Page 181 of Just One Little Bargain

Chapter 52

Milo

One moment, the ruined factory is still around me, Evie’s fingers slipping from mine while Hell tears at every part of me it recognizes as its own. The next, my knees hit black stone, pain shooting up both thighs. The recall leaves a violent pressure behind my eyes. For several breaths, I can do nothing but brace my hands against the floor and wait for the chamber to stop tilting.

Krell hits the ground beside me with considerably less dignity than is normal for him. He catches himself on one hand and swears under his breath.

There’s dust ground into my palms and a shallow scrape across the knuckles. Evie had been holding that hand seconds ago. She’d dug in with everything she had, furious with me even while she fought to keep me there. Nobody’s ever wanted me with that kind of frightening certainty.

I’ve been useful, tolerated, occasionally valued when my work benefited someone more important, but never chosen so fiercely.

She tried to give up her soul for me.

Another thirty seconds and she would’ve signed.

After she left the cottage, I told myself she’d spend the evening with her family and stay there until I was gone because that was the plan. Then the bond kept pulling me in her direction until sitting still became impossible. Once the thought of Krell entered my head, I couldn’t make it leave.

The factory was within running distance, which was fortunate because I had no better plan. I’ve always considered running an activity humans invented because apparently walking somewhere while suffering less was insufficiently virtuous. I barely made it there in time to stop her.

“Welcome!” The voice drifts toward us, startling me. “Regional processing is currently experiencing an estimated delay of four hours and twenty-six minutes. Remain seated until your case number is called. Threatening intake personnel will result in automatic reassignment to the end of the queue.”

I finally take in where Hell has deposited us. We’re just inside a cavernous processing hall, the arrival point marked by a strip of tarnished brass set into the black floor. Directly ahead, a booth has been built into the wall, separated by cloudy reinforced glass. A small rectangular hatch stands open at chest height, and the voice belongs to the squat demon sitting on the other side of it.

He wears a wrinkled burgundy shirt with the sleeves rolled unevenly to his elbows, a black lanyard disappearing under his chin, and a plastic name badge that reads TAVRIK. His cramped little enclosure is only large enough for him and the battered desk wedged beneath the window, an ugly composite thing with chipped corners and one leg propped up on a stack of obsolete procedural manuals. Forms are pinned crookedly across the partition behind him, along with a faded sign directing complaints to someone named Gladys. Beside the open hatch sits a brass bell with a handwritten note taped over it: DO NOT RING. I CAN SEE YOU.

Past the booth, the rest of the hall opens into an enormous waiting area. Rows of black molded chairs run beneath a low ceiling veined with red light, each seat occupied by some variation of demon, condemned clerk, collector, or irritated creature holding a numbered ticket. Periodically, an overhead display jitters between NOW SERVING 4812 and SYSTEM ERROR.

Krell steps up to the hatch. “What do you mean, four hours?”

“Subject to deterioration.” Tavrik moistens one claw and turns a page in the ledger without looking up.

“Why?”

That finally earns us one of his eyes. The other five remain fixed on the paperwork. “Central Administration merged Infernal Claims, Cryptid Affairs, Reaper Oversight, and the Otherworldly Disputes Office into one department last week.”

I stare at him. “They what?”

“Apparently maintaining separate processing systems for demons, ghosts, shifters, and miscellaneous undead was deemed ‘operationally inefficient.’”

From somewhere farther down the corridor comes an outraged shriek of, “I AM A FOUR-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD VAMPIRE. I DO NOT REQUIRE A NUMBER!”

Without so much as turning his head, Tavrik cups two hands around his mouth. “EVERYONE REQUIRES A NUMBER NOW, SIR. THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE MERGER.”

A second voice bellows, “THE WEREWOLF ATE MINE.”

“THEN YOU’LL NEED FORM C-SEVENTEEN FOR TICKET REPLACEMENT.”

Tavrik closes all six eyes for one long second. “And that’s why the queue is four hours behind.”

A stack of folders slides off the end of his desk and lands in a papery avalanche around his shoes. Tavrik watches the top file spring open, exposing a photograph of something with antlers, three tongues, and what appears to be a parking citation stapled to its forehead. He lets out a long sigh, nudges the mess aside with his boot, and carries on.

For the first time since Hell dragged me back here, something close to amusement pushes through the pressure behind my ribs.

Krell looks appalled, his jaw tightening as another distant voice demands to know why ectoplasmic entities are expected to use paper forms.

“That has absolutely nothing to do with our cases!”

“No.” Tavrik reaches beneath the desk and produces a narrow paper ticket from a dispenser that gives a wheezing cough before spitting out the second. “Unfortunately, the system doesn’t organize itself around your emotional response to inconvenience.”