They’re not supposed to operate in NYC
Does that help?
Her phone rang. “This could have been a text, Mother.”
Fiona ignored that. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but I appreciate it and I’ll see what I can do with it. Good job, pumpkin.”
“And?” Her mother wouldn’t have called just for that.
“Your young man—the Tidepools grad. Are you still a thing?”
She looked at the demon on her couch, shirt unbuttoned. She hated admitting her mother had been right, but she wasn’t going to deny him to his face. “Yes.”
“Keep him close, all right?” Her mother sounded worried. “He can see things you can’t.”
It stung, even if it were true. She was so tired of her mother treating her like a child. Like all Fiona could see was her disability. “Fine.”
“He has my number? Just in case.”
There was no circumstance in which she could imagine Luke willingly calling her mother. “I’ll make sure he does.”
“Keep me posted,” her mother instructed.
“You’re welcome,” she told the dead line.
She rubbed gritty eyes. One AM was somehow much later than it had been in college. “Don’t worry too much. She’ll fix it. She always does, in the end.”
“And does everyone always survive the fixing?” Gisele pointed out.
She didn’t have an answer she liked for that.
“I guess we should go to bed,” Morgan said finally. “Sincewe need to get the demo working tomorrow so we can spend the evening trying to convince vampires to give us large sums of money so we can save New York City and get Brad on the cover ofForbesfor whoever still gets a print copy ofForbesthese days.”
“I need another roll,” Lucareoth announced. “For fortitude.”
19
She woke up to satiny scales pressed against her back, and for just a minute, did her best to luxuriate in it instead of jumping straight to the worrying. Lucareoth rolled over and gave her a slow, sleepy smile. A little later they had to rush to get out the door on time.
She managed to carry the glow all the way through her first coffee at the office before it died.
Kelly knocked on the door right around the time Morgan was considering throwing the laptop out the window. Here came the question Morgan had been dreading for weeks. “How’s the demo looking?”
Luke scootched his chair back. He wasn’t sure how much he should touch her in public, she could tell. She wished he could have squeezed her hand.
“I can’t get it to work,” Morgan confessed, feeling the weight of her failure. She should have asked. Sure, there had always been other priorities, but she should have confessed. Now they had four hours before they failed in front of people who could rip out their throats and then all of New York fell to earthquake and fire. Also, she lost her job and didn’t geta good reference. It was going to make Winter Solstice with her parents awkward, one way or another.
Kelly glanced at Carter.
“It doesn’t work,” Carter said.
“Wait, what?” She blinked at him.
“It’s a demo,” Kelly said. “I didn’t ask how it worked, I asked how itlooked.”
“But that’s,” she trailed off.
“The whole demo is a lie,” Luke said slowly.
