by RJ Blain
They didn’t avoid my father, but I had a theory about that. What if my sliver of impurity had taken a dominant form? If my father was just a gene carrier, perhaps angels didn’t mind being in his presence.
What if my mystery genetics were a little like my cursed eyes? Neither of my parents saw matters of the heart quite like I did.
“Hey, Kennedy?”
“What is it?”
“Outside of demons and devils, what types of beings would angels avoid?”
“That’s a good question. I don’t know. Why?”
“My grandparents have always avoided me. Now I’m wondering why.”
“Who knows? I’ve given up trying to understand the motivations of angels and devils.”
“Not demons?”
“Demons are born on Earth. That makes a difference. Perhaps you just have a bit more angel in you than they like to admit for someone born on Earth.”
“That’s pretty petty.” The instant I said the words, I wondered if the truth was something as simple as ancient prejudices.
I had angelic sight, but I wasn’t an angel.
“It’s not like you’ll have to worry about angels often. Just don’t get the attention of a fallen angel. I think you’ll be fine. You have a bigger problem to worry about first.”
“I do?”
Kennedy pointed at the bed. “We have business to attend to, and your suits are in the way.”
Some problems had simple solutions, and I wasted no time dumping them onto the floor. “As a new resident of Gypsum Creek, I’m afraid I’m going to have to charge you a welcome tax. I accept all forms of intimate payment.”
“That must be the incubus in you talking.”
Or the succubus, but I wasn’t going to quibble about it. “I bet it’ll be the first time in your life you’ll actually enjoy paying taxes.”
“Only an idiot would argue over this. Show me what you’ve got, Reed. We don’t have all night.”
Chapter Eighteen
Thanks to one kitten, a puppy, and a shared dog bed, I came within a hair of calling in sick so I could stay home and observe the pair carefully. Ultimately, Kennedy urged me out the door so I wouldn’t disrupt my habits more than I already had. Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds seemed displeased to be separated from her new companion, protesting in howls until I got her into the car.
Chaos waited for me at work in the form of twenty new companies desiring contracts, and in a complete leave of his common sense, my boss assigned them all to me and my team with one notable caveat: he wanted me to handle them personally.
I hauled the stack of papers to my boss’s office, knocked, and waited for him to let me in. When he did, I dumped the source of my growing headache onto his desk with a thunk loud enough to silence the muted conversations in the hall and shared offices nearby.
With a nudge of my foot, I closed his door, and to make it clear he’d crossed every last one of my worker bee lines, I slapped the files hard enough my palm stung. “There is zero chance in hell I’m going to be able to finish this within a week.”
Delivering the bad news so bluntly might get me fired, but if it did, I had enough money saved I could live for months before having to find another job. I had a few new things I could spend my time on, including making certain Kennedy needed a boost to get out of bed every morning.
“Well, I see you’ve determined you actually do have limits rather than doing your best to do the impossible. This is a new development. You were even thirty minutes later arriving to work than usual. I had three people in my office wondering if you’d gotten into another car accident.”
“I have guests, and one of the guests is a puppy still being bottle fed. One minute, I’m getting ready for work. The next? I’m petting the puppy. The puppy has some form of magical power that alters the course of time. As such, I was late getting out the door.”
“As far as excuses go, it’s an amusing one.” My boss glanced at Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds. “I’m surprised that furry terrorist didn’t try to kill the puppy.”
“They were sleeping together this morning. I almost called in sick because they were sleeping together. I regret not having called in sick after seeing these files. What sort of monster dumps twenty new contracts on my desk on Thursday morning?”
My boss arched a brow. “One who had twenty contracts dumped on his desk Wednesday afternoon with direct orders to make you handle them because you’re the best man I have on the team.”
“Your boss might be a devil.”
“I was thinking the same thing when I inherited the stack. You can dump some of the research work onto your team, but the bosses want you handling the actual negotiations. I would’ve distributed them better if I could, but the uppers were clear: you need to handle the negotiations.”
To handle the negotiations, I needed to do the footwork, which meant I’d be working more overtime than I cared to think about. “Can the files come home with me?”
“Unless you’re planning on living here until the end of next week, it’s likely unavoidable. I’ll let the bosses know you’re game but need to take work home with you. I’ll try to talk them into incentives for working on such a tight schedule.”
“Which ones are the most important?”
“That’s the problem. They’re all important.”
“If you’re trying to make my Thursday a sad, miserable day, you’re doing a good job of it,” I complained, picking up the stack. “I’ll try to rank these and send a prioritization list for your approval. It’s going to take a literal miracle to push through twenty contracts next week. A literal miracle.”
“Well, you are part angel. Go make miracles happen, Reed. If anyone in this hellhole can, it’s you.”
I left before I succumbed to the temptation of throttling my boss, his boss, and his boss’s boss.
