Ashley McConnell is the author of books written in the universes of Quantum Leap, Stargate: SG-1, Highlander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel: The Series, as well as original horror novels (including a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel), and the Demon Wars fantasy trilogy. She lives in New Mexico with a menagerie of dogs, cats, and Morgan horses, all of whom want dinner at exactly the same time.
Angela Kashrif Twentyhorses didn't know enough about murder to be able to get away with killing her boss.
It wasn't as if Carrie Jillson didn't deserve it, heavens knew. She smiled and smiled and shoved a big old slice of humble pie down Angela Twentyhorses' throat, and Angela had to smile back at her and act like she liked it after all.
But killing her?
Oh, it was tempting, and Angela thought about it a lot. She thought about it on her way home from work, driving through heavy traffic back to the apartment on the east side she shared with her grandmother and sister and two brothers, and sometimes she talked to the air as she drove, saying all the things she wanted to say to her boss but never could think of at the right time, things she probably wouldn't say anyway because Tina was only seven and Marley wanted to go to church camp this summer and Gramma, well, Gramma never said much but her black eyes snapped at you when you talked too much. And Joe had a job, but it wasn't much, working in a warehouse. He kept saying he was going to get his own place, but he wouldn't, not as long as Angela kept paying the bills.
So Angela got up every morning, washed her long hair, made breakfast for everyone, and caught the bus to work. Every single morning.
And every single morning, her boss came in, and gave her a big, big smile, and said, "Hi, Angie! Isn't it a beautiful day?"
And Angela wished she could kill her.
"I go by Angela," she said, making herself be polite, low key, just like every other time.
"Oh, I know," Ms. Jillson said, still smiling brightly. "But Angie is such a cute name!"
"It's just not my name," Angela said. Polite. No edge at all to her voice.
Ms. Jillson's smile hardened. "Oh, of course it is. Everybody has nicknames. Mitchell's is Mitchie, Pedro's is Petie. And Angie is yours."
Angela bit back her response—what could she say, after all? The woman did this to everyone. It didn't seem to bother anyone as much as it did her. So why fight it?
Jillson's smile reflected satisfaction, now. "I'm glad I caught you coming in this morning—did you have some trouble getting up this morning, dear? It's rather late, isn't it?"
It was five minutes after eight. The office day officially started at eight. She'd already been in her office; she was just going to get a cup of coffee. And there was no point in saying so; she'd just sound like she was making excuses.
"Well, never mind that. I know you're not exactly a morning person! I wanted to talk to you about the project you've been working on."
Angela tensed. The community relations presentation for the CEO, George Pierson, and the board of directors was a prize, and she'd worked on it for weeks, knowing that it represented her very best work. She'd poured her heart and soul into the proposal for corporate involvement, led the team that developed it. If Pierson and the board accepted it, the changes would affect the entire company, its reputation, its future. If they accepted the team's work—her work—they'd have to acknowledge she made a difference, that she could not only handle strategic planning but could manage it as well. Standing before the board, making her pitch with the results of her work projected onto the large screen over her shoulder, meant not just visibility to upper management, not just the possibility of contacts that would get her out of this department; it meant promotion, pay, everything.
"I looked it over last night, and oh my, I had to change it all, top to bottom. It was just totally inadequate. I'm sorry, Angie, but you just don't have the communication skills for something this big. It's a pity, too, because this was supposed to be your big opportunity—yours and the team's."
There was movement behind Angela. Someone was standing in the hall, listening. Several someones, from the sound of it. She didn't need to look around to know that the occupants of the nearest offices were the other members of her team.
"I've decided that I'd better give the revised presentation myself. I know you really tried your best, but your work just won't do."
Angela's fists were clenched hard. So was her jaw. Jillson's eyes sparkled.
"But I know you really wanted to contribute to this, so what I'd like you to do is make twenty copies, and put them in interdepartment envelopes, and address each envelope to a board member, and then put them in the office mail. If you'd gotten here earlier you'd have more time to do this—the mail gets picked up in twenty minutes, so you'd better hurry! Shoo!"
She handed a copy of the presentation to Angela and turned her back, sashaying back to her own office. Angela looked down at the sheaf of papers—the diagrams, the statistics, the summaries Angela had worked on for so long, making sure that everything was clear and succinct and perfect. She paged through them.
The only part of the document that had changed was the cover page. Now, instead of the three team members, there was only one name, taking credit for all their months of work, making contacts, working out budget for events, the entire project plan and associated milestones. One name: Carrie Jillson.
