“Are you OK?” he cried. More crashing heralded additional office supply casualties, but her eyes were tightly shut.
“Oww,” she gritted out.
“What the hell is going on here?” Kelly’s voice demanded, a wave of cooler air hitting Morgan as the door flew open.
“I was getting these, uh—” Luke tried to explain.
“Paperclips,” Morgan managed to interject. “He knocked over the paperclips and then we both tried to pick them up and I slammed my face into the top of his skull by accident.”
“Uh huh.” Kelly’s voice was dry. “Are you OK?”
“I think so.” Morgan managed to blink her eye open. The vision on the right was fuzzy, but there. It hurt a lot.
“Let me see.” Kelly crouched effortlessly in her stilettos, a testament to her diligence on leg day. She tilted Morgan’s head up. “It’s already swelling. You’re going to have a heck of a shiner.”
Hayley hovered nervously in the background. “I’m going to need you to fill out some paperwork attesting that you did not receive this injury in the course of company duties.”
Morgan was pretty sure that wasn’t how workers’ comp worked, but she wasn’t particularly interested in fighting over a black eye.
“She can do paperwork later,” Kelly said briskly as she stood back up. “For now, Luke, take her down to the Duane Reade on the corner and buy an instant ice pack. The faster you get a cold compress on that, the less it will swell, and Ronaldo has always used all the ice in the freezer by this time of day. Here’s the company card. Stop sitting there, go.”
With one eye closed, Morgan could still tell that Luke wasavoiding eye contact on the way down in the elevator. Once they’d gotten onto the street, she turned to him.
“Are you OK?” she repeated.
He looked at her like she had said something crazy. “I gave you a black eye. Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve had one,” she admitted. She had been ten, and it had turned out the kelpie had been extremely uninterested in playing horsie. “And I wasn’t the one in the crying closet.”
“I thought it was for supplies?” His eyebrows knitted together. It was cute. She tensed her cheek and the bolt of pain pulled her mind back on track.
“Any office supply closet that’s big enough to stand in with the door closed is also for crying,” she informed them as they entered the Duane Reade. She’d learned to love the ubiquitous New York pharmacy in college, despite the distressing lack of potions. It was entirely possible the zoning laws of Manhattan required every block to choose between a Duane Reade, a Starbucks, or a Bank of America kiosk.
“I’m fine,” he said as they snagged a box and got in line. “It’s my job.”
“Just because it’s your job to take all his stupid requests doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck, and that it isn’t draining,” she said. “You’re allowed to complain—at least when you’re not in the office.”
“I guess I never realized how demeaning it would feel,” he confessed. “He can’t even remember my name.”
“Or my name,” she reminded him. “Also, he’s an asshole.”
“At least you get a paycheck,” he grumbled.
“I know,” she commiserated. It wasn’t fair that her job should be getting better even as his got worse.
Luke took the box from her as they left and peered at the directions. “You know, if Brad had wished for your eye to feel better, I could have done something about this.”
“Brad would never think of it,” Morgan said. A thought occurred to her. “But I think Kelly would have, if she knew.”
“Kelly doesn’t strike me as someone who would sign that contract,” Luke said, twisting the ice pad in his hands until it cracked, as per the instructions. “Whoa, that’s cold! Where did the cold come from? You said they didn’t have magic!”
“Mumble mumble chemicals,” Morgan said, pressing the wrapped pad against her eye and wincing. “You’d be surprised how much mundane humans have managed. Sometimes I wonder why the magical folks bother.”
Luke nodded. His steps slowed as they approached the office.
“You don’t want to go back, do you,” she said.
He shook his head. “Not much of a choice.”
