“I don’t have time for this.” She took a deep breath. “Goats are native to this plane.”
“But the horns! The eyes!”
“I know the eyes are freaky, but they really do come from here. It’s OK. You just need to help catch the goat again before it eats more than Ronaldo’s khakis.”
He looked less panicked and more intimidated.
“But. What the hell, Luke? I told you not to try to buy our prospects’ souls so you went after my coworker? What were you thinking?”
“That I’ve been here for five days and we’re no closer to getting me home, and I can’t walk in there empty-handed!”
“I told you I’d help you, don’t you trust me?”
“No, I don’t!”
They stared at each other.
Outside in the main office, Carter and Ronaldo had cornered the goat by the copy machine. It bleated. The yoga instructor approached cautiously, holding out a protein bar as a lure.
“Humans lie,” he said quietly. “You lie all the time. I know it’s your job on the line, but this is mylifewe’re talking about.”
He was right. And she was so worried about her stupid marketing platform and her webinar and her promotion she hadn’t earned that she had lost track of that. “I’m sorry.”
He looked surprised. Maybe not a lot of people apologized on the Infernal Plane.
“This will be my top priority two hours from now.But right at this moment, I need to deal with this webinar or Kelly will want to know why, and we’ll be in more trouble. So, for now, can you go deal with the goat?”
“It’s really not from my plane? It looks like a baby.”
“It’s smarter than a baby. More likely to bite. Actually, I don’t know what your babies are like.”
“Very likely to bite.” He watched the yoga instructor try to tackle the goat. She was very flexible. The goat was stronger. “I don’t think I can use magic for this. But I’ll fix it.”
He squared his shoulders and went out to do battle, leaving her with ten minutes fewer to fix the deck.
“Shit!” She’d found the webinar deck in Tim’s files earlier—where had she put it? There! She opened it, skimming through. No notes, of course. Three pages of generic stats about changing employment trends, two pages of painfully obvious “hiring tips” he’d probably gotten off someone else’s clickbait article, and then the usual Zabloom pitch. At least that part, she knew.
The goat ran back past the window. Luke ran after the goat. Floofums ran after Luke. Hayley ran after Floofums.
The slides were all pretty general—could that still apply to a platform for the whole HR team instead of only the recruiters? What did quantum computing even have to do with it? She pitied anyone in the audience who had hoped to learn something substantial today, because Tim had clearly half-assed this, and she was about to half-ass what he’d prepared. Quarter-ass?
The goat found refuge under Vijay’s table. Luke stalked from one side. Carter, armed with a trashcan, snuck up from the other. Vijay absently reached down and scratched the goat’s ears.
She rearranged the slides into an order that made a little more sense. Deleted the bits that didn’t seem particularly relevant any more. When she looked up again, Vijay was triumphantly carrying the goat to the elevator.
A few more random stats from Google. That would have to do. She sent the file to Kelly and put her head on the desk.
Her phone rang. It was her mother.
She picked up the phone without picking up her head.
“You haven’t heard anything odd lately, have you?”
“Mother, I’m at work.” The goat’s bleating dopplered down the elevator shaft.
“Yes, I know, that’s why I’m asking. Maybe something at work about the businesses in the neighborhood?” Fiona’s voice was strange, like she was breathing hard.
“What do you mean around the neighborhood?” Oh god, Fiona had figured out Luke was her target.