"Angela?" It was Mitchell. "Angela, can she really . . . ?" Angela turned around, and the intern stopped in mid-question at the look on her face.
"Yes," she said very softly. "Yes she can, really."
Mitchell looked scared. "But if I can't put the community relations project on my resume, what can I tell Personnel when I put in my full-time application? You said you'd make sure they'd know about it. It's too late to put in for the summer internships anywhere else."
Angela closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and when she opened them again she tried hard to paste a reassuring expression on her face. "It's okay, Mitchell. I'll call Personnel for you. You go ahead and put this on your resume, put me down for your recommendations, and tell them to call me if they've got any questions."
"Are you sure it'll be okay?" Mitchell was twisting his hands together; he looked like he was about to cry. She knew exactly how he felt. "What about you? You did the whole project plan."
"I'm sure," she said. "Don't worry about me, okay?" She retreated down the hallway and went into her office and closed the door, very softly, behind herself, and thought about murder. There really wasn't anything that could be done for her. It was her word against Jillson's, and Jillson was the manager. Of course the brass would believe the manager. But at least she could protect poor Mitchell's job. Always assuming she still had one herself, of course; if it got out that her manager had taken the project away from her, she might be updating her own resume.
Carrie Jillson had shown up out of nowhere, as far as anybody could tell, just about a year ago. She hadn't transferred from another department or division of the company; she just walked into Personnel one day and immediately got hired as a manager. Nobody Angela knew had ever seen a copy of her resume, and she never mentioned working at previous companies.
She'd quickly established herself as a schmoozer, flirting with anybody with a higher title than hers. Angela couldn't understand it. The woman wasn't even attractive. She was tall, skinny, and flat—really flat, not just lacking an upper deck. She looked like one of those cartoon characters that had been run over by a steam roller. Even her face was flat, and not the broad, brown plane of Angela's Diné cousins, but flat as a pancake. Her nose barely interrupted the white expanse.
Her hair was frizzy and bright red—and it couldn't be natural, not that shade. She had a high-pitched, whining voice, and she was always grinning, all her teeth showing, as if she was practicing for a beauty pageant. And she was always made up as if she was in a pageant, too, with eyeshadow and lipstick that could be seen at the back of a major auditorium.
And in the whole year she'd been here, neither Angela nor any of her friends or co-workers could think of one single thing the woman had actually accomplished. Sure, she was good at standing up in front of crowds of people and talking, and she was great at convincing upper management that she was fabulous. But all the things she talked about were other people's work, other people's ideas. She never had a project of her own or anything that really added to a program. Only somehow, by the time she was finished, the people she talked to were convinced they'd just been given a gift of a Carrie Jillson original.
Jillson came back from the meeting smiling, of course. She stopped Angela in the hallway.
"I've decided to give you another crack at leading a team to implement the recommendations in my report," she said, the soul of generosity. "It's going to take some seriously creative thinking, really outside-the-box stuff. I know you had a few ideas about this—I could see you trying so hard to express them in that thing you did. I want to give you another chance. Why don't you write something up for me and I'll take a look at it?"
And steal it, she did not say.
She heard, later, that the board had been completely blown away by the presentation.
She went home that night determined not to cry. The sight of the little red brick house at the very edge of Kansas City, surrounded by its yard and the garden in the back, didn't help the way it usually did. All through dinner, Navajo tacos with fry bread and Gramma's khoresht on the side—it was odd, but it was the way the Twentyhorses family honored Gramma's Persian roots—she kept her chin from quivering and her voice from trembling. Her brother Joe had swing shift at the warehouse, so they set aside his share, and afterward Tina came out with dessert—yakh-dar-behesht, "ice-in-heaven"—and she even managed to smile.
"Noush-e jon!" Tina said proudly, setting the tray on the table and reaching for Gramma's plate to serve the first piece of pistachio-topped confection. They all waited for the old lady to taste.
Gramma nodded sharply as she swallowed, and dug her spoon in for her next bite. Tina breathed a gusty sigh of relief and served the rest of them.
It wasn't until they had finished dinner and the ritual squabble between Tina and Marley about whose turn it was to fill the dishwasher that Gramma turned to Angela and said, "So, tell me. What happened today that you are so unhappy?"
Angela blinked. She'd tried so hard not to reveal her feelings at dinner, and she thought she'd succeeded. She should have known better.
