Morgan boggled, and then realized. “If you’re looking for the theater, it’s one floor up.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
The woman tugged on his sleeve. “Wait, maybe this is part of the show. Like an escape room puzzle. We need toconvince her to let us past.” She leaned in and waggled her fingers in Morgan’s eyes. “Weak-willed human, join us. We have sold our souls for eternal life, and you too can find solace and purpose in the Embrace.”
“Wait, the whole premise of the show is that you’ve already sold your souls?”
“And you can join us.” She flicked a fake fang with the tip of her tongue. “We’ve got dental.”
Morgan looked around. Most of the other workers’ heads were down, loathe to attract the weirdos’ attention, but she could tell people were snickering. “What about ‘show up on a random weekday and pretend to be damned office workers’ sounded like a good time to you?”
“Because it’s a lot sexier than just accepting normal life,” said the man with the top hat, gesturing. “Your souls are all already dead anyway. Also, your shoes are boring. Come on, Drusilla, this is the wrong floor for eternal damnation. It’s just real-life corporate drones.”
Morgan examined her sensible, boring shoes and admitted to herself that humanity would, in fact, sell their souls for a smoothie.
As the elevator doors closed, Drusilla waved her hypnosis fingers in one last attempt to roleplay. “Tell no one of what you have seen!”
Shecouldtell the Shadow Council. About Brad’s plan, not about people pretending to be vampires upstairs. It would be humiliating to admit to her mother, but her life was just a series of humiliations. It came back to the question of what they would do to Luke. And he’d tried. He’d tried so hard. She couldn’t risk him.
She checked her social feeds again. Hawk grinned at herfrom the latest GreenField post, their nearly constructed booth in the background. Their graphic design was better than hers, probably because Gisele had only been available to help with Brad’s presentation and their shell-shocked freelancer had not been able to keep up with Brad’s endless changes. Not that Morgan herself could keep up. She’d have suspected of Brad keeping her running with too little sleep to prevent her from thinking of an effective plan to stop his scheme, but she was pretty sure he really was just that indecisive. She closed the app angrily.
Her phone buzzed anyway, reminding her that she’d never canceled the meeting with Carter to finalize the demo. She had no idea how they were going to do a demo of a juicer that didn’t exist. Although if the juicer didn’t exist, then at least the demo would fail and the world might be safe from Brad’s shenanigans. Where was Carter, anyway?
She followed the scent of vinegar into the kitchen. Carter and Luke stood next to the communal table along with a guy wearing a faded They Might Be Giants t-shirt who she had never met before. The stranger’s hands were ombre gray, darkened toward the fingertips with blackened cuticles, as if oil had worked its way so thoroughly into the lines in his skin that it could never be soaked free. The table was covered in oddly-shaped arcs of plastic and a handful of tiny metal gears and springs. Carter compulsively sprayed down each piece with his little spritz bottle of vinegar.
Her eyes slid to the counter to confirm her suspicions. The pieces on the table were the disassembled corpse of the Keurig machine.
“Won’t the Keurig people notice we used their parts?”she said. Would that be so bad? Maybe a patent suit would slow Brad down.
“Not when I’m done with it,” the stranger said. “I’ve got a 3D printer working on a new casing, should be done tonight.”
“Where did you find him?” She debated asking for an intro and decided she didn’t want to know.
“Fiverr,” Carter said, continuing to spritz.
She thought about the chances of finding a mechanical engineer on Fiverr who happened to be able to reassemble a Keurig into an unrecognizable kale juicer. She raised her eyebrows at Luke. He shrugged helplessly. Of course Brad had asked him.
“Will it actually work?” she asked, gently poking a spring with her finger.
“Well enough for a demo,” Luke said. He winced, able to tell how much she wanted the answer to be “no.” Maybe they could sabotage it? But then, Brad would simply wish it fixed, just like the Ravenfell presentation.
“As long as no one tries to double-load it,” the engineer cautioned in a tone that suggested he’d said this several times already.
“What happens if you double-load it?” Morgan asked.
“I mean, in a production model, we’ll build in some safeguards,” the guy responded, continuing to fiddle with a piece of plastic. Not that mechanical safeguards were anything compared to demonic ones. “But for what I’m going to have to do to make this look convincing, if you don’t make sure you manually clear the old packet, it’s going to get jammed.”
“And then what?”
“I dunno, explode or something. I put a lot of tension on the spring, it’ll be messy. So don’t jam it. Make sure you don’t let any non-employees touch it.”
“How is the rest going?” Carter asked.
“The rest?” she said blankly.
“The software part,” he answered. “Brad’s been really insistent that the software part needs to also be ready.”
