Any Port in a Storm (17 page)

Could one of the shades in that warehouse have survived? The blast killed over a score of them. It troubles me to think of it, the trauma that could have caused a shade to see.
 

Helping set off that explosion is not on my list of things I'm proud of.

I'm happy to go to work Thursday. Getting into the office is a relief, where I can compartmentalize away all thoughts of blood and dismembered norms that might be my fault.
 

On my desk is a draft of the partnership contract with a note to have it run by my lawyer.
 

I should probably get one.

The sight of the contract gets me through the day's appointments and meetings, and I even manage to find a lawyer during my lunch break who tells me to bring it by after work. He keeps witch hours, so he says I can bring it over after I'm off and we can go over it on his dinner break.

I pick up my cell phone at three and almost drop it. It's full of missed calls from Alamea and Gregor. When I check my work phone, it looks like they've tried calling there, too, and I missed it because I was on the other line.

Alamea gets the first callback. My skin feels shaky as the phone rings, a creepy, anxious sensation that makes me wish I could just hang up.
 

"I've been trying to call you for an hour," she says.
 

"I'm sorry. I had meetings. I just now saw my phone. What's going on?"
 

"There have been over twenty deaths at the hands of shades in the past day." Her voice sounds like she's her larynx through a ringer and is speaking with the drippings.
 

"Hells,
twenty?
"

"All dead. Some from trauma, a few from blood loss at the hospital. They were all called in."

"Who called them in?" I don't like where this is going.

"Anonymous tips."

"Of fucking course."

"I need you here. It's all hands on deck."

"I can be there at nine. I have a meeting with my lawyer at seven thirty about my partnership contract."

The line goes quiet. "Partnership?"

"My boss is promoting me to partner."

"That's quite a commitment." Alamea's tone turns thoughtful, and I wonder why she's not pushing me to come to the Summit earlier.
 

"I love my job," I say.

"You're a Mediator."

"I'm a person."

"Those two things are not mutually exclusive," she says.

I walk back to my desk and sit down on the edge of my chair. "I know, but this is my life. I've earned this."

There's a long pause.
 

"I'm going to make you an offer," Alamea says quietly.

"Excuse me?" I almost slip off my chair. What in all six and a half hells is she saying?

"I want you to work for me."

"I can't afford to do that," I tell her, and I don't just mean money.
 

"What is your current salary?"

I tell her, and for a moment she's quiet again.

"I'll double that."

"You'll what? Why?" Something very like terror takes hold of my guts and yanks, and I scoot back all the way in my chair. This doesn't make any sense. I've turned down several job offers from the Summit, because they always lowball the salary so much it's laughable. But she's offering to pay me six figures to come work for her? What does she want me to do, torture people?

"Think about it, Ayala Storme. You saw my data. I have the rest, the figures you asked me for. We have a noose around our necks, and I don't know when it's going to jerk itself shut and break our spines. You can play house and PR queen all you want, but when those hotspots open and the hordes of all six and a half hells descend on our city, they will devour your boss, your company, and everything you love." She's quiet again for a moment. "Help me stop it."

My breaths come faster than my heartbeat, which sounds as sluggish and hollow as an underwater drum.

For a long moment after Alamea hangs up, I stare at the phone, wishing for it to confirm what I just heard.

From that suspended place of disbelief, I settle on three things that have to be true. One. Alamea is truly desperate. Two. She doesn't know who she can trust. Three. She trusts me.

If she doesn't know who to trust, then things at the Summit have to be worse than I thought. I think about the third thing, because if she doesn't actually trust me, then she's using me.
 

Why?

My phone sits on top of the draft contract from Laura, but I can't look at those pages now.

It hits me, a reason for Alamea reaching out to me.

Either she trusts me because Gregor's her second in command — or he's now one of her enemies and she's using me to keep him closer.

My mouth feels gummy and soft.
 

I make sure my office door is locked and dial Mira.

She answers on the third ring. "Sup?"

"What can you tell me about the splitting factions at the Summit? You're there more than I am."

She starts cursing before I'm done talking.

I know it's bad when she leads with, "You know that shit head witch Gryfflet?"

Now it's my turn to curse while she talks.

