Undercover Gorgon
A Mt. Olympus Employment Agency Miniseries
R.L. Naquin
This book is a work of fiction. All names, places, and characters are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any way whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except as brief quotations.
Edited by Sara E. Lundberg
Cover design by Yocla Designs
Published by Bottle Cap Publishing
Copyright © 2016 R.L. Naquin
All rights reserved.
Version 1.0
“Episode #1 — Witches War”
Six months ago, when I was a mousy human working in a drugstore, I would have smiled and taken the shit this guy was giving me. Unfortunately for him, I was not a mousy human anymore.
I was a bitchy gorgon.
I lowered my sunglasses, not enough to expose my light-sensitive eyes, but enough to make the muscled manbun in front of me flinch. They always worried I’d turn them into stone. Hell, I’d thought I’d turn everybody to stone when I lost my human glamor and found out what I really was. Now, I just thought it was hilarious and used their misinformation against them.
“Sir, you need to step behind the line. I’m not going to ask you again.”
He scowled, but took a step back. “I’ve been waiting half an hour for somebody to take care of this problem.” He waved a piece of paper at me. “Somebody’s going to pay for my dry cleaning bill. That was a $300 shirt, and your girl in the dining hall dripped marinara sauce on it.”
I stared at him through my darkened lenses without changing my expression. The snakes on my head, however, eased from the complicated up-do I’d arranged them in earlier and slithered in agitated patterns over my shoulders. Not for the first time, I wondered why I bothered to try to style them at all.
My tone was as patronizing as I could make it. “Sir, as I explained before, your paperwork has been through the system, and your request was returned denied. You’re done here.”
His face turned red, and he nudged a shoe over the line. My snakes all hissed, and he pulled his toe back. “Then make the girl pay for it out of her salary. That’s how the real world works.”
My snakes went silent. I leaned forward, all pretense of bitchiness gone, replaced by genuine anger. “Listen carefully. If you can afford to blow $300 on an ugly shirt, you can afford to pay to clean it when it inevitably ends up getting dirty. I don’t know what you do for a living and, frankly, I don’t care. You will not set foot in my lobby again until you learn to respect the hard-working people in the service industry. Now leave the building before I call security.”
He spluttered something incoherent, but something in my face—or the faces of the mass of snakes on my head—made him realize I was serious. “This isn’t the end of it.” He turned toward the door, and his voice trailed behind him, weaker and less full of bluster. “I’ll be writing a letter to your boss.”
The entire queue turned to watch him go.
I shook my head, and my snakes moved into a less angry, more hair-like position. “Next.”
A cloaked woman with a hood covering her hair and much of her face moved forward and took his place. She spoke in a low, raspy whisper. “I hear you can get things done.”
I glanced side-to-side, looking for cameras or snickering coworkers. This had to be a practical joke.
“If you’ve filled out the correct forms, then yes.” I held back from giving her my usual dose of attitude. Something told me it wouldn’t be in my best interest. “What exactly do you need?”
“No paperwork. This is…” She glanced around again, as if afraid secret agents were watching from behind the potted plants. “This is a delicate personal matter. I’d like to keep it between the two of us.”
She seemed serious. But nobody knew about my after-hours activities. How could this woman know I’d been borrowing magical tools from other departments to fix things I had no business fixing?
I had to play dumb. There was no other way to handle it. “Look, I’m just the receptionist. But I’ll be happy to direct you to whatever department can help you.”
She sighed and drew closer to me, her palms resting on the desk. Her breath smelled like cotton candy. “You are the department I need, Patrice. I have a problem only someone with your…resourcefulness can accomplish.” She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “I’m out of time. I have to get back before I’m missed. This line was so damned long. I’ll be here at 5:30 when the lobby clears out. Wait for me.”
She hurried off in a cloud of voluminous black silk. Beneath the cloak, a pair of six-inch, hot-pink heels clattered on the tiles. Whoever she was, she had flashy taste.
The rest of the day, I barely paid attention to the people in my line. I was too preoccupied with thinking about the mysterious woman to properly torture anyone, no matter how rude they were or how stupid their questions.
Believe me, there really are stupid questions, no matter what teachers might say in fifth grade.
Seriously. Who stands in line for half an hour to ask where the closest mailbox is? Any other day, I’d have given the dishwater-blond guy elaborate directions to the farthest mailbox I could think of.
“Just give your letter to me.” I held my hand out. “I’ll put it with our outgoing mail. It’ll go this afternoon.”
He stood blinking at me like a confused toddler, clutching a small blue envelope sealed with a golden hydra sticker. “You don’t mind?” It wouldn’t be enough to say his eyes were blue. They were kind of a glowing, translucent indigo. Like the blue in Halloween glow sticks. Cool, but a little freaky in an eyeball.
I shrugged. “Give it.” I took the envelope and dropped it in a box to mingle with other stamped, addressed envelopes. “Next.”
He didn’t move. “You’re sure it’ll go out today?”