She took a deep breath and tried to relax the muscles in the back of her throat that knotted up when she attempted to get the words past them. Gramma waited implacably. Marley finished clearing the table, looked at the two older women at the old wooden table, and decided to go play a computer game in his room. Tina slid back into her chair. At the expression on the little one's face, a wry smile forced its way to her sister's face. The seven-year-old was very grave and serious and obviously taking her rightful place in a women's council of the Twentyhorses clan.
But the smile didn't last.
"It's my boss," Angela said at last. "You know I've been working so hard on this proposal."
"You dressed up special this morning for the board," Tina agreed. "Didn't they like it?"
Gramma cut a look at her, but didn't say anything.
"Oh, they liked it fine," Angela said bitterly. "It's just that I wasn't the one who gave it."
"This woman took it away from you?" Gramma was no dummy. She had a master's degree and had taught for years before coming to the States and falling in love with a Navajo professor of music at the University of Chicago. She'd come away with a doctorate and a husband. Independent before Gloria Steinem, she'd kept her maiden name and insisted that every one of her descendants carry it. Her husband, from a matrilineal culture himself, had loved the idea. Angela had never known him; he died before she was born.
It was a relief not to have to spell out the day's disaster. "Yes. She said she had to change it, that it wasn't good enough, but she didn't change anything. And when she came back she said she was going to 'give me another chance.'"
"Bitch," Tina said promptly. Tina had a judgmental streak.
So did Gramma, who cuffed the back of Tina's head. "Well, she is!" Tina protested.
"Yes, but you don't say so!" Gramma said. "You don't tell them what you think. You keep your opinions secret so they don't use them. But in the family—" she paused and gave Angela a meaningful look "—yes, we will call her a bitch. Not around the boys, though."
Tina giggled. Angela smiled again, despite herself.
"What can you do?" Tina said.
Angela shrugged. "Nothing. I can't transfer; she's ruined my performance reports. I could quit, but . . ."
"Well? Why not?"
"Because I don't have another job to go to, and somebody's got to pay for your hairbands." She grinned weakly at her little sister. "Besides, I have to stay long enough to make sure Mitchell, the kid who was working part-time with me, gets the full-time summer intern job. I told him to use me as his recommendation, and keep the community relations thing on his resume. I have to be there if Personnel calls me about him."
"You cannot report her to the directors?" Gramma asked.
"They think she walks on water. You should see the looks on their faces when she talks to them. They look like cows, every one of them!"
"You do not have an ombuds, an Employee Relations department?"
Angela sighed. "I could go to them, but honestly, Gramma, they're not worth spit. They always believe management." She traced an ancient scar in the wood of the table, where someone had jabbed a knife in the wood. When she was little, she'd made up stories about how the mark got there. It reminded her, now, of the red rage she'd felt that morning. Knives. Jabbing . . .
"I'm sorry," she went on after a moment. "It's just that I get so sick of it. I used to love my job, and now I get sick to my stomach every day when I walk in the office. She says my name—no, she doesn't even do that, she calls me a nickname—and I cringe. I'm always expecting her to write me up for something. And she steals my work all the time—not just mine, but everybody's. We all know it, but management just loves her. We could all just kill her."
She thought saying it would make her feel better. It didn't. "The only good thing is that she's not there half the time," she added. "You can never find her when you actually need her for something."
"You need Mushkil Gusha," Tina announced.
"What?" Angela said, not tracking her little sister's thoughts.
"Mushkil Gusha. Like Gramma told us. He comes when you tell his story, and then you share good things with people, like you did with Mitchell, and he takes care of all your problems. That's his name, the—"
Angela caught up with her at last. "Oh, honey, that's just a story. There isn't really a Remover of Difficulties out there, it's just a story we tell to remind ourselves to help other people."
Tina sat back and crossed her arms, the image of stubborn resistance. "He is so real."
"Hmph." Gramma leaned back in her chair, pushed her hair combs back into place. Angela had inherited her thick black mane from her grandmother; now her grandmother's hair was sheened with silver, but it was still heavy and lustrous. "Then what will you do?"
"There really isn't anything I can do," Angela admitted. "She's got all the cards. She managed to get the job when everybody thought Tom Cassion was going to—and he would have been such a great boss! And now he's checking time cards down in Payroll, a really nothing job. So all I can do now is hope that somebody higher up finally sees through her. Or maybe she gets another job somewhere else! But if it doesn't happen soon, I'm afraid I'm going to get fired, and I'm not going to get any kind of a reference, that's for sure."
"But if she fires you, she'll have to find somebody else to do the work for her," Gramma observed. "So perhaps you're safe for a while."
"But it's not fair!" Tina protested. "Angela's a terrific project leader! She should be getting all the credit!"
