Was it really that much worse than selling bullshit software?
All she wanted was to go home.
She met Bel’aliol’s eyes. And then, before her conscience or her common sense could catch up with her, she picked up a pen.
10
There absolutely are people who deserve to lose their souls,” Gisele declared. “Or rather, title to their souls, since their souls are shriveled little things they’re not using anymore.”
She had taken Morgan and Lucareoth appearing in the middle of the apartment in a flash and a whiff of cordite better than Morgan thought she herself would have taken it. Apparently outbound callswerean option if you were Bel’aliol’s level. The finish on the floor was a little marred, but Morgan had never really expected to get their damage deposit back after the exploding blender incident anyway. The biggest surprise was Rix, who had leapt into Lucareoth’s arms right as they crossed back.
“Trust me, your investors would all happily sell their grannies if they thought it meant they could get a multiplier on their return,” Gisele continued, scratching at Rix’s spines. She’d been less upset about their new pet, or the necessity of hiding him from the landlord, than Morgan had feared. “Hell, my current client is in renewable energy, and as much as their investors talk about idealism, I still think they’d probably sell the whole thing if it got them a highermultiplier. Finding someone who could stand to spend a few years being a lamp should be easy.”
It didn’t make Morgan feel all that much better. Now that she was safely home, she kept coming up with fiery speeches she should have made. She’d given Lucareoth enough mediocre fiery speeches when he’d first gotten here to feel the burn of hypocrisy keenly. Although she couldn’t imagine a believable response from Bel’aliol, no matter how good the speech was.
Lucareoth raised a hand hesitantly. He seemed to be having trouble meeting her eyes since they’d gotten back. “I didn’t ask before, because I didn’t think I was going to be here and so I didn’t care, but what’s a multiplier? I know what multiplying is, but that surprisingly doesn’t help.”
“Let’s back up a little,” Morgan said. She set down the notebook she’d gotten to organize ideas in, which was still completely blank. “When someone has a cool idea and they want to start a company, they need money. So company founders go around to people who have money and try to convince them that their idea is good. If you can find an extremely rich person who’s willing to invest early, that’s usually called an angel investor.”
The demon sat bolt upright. “Hold on. No one said anything about angels.”
“Notangel-angels,” Morgan reassured him quickly. “Most mundane humans don’t believe in angels, or they think of angels as sweet innocents with fluffy white wings who play the harp, or they think of them as drug-fueled monstrosities with too many eyes, and feel very clever about themselves. We misuse a lot of words.”
“Wait, are angels also a real thing? Are they hot?” Giseleasked, reminding Morgan far too late that her roommate had gone on an urban fantasy binge shortly after the Penguin Incident.
“They’re interfering busybodies with too much power,” said Morgan.
“They’re terrifying,” said Lucareoth.
“They’re not relevant here,” Morgan concluded. “At this stage, what Brad’s mostly going for are companies that do nothing but invest in other companies—they’re called venture capitalists, or VCs.
“Investing is basically just buying a chunk of the company. The company is hoping to use that money to get bigger. The investor is hoping that the company will succeed in becoming something much bigger. When the company gets big enough, they can either get bought by an even bigger company, or they can do an IPO, which is basically letting anyone buy a much smaller chunk of the company. But at that point, all the original investors get to sell their chunk. If the company seems valuable enough, the investor’s chunk is worth a lot more than they paid.”
“That’s the multiplier bit,” Gisele said helpfully. She was trying to teach Rix to roll over. It wasn’t going well. Spines and cheap carpet didn’t mix. “Used to be investors would be happy if they made their investment plus an additional percentage back. Now they want to make back a multiplier of their investment—two times, three times, ten times.”
“That’s a lot more complicated than selling souls. Why can’t the company just sell stuff for more money than it costs to make it?” Lucareoth leaned down to help get Rix free from the loops in the rug. She reached out and Lucareoth moved his hands quickly out of the way. Then again, aftera trip home, he’d just been reminded exactly how weird mammalian skin was. Also that he was banished because of humans, and could very well die by human hands. No wonder he didn’t want to touch her. Rix did not help at all, choosing to interpret everyone’s concern as a desire to give him belly rubs.
“Some people try, but for stuff like software, it’s really hard to do that way,” Morgan said. Her feelings were hurt: why? He’d done his best to protect her while they were in his realm. Did she expect him to be comforting her, now that he was the one in danger again? She had to focus, if only so her own feelings didn’t distract him from the problem at hand. “Because it costs a lot more money to get a business started than you make at first.”
“I’m pretty sure if someone tried to start up a new House on our plane, the ruling families would obliterate them so hard you’d feel the impact over here.”
“Most human startups don’t make it either, although a little less dramatically,” Gisele added. “And very few of them make it fast. What I’ve been seeing with my clients is that a company has a good idea and gets a couple of investors, but they can’t get big enough fast enough. And their investors get impatient but they also don’t want to invest more money. Now they need more money to keep growing, so they change their idea a little to get more investors, over and over. Eventually, lots of investors own some of the company and they all want their multiplier and they make demands.”
“Oh, like a milleora.”
“A what?”
“It’s an animal on my plane. As they get bigger, they sprout another head to keep eating faster. Once they get fiveor six, they’re really dangerous: you have to run really fast ’cause they eat everything in every direction. But once they get big enough, they sprout enough heads that the heads start pulling in different directions, and either they eat each other or they pull themselves apart in this giant shower of viscera. And then the one or two big ones limp off to start over while the rest just die and the scavengers eat the mess.”
Morgan and Gisele stared at each other for a moment, picturing a monster with multiple cancerous heads eating everything in sight.
Gisele tried valiantly to get them back on track. “Here, where we don’t have giant self-eating monsters, the smart, lucky companies manage to make it all the way to the end, go public, and then have a whole new set of problems which I’m sure are very exciting.”
Actually, maybe that wasn’t that different from human companies.
“And the others?”
Gisele shrugged. “No viscera. They just go bankrupt and I don’t get paid. That’s why I’m so diligent about getting my invoices out every month.”
