by Nazri Noor
The next place was a long hallway, its walls filled with screens playing videos of Happy’s various brands over the years, mostly TV commercials. I recognized some of the newer ones, which had always triggered a positive response in me, specifically from my salivary glands, but things were starting to feel a little, I don’t know. Sketchy.
“Hey,” I whispered to Herald, nudging him in the ribs. “Is it just me or does this all feel a little cult-y to you?”
Herald sucked on his jumbo tumbler of milk tea, which, as Katherine had explained, was made from the finest jasmine tea.
“A little,” he hissed back. “But I thought you were a believer. You bought into the cult of Happy, like, ages ago. Hell, even Banjo’s a convert now.”
That was true. Puppy Yum biscuits were not just my go-to first choice for ritualistic incantations, but the best treat we kept stocked at the Boneyard for Banjo the corgi, also fondly known to Carver as Daddy’s Little Murderer.
“It’s just corporate culture,” Herald said. “That’s how this stuff is. You work at the same place long enough, they get your hooks into you, and you become the perfect machine.” He nodded at Katherine, who had her backed turned to us, but kept babbling on about Happy, Inc.’s greatness. “Don’t worry too much about it.”
So I didn’t, because we were supposed to be in my happy place. Not really an exaggeration, mind you, because what awaited at the end of the video tunnel was basically an indoor damned amusement park.
You know how some of the world’s hugest companies have crazy office spaces with arcade machines, or slides and fireman’s poles that let you travel between levels, and maybe half a dozen foosball tables? Yeah. Welcome to Happy, Inc.
Chapter 5
“Go nuts,” Katherine said, spreading her arms again. No hesitation: Mason and Asher fanned out and went exploring.
Herald stared at me, every muscle in his body tense, his knuckles white as he clutched his milk tea. I sighed.
“Go on,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. Have fun.”
He pecked me on the cheek, and just barely managed to bark “Thank you you’ll be fine I love you” before streaking off. Kids, am I right? I shrugged. What the hell, I thought. Might as well make the most of – well, not a bad situation, exactly. Just a strange one.
I was about to walk off when Katherine held her hand up at chest level. “Oh, not you, Mr. Graves,” she said, grinning. “We’ve got something special planned for you.”
My butt cheeks clenched. “I – what?” This was the part where they would chop me up, pack me in a box, and send me off to one of their processing centers to be ground up into cute little patties.
“You’re supposed to meet Mr. Thorpe, remember?” Katherine’s smile stretched impossibly wider. How many teeth did this woman have? “Silly. Come now. Right this way.”
I followed, bemused, as she tapped the side of her temple and spoke. I guess I hadn’t spotted the earpiece she’d been wearing the whole time. “We’re ready for you, Mr. Thorpe,” she muttered.
At the far end of the massive playroom, with all its bells and whistles and flashing lights, was a simple, smooth black door with a golden handle. Very much out of place. Not gonna lie, I was still considering the very real possibility of being chopped into bits.
“Through this door, and down the corridor, Mr. Graves,” Katherine said. “This is where we part, for now. I’ll meet you back here with your friends to give out the gift bags, once you’re finished with Mr. Thorpe.”
Ooh. Gift bags? That was a nice touch, and a good incentive to stay alive. Who doesn’t want free swag?
“Thanks for showing me around. See you later, I guess.”
I stepped through the door, and let it click shut behind me. The walls of this new corridor were jet black, much like the door itself, the floor carpeted in deep, lush vermilion. If the rest of HQ was some enormous, fast food-laden playhouse, this felt much more like the hallway of some really luxurious hotel, or, you know, an actual corporate office, albeit a very expensive one. Incandescent bulbs set in deep recesses in the ceiling lit the way to – wow, yet another door? Man. Where the hell was Mr. Thorpe?
I realized then that I really had no idea who I was supposed to meet. I tried to look him up online prior to the tour, but Thorpe was so elusive that there were so few photos of him out in public. I mean, this wasn’t a mission for the Boneyard, I wasn’t there to steal from him.
Or assassinate him, for that matter.
