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The head honcho of Happy, Inc. herself. She smiled down at me as if perched atop a mountain peak, so tall that she reminded me of a wizard on his proverbial tower. Scrimshaw’s words stuck to the inside of my skull as surely as all of my spell fragments.
“Alexandra,” Morrow said, standing bolt upright. “I mean, Ms. Thorpe.”
She held her hands up and smiled, the slitted sleeves of her emerald dress draping down her sides like a butterfly’s wings at rest.
“No need to get up, gentlemen. Fancy seeing you here. We have met, haven’t we? I’m quite sure I saw both of you at the opening of Happy Links Too.”
“Well, we didn’t quite meet,” Morrow said, little blotches of red on his cheeks. “No introductions were made, technically.”
All that effort to put on his disguise, all for nothing. It was weird sitting there feeling bad for him, then feeling bad for kind of wanting to laugh about it, too.
“No introductions necessary,” Alexandra said. “Part of the pains of being a very public figure, not to toot my own horn. I mean, I do put myself into these situations, don’t I? None of my predecessors would have ever considered wading into the fray for a product launch. Grandfather would turn over in his grave.”
“It’s very modern,” I said. “I think it’s pretty cool that you have such a hands-on approach to your work.”
Alexandra grinned. “Yes, indeed. I’m sure you can relate, being so hands-on with your investigation yourselves. Isn’t that right, Jericho Frost? And you must be Theodore Morrow.”
I tried not to look so stunned. There I was in Southridge Mall telling Morrow that Happy, Inc. couldn’t give two shits if some punks from a different corpo went in to grab freebies, but here was their CEO calling us out by name. But this wasn’t that unusual, was it? Occultech had files and intel on everyone. It would have been stranger to learn that Happy, Inc. didn’t have any dirt on us.
Morrow returned Alexandra’s smile, doing a far better job of looking unperturbed. “So you’ve taken a look at our dossiers? I hope it made for an entertaining read, at least.”
“Oh, quite entertaining, indeed. Very interesting, too. The two of you make quite the pair with your, ah, special talents. Very valuable gifts, your experiences with, shall we say, crafting and copying rare documents.”
Which was a very roundabout way of hinting at Morrow’s scrollwork and my mimicry, but this sealed it once and for all. Alexandra Thorpe was magical — of course, she was. Everything we’d discussed with Scrimshaw sharpened into a big, blinking arrow pointing at her and her corpo as elements of the arcane underground.
It was only a question of how magical she was, or what type of supernatural she represented. Not to stereotype, but from height alone, but maybe actual giants? Valkyries? We had to be patient with her, play her little game, but politely. Maybe flattery would get her to show her hand.
“But it doesn’t seem right that I should know so much about the two of you,” Alexandra continued. “It would only be fair for us to be on equal footing, yes? Why not ask me the questions you’ve been dying to ask? There’s a reason you’ve been investigating my charming charms, after all.”
Only then did I notice how Alexandra had none of the charming charms in question on her person. She was festooned with garlands upon garlands of them at the launch, like a human Christmas tree.
Not human, I reminded myself, though that was still up in the air. A sorceress, a dragon in disguise — Alexandra could be any number of things.
Morrow’s eyes flitted toward me, as if to say that we should play along. I gave him the subtlest of nods, a quiet go-ahead, because frankly, I was still too taken aback to say anything, much less formulate any questions. Morrow’s lips parted just as our waitress returned with our drinks.
“Oh, Ms. Thorpe,” she stammered, sliding our drinks onto the table before glancing nervously around the lounge. “I didn’t realize you’d be — please, let me pull up a chair for you. Can I get you something to drink?”
Alexandra Thorpe graced her with a kind smile, then turned to us with a nod. “It’s not my notoriety this time, I promise. I spend quite a bit of time here. A frequent flyer, you might say.”
All part of the Harrington Hotel luxury experience, I imagined, where the very important received the privilege of being made to feel even more important.
“And thank you,” Alexandra told the waitress, “but no need to bother. I won’t be staying long. I was only dropping by to say hello to these fine gentlemen. I’ll only be here for a spell.”
Alexandra Thorpe waved her hand, but it wasn’t some friendly, casual dismissal. A slow nova of quiet magic rippled out from our table, a pebble in the water, Alexandra’s spell creeping throughout the lounge.
No words, barely a gesture. Very difficult for me to copy, bordering on impossible. But was there another reason? This flavor of magic felt foreign, yet all at once somehow familiar.
The waitress smiled, as if relieved that she hadn’t committed a faux pas, shoulders lifting as she inhaled and mustered a polite answer. And then she stopped breathing.
I jerked upright. Morrow held his hand up to stop me, nodding at Alexandra, then at the rest of the room. Everything else had frozen, too — the hotel guests, the bartender, the fountain in the lobby. Even the speakers had stopped playing music. A cold bead of sweat trickled down my nape as I soaked in the awful, eerie sensation of complete stillness, so quiet I could hear my own breath, the blood pulsing in my temples.
That and the sound of fabric ripping. No. Not just fabric. Skin.
Alexandra Thorpe flayed apart, her skin, hair, and clothing shredding into strips and ribbons, like a cocoon unraveling. Her face went last, her smile still serene even as her eyes and lips drifted off in an eldritch breeze. I looked on in horror as the woman who was once Alexandra Thorpe came completely undone.
In her place stood an entirely different person. He was a shorter man than Alexandra, but still taller than Morrow, and wearing a suit like Morrow. But something about his demeanor made his aura stretch unfathomably higher still.
This was the real power behind Happy, Inc., this dark man with features that ended in edges and angles, handsome in only the deadliest of ways. This was the mummy in the sarcophagus, the vampire in the coffin, and yet I knew in my gut that he was none of those things. He was greater, stronger, and worse.
