“—could do that for you, of course. All I’d need is a signature.”
She suddenly became aware of what Luke was saying. Her head shot up. “Are you trying to cut a Deal with one of our prospects?” she demanded, outraged.
He wouldn’t meet her eye. “Eminently affordable! All it costs is your soul.”
“Luke!” She grabbed for his earbuds.
But he was already staring at it. “He hung up on me!”
“Of course he hung up on you, you sound like a prank caller,” she snapped.
“You seem so worried about not talking about magic, I didn’t realize how few people believed in magic,” he complained, still glaring at his screen.
“Yes, because we don’t talk about magic!” She stabbed his mousepad with her finger, closing the dialer screen. “This is serious. You cannot do this.”
“Yes, I know it’s serious,” he snapped back. “Do you? Because you’re sure not acting like it.”
“I’m sticking my neck out here for you. You’ve already put my job at risk by forcing me into this.”
“I just gave you what you wanted!”
“There’s a difference between saying you want something hypothetically and actually wanting someone to do it for you. And I don’t even want to think about what the Shadow Council will do to me if they find out I’m hiding you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are they going to eat you?”
That pulled her up short. Because no, they weren’t. She might lose her job. She might lose her apartment. She might lose her memory to a Council charm, and certainly her welcome home at Thanksgiving. But her life wasn’t on the line.
“Are you joining us for yoga?” Hayley stuck her head inthe door. She’d changed from her pencil skirt into Lululemon leggings. Floofums eyed Morgan’s bag speculatively, ready to steal anything that looked edible.
“I’ve got a little too much to get done today,” Morgan said tightly. Even on a normal day, she never had time to take advantage of the yoga instructor Hayley hired in place of a decent health insurance plan. They had yoga and foosball and mini-packets of keto-friendly snacks, because that’s what you did when you were a tech startup. Sometimes Morgan wondered if there was a licensing board who barred you from Series A funding if you didn’t have free sriracha-flavored dehydrated chickpeas.
“Mindful exercise is the key to preventing burnout!” Hayley chirped.
Giving people achievable quantities of work and adequate pay was the key to preventing burnout. Right now, her burnout had less to do with work and more to do with her unwanted roommate. “Maybe next week.”
”Is yoga not cool enough? Should I have gotten a Pilates instructor instead?” Hayley looked disappointed. “Oh! I know—what if I got goat yoga?”
“I need to set up this thing for Ronaldo,” Morgan said, grateful when Hayley finally took the hint.
“What’s yoga, and why are we supposed to be doing it now?” The “instead of finding a way to get me home” remained unspoken.
“It’s performative self-torture in eco-unfriendly and unflattering spandex,” Morgan said reflexively.
He cocked his head and studied her. “But you want to do it anyway.”
Now that wasn’t fair. She’d spent a lifetime perfecting herpoker face and now she was stuck with someone it didn’t work on. “It’s fine.”
“I appreciate that my problem is not the only thing you’re avoiding, but if you want to do the spandex torture, why are you insulting it so much?” He stared straight into her eyes, leaving her nowhere to hide.
“You’re not going to let me give you a non-answer, are you?” He shook his head. She tried to figure out how to explain something she tried to not spend very much time thinking about. “It’s just… if you don’t participate in office activities, HR thinks you’re not a team player. But if you take the time out of the day to participate in office activities, you can’t finish your work and then you’re an underperformer. There’s no way to win.”
“So you’re making fun of it so you don’t feel bad you can’t do it,” he said slowly.
“It’s a human thing, I guess.”
“What happens if you’re an underperformer, or not a team player?”
“If they decide it’s bad enough, they kick you out and you have to find a new job?”