Lucavier Buioni had it out for me, and he was responsible for eight of the twenty contracts. I suspected a few others were his doing, too. In some ways, his meddling simplified matters for me. Once I approached him and made it clear I knew he was behind all the contracts, I could unravel the tangled weave of lies, aliases, and corporate fronts, allowing me to kill multiple birds with one stone. I respected his tactic; if his goal was to meet with me face-to-face, blanket dumping potential contracts with my company was a good way to do it.
The amount of money on the table for business management would’ve caught the immediate attention of the company’s CEO, ensuring that only the better negotiators would handle the contracts. Lucavier’s assumption I was one of the better negotiators amused me.
I was, but I only had my heritage to thank for that. Kennedy had me pegged; I liked crunching the numbers far more than I liked arranging the contracts to make the number crunching happen. After I handled the issue with Lucavier, maybe I’d take the dive, finish the schooling I’d abandoned, and try my hand at the job I thought I’d wanted growing up.
Involving Kennedy might cost me, but I’d ask her for her opinions. With her background, she might have better ideas.
Leaving the ruts of my past completely and going into a new field might do me a world of good. My original plans of forgetting Kennedy had gone up in smoke. I suspected if my therapists realized how much change she’d brought into my life, my therapy animal privileges would be revoked. Eventually, I’d get Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds used to staying home alone with Puppy, Savior of Worlds, likely resulting in the utter destruction of my—no, our—home.
As I expected, my research into Lucavier’s corporations and activities would make or break me. I threw myself into the work, pulling out comprehensive records of every single corporation he lobbed at my company, tracking down sister and parent companies with a ruthlessness I usually reserved for the trickier contracts to land on my desk.
In the financial ball game, Lucavier didn’t bring that much to the table. I’d handled contracts worth twice as much.
Those contracts, however, didn’t stink of treachery quite like a devi
l’s dealings.
After lunch, I brought the files to my boss to make several odd requests, one of which I hoped would get me fired so I wouldn’t have to deal with the damned mess.
When I entered his office, files in hand, my boss sighed. “It’s barely ten after one, Reed. When you come into my office fresh off lunch, you’re telling me something I’m not going to like.”
“I’m going to need a good tablet to handle these contracts, sir. There’s substantial overlap in these files, and I want to be able to take notes more efficiently. I’d also like to be able to take it home. I think I can condense these to a handful of meetings, but I need to verify the overlap over the next few days and draw up a proposal for the company owner in charge of the overlapping contracts.”
“Overlap? What sort of overlap? I was told these were independent contracts.”
I thumped the files onto my boss’s desk, separating out Lucavier’s corporations. “These companies are all companies branched from a firm owned by Lucavier Buioni. It wouldn’t take much to suggest we ask Mr. Buioni to handle the negotiations of all these companies personally. He’s listed as a primary shareholder on all of them. There are a few private companies I suspect are also under his general umbrella, but that’s why I’d like the tablet, so I can look into it more efficiently.”
“Risk level?”
“If all of these contracts were to pass, he might be accused of establishing a monopoly; the investment sectors are very close. It is feasible we might be dragged into the lawsuit if these proposals were to go through as is.” I shrugged, flipping open the largest of the proposals, handing the financial page to my boss. “This one is the largest concern. With this proposed move, he could wipe out the family-operated businesses, do significant damage to the larger companies, and form a monopoly in the area. It would depend on if his activities have a monopoly elsewhere.”
“Sector?”
“Home renovation and construction contracting.”
My boss’s brows went up. “You think it’s possible for him to develop a monopoly in that field here?”
“With the amount of money he’s willing to invest, the number of business takeovers he’s proposed, and his base strategy, I certainly think it’s a possibility we don’t want to ignore.”
“Some of those big businesses have been in operation here for over a hundred years. It’d take a miracle to unseat them. Hell, our building is maintained by them. Most of the bigger buildings here are.”
“It’d be a nightmare for everyone here if this transition happened. It’s bad enough when the maintenance is late a day. Imagine what would happen if a new company swept in all at once. Every business in the area would have troubles just because of problems with their building.”
“Conspiracy theories are not your thing, Reed. Don’t get into conspiracy theories, especially when they have enough viability to worry me. Please go back to your office, pet your cat, and rein those thoughts in. You’re entering nightmare territory.”
I chuckled. “But it’s a possibility. Most of his corporations, that I can tell, are business centric. Advertising. Accounting firms. A law firm. One retail branch that’s large enough for corporate presences in buildings. It’d be a brilliant way to disrupt productivity of other businesses. If he controls when and how maintenance is done in their buildings, he could plan renovations during a sensitive time and influence worker productivity.”
“While I’d like to say employees can work through that, we both know it’d be difficult, and that logic is interesting—and terrifying. It’s also logistically difficult or impossible to pull off, I think.”
“Oh, I think it’s logistically possible. If he knows a rival company is in crunch time, he can disrupt activities and lower quality of their work through renovations, and it’s often not difficult to tell when a company is on the move. Is that the motivation? Who knows? I don’t really care, honestly. I just think the building a monopoly aspect is worth looking into. I’d rather we not run afoul of the state’s monopoly laws.”
