“It’s not a lie, it’s ademo,” Carter said. He didn’t look happy, though.
Kelly sighed. “I promise you, more tech demos are, shall we say, artful than not.”
All this time she’d been worried about confessing that she didn’t know how to get the demo to work, and it never worked in the first place? “You’re saying you want me to fake this.”
“Did I say that?” Kelly raised her eyebrows.
“No, but you implied it pretty heavily!”
Kelly stared her down. She also didn’t look happy, Morgan noted.
“OK.” Morgan took a big breath through her nose. This was a different kind of problem. A problem she could solve, actually. Could have solved days ago, if she’d just swallowed her pride and asked. “Carter, can you change the URL the search button links to so it goes to a static page?”
Carter gave her a quick nod. “Send me the specs.”
“Make sure the initial sign-up page is part of the demo package, too,” Kelly said.
“The sign-up page?” Who cared about the sign-up page? Those all looked the same.
“Brad added it to the list this morning with exclamation marks,” Kelly said, as if that explained everything.
It kind of did. “Brad gets what Brad wants.”
Kelly nodded sharply and left them to it.
“Oh god, how are we going to get this done in four hours?” Morgan looked at Luke in a panic.
“Morgan. Think,” he said.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Magic. Can you get Brad to sign off on a miracle?”
“Already Slacked him,” Luke said.
She rubbed her face. “Why didn’t we simply ask him to approve making the product work?”
“Pretty sure Carter would have noticed that one.”
“Does that matter?” It was a tough balance. Magic could absolutely make some of their problems go away. But like they said on that TV show (highly inaccurate regarding demons, yet funny nonetheless) it was like a Molotov cocktail. If you threw one at your problem, you might or might not solve the problem, but you could absolutely guarantee you would have an entirely different problem. How much could they change before someone noticed? And how many mundane bystanders could notice before the Shadow Council caught on?
“Uh oh,” Luke said.
“No,” she said. “I refuse. I forbid any ‘uh ohs’ at this juncture.”
“OK,” Luke said. “How about ‘oh shits’?”
She groaned. “Tell me.”
“Brad wants to pivot again.”
She took another big calming breath. It wasn’t calming her like the YouTube meditation video had promised. She stuck her head out the door. “Kelly? Carter?”
Morgan could see Kelly anticipate, and go dead behind the eyes.
“Brad wants to pivot,” Morgan said in the most neutral voice she could manage.
“Does he.” Kelly knocked on Carter’s glass wall. Carter choked back a reaction. “Let’s go get some details, shall we?”
Kelly led the group next door to Brad’s office. Mercifully, no one questioned the intern’s presence and Morgan once again blessed Luke’s unobtrusiveness field. Or maybe they were all just too worried.