I shook my head. See, this was what life in the arcane underground had done to me. It twisted something as innocent as a fun company tour into a cult-y murder operation.
The door at the end of the hallway slid open as I approached. Automatic, I thought, until I realized that it was an elevator. One of those smallish ones, meant for transporting very few passengers at a time. Claustrophobic, almost, if it wasn’t for the mirrored interiors, the shiny metallic floor, the single brass button that looked tauntingly out at me from the control panel. I pressed it, unsure of what to expect.
Maybe half a minute later, the elevator finally dinged. Warm, fresh air rushed in as the door slid open, and I blinked my eyes, unbelieving. Sunlight? This shaft was built all the way to the rooftop.
I stepped out, mouth agog. Not just any rooftop, either, but one that was sprawling with beautifully sculpted plants, opening out into a powder blue sky. Glass fixtures sparkled in the sunlight. It was like being in a terrarium, almost, one that looked out onto the entirety of Valero.
“Mr. Graves, I presume?”
The voice was smooth, velvety, as sleek and sophisticated as the man it belonged to. He stood by one of the larger bushes, a disproportionately tiny pair of trimming shears in his hand.
“Mr. Thorpe,” I said, putting on my best smile. “It’s a pleasure. I’m a huge fan of your company.”
“So I’ve heard,” Thorpe said. He was a handsome man, his longish locks slicked back across his scalp, in a way that reminded me of how Carver liked to style his own hair. That wasn’t the only similarity, truthfully. Thorpe liked his suits too, it seemed, wearing a charcoal gray one that looked so sharply cut that he could have been poured into it. His eyes alternated between watching me approach and scrutinizing the bush he was working on. His irises were as dark as his hair, glimmering with curiosity, and a kind of cunning.
“But the pleasure of this meeting is all mine,” Thorpe said. He smiled – there it was – all brilliant white teeth and perfect cheekbones, his eyes all but twinkling under the light of the sun. “I imagine you’ve had a good time here today. I did have to wait a little, but I’ve waited to meet you for so long now.” He folded his arms, grinning, letting his shears dangle from the end of his finger. “What’s one or two hours more?”
I stepped up to him, thinking that offering my hand would be the polite thing to do, but there was something odd about his stance, and his smile. Not quite mocking. Teasing, I suppose.
“Apologies for the wait,” I said. “Katherine gave us the grand tour. I’m not entirely sure what you mean about wanting to meet me, though. I mean, I’ve been a fan of the Happy Cow forever, but I didn’t know I was so famous at the Valero branch for loving it.”
I forced myself to laugh, trying to dislodge the discomfort and dread building in my throat. Thorpe laughed with me, his voice musical, but his eyes strangely still.
“Dustin, was it?” he said, his head tilting, as if to appraise me. “Dustin Graves?”
“That’s right, Mr. Thorpe. Unless you’d prefer I call you something else?” I grinned, masking my anxieties. “Sir? Hah. A burger genius?”
Thorpe’s smile was as warm and as bright as the sun. “Please. I’d like us to be friends. Call me by my true name.” He extended one hand, his fingers slender, elegant. “Call me Loki.”
Chapter 6
“Bullshit,” I said. A little rude for a first-time meeting with a new entity, you say? Probably. But I was getting fed up with all these roundabout tricks the gods and demons
liked to play just to talk to me, how they expected everyone to just bend to their whims and caprices.
“If you say so,” Loki said, his smile so mirthful that I knew he was holding back his laughter. It was his defining trait: he was constantly on the verge of losing his shit and cracking up, like he knew the punchline to the world’s funniest joke.
But he wasn’t about to tell it.
I asked him anyway. “What the hell is so funny?”
“Look,” Loki said. “I know you’re tired of stumbling upon gods and goddesses wherever you turn.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You read my mind.”
“But shouldn’t you be at least a little bit flattered? I went through all the trouble of finding you, and getting you to come here.”
“See, here’s the problem with that. I’ve met so many entities now, and all of them were so blunt with me. Either they chased me down themselves, or met me with hostility the very moment I stepped into their domiciles.” I looked around the rooftop garden, its warm breeze doing little to improve my mood. “Wait. You’re telling me this entire building is your domicile?”
