“I gotta go. I’m at work. I’ll tell you all about my job soon,” I promised.
“Okay. Bye, dear.”
“Bye, Mom.”
“Knock ’em dead, Son.” I rolled my eyes, surprised that Dad’s favorite nickname for me hadn’t come up sooner.
“I will, Dad.”
I hung up and stared at the phone. I couldn’t avoid explaining my job forever. I needed to remember to ask Mr. Pitt or Rose about the day-to-day office work on the bumper sticker side of the business today so I’d have something I could actually tell my parents.
I peeked inside the doors along the lengthy hallway leading to Illumination Studios, catching glimpses of bored office workers in the half-empty mortgage company office and in the much busier temp agency. For the first time since my interview yesterday, I felt a surge of optimism. I may have had the most bizarre day yesterday, but at least I hadn’t droned along behind a desk like all those people.
Of course, they hadn’t been attacked by evil creatures or spent their late-night hours training in the worst neighborhood they could find. They also hadn’t woken up to find their beloved pet near death’s door. My smile faded.
Dwarfed behind the large reception desk, Sharon glared over the top at me as I entered. I smiled and said hello. Her expression didn’t change, she didn’t blink, and she didn’t say anything. Doris’s description of her as a gargoyle is apt, I thought. I had to resist the urge to twitch at the feel of Sharon’s stare boring into my back as I headed for Mr. Pitt’s office.
He was seated behind his desk, staring at his monitor. I was again struck by the unfairness of having a boss named Brad Pitt who could not have looked less like the movie star. If there was any star he resembled, it was Wallace Shawn, but only in height. Shawn didn’t look like a balding poisonous frog.
“Madison, I just got off the phone with Doris. She said you guys had a successful night. She’s about to get on the plane, but I want you to talk to her.”
He bustled me out of his office and to the cubicle that Rose had said was mine. There was a computer set up on the bare desk, an abandoned overflowing pen cup, two staplers, and a tiered folder holder. The computer was already on. Mr. Pitt clicked on something and a box appeared in the center of the screen showing a picture of Doris. Mr. Pitt clicked something again, and the picture expanded to the whole screen.
“I’ve only got a minute,” Doris said. I jumped. It wasn’t a picture; it was a live video.
Mr. Pitt motioned for me to sit, then he left. I sat, feeling like a country bumpkin who’d time traveled to the future. A cell phone yesterday. A video conference today. Watch out, world. I might get a Twitter account next!
“Tell me about Mr. Bond,” Doris said.
I eyed the old woman. If anything, she looked more peppy this morning than she had last night. Maybe it was the lack of the biker sweater. Maybe it was the camera. Behind her I could see the steady activity of an airport.
Editing out my emotional reactions, I outlined my morning’s visit to the vet, ending with, “So I was right to guess this had something to do with the forces of evil?”
“Did you recharge last night?” she demanded.
“Yeah. I slept, what, four hours. It was plenty.” It wasn’t plenty, but I’d be damned if I admitted it to this elderly lady who had clearly had even less sleep and yet still seemed more energetic. And I didn’t see what my sleep had to do with Mr. Bond, anyway.
“That’s sleep. That’s not recharging. Oh, dear. You don’t know about recharging.” She slapped herself on the forehead and I winced for her. “I should have guessed.” She looked around, then stood and walked quickly to a corner of the terminal, the image from her laptop bouncing and blurring with each step. I closed my eyes against the sudden carsick sensation, opening them only when she spoke again. “Listen, child. What we did last night—using all that lux lucis—well, it pulls from your own life force reserves. You have to recharge. Use plants and trees for this. Touch them, and pull the life force from them.”
“You want me to uproot plants? I don’t think that’s going to help Mr. Bond.”
“Not uproot—take their lux lucis. Let me guess: All those plants in your house were dead this morning, right?”
I nodded. My heart clinched in dread as she continued.
“Since you didn’t actively seek to refill your life force, your body did it passively while you slept. You sucked the life out of the plants first, and then you sucked it out of your cat. You’re lucky he’s not dead.”
