Page 11 of Just One Little Bargain

Bargain negotiation, except I keep accidentally talking people out of deals?

I settle for: Soul acquisition. Currently bad at it.

Honesty’s probably the best policy at this point.

I’m reaching for the next form when the alarm starts one department over.

The adjacent door bangs open and an imp barrels through the HR reception area at full sprint. He’s three feet tall, with ears that point in different directions, and a glass soul vessel clutched close to his chest. The container has a hairline fracture running from the base to the rim, and pale blue light presses against the crack from inside.

Two more imps follow with containment equipment. One is dragging a backup vessel missing its handle. The other is carrying sealant paste. They move with the frantic coordination of a team that has done this too many times and learned nothing from the experience.

“Fracture’s spreading, Dekh.”

“I have EYES!”

The first imp pins the vessel flat on a section of Thessara’s desk, and she moves her stamp two inches to the left without looking up. The sealant imp runs paste along the fracture in a thick, uneven line. Before it can set, the tape imp wraps the whole thing, which seems counterproductive, but nobody asks me.

Inside, the light flares. Strains against the seal. Dims. Settles.

All three imps exhale.

The first imp pulls out a clipboard. “Incident report. Vessel 7749-B. Hairline fracture. Contained on-site. No breach.” He looks at the other two. “That’s no paperwork.”

“No paperwork,” they repeat, almost reverently.

They retreat through the adjoining door with their mummified vessel, and the room returns to its previous state of joyless productivity. Thessara huffs and wipes her desk with a cloth.

“Apologies,” she says. “Containment has been understaffed since the third quarter budget reallocations.”

I look at the sealant smear still visible on the stone. Somewhere inside that taped vessel, a soul is sitting in the dark. Its prison held together by paste, tape, and the bureaucratic determination to avoid quarterly paperwork. That’s someone’s whole existence now.

I pick up the second form titled Mortal Realm Disguise Registration. Fifteen blank fields confront me, demanding information about aesthetic goals, cultural presentation strategy, and approximate threat level of appearance.

I glance down at myself. Brown curls that refuse to cooperate. Pale pink skin that burns if I stand too close to torches. Eyes that are more lavender than crimson.

I write: Minimal. Possibly nonexistent.

The third form wants confirmation that I’ve completed Contemporary Mortal Culture Awareness Training.

I haven’t. I was supposed to attend, but got distracted researching human pizza variations and missed it. There’s no box for meant to but didn’t, so I check yes.

It says training. It doesn’t say whose.

I’ve read Cosmopolitan for ten years. That counts.

The fourth form is short, only one paragraph acknowledging that humans now carry devices capable of photographic and video recording.

There’s a note beneath it: Failure to avoid documentation may result in reassignment to the Viral Incident Response Team.

I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds bad. I sign quickly and move on.

The fifth form is three pages of legal torture so dense I have to reread every sentence. Eventually, I realize the whole thing boils down to: Don’t let mortals trick you with clever phrasing.

Oh, perfect. Great advice. I’ll just not get tricked. Why didn’t I think of that?

I sign it even though the guidance is useless.

The sixth form is a waiver. Hell is not responsible for injuries sustained during summoning transport, including but not limited to dimensional vertigo, temporary blindness, whiplash, or landing in inconvenient locations such as bathtubs, chandeliers, or active volcanoes.