Loki gave me a simpering grin. “A small part of it.”
I whistled. “Good for you. But again, how do I know that you’re who you say you are? I know where some gods keep their tethers, and that’s proof enough for me. That’s like a mailing address. You, on the other hand? Nobody ever said anything about a Norse god controlling an entire fast food empire.”
“What can I say? I’m good at both business and keeping my profile – low-key. Hah.”
I frowned at him. If Loki wasn’t being so pompous, I thought that we might even have gotten along. We certainly had matching egos and bloated self images.
“Look,” Loki continued. “I don’t know what to tell you, other than you’re just going to have to trust me.” He placed his hand on his coat, puffing his chest out, standing erect. “I am Loki, father of Hel, the goddess of death. Father of Jormungand the world serpent, and of Fenrir. Mother of Sleipnir.” He sighed when he saw how unimpressed I looked. “Listen. I don’t exactly carry around pictures of my kids in my wallet.” He flicked his garden shears up in the air, sticking his hands in his pockets. The shears glimmered in the sun, then vanished.
“This extremely circuitous way of getting my attention at least has me listening, I admit,” I said. “Just the type of weirdo games you entities like to play. And it can’t be a coincidence. Odin wants my head on a platter, and you come crawling out of the woodwork. What I find hard to believe is that you’re really the guy behind Happy, Inc. You’re telling me that you’ve been slinging burgers for a living?”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing. I would thank you not to denigrate the fine art of burger-slinging, Mr. Graves. Was it not a fry cook who saved your life?”
I held out my hands. “Whoa, whoa. I never said anything about dissing Charlie, or his profession. But yeah, about that. Whose idea was it to put a cardboard disk in a hamburger?”
Loki chuckled. “We knew ahead of time that you, specifically, would discover the Lucky Patty. This was planned. How else was I supposed to make your acquaintance?”
He was mocking me, with his sharp grin, the knife-like curve of his eyebrow. “Whatever happened to phone calls? Or you could have just ambushed me in a dark alley, or barged in on me while I was in the shower.” I folded my arms and huffed. “That’s what every other entity does, anyway.”
“Now, where’s the fun in that? I’m a trickster god, after all. It’s in my job description. I wanted to keep things interesting. Entertaining. Fun.”
I waved my hand around myself, at the gardens, at the building. “So all this? This has been your idea of fun?”
He smiled warmly. “Oh, for the past sixty years or so? Happy, Inc. is a family-owned business, always led by a member of the Thorpe clan.” He stuck his chest out again, flicking his lapels proudly. “It was always me, of course. Kind of fun, assuming different identities over the years. Zebediah Thorpe, Felicity Thorpe after him – that was fun – then it was Zachariah.” He turned his lip up. “Wasn’t too fond of that one. So now, here I am, Theodore Thorpe, heir to the Happy, Inc. fortune, and the young maverick behind its expansion into the trendier side of fast food.”
“And dog treats.”
“Indeed. I’m very happy with the performance of Puppy Yum biscuits.” Loki must have noticed the look that passed across my face. “Oh, don’t worry. We don’t process them and Snacky Yum-Yums in the same place. I realize the similarity in their names, but your cheesy, high-sodium snacks are safe.”
I nodded, and squirreled away that information for the next time I ran into Artemis. Knowing how comfortable she was with animals, though, she probably wouldn’t have minded either way.
“So this is the face you wear now,” I said.
Loki chuckled, running his tongue along the rim of his teeth. “Not handsome enough for you?”
“Not my type,” I said, carefully avoiding the magnetic well of handsomeness that was his dumb, cocky face.
“This is my true face. I’m every bit as attractive as the legends say.”
“None of the legends talk about you being attractive.”
He winked in a way that made my stomach perform a tiny somersault. How the hell did he do that? I should have been taking notes. “You know well enough by now that you can’t believe all the old stories.”
“Fine. So we both know things. But why do this? Why did you want to see me?”
“One question at a time. I did this purely out of boredom, Mr. Graves. Immortality can be so dull.”
“I heard the same thing about Odin. It’s why he put up the Twilight Tavern in the first place. His beloved bed and breakfast.”