“I didn’t do that to Mr. Bond!” I shook my head frantically. “I wouldn’t!”
“You did. You have to replenish yourself—recharge—before bed, or anything living around you is in danger.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that!”
“I did. I told you to recharge.”
“How was I supposed to know what that meant?” I was trembling with anger and guilt. I thought of poor Mr. Bond laying limply in the hallway, drained of life by me. “I could have killed him! These are the things you tell a person you’re training. Jesus Christ!” It hadn’t been some evil creature. It’d been me. The person who was supposed to love and protect and care for Mr. Bond. If this is what I got for embracing my abilities, I’d give up my advance and tell Mr. Pitt to find himself someone with a different moral structure. Killing evil creatures was one thing. Becoming one was intolerable.
“I’m telling you now, girl. Yelling at me won’t help.”
I felt like crying, so I focused on my anger instead. “Tell me how to recharge, and don’t leave anything out this time,” I demanded.
“I already did. Pay attention. All you have to do to recharge is touch a plant and absorb its lux lucis. Trees are best. They have more life to give.”
“Intentionally suck the life out of things? That doesn’t exactly sound like the good side. No one told me anything about this!”
“No need to get all melodramatic, child—”
“I’ll be the judge of that. You didn’t spend this morning at the vet’s with a nearly dead cat that you almost killed! And I wasn’t touching him. I wasn’t touching any of the plants, and they all died.”
“You don’t always have to be touching the plant, it’s just faster. This isn’t evil, either. The plants will give you their life willingly. It’s up to you not to take too much. If you were evil, you’d take it from animals and other people.”
“But I did take it from Mr. Bond.”
Doris sighed. “Your life force doesn’t distinguish between what you morally feel is good and evil. It fed off the plants first because they were willing, but when you needed more, it fed off the next closest, weakest thing, which happened to be Mr. Bond. In a way, you’re lucky. It could have been a neighbor’s pet or a neighbor’s child.”
“How is that not evil?”
“It just isn’t. It’s a balance you’ve got to learn to maintain. It’ll become like second nature.” She looked over the screen, and I heard a loud announcement for the last call of a flight. “I’ve got to run. You’re going to do fine. Always recharge after using lux lucis, especially before bed. Oh, and remind Brad you need some weapons. Good luck.”
The video froze as she signed off.
“Bite me,” I told her picture.
“Rough first day?” a deep voice drawled from behind me. I jumped and spun. I’d totally forgotten where I was. When my eyes fell on Mr. Dark and Deadly—I mean Niko—I forgot everything all over again. Good job, Dice. You looked like a wreck when you saw Dr. Love this morning, and now you’re cursing at the picture of a little old woman in front of Niko. You really know how to impress them, don’t you?
“Uh, second day. Kind of a rough beginning to the second day,” I stammered.
Niko was as heart-stoppingly drool worthy as he had been yesterday. His jeans fit his hips and thighs snuggly, and his tight blue T-shirt emphasized his stunning pectorals. He had his arms crossed and was leaning lazi
ly against the wall of my cubicle. A hint of a smile quirked his sensual mouth, but his eyes were dark and serious. If he was the elite of the enforcers, I was sure there were many questions he could answer for me. If only I could formulate a single thought. Other than how nice it would be to rub up against him. Down, girl.
I stood, tripping over the wheels of the chair.
“I’m Madison,” I said, extending my hand.
“Niko Demitrius.” His grip was warm and strong. I made sure I didn’t hold on. He passed my hand test with flying colors, but while Dr. Love had made me think of romance and long nights of languid passion, shaking Niko’s hand had me scanning a mental map of the office for the nearest empty room with a door, no preliminary chit-chat necessary. Honestly, my hormones needed a shot of sedatives around this man.
“It’ll get easier,” he assured me. I blushed before I realized he was talking about the job, not my attraction to him. He flashed me white teeth, then walked away.
