Evie followed the boss down the hallway back to the open office area. Her face was burning like she’d eaten something spicy, and the pace at which the boss was moving wasn’t helping with the redness in her neck and cheeks.
He’d just stared at her blankly. Completely devoid of all emotion. In fact, she thought she saw the little emotion that was there flicker out the minute he locked eyes with her. As if her silly comment was not even worthy enough to be embarrassed or outraged.
My stupidity is profound enough to be acknowledged, dammit.
She opened her mouth to say as much, but the boss paused in front of large wooden doors that led out to the parapet walk and opened them, motioning for her to pass in front of him. Rubbing her damp palms on her skirts, she stepped forward, feeling the rush of the midmorning sun against her skin.
Evie wasn’t a particular fan of high places, so seeing the distance from where she stood to the ground below caused her to back into the stone edge of the parapet and cling there.
“You’re missing the view.” His voice was low and gravelly in a way that made her head tingle, like the pitter-patter of rain against a roof.
“I know what Hickory Forest looks like,” she said dryly, shutting her eyes tight. But the images of the grand trees beyond were clear. She’d grown up in a village on the outskirts of the forest that took up so much of Rennedawn’s lands. Trees the size of giants blanketed the area surrounding the manor, thick green foliage standing out against a cloudless blue sky. The warm, balmy weather brushing her skin was typical of their kingdom’s forgiving climate, attracting all manner of beings to their modest section of the world.
Evie finally found enough strength to open her eyes and caught the tail end of a curve in her boss’s lips.
Glorious.
Ugh, not glorious, Evie.
She needed to be sedated, clearly.
The Villain continued like she wasn’t the blithering mess that she was. “I wanted to bring you away from prying ears.” He edged closer, his dark hair curling slightly against his tan skin. “It’s a matter of grave importance.”
Something about the way he stood, the wind billowing his black cloak about him, gave Evie a great sense of foreboding. Of course, that perfectly rational emotion was overtaken by the less sensible part of her brain that ignored the danger in favor of how attractive he looked.
Anyone with common sense knew that the loveliest blades were always the sharpest, but for Evie there was no such thing. Her sense came and went with the wind, nothing common about it.
Drawing the tip of her shoe in nervous circles, she looked the boss directly in the eye. “Okay, before you go all brooding Earl of Darkness on me, it was a dirty dream, but I meant, like…dirty. You know, with dirt, the brown stuff. It was muddy and a carriage rolled by and splattered muck over both of us and you said, ‘Better get this washed, Sage.’”
She could feel that awful tumble of words that spilled out every time she was nervous or an unwelcome quiet appeared, so she continued. “It was one of my more ordinary dreams, actually. Nothing explicit or inappropriate.” Her arms were flailing now, full-blown wing movements like she was trying to take off.
What was worse was the heightened color tingeing the sharp angle of his cheekbones and the slight widening of his eyes at the words tumbling from her lips.
A smart person would cease speaking at that clearly taken-aback expression, but Evie was not smart. Or rather, Evie was smart, but her brain and her mouth seemed to have a swift detachment from each other.
“Nobody was naked,” she said with a confident finality, rocking back on her heels.
Nobody. Was. Naked?
His eyes flashed, and her twisted imagination had the gall to see something burn there, for just a moment, before they shuttered again. He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his head, seeming a little unnerved.
Seeing him lose any ounce of his impeccable composure gave Evie far too much satisfaction.
“I was not referring to your nighttime imaginings, Sage.” His throat bobbed as he walked around her to look out at their surroundings. The Manor was in a part of the forest that was so thick with foliage, no one would think to stumble this way. Every village in Rennedawn was intentionally built over natural large gaps in the trees, almost as if the gods created the map of their lands by hand.
But Massacre Manor was the exception, living encased by its surroundings, like an armor.
The boss braced his hands on either side of the stone pillars. Evie knew his shoulders and back would be tensed beneath his cloak if it wasn’t obscuring her view.
“Sage?”
Oh, he’d been talking, hadn’t he? She’d been too busy ogling him as if he were the last piece of pie.
“Oh yes, I…agree.” She nodded emphatically, rocking back and forth, doing her best to mask her confusion with a false confidence.
“Is that so?” He whistled low and raised a hand to rub the perfectly maintained stubble at his chin. “Well, with your agreement in mind, I’ll begin the arrangements to have you married off to one of the river gremlins to allow us safe passage for our shipments from the southern kingdoms.”
“What?” Evie gasped “Sir, I— No, I wasn’t— You can’t be serious!” But he could be. Evie had seen him do far worse to other employees who weren’t cooperating, and she’d arranged most of them. Her heart was pounding, blood rushing through her ears, making everything sound muffled.
Without realizing it, she’d brought herself closer to him, searching for any ounce of humanity in his black eyes. Anything that might take pity on this magicless human with a terrible attention span.
But instead of humanity, she saw his eyes squint and crinkle at the corners. Evie took a large step backward to better observe the picture. His lips were curled up at the sides, and when Evie caught sight of them, she yelped.