I rolled my eyes, but he couldn’t see them behind my glasses. “Next!”
The tree nymph behind him nudged him aside and shoved a twenty-dollar bill toward me. “I need to get change.”
Again, if I weren’t so focused on the odd lady in the cloak, I’d have given her my withering best. “I don’t handle money. Try the cafeteria or the gift shop. Next.”
The rest of the day didn’t get any better. One stupid thing after another. At least on Mondays I had the new humans coming in for orientation. They had every reason to be confused. And giving them a hard time really was part of my job—though I didn’t find that out until I’d been working the front desk for several months.
Turned out, someone in Inhuman Resources read me correctly and knew I’d be a natural at intimidating the clients. The newbie humans went through all sorts of personality testing to determine which department to assign them to. I was their first test.
Unfortunately, today was a Thursday. I had to do without the human newbies to entertain me.
Late in the afternoon, a sphinx named Anderson came by with the mail cart and took my outgoing mail.
I nodded at him. “Anderson.”
He bumped his chin in my direction. “Patty.”
“You know I hate when you call me that.” My headsnakes hissed in agreement.
“I know it.” He paused, tapping his cheek with a clawed toe. “What is it that’s always coming, but never arrives?”
“Anderson, what have I told you a
bout bothering me with your dumb riddles?”
“You can’t answer it?”
I scowled. “See you tomorrow, Anderson. Go.”
He grinned, having received the correct answer. “See ya, Patty.” He sauntered away, pushing his cart.
Less than an hour later, blondie with the glowing eyes was back. The line was pretty much gone, and he pushed ahead of the yawning centaur waiting for me to print out a B1117A for him to fill out to requisition a new set of horseshoes for an out-of-town assignment he’d been given.
“I changed my mind,” the blond guy said.
I stared at him, trying to remember what he’d wanted earlier. “Excuse me?”
“I need my letter back. I changed my mind.” His face was pinched and a little sweaty.
“I don’t have it. You wanted it to go out today. It’s gone.”
He expelled a lungful of air and covered his mouth with his fist. “Where did it go? Can I get it back?”
“The sphinx took it awhile ago. By now it’s probably being sorted in the mailroom to go out in the morning.”
He shook his head and kept shaking it, his face pale. “No, no, no. I’ve got to get it back. Can you get it back?” He looked like he might cry.
“What’s in the letter that’s so important?”
The centaur appeared at my counter, tail swishing. “Look, I just need my form. If it’s printed out, can I get it and be on my way, please?”
“Oh, sure.” I twisted to the side and pulled the sheets of paper out of the printer tray. “Here. Once they’re filled out, you can either give them to me, or to your boss. Either way.”
He eyed the blond guy. “I think I’ll just give it to my boss. Thanks.” He gave the other guy a dirty look and trotted off.
“Look, I’ll tell you what.” One of my headsnakes dropped to my shoulder, then crawled up to lick my cheek. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do to get your letter back. Can you come back tomorrow morning?”
He relaxed a little—not much, but enough to bring his shoulders down a few inches. “You think you can do it?” His pink face was so hopeful, I very nearly leaned across the desk to give him a hug.
That would’ve been terrible for my reputation.
“I’ll do my best. Now go home or something. You’re holding up my line.”
My line had precisely one person in it. And she was texting on her phone, so didn’t seem too worried about waiting.
“Thank you so much.” He stopped and gave me a smile that looked a little sickly. “I really appreciate it.” He darted off and through the door to Mount Olympus proper.
Looked like I’d be working after hours again on top of the meeting with the mystery lady. Breaking into places I wasn’t supposed to be in was becoming a rush, but it wasn’t helping me get a good night’s sleep.
At 5:00, the lobby filled with people getting off work for the night. I sat at my desk, watching them flow from the bank of elevators, past my desk, then split into twin rivers, one going out the door to the human world, the other leading to the various districts of Mount Olympus.
With few exceptions, the first line consisted of humans, while the other was a mix of mythics—non-human humanoids like me, as well as creatures like basilisks and phoenixes—and humans. The first time I’d come here, I’d entered through the human-world door. Now, I went home through the other one.
Circumstances changed. I adjusted.
The lobby emptied in no time, until only a few stragglers lingered. Some departments, like Dreams and Nightmares, worked around the clock. Most, though, closed up at 5:00 and left for the night.
With so few people left in the lobby, the ding of the elevator called attention to itself. I watched as the lady in the black cloak emerged and clicked toward me in her pencil-heeled shoes.
She glanced around the lobby, then crooked her finger at me to follow. I saw no reason not to, so grabbed my purse and went after her. She stepped into the elevator and gestured at me to hurry. I slipped in as the doors closed.
My hairsnakes slid over each other, tongues licking the air. They did that when they were nervous. I put a hand up there to soothe them and faced the woman. “Where are we going?”
Her lips—the only part of her face I could see—drew up in a smile. “We’re going down.”
She rummaged under her cloak and produced a keycard which she shoved in a slot beneath the floor numbers..