I relaxed my white-knuckled grip on the back of my chair. Women don’t swoon in the twenty-first century, I told myself firmly.
“You’ve got a little drool on your chin,” Rose said from beside me. I jumped and made a swipe at my chin before I realized she was teasing. Rose laughed. “Come meet the others.”
She led me across the aisle to the group of four cubicles where she sat. A beautiful, blond-haired supermodel lounged behind the desk across from Rose. She had the kind of hair I always tell myself regular people without a team of stylists don’t have. It was thick, with a wavy curl that glistened in the flat florescent lights.
“Joy, this is Madison Fox. She’s our new enforcer. Madison, this is Joy. She’s does a lot of our graphic design.” We shook hands. Hers was warm and slender and I felt like a thick-boned Neanderthal in comparison.
In the cubicle beside her was one of the most pleasant men I’d ever seen. We were evenly matched in height, and probably in weight. Short, mussed brown hair gave his ageless face a boyish charm, and the smile he shone upon me made me like him instantly.
“William, this is Madison. Madison, William does much of our marketing and advertising.”
“Call me Will,” he said in a lovely British accent, tipping the scales from pleasant to attractive.
I blinked. I did it without thinking, with only the remembered voice of Doris in my head instructing me to use Primordium constantly. Who better to start with than my coworkers?
Will was more beautiful in Primordium than he was with regular sight. His life force glowed with the visual warmth of a small sun. It was all I could do to not reach out and touch him to see if he was as warm as he looked. Not wanting to be rude, I averted my gaze to Joy. Her life force sparkled, literally. Almost like someone had sprinkled glitter all over her.
“What Rose didn’t tell you is that we’re Illuminea,” Joy said in a soft, musical voice.
“Illuminea?” I repeated stupidly. What was wrong with me? I wanted to touch Joy, too.
“I told you, she’s totally ignorant,” Rose said behind me. I turned to look at her. Her life force was a standard white, though abnormally pure for an adult. Unable to resist, I found my eyes drawn back to Will and Joy.
“You don’t know what Illuminea are?” Will asked incredulously.
I licked my lips and shook my head. Niko I wanted to rub up against physically. I hadn’t even thought about what his life force looked like. These two I wanted to rub my soul against. That definitely would be crossing the boundaries of personal space.
“We are highly evolved people who have chosen to step out of Primordium into this realm for a while.”
“You what?”
“They’re not human,” Rose said behind me.
“Eh?” Why was this conversation so hard to follow?
“We’re not nonhuman, either,” Joy said defensively. “We’re just more advanced. When we feel the desire to help, or the desire for a physical form for a while, we come into this realm.”
“They stick their noses into everyone’s business and no one minds because they’re all too happy to let them, is what she’s trying to say,” Rose translated.
“I’m sorry. You’re not human?” I asked. Joy and Will shared a look and shrugged. “And what exactly is it that you do?”
“Add a little light to the world in our own small and humble ways,” Joy said.
“I think you would be surprised how many nonhuman humans there are,” Will said.
I was still trying to absorb the idea of nonhuman humans when I saw an albino imp at Joy’s feet. It rubbed happily against her ankle, its glowing eyes watching me.
“There’s an imp on your foot,” I said as calmly as I could.
“Oh, that’s Nemo,” Joy said. “I named him after the fish.”
“He’s all white.”
“Yep.”
“You can see in Primordium?”
“We came from Primordium,” Will reminded me gently. I looked toward his golden warmth, then back at the white imp.
“How is that possible?” I pointed to Nemo.
“Joy decided she wanted a pet,” Will said with a shrug.
“Aren’t the imps so cute?” Joy asked, reaching down to pet the imp. It bounced up to rub eagerly on her hand, nipping at her soul with sharp, white teeth.
“Until they feed on you.” I was trying hard not to be rude, but I felt way out of my element.
Joy shrugged, as if a silly little thing like having your life sucked away was no big deal. “I just had to have one, and this guy was following me around.”
“Imps do that to us. They can’t resist us,” Will explained.
