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I had the strangest feeling that Loki and Director Sakamoto would get along. Or hate each other on sight.
Alexandra clicked her fingers. Time unfroze, a bead of condensation dripping down the side of my white Russian. The glassy dome of icy magic around us collapsed, the lounge’s ambient noise returning in concentric waves. Our waitress slipped away, perhaps relieved that she wouldn’t have to serve the influential and potentially very picky Alexandra Thorpe.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again very soon, gentlemen,” Alexandra said. “Sooner than you think.”
She fluttered her fingers at us in a playful farewell. Morrow and I watched as Alexandra strode away from the lounge and out through the hotel doors.
“Fuck my life,” I grumbled, kneading my eyelids with my fingertips.
“Same,” Morrow said, right before he downed his cocktail in a single gulp.
Freyja, Paralumen, and Loki, too? Now we had three gods to deal with.
Great. Just great.
CHAPTER 11
“So Thorpe was a god all along. I knew it!”
Sakamoto slammed her fist on her desk. Power reverberated throughout her office, sending documents flying, rattling my teeth.
I kept my mouth shut, biting back the urge to demand why she never voiced her suspicions in the first place. I could tell that Morrow was thinking the same thing, including how it was a good idea to shut up and swallow the question. I shifted in my seat, Sakamoto’s horribly uncomfortable acrylic chairs making my butt slip and slide on the surface.
The dense mass of fancy Chinese food was still sitting heavily in my belly. Morrow had proposed that we head directly to HQ to report to the director. I agreed. It didn’t matter that my internal organs were still paying for my gluttony. This was super important.
“As if things could get any worse,” Sakamoto said. “I should have suspected. All these factions represented by Nomicon Valley’s corpos, yet there was never one helmed by a god. It should have been so obvious.”
“That’s exactly what our contact told us,” I said, hopefully reminding her that she’d plucked that precious nugget of information from what we’d reported to her some two or three minutes ago.
“Your contact who turned out to be a completely unnecessary expense! Accounting flagged the transaction and notified me immediately.”
Morrow coughed. “You found out that quickly?”
“Naturally. All field agent expenses are routed to my office. I’m willing to overlook more reasonable purchases, but these aren’t plane tickets or business hotel stays, gentlemen. I mean, look at this nonsense.”
Sakamoto pinched her fingers together, then spread them apart, a holographic projection of the world’s most horrifying spreadsheet sprouting from her hand.
Actually, it was JackAsh that held the record for the most maddening spreadsheet in existence. Literally. Complicated and chaotic enough to drive the uninitiated insane.
“You spent how much for this Heavenly Concubine? I certainly hope that she gave you the level of service you paid for. And may I add that I’m very surprised by your proclivities.”
I wasn’t sure which of us Sakamoto was referring to, a problem worsened by how her eyes were doing that thing where they swiveled outward and focused on two things at once. In this case, it was our faces. A horrible prickling went down the back of my neck. I blinked, and Sakamoto’s eyes were back to normal again.
“What was the whole point of you spending so much on your indulgent overpriced orgy when the god you were hoping to investigate just happened to stroll by mere moments after your delectable debauched degustation?”
“To be fair, Director,” Morrow said, “there’s no way we could have predicted that Alexandra Thorpe would make an appearance immediately after our meeting.”
“The timing was impeccable,” I added. “At this point I’m sure it was deliberate. Trickster god, remember? As if she — sorry, he? — was trying to prove to us that he knew all along. That he’s probably one step ahead of us at all times.”
“Happy, Inc. cannot get away with this,” Sakamoto said. “It’s just like entities to step over their bounds and pull these sorts of shenanigans. Whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to honoring the Accord? The Investors will not be pleased.”
Getting the mundanes involved was one step too far. The charms, the charm magic — Loki clearly had something up his sleeve, and it killed me that we were no closer to learning what it was. And what Houston said about how each activation seemed to be prepping the Happy Links wearers for something bigger, something more sinister — what were the mundanes being conditioned for?
“So what happens now?” I asked. “When stuff like this goes down, who actually holds a corpo’s feet to the fire?”
“Who else but the other corpos?” Sakamoto said. “We have to enforce the Accord. We have to police each other. And by we, I mean you.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, my eyes squeezing shut. “Respectfully, Director, you’re asking us to go up against an actual god. What could we possibly do against Loki, of all people? We need Occultech’s backup. We need resources. Support.”