“All right. I’ll have a tablet for you by the end of the day and the auth to take it out of the building along with digital copies of the contracts and everything we have on the corporations. You figure out what this Lucavier’s goal is, and when you do, come to me so I can take it to the bosses. I definitely think you’re onto something. If he was on the up-and-up, he wouldn’t be trying to hide his connections to all of these contracts.”
I gathered the files, claimed my victory with a nod, and replied, “Will do. Do you want me to approach Mr. Buioni and acknowledge we know he’s involved with multiple contracts?”
“For now, let him think he has the upper hand, but arrange to meet with him about the contract openly from him. We’ll play it by ear. Keep me in the loop. I don’t care what time it is, but if you find out anything about this guy, call me.”
“Understood.”
Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds disliked Lucavier’s files, and whenever I took my eye off her, she tried to eat the papers. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to destroy my work due to boredom, being a cat, or if she knew something I didn’t. My haphazard entry to cat ownership taught me to be careful around the fluffy entity.
She ruled over me with an iron paw, and something about my work annoyed her. I placed most of my bets on her wanting to play and thinking I was giving too much attention to the contracts. The rest went to her being some form of higher being, cunning in her ability to convince me she needed me to care for her. Damned cats.
I couldn’t wait to get home and get a dose of Kennedy and her wickedly cute puppy. One of them would cure me of the sense of dread plaguing me over Lucavier’s interference with my work life. If our pets slept together again, I’d need therapy to recover.
I could live with therapy for an overdose of our pets being adorable. I’d sign myself up for multiple therapy sessions to avoid dealing with a damned devil determined to butt into my affairs. Short of going into hiding, I needed to haul ass on my plans to protect myself. When a devil came calling, something would happen.
Delaying the contract negotiations long enough to grasp the basics of swordplay and acquire a weapon would be my first step. If I could make the concerns about a monopoly stick, I could delay proceedings for several weeks—maybe even months—while my company’s lawyers found a way to work around the current laws.
The legal department could limit my contact with Lucavier until I was better prepared to handle meeting with a devil.
Then again, devils played the long game. I likely had time. How much would be the question, but I’d have to haul ass. After being in the sights of an angel, a devil didn’t surprise me. I needed to find out why.
As far as I knew, I’d only inherited an angel’s sight, and it was more of a burden than anything else. Was my sight to blame for Lucavier’s interest in me? Meddling with more practitioner magic would lead me straight into trouble, but I needed facts in a hurry.
My boss hadn’t banned me from communicating with Lucavier. Playing my cards with care would win me the war, but how could I call him without betraying I knew eight of the contracts were his? Listening for the truth might give me an edge in negotiations—and reveal his plans.
If I asked the right questions.
The mystery bothered me through the rest of the day, punctuated by my kitten’s attempts to destroy as much of the paperwork as possible. It took my boss two hours to get a tablet for me, and I wasted the rest of my day photographing the documents with it because the person with the digital copies had left work early due to illness.
I found that as fishy as the entire lot falling onto my desk, but I kept my thoughts to myself. There was only so much I could do without my boss worrying I’d lost my mind. After work officially ended, I called Hamhock.
“Hamhock’s Forge,” Hamhock’s assistant answered.
“Is Hamhock around? It’s Reed Matthews.”
“Yes, she is. One sec.”
One sec was closer to five
minutes, but I played with Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds while I waited.
“Evening, Reed,” Hamhock said. “What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to find out if it would be possible to push up lessons and the practice sword any. I might have a bit of a devil problem in my near future.”
“A devil, you say?”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure he’s a devil. Might be a demon, but I don’t think so.”
“Looks like you were on the right track. I’ve got a sword I can loan you for lessons, and you’ll start on wooden blades to limit injuries for the first few sessions. I’ll put in a call. How soon can you work evenings on this?”
Considering my soured luck, I needed to protect Kennedy, too. I hoped she wouldn’t take offense to me volunteering her for lessons. “Tomorrow. I might be bringing a friend, too. If this devil comes after me, he might go after her, too.”
“I’ll warn your instructor. Your friend good at firearms?”
“She’s licensed, but not here.”
“I’ll let your instructor know, and I’ll have a second weapon ready. Tell me about your friend so I can pick a blade.”
“You know that Japanese death scythe?”
Hamhock laughed. “Naginata. Yes.”
“That. I think she should use that. If the instructor can teach her.”
“Your instructor was born with a weapon in her hand, Reed. She can teach any weapon. I’ll have a naginata ready. I’ll call you with the address tomorrow. Is around this time good?”
“Around this time is good. I’ll warn my friend she has a date.”
“Do yourself a favor, Reed. Don’t call this a date. It would be a terrible date. Call it a self-defense class. Act worried. You do worried well.”