“Was that a joke?” She almost cringed at the blatant shock in her voice, but her reaction to something so unpredictable could not be contained.
His smile widened further than Evie had ever seen it, and a single dimple on his left cheek poked free.
“And you have dimples?”
He rolled his eyes, and the dimple disappeared. “Just the one. Now that I have your full attention—”
“Was that your first?” Evie interrupted, unable to process all this new information in an efficient manner.
The boss’s head knocked back in surprise. “My first what, you little tornado?”
“Your first joke.”
He grunted and opened his mouth to speak, looking quite outraged, if she were being honest. “Of all the—” He paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Sage, do you honestly think me incapable of humor?”
“Of course I don’t think that,” she said earnestly. “You hired me.”
Letting loose a long-suffering sigh, he pushed a strand of dark hair meticulously back into place. “I speak to you for less than three minutes, and I’m more turned around than the interns during my favorite day of the week.”
“Metaphorically speaking, of course, as I am not shooting arrows at you.” Evie gave him a pointed look to reiterate how she disapproved of his “self-defense” training for the poor souls who came here on “internships.” Cast-off noblemen’s children, people who owed gambling debts, and other general reprobates alike applied for the entry position all the time.
Massacre Manor was a far cry from the kingdom’s capital, the Gleaming City, where most of the interns had stumbled in from. The decadence and abundance so different than the squalor of their new place of employ, for most of them their first place of employ. Evie had been to the city once as a child. It had been an entire day’s ride north from her village, when the forest was still considered safe to travel. She had been too little to remember much, but she recalled the contagious energy of it vibrating the air. Remembered vaguely meeting a magical specialist with her parents, and, just like the stories children in her village had told her, he had been kind and helpful with seemingly endless knowledge to share.
It was nice that quite a few interns had magic, as many of them accomplished their tasks quicker.
That sure must be useful for cleaning the toilets. Evie snickered inwardly.
But they kept applying, coming back, despite the harshness of the job.
The proof was in the pile of letters laden with words of woe and how a down-on-his-luck son of a noble found himself in deep debt to a very expensive brothel. It was always someone in desperate need of a second chance, and though the danger of the job was well-known in less-desirable parts of the kingdom, so was the pay.
Evie was quite certain the interns made only slightly less than she did. Which in any other circumstance might cause her some level of outrage, but she was working for The Villain. She would be grateful she held one of the only job positions that didn’t call for her Scatter Day participation.
The event took place at the end of every work week, unless of course the boss was having a bad day. Then it could be the beginning of the week, the middle of the week, in the morning, during her lunch hour, or… Well, she could go on. It was, at the very least, consistent in that every Scatter Day consisted of the boss sending the interns outside and having them run from something. So far, she’d watched them try to escape a crossbow and countless magical beasts. But Evie’s personal favorite was the day the boss was so fed up with their antics that he began chasing them himself across the back courtyard.
It was the fastest she’d ever seen them run.
“I’ll remind you that, at your bequest, I haven’t actually killed an intern in several months.”
Evie shook her head hopelessly. “Sir, I hate to belittle your successes, but there are people who go their entire lives without killing anyone.”
His face remained serious. “How dull.”
“You also can’t even really say months, can you? You pushed Joshua Lightenston off this very parapet last week, and he broke his neck.”
“Well, he deserved it.”
She threw her hands up in defeat. “Why?”
The boss rubbed his chin and grimaced like an unpleasant memory had resurfaced. “He said something I didn’t like.”
“If I had that luxury, Becky would’ve gone over this thing several times already.” Evie took a contemplative pause. “Actually, sir—”
“No.”
“But what if I make a very official and organized pro/con list?” she pleaded.
“Give me one con to Rebecka Erring as an employee.” The breeze picked up, tossing that rebellious dark lock against his forehead.
“She’s determined to be my enemy.”
His face was suddenly closed again, so suddenly that Evie heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Always keep your enemies close, Sage. Life’s more interesting that way.” The smile he was giving her now held no joy, only cruel promises.
Evie swallowed hard, disappointed in herself for needing to take a slow step backward. Out of his sphere and back to her senses.
“Speaking of enemies. May we get to what I brought you out here to discuss before the other employees begin to believe that I’m throwing you over the edge?” he asked.
Evie rolled her eyes and motioned her hand forward. “Go on.”
His mouth turned down in a frown as he spun away from her, back to the forest view. “Another shipment has been compromised.”
Evie tried not to groan, but the frustration was palpable. It had taken her weeks to organize that shipment trade-off and plan the perfect undetectable checkpoints between here and the Gleaming City. The office was run on illegal cargo coming in and out, selling it, trading it, stealing it from King Benedict directly most of the time.
“I suspected as much, since I saw the extra…” Evie tapped the top of her head lightly with her pointer finger.
“They were Valiant Guards.”
