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These Happy, Inc. people were geniuses. Overstimulation? More like total sensory overload. Morrow had finally let go of my hand, freeing himself up to collect a little bag of charms for himself. I didn’t make it two steps before a worker pressed a bag of charms into my open hand.
“Have a Happy Links day!” she trilled, going off to distribute even more goodie bags.
I glanced at the rest of the workers tending the line, mentally calculating how many people had already gone ahead of us and how many more of the velvety pink drawstring bags they had left to hand out. One hundred gifts was a severe underestimation. There had to be a couple hundred more between them. Happy Links was casting a wide net, making sure to hand out as many of their charms as possible. That wasn’t counting all the prizes from the booths, either.
And then stepping aside to peek into my drawstring bag, I understood why. They’d given us free charms as promised, but had also strung them on the most boring, basic black cord available. I watched as shoppers inside the store tried on glitzier options — brass ball-bearing necklaces, woven silver bracelets, delicate gold chains — and then I understood. These things were trendy enough that no one would want to be caught dead wearing them on some default shabby piece of string.
“It’s kind of brilliant,” I told Morrow, who was also sifting through his drawstring bag.
“I know,” he replied, fishing out the cord, grimacing at it like it was something he’d discovered in his bowl of pasta. “They’re not just profiting off the charms. Those chains can get pretty expensive, too. Happy, Inc. is making bank here, whether or not these things are magical.”
“Of course they’re magical!” boomed the tallest woman I’d ever seen. “They bring so much joy to people of all ages. Look at all these Happy faces!”
And when I say tall: an imposing skyscraper of a woman, surely almost seven feet, an absolute giantess. Draped over the elaborate collar of her golden tuxedo dress was a gold necklace dripping with Happy Links charms. Oh, and the earrings, and the bracelets, and — yep, there it was, an anklet, too, all of them festooned with tiny little charms. With her dazzling smile, oceanic waves of glossy hair, and sparkling green eyes, she was a gilded statue come to life.
“Sure, yeah,” I told the shiny titan. “Magical smiles! Can’t wait to try mine on. Thanks for the freebies.”
“Absolutely,” she said, blasting both of us with another smile. “Enjoy the charms, and have a Happy Links day!”
She swanned off, radiating charisma as she moved down the line to keep on schmoozing. I chuckled nervously to myself, unsure of what to make of my encounter with a human cartoon character.
I thumbed over my shoulder and held a hand by my mouth, giving Morrow a conspiratorial wink. “Wilhelmina Wonka over here, am I right? I was waiting for her to whip a golden cane and top hat out of nowhere, too.”
“Be serious,” he said, bending closer to whisper. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but that’s Alexandra Thorpe. You know. The current head of the Happy, Inc. dynasty.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. Holy shit. Why was I expecting a stuffy old guy in a suit? And for her to be all boots-on-the-ground running publicity at a store opening. Like, wow.”
Alexandra Thorpe was Enyo Sakamoto’s counterpart. I couldn’t imagine the director at a product launch, much less rubbing shoulders with common folk.
“Tell me about it,” Morrow said, still watching Thorpe like a hawk. “Talk about being hands-on with your business. But that thing she said about magic felt like a convenient deflection to me. These charms are obviously magical. She’s almost certainly magical, too. Her corpo is breaking the terms of the Accord.”
“Maybe she doesn’t care about it,” I said. “Maybe she thinks she’s above it.”
The Accord was the special agreement forged by the arcane corporations of Nomicon Valley. No matter their business models or product lines, the corpos agreed not to get mundanes involved.
Necropolux catered exclusively to the arcane underground, providing both electrical and analog lighting solutions to conceal the more intimidating features of nonhumans, supernaturals, and the living dead, staying out of mundane territory entirely.
JackAsh skirted the line by actually offering some of the most efficient and ruthless legal services on the continent, truly working in the best interest of their clients — except for those who even demons considered assholes, that is.
But this? Happy, Inc. was way over the line. Shoppers were streaming out of the Happy Links store in the same state as the first location, dazed looks on their faces, far more sluggish and a lot less excited than when they’d walked in. Each, naturally, was wearing charms on their person, whether on bracelets or anklets or earrings. I gritted my teeth as an idea came to me, but if we were really going to get to the heart of the matter, Morrow and I would have to go deeper. At least wrist deep.
“You’re going to hate this,” I said, “but I think we have to test these charms on ourselves.”
CHAPTER 5
“Best two out of three,” I huffed, smacking Morrow’s hand away. “And besides, you hesitated for a split second. You saw me throw rock before you threw paper.”
“That’s impossible,” he said, “but we both know you’re a sore loser. Fine. Two out of three, then.”
Another quick round of rock-paper-scissors later, Morrow bested me again. I bit on the inside of my cheeks, refusing to prove him right, but he could tell I was fuming anyway. Well, shit. This meant that I was going to test the charm bracelet first.
“Go on,” Morrow said, ushering me into the farthest corner of the corridor. “Put it on. Let’s see what happens next.”
We’d found our way to one of Southridge Mall’s abandoned corridors, an alcove ending in nowhere flanked by dark, empty stores with the shutters pulled down and the windows plastered in closing-sale signs. Even the fixtures above had been liberated of their light bulbs, as if management wanted to make especially certain that they wouldn’t have to pay for electricity in this part of the building.
And not just this darkened dead-end, either. The mall branched out from the ground-floor atrium like an asterisk or the spokes of a wheel, the dried-up, nonfunctional fountain in its center. Maybe Happy Links really would revivify mall business with all this new footfall, but that depended on what our investigation would find. Any Nomicon Valley corpo would gladly take any opportunity to throttle another corpo’s income stream, Occultech most of all.
Sweat formed on my brow as I fished the black cord out of the promotional drawstring bag. The charms I got were cute, all right — a donut, a beachball, and an open book — but I was still apprehensive. I mean, I was the one who succumbed to Paralumen’s binding hex, after all.