Angela let out a long breath. There was nothing like a ferociously partisan little sister, even if Tina had no idea what a project leader really did. "Thanks, hon. But what is, is. And you need to do your homework, and I guess I need to see what else is out there for someone like me. The really rotten part is, I used to love that job, you know?"
"Yes," Gramma said. "I know."
Angela glanced up at her, startled. It had been a long time since she'd heard that tone in her grandmother's voice. She didn't know exactly what her grandmother had decided to do, but there was certainly something behind it.
In her youth, Mumtaz Kashrif had been an elegant woman, slender and proud, with huge flashing dark eyes and glorious hair. Now, in her seventies, none of that had changed.
She stood under the jasmine, breathing deeply of the late evening scents, remembering what it had been like for her as a child in Iran; as a refugee to Turkey, to the United States; being a young woman in Chicago in an Irish neighborhood. None of it had been easy. She had experienced a thousand things that no young lady growing up in the Middle East would ever have been exposed to. She had met her share of cruelty, and she understood the anguish in her granddaughter's eyes, the feeling of helplessness and responsibility.
America had been a kaleidoscope of bewildering images, ideas, customs. She had decided long ago to accept whatever she found good and ignore the rest. But when her family was threatened, it was hard to ignore.
When she needed help the most, she had offered it to someone else, and her own needs had been answered. Now her Angela had helped a young one in the office, even though this Jillson woman had stolen all the credit for their work.
Tina was right. They needed a Remover of Difficulties. In the stories, the hero had found himself in great difficulties, but he had even so shared what little he had with a stranger wandering by. As a result he had been blessed, and his own difficulties had magically vanished. That was what was needed here. If not the Mushkil Gusha, the wandering stranger, of her childhood's fairy tales, then . . . something else.
And there was someone, long ago, that she had helped.
And it was Thursday night.
Her hand wrapped around a silver token that hung from a chain about her neck, and she closed her eyes against the brightness of the crescent moon. The memory was there, hidden deep; she let out a sigh. For a moment she doubted that what she was about to do would really work. It wasn't rational. Surely it had nothing to do with the twenty-first century, the modern world.
But here in her garden, with jasmine and wisteria and lilac and roses and the moon a scimitar's blade in the clear dark sky, it didn't feel like either the twenty-first century or the modern world. It felt like a place that magic could happen—as it had happened before.
"Mushkil Gusha," she murmured into the night breeze, the stirring leaves. "You promised. Mushkil Gusha. Mushkil Gusha."
There was a stirring in the air before her. It might have been a breeze rustling in the leaves, carrying the scent of the flowers, but it wasn't. Mumtaz took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
"That isn't my real name, you know," the ruby cat said, yawning.
Its teeth were diamonds, sharp and glittering. It stretched, extending its claws, and those were diamonds too, little curved knives that tore deep gashes in the earth next to the American Beauty rosebush.
Ruby cat. From an old joke: the Rubiyat, rubycat. She smiled.
"No," she agreed. "It isn't."
The cat sat up again, curled its thick scarlet plume of a tail neatly around its front paws, and blinked at her. "It has been a long time here, has it not? You have changed."
"Yes. Fifty years, at least. But you came anyway."
The cat shimmered, and Changed, and suddenly in its place a young man stood before her, very tall, with golden hair that fell to his shoulders, pale skin, delicately pointed ears, slanted brows, and still the cat's emerald, slitted eyes. He was dressed in something like a rainbow, a tunic and leggings of shifting colors that glowed softly, lighting up the garden, painting the white roses with pink and purple and green, deepening the delicate jasmine, darkening the reds to nearly black. From his shoulders flowed a cloak of light, swirling around him though there was no breeze. His left hand rested lightly on the hilt of a long straight sword at his side, while his right was raised, though she could not tell whether the gesture was meant to rebuke, or emphasize, or some other thing altogether. "I gave my word, mistress. I owe you a debt. I promised you that if you called me with intent, I would come; did you doubt me?"
She couldn't prevent herself from chuckling. No, she had never doubted that he'd come; only that he had ever existed to begin with. Only that this moment itself was real. But it would not do to say so. He was proud beyond human comprehension; if he had not been, he would never have been bound to her to begin with.
If he was real at all, that is.
"If I truly doubted, I would not have called, would I?" she parried.
He smiled, a smile that somehow had no sense of shared companionship. "Perhaps. Nonetheless you have called. How may I discharge my debt to you?"
