The first question was a softball. She smiled as she answered, even as something growled and gurgled in the ceiling. The next three weren’t bad, either. Luke leaned into the sexiness of his own voice and she set aside a vision of podcast stardom.
“What’s your opinion on the recent study Professor Eisenglasset al.published in theAcademic Journal of theInternational Management Academyabout the impact of hiring for different learning modalities on long-term profitability?” Luke read out, his voice caressing the words.
She froze. She had no idea who Professor Eisenglass was, let alone having an opinion on his work. She had no more read theAcademic Journal of the International Management Academythan she read any of her father’s journals, even before he’d stopped giving her copies. Wait. She needed to keep that thought. What if—no, she had to finish this webinar. She’d been sitting there with her mouth open, everyone would know she was a fraud—
When suddenly, with a clang from the construction upstairs, a chunk of acoustic ceiling tile fell directly on her head. It bounced off lightly. It was followed by a thin stream of liquid, viscous and black, from the machinery above. For a moment, she froze, appalled and disbelieving, the cool goop pooling on her scalp before oozing down the back of her neck.
Then she shrieked, leaping up from the chair.
“Give us a moment, folks,” Luke cut in, grabbing fistfuls of tissues and shoving them at Morgan from offscreen. “I’m afraid we’ve had a bit of an incident here in the Zabloom offices. Our neighbors upstairs appear to have, as part of their construction efforts, sprung a leak.”
Morgan grabbed the tissues, frantically trying to scrub whatever it was out of her hair before it could end up in her eyes. It smelled like an automotive shop mixed with mildew. She gestured frantically for Luke to cut the feed.
“You’ve been a lovely audience, okthanksbye!” Luke mercifully cut the connection.
Then he looked up at the ceiling and his eyes glowedorange. Something arced—a blue lash of electricity—and upstairs, she heard someone yell. And then a small explosion. More yelling. And cursing.
“What did you do?” she demanded, hair full of goo.
“Ensured our neighbors are done with construction for the rest of the week,” he said. “Very unfortunate.”
“Are they dead?” she asked, horrified, but feeling weirdly supported at the same time.
“I don’t think so, just the equipment,” he said. He paused to think. “Maybe a little burned. Hard to tell, but fatalities were less likely than what I tried for.”
He looked at her, delighted. “You’re right! Fulfilling a small desireissatisfying!”
***
It wasn’t until after she stepped out of the shower (Kelly had taken one look at her and sent her straight home in a car with a couple of garbage bags to protect the upholstery) that she remembered the thought she’d meant to pursue. Luke came home to find the piles of books she’d ripped off the shelves, and ingredients she’d managed to scavenge from the botánica and the bodega down the street.
“I think I know how to get you home,” she said.
He stilled. “Really?”
“It was that last question on the webinar,” she replied, holding up the journal she’d found. (She’d also tried looking up the journal mentioned in the chat and completely failed to find it. She did manage to find theJournal of Management, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management Perspectives, Academy of Management Learning, Journal of BusinessVenturing, Journal of International Business Studies, International Journal of Management, andJournal of International Management, all of which were paywalled anyway.) “My father used to send me his articles when he published, until he finally accepted that I didn’t have the background to understand them and wasn’t going to. There was one back in college I’d almost forgotten. Look familiar?”
She held up the article, with its diagram. He sucked in a breath. “This was here all the time?”
She winced, mortified. “I’m so sorry. I guess I got so used to not knowing things that people expected me to know that I forgot that I actually do know some stuff.”
He nodded slowly.
“I think I’ve got everything we need,” she continued, grabbing books and shoving them willy-nilly back onto the shelves. She’d reorganize them to Gisele’s standards later. “Here’s some chalk, you get the north side.”
Luke clutched it, looking a little dazed, and started drawing runes. They worked their way around the circle: a surprisingly effective team.
She laid out the candles and stepped back. Luke was staring at her. She was going to miss him, she realized suddenly. He was a little disturbingly amoral and talked too much about people getting eaten, but he’d been willing to shock a construction crew for her and no one had ever done that before. Or gotten her coffee at work without being asked, which was something more reasonable to want.
One of the corners of his mouth tugged up. “I can’t say I want to stick around until your dam finds me, but I’m glad to have met you, too. Humans are, well, greedy liars like I always heard, but they’ve got a lot of nice points as well.”
At least she wouldn’t have to warn him about her mother if he was going to go away and never come back.
“You’re just going to miss ice cream,” she said, breaking eye contact.
For one moment, she thought he was going to protest. Her breath caught. Then he snorted. “Obviously.”
She was an idiot. But that was all right, because in a few minutes, he’d be safely home. “I’m sorry I yelled at you for getting me the promotion. You’re right; I do want it.”