"Last I heard, he had convinced the other witches in the Summit's employ to work with him on some project, but no one knows what it is. I hear even Alamea can't get it out of him, and she's livid that he's found a way around the disclosure clause in his contract. Something about a state of emergency and leadership instability."

"Gods fucking damn it to the hells and back."

"Yep."

I pace back and forth in front of my desk. Outside my door, I hear Alice's muted giggle and an answering one from Parker.

"How do you know all this?" I ask.

"Ripper."

"Ripper?" Hells, I thought that Robert Redford wannabe had more sense than to get into this shit.

"He's one of the few people still loyal to Alamea, dude," Mira says. "Me, him, Devon. A few others I know of and probably a few I don't. Everybody's laying low right now."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" I wonder if my being seen with Alamea at the Summit is helping or hurting her. Probably both, depending on who you ask. Ugh.
 

Mira's frown almost appears in the wryness of her voice. "I kind of thought you had enough on your plate."

I ask her to invite Ripper over that night, and we hang up.
 

I take a long drink from my water bottle, wishing to every sparkly magic in the universe that it were something stronger. It doesn't dispel the tightness in my throat. I make one more call and pick up the contract.

For a pile of paper, it feels heavier than a mountain. I feel like barfing. I've been a naïve fool to think I could make this work.
 

I can feel the noose around my neck loosen ever-so-slightly as I leave my office to turn down Laura's offer — but even as that noose loosens, I feel the shackles that chain me to the Summit and to this life of death.

Laura and I look at each other for a long time after I tell her.

I think I expect her to rage or yell or huff. Instead, she gets up from her desk, walks to me, and puts her arms around me.
 

I freeze, unable to hug her back.

"I don't envy your life. If you can ever come back, my offer stands," she says into my hair.

We both know it won't happen.

Alice cries when I clean out my desk. The rubber duck she left when she disappeared sit by my computer, and when she sees me pick it up, a new stream of weeping begins. I try to give the duck back to her, but her small hands close around mine, and she shakes her head.

"Keep it," she says through her tears.

Why do I feel like I'm prepping for my own funeral instead of quitting a job?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

My phone's exploding with texts by the time I get to my car.
 

From Mira:
Yo, Ripper's busy.

From Ripper:
I'm busy tonight.
[heart emoji]

Then again from Ripper:
fuck

His thumbs are as nimble as snorbit feet.

From Gregor:
?????

And finally, from Carrick:
Come home.

I resist throwing my phone out the window.

The only person I text is the one who didn't text me in the first place. Alamea.

My text to her just says:
It's done
.

I go home, more out of a desire to snuggle my face into bunny fur than to obey Carrick.

I ignore him when I get there — he's out on the balcony, pulling a Mason and dangling his feet over the edge seven stories up — and I go looking for Nana. She's under my bed and won't come out. I put the duck from Alice on my night stand.

In the reflection on my television screen, Carrick appears in my doorway.

"How'd you find out?" I ask.

"Alamea told Gregor. Gregor told me."

Now is not the time for me to unravel the possible politics in that, and I'm still not sure I want Carrick in here, but after a minute he comes in and perches on the end of the bed. Nana hops out and lets him pick her up and put her on the bed.
 

"Traitor," I tell her.

"You're still cross with me."

I picture the shade again, hear his cries for help again.
 

"Yes."

"That was the job."

"That doesn't make it right." I remember when I knew that doing the job was doing right. Those two things were one and the same. The knowledge was like a life vest. Now I feel like I'm trying to keep my head above the surface, and the sea around me is blood.

"You're right." Carrick's words come as a surprise to me.
 

I look at him. His face is that of a maybe thirty-five-year-old man, but he was born in the seventeenth century. He has a few crinkles around his eyes. One or two creases in his forehead. His bare torso is mostly unmarked, though his shoulder has some fading scars still from his encounter with the slummoths, and if I look closely, I can still see the pinpricks from the rakath quills. Either his body is healing more slowly these days or he waited to get in any fights till the last few months. I never considered the possibility that shades had a natural lifespan. We learned as Mittens that hellkin do, but we're mostly encouraged to truncate that lifespan as much as possible.