The silver talisman, cold under her fingers, was the only thing that assured her she was really awake and not asleep in her bed, dreaming an old woman's dreams about confused memories of something from long ago.
"You can get rid of Angela's boss," said a clear challenging voice at her elbow. Mumtaz looked down in shock to see Tina standing here, arms akimbo, staring up at the visitor without the least scrap of either fear or awe.
The being who answered—occasionally—to Mushkil Gusha laughed with delight, and went to one knee before the little girl. "Child!" he said. "Little mistress, you have the heart of a warrior. May I have the honor of your name?"
Mumtaz drew a breath in alarm, and placed a protective hand on the little girl's shoulder.
"What's yours?" Tina asked belligerently, ignoring her grandmother. "I heard Gramma. But you're not really Mushkil Gusha. He's Persian, and you don't look Persian at all."
He laughed again, a cascade of silver sound in the moonlight. "You are quite right. I am Sidhe."
"Are not," Tina flatly contradicted him. "You're a boy."
The sapphire eyes blinked. "Sidhe, my fierce lady. Not 'she.' My name"—he glanced up at Mumtaz, merriment dancing in his face—"is Coilleach, and I am a Knight of the Seleighe Court, Magus Minor, a Singer and a Warrior of Elfhame Sky-Unending."
"Pleased to meet you," Tina said formally. "I'm Tina."
"And who," Coilleach continued, still on one knee in order to remain more or less at eye level with the little girl, "is Angela, and why do you desire that she be rid of her 'boss'?"
"Angela and Tina are my granddaughters," Mumtaz said, giving Tina's shoulder a warning squeeze. "Angela is the oldest child of my late daughter." She blinked at the stab of heart-pain the words gave her, still. "She is employed at a large company, and her immediate manager—her boss—is not treating her fairly."
"An ill thing, surely, but what has that to do with me? I cannot enforce fairness in the World of Men."
"Angela's boss is a woman," Tina informed him.
"Indeed." Coilleach rose gracefully to his feet. "Still, what would you have me do? Shall I slay this woman for you, mistress?"
"Yes!" Tina shouted, at the same time that her grandmother said, horrified, "No! Of course not!"
Coilleach raised one elegant eyebrow. "What then?"
Mumtaz hesitated, and then said, slowly, "I wish the woman who is Angela's manager—Jillson, her name is—to quit, with no repercussions to Angela. Remove this difficulty. If she is gone, then things will be better."
"And if I do this thing for you, is my debt discharged?" Coilleach asked.
Mumtaz thought about it, thought about the pinched look on her granddaughter's face as they'd sat at the dinner table. "Yes," she said. "Do this thing for me, and we are quit."
"Done," Coilleach said, and suddenly he smiled. "I will miss you, you know, mistress."
Mumtaz snorted in a very unladylike fashion.
Abruptly, Coilleach was gone and the ruby cat sat before her again. It stretched—or was it a bow?—and vanished into the shadows of the garden.
"Cool!" Tina said. "Wow, Gramma, who was that? Where do you know him from? What was that debt thing he was talking about? Why wouldn't you let him kill that bi—"
Mumtaz waved her hands, batting her questions away. "It's late! What are you doing up at this hour, anyway? You're having a dream. Go back to bed."
"It isn't even my bedtime yet!" the little girl protested.
"It is if I say it is," her grandmother informed her grimly. "March!"
The next day, Angela dragged herself to work again, blissfully unaware that a little someone extra was tucked into her briefcase. She set the briefcase beside her chair in her office, and she didn't notice when the someone shimmered its way out and slipped out the door.
Coilleach appeared in the hallway, in the seeming of a tall, preternaturally handsome young man wearing a highly expensive business suit, complete to silk shirt and tie and glossy shoes. He looked up and down the hallway, his lip curled slightly. This human place was even more boring than usual. What use were these humans if they didn't have imagination? That was their only saving grace, after all, and he didn't see much evidence of it in gray carpeting and bulletin boards with official government posters about employee rights and safety, in dull cream walls that needed painting and an acoustic tile ceiling.
Fortunately, one wall of the hallway was windowed, overlooking a parklike open space with trees; it didn't entirely compensate for the amount of Cold Iron in the building, but it did help. He wouldn't stay long enough for the deadly metal to really bother him.
He sauntered down the hall, glancing into open office doors, stepped hastily past the lunch room with its stainless-steel refrigerator and microwave and sink. The occupants glanced up—some of them stared, openmouthed—as he went by. He could hear murmuring behind himself, and he lifted a hand, and the employees who had been enthralled at the sight of the beautiful stranger found themselves sitting in front of their computers again, trying to remember what they'd been doing a moment before.
