“No,” Luke sighed. “Bel’aliol is competent. Why do humans put people like Brad in charge of anything?”
“Because he’s a white dude with outrageously good hair.” She sighed. “I suppose he could be pretending to be stupid to fool us all. We could try to break into his laptop and look for nefarious plans. I bet his password is something like ‘password123.’”
“He just Slacked me to ask for a copy of ‘the Wu-Tang Clan album that pharma dude bought.’”
“Yeah, he’s an idiot.” She straightened up. “Luke, what if we’re going about this wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“We wanted to know which House GreenField is contracted to. But I haven’t been able to connect anyone there to the magical world: even among mages, the fact that there are different Infernal Houses is pretty esoteric knowledge. I bet you Hawk doesn’t even know what House he’s signed with. I don’t even know what House you’re at, come to think of it.”
“House Berith,” Luke supplied.
“OK,” she said. “My point is that it might be easier to figure it out from the Infernal Plane side. I think we should tell Bel’aliol there’s a rival at work.”
“I’m not talking to Bel’aliol,” Luke said automatically.
“He’s a shoot-the-messenger type?”
“He’s probably a flay-the-messenger-alive type. I don’t know, I’ve never given him bad news.”
“Let’s talk this through,” she said. Impulsively, she reached out to hold his hand. She’d intended to just squeeze and let go, but he grabbed it like a lifeline. “I’m not saying I know better than you, I really, really don’t. But first—how easily can he hurt you here?”
“If I summon him, maybe. If I just call him, less so. Not at all via messaging. But I can’t stay here forever. I have to go back at some point.”
She swallowed down the pang she didn’t have time to unpack at the moment. “But by that point, he may have calmed down, especially if you come back with two souls in hand.”
“We only have one.” And they still hadn’t discussed whose it counted as.
“We’ll have two by the time you go back,” she said with confidence she didn’t feel. “But my point is that you only have to survive the initial call, and it’s probably safe enough here you can do that.”
He didn’t look convinced. His hand tightened. “What’s the second part?”
“This isn’t your fault, and it has nothing to do with you,” she said. “This is a chance to give him useful information. This rival House don’t know you’re here. They can’t get an agent of their own over here, because someone would have to let the agent out of the circle, and who’s stupid enough to do that?”
They both glanced through the door at Vijay, who was typing very intensely with a Beanie Baby duck on his head.
“You’re not bringing him a failure. You’re bringing him an opportunity. If he can figure out who it is, maybe we can help him get ahead somehow?”
Luke had slowly started to straighten. His hand loosened but he didn’t let go. “That might work.”
She smiled and he smiled back. “What do we need?”
“For a call? Some kind of heart,” he said. “For a sacrifice. Doesn’t have to be human. It’ll be easier at midnight our time, if he’s not in a receptive mood.”
“We’ll stop by a butcher on the way home,” she said. “You keep looking for details on Hawk. I’ll tell Kelly it’s competitive analysis.”
Before he let go of her hand, he squeezed it back.
***
She punched the dough down with more force than was necessary. It wasn’t ideal; if she knocked too much of theair out, the crumb would be too tight. She’d learned most of her baking skills from YouTube. Her mother tended to forget to eat and then inhale three protein bars, and her father made the same chicken and potatoes and overlaid it with a glamour every time. Figuring out how to produce food worth eating for less money than takeout had been first a necessity and then an adventure. But most of why she was making bread now was that she was nervous and she wanted something she could safely hit.
Luke watched, enthralled. She usually felt self-conscious when someone watched her bake, but somehow he was different. His presence made her more aware of what she was doing, in a good way. Gisele had grown up in a house full of home cooks; she wasn’t particularly impressed. Luke’s wonder at the transformation of flour into dough reminded her of how much she enjoyed the process.
“And this is how sandwich casings are made? I never would have guessed.”
Sandwiches were clearly one of Luke’s favorite human inventions. Once he’d discovered them, he ate one every day.