I took a step back and held my hands up with my palms toward her. “Now, wait a minute. I did not agree to a trip into the Underworld. You haven’t even told me who you are, yet, let alone what this is all about.”
The elevator shook as it descended to the basement of Mt. Olympus and, if I understood the process correctly, through a portal into the Underworld, which was an entirely different world. Or dimension. Or something.
The woman turned toward me, her face still hooded. “I’ll tell you everything once we get to my office. First, I have to get off the elevator and down the hallway without being seen.”
I folded my arms across my chest. If she had her own office in the Underworld, she probably wasn’t some low-level office drone. Plus, there was the matter of the keycard she used in the elevator. They didn’t just hand those out like business cards. Either she was someone important, or she’d stolen it from someone who was. No matter which was true, I was intrigued.
As long as we didn’t get caught.
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened into a long hallway. The hooded woman stepped out and made a right, her cloak billowing around her as she rushed away. She didn’t check to see if I followed, but of course I did. I couldn’t get back on my own, so I didn’t have a lot of choice.
Several turns later, the woman took out a set of keys and led us through an unmarked office door. None of the doors in that hallway were marked, so the absence of placards or painted signs wasn’t strange in the context of the rest of the building, but it left me uneasy. Inside, we stood in a small waiting area with an empty reception desk positioned beside another door, presumably to the actual office. The only things currently sitting on the desk were a phone, a pad and paper with a pen, and a small table lamp that cast enough light to throw shadows on the wall but not tell me exactly what color everything was.
Once the door was closed and locked behind us, she turned on the overhead lights and pulled back her hood. A dimple formed in her right cheek. “Now we can talk.” She pulled away the cloak and dropped it on a small sofa.
Her hair was spiky silver, and the tips were dyed cotton-candy pink and black. She was tall and lean, even allowing for her six-inch heels. The pink of her hair matched her lipstick and nail polish, and much of her clothing was tight and was some sort of animal print.
I had no idea who I was looking at.
She spun and posed. “Ta da!”
“You look very…nice.” What was I supposed to say? She obviously expected something out of me.
Her dimple disappeared. “You don’t know who I am?”
I shook my head and my snakes stirred and hissed in their sleep. “No, I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “What are they teaching you up there? Origami?” She strode to the receptionist’s desk and rummaged in the drawers before coming up with a bottle of scotch and two glasses. “Hope you like it neat. She doesn’t exactly keep ice cubes in her desk.” She poured a little in each glass and sat on the sofa, waving her elbow for me to sit in the chair across from her.
“Thanks.” I took the glass she handed me and settled into the stiff chrome and faux-leather chair.
She swallowed a mouthful of scotch. “So, let’s try this again. I’m Hecate.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, and my snakes shifted. All this time I’d been in the presence of the goddess of witches and necromancy. I took a gulp from my glass, instantly regretting it as the liquid burned its way down my throat. “You don’t look like the pictures they show of you, um, upstairs.”
She grimaced, and her dimple w
inked. “Honey, when you’ve lived as long as some of us have, you make a point of mixing it up from time to time.”
“But why the disguise?” I leaned back in my chair and tried to get more comfortable. Or at least to appear more comfortable. “You should be able to come and go wherever you like.”
“I can down here.” She shrugged, and her leopard-print top undulated with the movement. “Up there, I’m supposed to have a licensed Mt. Olympus escort at all times.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “That’s awfully restrictive for a goddess.”
“Like I said, we’ve been around for a long time. In the past, mistakes have been made. Lines were crossed. Zeus isn’t the most forgiving guy, you know.”
Zeus was sort of a superstar or a legend. No one I knew had ever met him, seen him in passing, or even knew of him being in the building when they were there. But I’d heard the stories. I wouldn’t want to piss him off.
I took a sip, this time taking my time to appreciate the warmth all the way down to my belly. “So, what is it you need from me?”
“Well, as you’ve seen for yourself, it’s not easy for me to move around outside of the Underworld.”
“You need me to do something for you upstairs, then.”
She tapped a long pink nail against the edge of her glass. “I need you to recover something of mine that’s been stolen.” She paused, narrowing her eyes. “Something stolen by another god.”
I finished my scotch in one gulp. My snakes felt heavy, like they’d turned to lead. “You’re kidding me.”
She took my glass, refilled it, and set it on the table near me. “I exaggerate. You’ve heard of the Stygian Witches, yes?”
“Sure. Three of them, one shared eyeball.” Good grief. This was not getting any better. She was sending me after the Stygian Witches. In every story I’d ever read about them, those bitches were crazy. And dangerous as hell.
She leaned into her chair and crossed her legs. “That’s them. Last night I went to my storage room to retrieve an artifact I need for an incantation.” She paused and rummaged in a fold of her cloak, then produced a life-sized statue of a black cat.
Undercover Gorgon: Episode #1 — Witches War (Undercover Gorgon: A Mt. Olympus Employment Agency Miniseries) Page 1