On the way in this morning, he had teased quite a lot of information out of Angela's mind about her boss. Her office would be—yes, here, at the end of the hall. A corner office.
The door was locked. He smiled and turned the knob. The door opened without protest, and he went inside and closed it behind himself.
It was a large office, much larger than Angela's, with an antique wooden desk and an executive leather chair; a sofa along one windowed wall, a wooden bookcase along the other. No utilitarian metal furnishings here, he observed.
So, he thought. This is Carrie Jillson: indifferent to human sensibilities, unable to create anything new, able to charm the most difficult of humans, and a nearly complete lack of Cold Iron in her office. The only evidence of the metal he could see, in fact, seemed to be in the computer, which rested on a small stand on the other end of the office from the desk. Even the office chair was made of brass and leather, not steel.
And the final evidence, of course, was that the whole room stank of magic.
Carrie Jillson, like Coilleach mac Feargus, was an elf.
He stepped around the desk and sat in the leather chair, leaning back into the overstuffed cushion, looking around.
A wall of windows, overlooking the park. A tryptich of prints on the wall, a Canty painting divided into three separate frames. In the one on the far left, a red-and-gold dragon mantled its leathery wings and breathed fire; in the one on the far right, a heroic knight with suspiciously pointed ears and bright-gleaming silver armor brandished a sword. In the middle, another knight, this one in black, was poised to launch a spear at the dragon. An elf with a sense of humor, it seemed.
The question remained, Which elf? At the very least, which Court? It made a difference whether this "Jillson" swore allegiance to Oberon or to Morrigan of the Dark Court. At first, when he had agreed to do this thing, he had assumed it was merely a matter of harassing a human woman out of Angela Twentyhorses' life—simplicity itself for a bored, mischievous denizen of Underhill. But that she was one of his own kind rather than one of the mortals, that complicated matters. If she had a greater command of magic than he did himself, he could not overpower her. But the situation also piqued his curiosity: What was an elf doing masquerading as a human first-level manager at a small corporation in the middle of Approximately Nowhere, USA?
A photograph in a solid gold frame caught his eye. He blinked. The appearance of Elvenkind to the humans was always one of great beauty, but this woman was not beautiful. He considered the possibility that it might be a picture of someone else, but no; the magical signature of the photograph was that of the office's primary occupant. And as he looked at it, he could see, too, that this was indeed the woman Angela thought of as her boss.
He picked up a pen—a wonderful thing of plastics—and turned it in his fingers, thinking. If there was one thing the Courts of the elves, Bright or Dark, understood to their very bones, it was politics. There was nothing new—of course, there could not be; elves did not create anything—in what this "Jillson" was doing to Angela. He had seen many of the princes of elfdom and their lords of both Courts treat those lesser in rank with such arrogance. Those who behaved in such style invariably sought to ingratiate themselves with their overlords, as if certain that they would be treated with the same arrogance. Often enough, of course, they were.
And the very lowest in elfdom had no hope, ever, of besting their masters.
It was an interesting puzzle, then, why a near-immortal elf should toady to mortals for the sake of lording it over other mortals. For amusement, perhaps, but she had been here for a year or more, according to Angela. Only a High Court elf could survive away from her Grove so long.
Coilleach smiled suddenly. He could think of only one elf woman who might look so . . . plain, to be kind . . . and who might stay so long in the World Above for so little play; only an elf who had been banished from the sight of her own hame would bother. He knew exactly, now, who Carrie Jillson was, and how to deal with her both to the satisfaction of Mumtaz Kashrif, and to his own.
And in the way of the High Court, it amused him not to deal with her directly, but rather through her mortal allies. He rose to his feet and replaced the pen on the desk exactly where he had found it, and placed a small spell upon it, a minor thing, hardly noticeable, bound up tightly with the instrument's own nature. Then he moved over to the computer and placed a similar spell upon it. A moment later the printer began chattering, and he watched, fascinated as he always was, no matter how many times he had seen paper slide out of machines, to see the results of his delicate magical suggestions taking form on the page.
Taking the paper over to the desk, he waved his hand negligently at the pen, which rose up, hovered over the page, and then dived to it and began industriously scratching away. When it finished, he picked up the page again, and blew gently on the ink—some habits were hard to break, even hundreds of years after quills had gone out of fashion. He was about to leave the office when he turned to look again at the computer across the room. He lifted his hand again, and the machine's screen flashed as an e-mail program booted up. Text appeared on the screen. He considered, lifting an elegant eyebrow, and it edited itself. Satisfied, he flicked his fingers at the screen, and the program responded, sending the message, and then closed, followed by the computer's shutdown. Coilleach left the office, humming gently to himself, waving the printed page in the air, and headed upstairs to the executive offices.
