“Will do,” Rick said as he began to walk away. “Doughnuts. My office. Ten minutes.”
“Be right there.” Jaw clenched, Kal dropped down between the cars, hoping Rick didn’t see him pull his lace free before he made a show of tying it up. “Orchid . . .” he whispered, relief spilling through him when the tiny woman flitted to him from under the cars. She was fine, her dust a little thin with hunger, but fine.
“Kal, she’s got a demon!” the pixy said, her eyes so wide he could tell they were green.
“I know,” he said, shifting so she could alight on his knee. “That’s what that ring of fat is on my office ceiling.” He didn’t like that Trisk had not only found a demon name, but had the courage to summon one. By the looks of it, she’d almost been snagged. “Jeez, Orchid. Get under my hat before someone sees you. Are you hungry? I’ve got crackers in my desk.”
But Orchid didn’t move from his knee, her dust shifting suddenly to a bright red. “She’s playing you for a fool,” she said, wings blurring. “I heard them talking. She and some elf named Quen made her demon curse Daniel into not remembering what they said, but they didn’t see me.”
“Daniel?” he asked, then froze. Quen is here?
Alarm coursed through him, washing to a tiny pit in his middle. Feeling like a ghost, he stood and scanned the outskirts of the parking lot as if the man was lurking in the trees.
“She doesn’t like you,” Orchid said, hovering in the shelter of the cars. “She likes Quen, even if she doesn’t know it yet. Daniel overheard them talking, they broke the silence, and they made him forget so they wouldn’t have to kill him. Kal, she’s only pretending to like you until you sign off on her tomato patent. She’s not going to go to NASA with you. Ever. You have to do something or you’ll never be able to prove her theories are unsafe. Never ever.”
He looked down at Orchid’s last, plaintive words, and he knelt again, his shocked alarm shifting to an enduring anger. Quen was here. Daniel must have seen something bad if they had to ask a demon for a forget curse. I wonder what a curse like that costs, he thought as he took off his hat, wanting to ask Trisk if she had bought the demon’s favors outright or if the demon had left a mark on her as a promise of payment. And would she lie if he saw it and asked what it was?
“Under the hat, Orchid,” he said, and the pixy pouted as she obediently flitted to nestle in his hair. “We have to find you something to eat first.”
He rose, feeling unreal and wanting to crush the flower he’d brought Trisk. He’d been convinced she was infatuated with him. She acted like every other woman he’d pursued and bedded. Perhaps they’ve all used me, he thought, anger tightening his chest. The bitches trying to find their way into the Kalamack family through his bed. Back stiff, he strode forward.
“She thinks you’re trying to steal her work,” Orchid said, her tiny whisper clear as she huddled under his hat. “Not prove how dangerous it is.”
“The end result is the same, though, isn’t it,” he muttered, liking the new idea.
“Uh, Kal? Your aura is kind of nasty,” Orchid said, and Kal hesitated in his reach for the door to the imposing building. He hadn’t known pixies could see auras.
Exhaling, he calmed himself. He could keep the game alive. See how far she’d go. No one played him. No one. “Better?”
“Better,” Orchid said, and he pulled the glass door open, his skin crawling in the ozone-scented air that leaked up from the lower floors where the computers lurked. His fake smile turned real—if somewhat mocking—as he saw Trisk and Daniel in the expansive lobby, arguing beside the elevators. At least Daniel was arguing. Trisk looked unusually awkward and submissive as she slowly rock-stepped away from him, trying to escape.
Curious, he drew upon his second sight and their auras wavered into existence. Daniel, he mused, had a bright gold aura, rare for a human, but Trisk’s was a pale green, streaked with gold and black. She’d been summoning. Not only that, but she’d taken payment for something.
He dropped his second sight, steps slowing as he tried to piece it together. Forget curses were unreliable, even demon-crafted ones. If Daniel had seen something that broke the silence in a real way, she’d have to leave or risk eventually triggering his memory. A smile, wicked and devious, curved his lips up as a feeling of power dove to his groin. She had to leave Global Genetics to preserve the curse. If her tomato failed—and he’d make sure it would—Trisk’s potential funding would shift to his work instead of her fast, chancy theories that had fallen short once already. He would save their species; Trisk would have nothing. No career, no prospects. Nothing. He had won.