King Benedict’s personal guards? They never involved themselves in The Villain’s business. It was a point of strangeness to her, in fact, that in all the times The Villain had struck Benedict by lifting his resources, stealing cargo of all kinds, he’d never struck back.
“So I assume we didn’t make it out with any of the borrowed goods?” This trade deal was going to bring in at least four large crates filled with weapons from King Benedict’s personal collection. Depleting them of not only the swords and firearms themselves but the value of the weapons would no doubt be an enormous loss to their esteemed ruler.
Or it would’ve been if the whole thing hadn’t been blown to bits.
“My Malevolent Guards were able to make out with two of them.”
The Malevolent Guards were the elite group of people who managed the more violent parts of The Villain’s business—the fieldwork, some of the interns had coined it. The most ruthless warriors were among them, many of them magic users of varying kinds and educations. Most in the office steered clear of them, but Evie helped Edwin make them sandwiches.
Shoot, I forgot to restock the cheese. They are fiends for provolone.
“That’s better than none at all, I suppose,” Evie responded. She would accept any small favors if it meant not scouring a map, looking for another discreet trade from natural paths in the forest.
“Always the optimist, aren’t you, Sage?” His tone was light, but his face told her he didn’t think that was a good thing.
“I like anticipating the good—that way it’s easier to see it…even when the bad happens.”
The boss looked at her with some unreadable emotion. “If we could all see the world through your eyes.”
“It would be very colorful.” She smiled wide and turned her face up to the breeze. “So that’s three shipments compromised in the last two months.”
“Three too many.” His voice was lower suddenly. A deadly tone that she’d seen make the bravest of knights shiver with fear. She, for some reason, found it comforting, which was…troubling.
Danger isn’t attractive, Evie; it’s scary.
Or…it’s both, her brain countered.
“Aside from the little hangmen downstairs, how are you planning on handling this?” Evie was afraid of the answer, but this was becoming a very distinct pattern. Systems that had worked for them for months were suddenly failing, and the common denominator was becoming very clear.
“We have a traitor in our midst,” he said in a low voice.
Evie sucked in a breath, because he stood tall and dark, promising destruction, and all she could think was…
“How can I help?”
…
Evie was certain the clock on the wall ticked louder when she was trying to focus. Each stroke of the small hand felt like it was grating against her skull.
Tick-tick-tick.
“Ugh.” Evie threw her head down on her desk. She’d been going over the list of employees for the last two days in her favorite gold-foiled journal, writing little notes next to their names. Any indicators of suspicion or skewed loyalties had to be recorded. She’d figure out who was sabotaging them, and she’d hand them on a silver platter to her boss.
“What are you working on?” Ah, the other grating in her skull.
Evie picked her head up and closed her notebook, nearly taking out Rebecka Erring’s wandering hand. She quickly returned her quill to her favorite tincture of ink, a gift from her father. “Nothing you need concern yourself with.” Evie pinched her lips tightly into a smile, trying to keep every inflammatory word inside her head.
“Why are you making a list of employees’ names? I need to know everything that goes on in this office,” Becky said with a pompous sniff.
Evie considered the woman closely and then leaned her chin against her propped hands. “Does that mean you’re aware of the office pixies using ink to make self-portraits of their rear ends?” The pixies handled small tasks around the office, usually acting as scribes. It was quick work for them, since there were so many, but their erratic temperaments occasionally made them get creative with the ink.
A frustrated groan escaped Becky as she straightened and shook her head. “Again?” She turned quickly, eyes narrowing behind her glasses as she caught sight of the tiny fluttering creatures. All giggling as they scattered the papers about the room.
“Get over here, you wretches!” Becky growled as she stalked away, and Evie breathed a sigh of relief. She grabbed a vanilla drop candy from the tin Lyssa had given her and popped it in her mouth.
Despite the everlasting animosity between them, Evie did not envy the woman’s job. Every little drama, every conflict between the interns or any of the more permanent workers, was her responsibility to manage. When the boss had oriented Evie to the rest of the workers, he’d explained the system in which the manor worked. Every employee in charge of different tasks in different areas. It reminded Evie of a beehive. Becky’s particular specialty being a resource to the humans and other beings so the boss wouldn’t have to deal with the constant melodrama.
At the beginning, Evie thought she and Becky could be friends, that whatever stiff coldness lived in the woman during their first meeting would thaw. But despite Evie’s every effort, Rebecka Erring was determined not to like her. It was still a mystery whether it was because she found Evie obscenely annoying or if the rumor Evie had heard from one of the interns was true. That Becky had, once upon a time, wanted to be the assistant to The Villain, and Evie had been given the position instead.
Regardless, it was very clear that Evie and Becky would never be friends, and that was just fine with her.
Closing the book once more, Evie stood from her desk with her ceramic chalice in hand, praying Edwin had brewed the cauldron of bean juice strong enough to wake the dead.
As she wandered off to the kitchen, though, Evie couldn’t help the little voice in her head, wondering if there was an innocence to their feud, or if it could lead Becky down a different path.
The one of a traitor.