Pierson was the human lord, the man whose favor Angela had sought with her labor. His office was on the top floor, according to the information Coilleach had picked up from Angela's angry thoughts. Humans were so passionate about such trivial things. He wondered how they managed not to burn themselves out. Perhaps that was why their lives were so very short.
Pierson's office was at the top of the building. Coilleach gave the woman at the desk, the dragon guarding Pierson's gate, a gentle smile and walked past her, without stopping, into the CEO's office.
The executive was just hanging up a telephone, and started to his feet. "Who are you, and how did you—" he began.
Coilleach raised one hand. For his plan to work as he intended, this man must be made to believe that what he would read in the next few minutes was real, and good, and surely no honorable person would make such an offer and then go back on her word. And so Pierson must also be made safe against Jillson's blandishments, her warped glamourie. Everything in the office must reinforce the shields that Coilleach was creating, even if for such a short time. . . .
When he left, the paper was sitting on Pierson's desk, perfectly centered on the man's blotter, and everything in the office, walls, windows, furniture, was beginning to absorb the faintest glow, as if Coilleach's spell was soaking into every surface and becoming a part of it.
Angela had spent the entire day trying to talk herself into working on the development plan. She didn't even have the heart to check her e-mail; her office door was shut, and she ignored the knocks that came once or twice during the day. She had no heart for talking to her co-workers, although she did call the Personnel office to put in more good words for Mitchell. She was eyeing the clock, wondering if she dared try to sneak out early for the weekend, when her phone rang. She picked it up and answered automatically, "Angela Twentyhorses. How can I help you?" before registering the name on the caller ID window: Mr. Pierson's secretary.
"Mr. Pierson would like to see you in his office immediately," the woman said, and hung up.
Angela stared at the receiver, baffled. Still, she thought, "immediately" probably meant "now." She grabbed her briefcase and purse and locked her office door behind her. If she was going to get fired—well, the CEO didn't fire people. He had actual flunkies for that sort of thing.
And they had red hair, she thought resentfully, as Carrie Jillson got into the elevator beside her.
"Hi, Angie," the woman said, exactly as if she hadn't seen Angela in months. "Going upstairs? Who are you seeing?"
"I just got a call about something," Angela said. She edged away and faced the elevator door, hoping Jillson would get off somewhere else.
She was horrified to see her tormentor not only get off on the same floor, but head in the same direction. Jillson shot her a patronizing look as Angela followed her into the executive suite. "Going to pick up a package?" she asked.
Fortunately, Angela wasn't required to answer; Pierson's secretary sized them both up with a sour look. "Took you long enough," she said. "He's waiting for you."
Angela let Jillson precede her into the office. She'd never been in here before, and she glanced around avidly. Real oil paintings on the walls, and lots of silver and gold plaques with awards and honoraria; real wood furniture, not veneer; a large pedestal water fountain playing in the corner. And if she looked out the windows, she could see clear to the edge of Kansas City.
"Mr. Pierson! So nice to see you." Jillson was advancing on the CEO with a smile that bared all her teeth and stretched the already too-tight skin around her eyes. "I was delighted to get your call, of course."
She sounded like a supplier, not an employee, Angela thought, hovering near the door.
"Of course," Pierson responded. There were a couple of fine vertical lines between his eyebrows, as if he was trying to remember something. Then his gaze lit on Angela. "Miss Twentyhorses! I'm so glad we caught you before you left for the day. I do like to deliver this kind of news at the end of the week."
"News?" Angela croaked.
"Please, sit down, both of you. I'll make this quick, because I know you want to get home. And to tell the truth, I have a flight to catch, so I apologize if this is rushed."
Angela sank into a couch against the wall. Jillson took one of the guest chairs at the side of the desk, not in front of it, so that she and Pierson were both facing Angela. Oh, no, she thought miserably. I don't know how she did it, but she is going to have him fire me himself. This is crazy.
"First things first," Pierson said, sitting on the corner of the desk—the corner on the opposite side from where Jillson was primly crossing her ankles and folding her hands in her lap. The woman was now wearing an expression of intent interest. Expression twelve-B, Angela called it. He didn't seem to notice—he wasn't actually looking at her, Angela noted.