“How is this possible?”
“It took a while,” Joy began.
“Five months, three weeks, and two days,” Will filled in.
“I fed him some lux lucis, a little trickle at a time, and he kept coming back for more.”
“Of course he did. You’re like chocolate cheesecake to him.” Will sounded indignant.
“Not anymore. Now Nemo loves me, don’t you Nemo? Don’t you?” Joy had reverted to a tone that I seldom used with Mr. Bond even when we were alone. She also didn’t seem to notice the bites Nemo was happily taking out of her soul.
I met Rose’s gaze above Joy’s head. “If you think that’s bizarre, think about how this looks like to me,” she said.
“Crazy.” I meant the albino imp, but Rose eyed Joy and nodded in agreement. I blinked. Joy looked insane petting at the air near her ankle.
“If you couldn’t guess, Will and Joy are brother and sister.”
I eyed the Illuminea with regular vision but couldn’t find a resemblance between the two nonhuman humans. From bone structure and height to coloring and facial features, they shared no trait in common. It was, however, much easier to look at Will now. With normal sight, I didn’t feel the urge to cling to him. I still thought he looked very nice, and if he asked me to help him move from a fourth-floor walk-up or push his broken-down car, I probably wouldn’t be able to resist.
“Rose! Madison!” Brad Pitt bellowed from his office.
“I think the boss wants us,” Rose said.
“Nice to meet you,” Will said and Joy seconded it, still petting the air near her ankle.
As Rose and I walked to Mr. Pitt’s office, I asked, “If they’re brother and sister, how come only Will has an accent?”
“Oh, he’s been around longer, and lived in Britain for a while. You’ll get used to them. Everyone’s enthralled by Illuminea when they meet them. Most people don’t know why, though. You’ve seen them in Primordium, right? Then you know why.”
“How many Illuminea are there?”
“In the world? Who knows. In our area, they’re the only two, but there’s a few in Sacramento and more than their share up the hills in the sparser-populated areas. They prefer areas with a larger plant to human ratio.”
I had a thousand more questions, but we were already in
Mr. Pitt’s office. He had opened a thin cupboard on the side wall to a map of the greater Roseville area. It was hung a little low for me, but it was the perfect height for Mr. Pitt. He started talking without turning around.
“Something fuzzy is going on here.” He jabbed his finger at a spot on Sierra College Boulevard. “It’s been blipping on and off my radar for a few days now, and I think it’s here to stay. Go investigate it and clear it out.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Rose said.
“Doris showed you what to do last night, right, Madison?” Mr. Pitt asked, turning to pin me with his dark eyes.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Pitt snorted. He redirected his gaze to Rose. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“That’s above my pay grade.”
8
Got Toys?
Rose steered me out of the office. “Grab your purse. It’s hunting time. I hope Doris crammed in a few years’ worth of knowledge last night.”
I waited while she collected her luggage-size purse and we walked out together. Sharon’s eyes tracked us over the rim of the desk. Rose told her good-bye and I waved. Sharon didn’t blink.
Anticipation warred with anxiety as we crossed the parking lot. I was eager to take out a few imps and prove to Mr. Pitt that I could be useful. I’d preformed miserably yesterday, and it was a small miracle I still had a job. But was it a job I wanted? Doris had claimed that I couldn’t get rid of soul-sight, but that didn’t mean I was ready to barrel forward along this career path. I’d felt so righteous last night, cleansing evil from the world, but lower than a cockroach this morning for harming Mr. Bond. I had a wealth of ignorance and a pittance of skill. What was to say I wouldn’t do more harm than good today?
Give this job a chance, I reasoned with myself. And perfect recharging! If I still didn’t like the job in a few weeks, I’d quit then, after my bills were paid.
Plus, I had done very well last night, I reminded myself. Doris had said I was a natural. She may have added something about how I was as naturally gifted as most teens, but I took it as a good sign. If there were teenage IEs in charge of other regions, at least I was good enough to keep up with them. The only nagging problem was that I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing.
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 9