly said from Tim’s office door. “You can sit in here so you don’t distract everyone while we teach him how to take over your prospecting.”
There was brief confusion when everyone realized thatno one had ordered a laptop for the new intern. (“Can you, I don’t know, magic up one that coincidentally had been left in the back room?” “Sure, right after you take me to Nogo.” “Nobu.” “Whatever.”) Fortunately, Zabloom’s onboarding procedures were such a well-established shitshow no one seemed to think the lack of equipment was odd. Finally, they gave up and checked that Tim’s computer didn’t have anything particularly important saved locally (a couple of articles on how to cure scabies that Morgan really wished she hadn’t seen) and wiped that.
Kelly insisted on sitting in with them while Morgan demonstrated the pitch on a series of calls. They went about as well as Morgan expected. The first six didn’t even pick up. The next hung up as soon as she introduced herself. Two more went straight to voicemail. The next let her get through half the pitch before informing her that their company was in the middle of layoffs at the moment and did not foresee hiring anyone again for at least a year. They paused for a few minutes while the upstairs neighbors dragged a metal filing cabinet full of pebbles across a speed bump or two. The last target cursed her out, including a creative expression she’d never heard before. She made a mental note to add it to the private list she kept.
“All right, I think I’m ready to try,” Luke said after that one.
Morgan tried to signal to him with her eyes as Kelly raised an eyebrow.
“I usually wouldn’t let someone on the phone line until at least their second week, but if you’re that gung-ho…” Kelly said, leaning over to scroll down the list. She chose one of the names from the poorly rated section. “Here, you can try that one.”
Luke nodded, and shifted a little, settling into himself. He took a breath, turned his head so he wasn’t facing them, and then called the number. “Hello? This is Luke Harrioff with Zabloom, how are you today?”
To Kelly’s visible surprise, the prospect answered cheerfully. And they continued to stay on the line while Luke went through the entire pitch, not quite perfectly but close enough.
“We-ell,” the prospect said, sounding a little doubtful. “I don’t know if we really need anything like that. But tell you what, I’m kinda curious.”
“Can I book you for a demonstration, maybe?” Luke asked, staring intensely at the laptop’s phone app. His eyes flashed.
“Sure, why not. Tuesday good?”
Morgan scrambled to pull up Kelly’s calendar and Luke found an open spot before pleasantly thanking his target and hanging up.
Kelly stared at him, eyebrows in her hairline. “That was… remarkably fortunate.”
“Wow, talk about beginner’s luck!” Morgan said, kicking Luke under the table.
Luke blinked, but he seemed to take the hint. His next several tries went to voicemail, until Kelly finally left them to make their way through the rest of the list.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Morgan grabbed him.
“The new plan,” he said.
“Tell me the truth. Are you the reason I got Tim’s job?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes.”
“I can’t believe you!” She couldn’t throw up her hands like she wanted to, because everyone could see them throughthe glass door. She tried to keep her face normal, like she was giving him prospecting advice. But she was going to kill him. No, she was going to let her mother kill him. She’d let him sleep on her couch, and he was still trying to bargain for her soul? “I said no, and it’s beyond not cool for you to not respect that.”
“I’m not trying to buy your soul, it doesn’t work retroactively,” he said hurriedly. “I just wanted to balance things. I owe you.”
That sounded uncomfortably plausible. She could see how a demon might be uncomfortable with altruism. But it could also be a total lie, and she knew which she would bet on. “Oh, and they’re just going to approve that line item on the expense report because you felt bad. Or were you planning to tell them it was to tempt me? Somehow?”
“Well, it’s only a temporary promotion,” he reasoned. “So they might think it was to whet your appetite. And it would take a real miracle to let you just keep it.”
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“That came out wrong,” he said hurriedly. “I just meant that getting a permanent position would take real power, but this barely needed a nudge. Kelly and Hayley both desperately wanted a fast solution, and you’re right there. And you said you wanted to do marketing!”
“Not like this!”
“Do you want me to make them change their minds?”
“No, that’s going to screw me over even more!”
“I—”