“Correct. You live long enough, you start thinking of diversions, you know? And this isn’t a world where gods can go around razing the countryside for fun anymore.” He cocked his hip and chuckled. “Well, unless you count Odin and his Wild Hunt.”
I grimaced. “Tell me about it. Wait. Is that why I’m here? Is this about the corgi?”
Loki waved his hand. “Not at all. The All-Father’s misadventures are none of my concern. The time he spends reveling and drinking is time he doesn’t spend building more power – or, for that matter, a more financially stable small business. No, this has nothing to do with your little dog. Banjo is quite safe.”
“You even know the corgi’s name. Actually, you seem to know a lot for someone who should be paying attention to running his own business. And a pretty big operation it is, I might add.”
“I like to keep my ear to the ground, to take stock of what happens around me. I stay on my toes, Mr. Graves. I don’t have to get ready if I stay ready. That’s why I started Happy, Inc. Gone are the days of worship, of men singing the names of gods as they charge into battle, of temples and altars filled with zealots and sacrifices.” He folded his hands together and nodded at me. “Sorry. I know you’re sensitive about that.”
“Don’t mention it. So that’s your point behind all this? You have no worshippers, so instead you’re building wealth?”
Loki tapped the side of his nose. “Close. See, this is the world we live in now. Humanity is so wrapped up in acquiring more and more, in consuming. The gods are extinct, trampled to death by smartphones and celebrities and trendy food. These are your new gods. And wouldn’t you believe it, the importance humanity places in these objects and symbols, the psychic essence they invest? It all streams back to me. I siphon that energy, feed on it, and grow stronger. Why, it’s nearly as good as being worshipped again.”
A cloud passed over the sun just then, casting a shadow over Loki’s face. In just the sliver of his grin, the twinkling of his eyes, I saw him for what he truly was: a trickster god, a rogue, exactly as he said. We really could have been friends.
“That’s actually pretty clever.”
“Indeed. The moon turns, and time marches on, and those who don’t bend with the tides of progress will s
imply break. Take the All-Father, as an example. This is a world that I control, where I am the most powerful of the Norse gods, and that chaps Odin’s ass like you wouldn’t believe. Therein lies the second benefit of running a powerful corporation that dwarfs his struggling bed and breakfast by several orders of magnitude.”
“To annoy him. To revel in his torment. To play the role of the trickster.”
“Precisely. Schadenfreude. I enjoy a little bit of discord, a touch of chaos. It’s in my nature. Some things change, Mr. Graves. But some stay the same. That includes my unique relationship with the All-Father. I cannot deny who I am, as much as you cannot deny who and what you are.”
I raised my chin. “Oh? And who am I, exactly?”
“Dustin Graves, the darkling mage, one whose bond with the shadows deepens with every passing day. Kin and keeper of the Dark Room, you are. And both killer and catalyst of those mad greater entities, the gods who dwell outside of space and time. The Old Ones.”
“That’s – that’s pretty accurate so far.”
“Conqueror of gods, demons, and angels,” Loki continued. “Slayer of the White Mother Yelzebereth, and of Shtuttasht, the Overthroat. The bane of the Eldest.”
I scratched the back of my neck, restraining a chuckle. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“And indeed it has,” Loki said, grinning. “But this isn’t about buttering you up. Now that we’re friends, I feel more at ease discussing more delicate matters with you. I know full well of your struggles. Agatha Black is a dangerous opponent, and I believe you will need all the help you can get to defeat her.”
I felt my muscles tighten. “I’m not going to turn down any help that’s willingly given, especially when it comes to dealing with an agent of the Eldest. She’s a threat to the world. But I need to know something. Why would you want to help us? How could you possibly benefit?”
Loki’s eyes widened with some surprise. He turned his hands up, spreading his fingers, showing his palms. “Why, to preserve the status quo, of course. In this era, I am more powerful than the All-Father himself. You’re a clever man, Graves, don’t make me repeat myself. And I don’t need to remind you that you’ve fallen on Odin’s bad side as well. Who better to offer you advice on how to deal with his wrath?”