He rushed her through an environment that felt strangely familiar, like one step off the cubicle farms she remembered from movies likeOffice Space. The kind of soul-sucking corporate environment that had preceded the current soul-sucking corporate environment, and which she had entered the workforce too recently to have personally experienced. She supposed that whichever consultants—or furniture salesmen—had convinced the management of America to do away with even the flimsy privacy of felt-covered half-walls in favor of bench desks had not yet made their way to the Infernal Plane.
Heads popped up from the cubicles as they passed, a murmur of excited gossip flowing in their wake. More of the heads tended toward the reptilian or insectile rather than mammalian, but the stupid ties and stiff collars were a constant.
“Why does this look like a human office from the nineties?” she whispered. “Is this some kind of ‘as it is above, so it is below’ kind of thing?”
“No, it’s because humans are astonishingly good at motivating people without making them happy, and we copied you. No one innovates like humans,” he whispered back. “Also, no one has the resources to redecorate to keepup with trends, thank the father-eaters. No offense, but your office is awful.”
“Gee thanks,” she muttered. Hell thought her office was worse, and she couldn’t disagree.
He pulled her into what vaguely resembled a communal kitchen, other than the shared cauldron simmering sullenly in the corner. The viscous liquid looked too much like blood for her to want to ask questions.
A demon with a head like a crocodile slurped from a mug through a straw. Her companion reminded Morgan more of a tarantula, although he only had six limbs and it seemed rude to count the eyes.
“—landed a Member of Parliament, but the rest of the department got liquidated anyway,” the crocodile demon was saying. “Did you get any details?”
“My broodmate said it didn’t make up for the shortfall after last quarter’s big asset took up meditation and stopped seeking worldly things,” the tarantula demon replied, words only slightly mangled through mandibles.
The crocodile demon shrugged. “Well, we can spend less time on the Demogorgon slide, then. But it’s only competitive differentiation if it’s what the temptation personas actually want. Oh, I see you’ve deigned to grace us with your presence, Lucareoth. Bel’aliol is going to—what the Earth is that?”
“Uh. Hi?” Morgan gave a little wave, cringing.
“You didnotbring a human back from the Plane of Consumable Souls,” the tarantula demon said flatly. “And I know that because if you had done something so incredibly idiotic, you would have filled out form 23-B, and I have not processed any forms 23-B. I haven’t even seen a form 23-B since onboarding. And since I know you know thatinterplanar incursions without a form 23-B involvesixteen different forms, since I signed your certificate for completing theInterplanar Incursions and Youtraining session myself, there is no way that is a human.”
The crocodile took a long slurp of the I-hope-it’s-not-blood. “Could be a mass hysteria spell.”
“Mass hysteria spells only require four forms, and so are four times preferable to an interplanar incursion,” the tarantula countered.
“I thought Ytteri was doing mass hysteria forms?” Lucareoth bit his lip.
“She did until Niseraz ate her three weeks ago,” the tarantula said, all the eyes glittering. “Which you would have known if you’d bothered to read my memo. Either of them. The ones titledEveryone read this: Change in forms.”
“So, umm, has anyone seen Bel’aliol today?” Lucareoth shrank in on himself in the face of the tarantula’s righteous anger.
The crocodile shrugged and took another slurp. “Office.”
Lucareoth’s tail twitched anxiously.
Something came bounding down the aisle. It was waist height and had four legs and a whippy tail, but it also had eyes that burned with tiny literal flames and short spikes down its spine. It seemed half made of smoke; the skin that seemed solid had the unnervingly delicate texture of a Sphinx cat at the joints but fine scales like a pangolin covering its back, forehead, and shins. It rammed its head into Lucareoth’s knee and grinned happily, dripping some kind of ichor from its teeth that left little burn marks on the floor.
“Hey there, Rix,” Lucareoth bent to scratch behind the office hell-dog’s spines. “It’s nice to see someone missed me.”
“Is that a hellhound?” Morgan asked, staring.
“One of the runtier breeds,” Luke confirmed. “Although Rix here is even runtier than most. Little idiot lacks any kind of killer instinct, although it makes him a pretty good cubicle dog. I guess that’s why he likes me,” he finished mournfully.
He looked like he was going to his own execution along with her. She wished she’d thought of the stupid journal the first night, when it might have saved him, at least. “I liked you.”
He gave her a queasy smile. “I liked you, too.”
For a moment, they considered the might-have-beens.
He knocked on the dark fake-wood door at the end of the corridor. A brass nameplate was boldly engraved with a script that made Morgan’s teeth buzz when she tried to read it.
“Enter.” The voice sounded as if the owner had too many teeth in his mouth. Lucareoth pushed the door open. Rix followed them in.
The owner had too many teeth in his mouth. Most of them looked very sharp, although the tusks protruding from his lower jaw had jaunty little gold caps on the tips. The teeth were all black, which was a bit disconcerting, but they nicely matched the bull’s horns that curled down from the sides of his head. His skin was burnt umber and his whiteless eyes glittered. His tie had the very subtle sheen that on Morgan’s plane would have meant it was made from something expensive, and had been tied in the kind of elaborate knot that inspired prissy menswear video tutorials and no one ever actually used anymore.
The glittering black eyes narrowed. “Lucareoth. When we last spoke, I recall saying that you needed to pull off something special this quarter if you wanted to avoid unpleasant repercussions.”
