“Not a hundred percent sure, but it seems pretty likely yes.”
“OK.” He crossed his arms over his seasonally inappropriate fleece vest, but didn’t throw her out of the office. “I’m listening.”
This was further than she’d been afraid she would get. “I didn’t want to waste your time, so I did the ritual.”
He looked mildly impressed. “That’s the kind of proactiveness I like to see.”
“But I figured, for something this important, you’d want to do your own negotiations. You’re the deal closer around here,” she said with a mental apology to Kelly. “Should I bring him in?”
“Who?”
“The demon.”
“Ha!” he leaned back again. “You almost had me going there for a minute.”
She’d hoped he wouldn’t have that reaction, but had expected it. She leaned over to the glass door and caught the waiting Luke’s eye.
“Brad, I’d like to introduce Lucareoth,” she said, ushering in the demon, still in human form. They’d talked through a couple scenarios, ranging from Brad firing them both on the spot to Brad not even recognizing that he’d met his intern before. Mostly, she was worried about how to explain why she’d summoned a demon on Brad’s behalf but Brad was only finding out about it now. She hoped Luke’s mind-whammy powers were up to the task.
“Podcast kid!” Brad smiled. “You’re going along with this joke? Taking it a bit far. Is there a second punchline I’m waiting for?”
Out of sight of the glass door, Luke dropped his illusion.
“Whoa. Damn. I definitely did not ask for magic mushrooms in my mushroom omelet this morning.” Brad scooched his chair back.
“You’re not hallucinating,” Luke assured him. “Your worldis much bigger than you dreamed. And your competitors are taking advantage of that.”
It was keeping him from freaking out or blowing them off, she could tell. The idea that someone out there had a shortcut he didn’t know about. But his eyes still narrowed skeptically.
“OK, nice make-up or drugs or whatever. But you can’t possibly expect me to believe something like this.”
“You need proof.” Luke’s lip curled.
“Yeah, little bit.” She didn’t miss him pinching his leg where he thought she couldn’t see.
From Brad’s computer came the classic Slack notification knock.
She held her breath.
Brad scanned the message. He blinked. He leaned in and read it more carefully. Then he looked up. “Kelly says she just booked a meeting with Walmart. I suppose you’re going to claim that’s you?”
Luke smiled mysteriously. “You still need to close it.”
Brad leaned back. “And you can help with that.”
“I could.”
“And all it would cost is my soul.”
“Are you using it?”
“Touché.” Brad smiled back. He wasn’t sure if he believed he had a soul, she could tell. “So how does this work? We start with NDAs?”
“We can start with NDAs. I’ll warn you—this is one contract you can’t have legal counsel review. But you seem like the kind of man who knows how to review his own contracts.”
Brad seemed like the kind of man who thought hecould do any task he considered beneath him—if he could mansplain SEO to her, she was pretty sure he’d mansplain torts to a lawyer. At least, he would if the lawyer was female.
“So what’s the deal, then?” Brad smirked. “Fame and fortune in return for my immortal soul?”
