Morgan stood, mentally counting to ten. Then she slowly sat back down.
“Good boy,” Luke said fervently, stroking Rix’s ears. “No, don’t lick my hand, you’re probably still burping lithium. Lie down. Lie. Down.”
Rix sat. Which wasn’t lying down, but at least he wasn’t trying to lick Luke anymore.
Luke met her eyes. He looked exhausted. “I don’t—” He stopped, then started again. “I can’t talk about—You know enough, you should be able to fill it in. Please. And I thought about this guy I’ve been working with for weeks, who doesn’t think any of this is real, suddenly getting dropped into this, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I don’t think you want that on your conscience, either. You’re a good person.”
Was she, though? “What are we going to do?”
He leaned forward to tuck a strand of hair back behind her ear, staring into her eyes, willing her to think for them both. “You’re smart. You can figure it out.”
She wanted to believe. She really did. For a moment, she let herself imagine waking up next to him forever.
But the stench of burnt plastic and brimstone lingered in the air.
“What the hell is that smell?” Kelly pushed open the door. “Holy shit. What happened to that laptop?”
“Dog farted,” Luke announced. Rix wagged his tail.
“At least the podcast was saved in the cloud?” Morgan said, holding up her hands helplessly.
22
There’s something so surreal about living on the edge of a war zone,” Morgan said, staring at the sea of order forms spread across the kitchen table, splattered with the traces of the caramel-pecan cookies currently in the oven. Even their usually intoxicating smell wasn’t enough to calm her down. She had given up trying to jump back and forth online between all the pages apparently necessary for organizing a major conference appearance with little more than a week’s notice and printed them out before she left the office. It was only helping a bit. “Constantly aware of big scary things you can’t stop, but meanwhile you have to choose between the popcorn machine or the barista bar.”
“Get both,” Luke said as he flipped through the three pages of floral display options. “It’s Ravenfell’s money, not yours. You know Brad would want both if you asked him. Besides, the number next to the popcorn machine is so much lower than the number you approved for the exhibitry printing, it disappears.”
“They wanted twelve dollars for renting a freaking wastebasket.”
“Still nothing, in the big picture.”
“Did you say what happened to the folks who had originally rented this space?” There had mysteriously been an opening, in a prime location on the floor, when she’d called to ask.
“There was a mysterious leak to the investors that the founder was embezzling and the company needed to pull back the funds to pay the lawyers,” Luke said, not looking up from his paperwork.
Bel’aliol must be delighted at the mounting bill. She didn’t pursue it further.
“Why do they even have popcorn machines?” Gisele asked, peeking at the cookies. “I thought this was a tech trade show, not a kid’s birthday party.”
“Kelly says the smell draws people to your booth.” Morgan swatted her hands. “Because apparently tech executives have the same attention span as second graders.”
“Flaming crap, you can rent people.” Luke looked up. It seemed like a good sign that he had learned that this was horrifying.
“Ugh, Ronaldo’s booth babes. You’re not renting them, you’re hiring them.” Morgan tried to figure out how the weird grid for the electrical rental was supposed to be filled out. Were there instructions somewhere? “They’re just models. They’re supposed to talk to leads until your real salespeople take over.”
“Tech executives are horny second graders, got it,” Gisele said, making a face. “I don’t get why you’re not getting, like, a literal unicorn or something. It could be symbolic of being a metaphorical unicorn.”
“Don’t tell Brad that’s an option,” Morgan said. The timer beeped and she took the excuse to abandon the paperworkand retrieve the cookies. She had to smack Gisele’s hand again before her roommate burned herself.
Gisele grabbed one anyway, juggling it as it crumbled. She had a faraway look in her eye: one Morgan recognized.
“OK, spit it out.”
“So I get it—demon war, quotas, souls in mortal jeopardy,” Gisele said. “But I can’t help think we’ve got a lot of power at our fingertips at the moment. And we’re not using it.”
“You mean Luke?”
Luke looked a little affronted. “It’s not my power, I’m only the account rep.”