"The first thing is," Pierson continued, picking up a piece of paper from the desk, "is that your timing is just excellent, Ms. Jillson. I admit I was surprised by the way you did it, but there's nothing like burning your bridges, is there? I'm happy to accept your resignation; the board understands fully your desire to"—there, his brows were furrowing again—"to work in a soup kitchen, scrubbing toilets?"
Jillson laughed, as if Pierson was making a practical joke, and started to speak. Ignoring her, the CEO went on. "I've been on the phone with them all afternoon. I guess you must really mean it, sending copies of your resignation letter to the whole board and the entire company."
Angela Twentyhorses and Carrie Jillson realized at approximately the same moment that George Pierson wasn't joking. Jillson turned even paler than usual, and started to get up from her chair. Pierson continued to look right past her, out the window. Angela followed his gaze and saw nothing out there, except a bright-red cat sitting on the window ledge.
How did a cat get up to a tenth-floor window? she wondered, startled. She was even more startled when the cat looked directly at her and closed one green eye. Then Pierson began to talk, and she hauled her attention away from the red—red?—cat and made herself listen to him address Jillson.
"But everyone has been convinced of your sincerity," the CEO went on. "Your presentation to the board about our obligations to the community made it clear that this is something you feel very, very strongly about."
Jillson smirked and preened, made some self-deprecatory noises, and cast a triumphant look at Angela. Angela tried not to gag.
Apparently not noticing this little byplay, Pierson went on, "I don't think we would have believed the e-mail—it did seem that it might have been a hoax, but of course you did provide the signed letter. We'll respect your wishes, of course. I believe the Facilities people are down in your office clearing it out now."
Suddenly Jillson was gaping like a landed fish. She raised her hand and made a gesture, said something in a language Angela had never heard before.
Pierson ignored her and kept on talking. "But of course that leads us to the next issue. I was glad to see that you took the time to consider the tremendous hole you're going to be leaving in the company, and I'm very pleased with your recommendation of Ms. Twentyhorses, here, to take your place." Pierson actually smiled, now, and he looked Angela right in the eye. "I understand that a great deal of the work on the Community Relations presentation Ms. Jillson made yesterday is actually yours, isn't it, Ms. Twentyhorses? Really excellent analysis; the kind of thing I'd like to see a lot more of. I'm sure that you're going to do exceptionally well in your new position. You might want to scoot down to your new office and let Facilities know how you want things arranged."
He turned back to Jillson, but once again he was looking over her head, past her, anywhere except directly at her. It was as if he wasn't quite sure exactly where she was, even though now she was standing, fists clenched at her sides, less than a foot in front of him. "You'll have to turn in your badge and keys, of course, Ms. Jillson. Why don't you do that right now? I do hate to rush you, but I have that plane to catch. Thank you both for your time, ladies—"
Mumtaz Kashrif sat in her garden under the jasmine tree, her fingers buried deep in the scarlet fur of the cat sprawled and purring lazily beside her.
"Are you pleased then, mistress?" the cat asked, examining its scintillant talons. "Is my debt discharged?"
Mumtaz breathed deep of the perfumed air and stared up at the starry sky through the flowered branches. "I think so," she said at last. "It was very burdensome for you, wasn't it? Owing a mere human such a debt."
The cat rolled over, exposing a nearly pink belly, inviting her to rub. She obliged. "Burdensome? No. And it was good sport, watching the disgraced one try to pierce shields she did not even know were there. Her senses must be dull from living so long among mortals."
"Why was she disgraced, by the way? What was her story?"
The cat laughed and caught her fingers in its claws. She held the hand very still. "Now, why should I tell you such a thing?" the cat said. "You kept my secret from your older daughter. Allow the Sidhe a few of our own in turn. Angela, for instance, will never know of me."
"Tina knows about you."
"Tina, small fierce one, thinks I am your Mushkil Gusha."
Mumtaz untangled her fingers, and the cat twisted and leaped down to the ground, and Changed, until Coilleach stood before her. "I am Sidhe, not Persian, as the little one so rightfully points out. I may look in on her again, from time to time, if it amuses me. I do not think you and I shall meet again, however." He bowed, sweeping the glowing, many-colored cloak around—and around, and around, in tighter and tighter circles, until it collapsed in upon itself and vanished with a faint pop.
Mumtaz looked down at the scattering of ruby-red cat hairs that clung to her fingers, and smiled. Her Tina would be blessed; she was a generous child. And so, should she ever truly need help, for all her life, she would have it, as Angela had in her turn. For it was the nature of the Remover of Difficulties to come when he was needed most.