Sixteen

Marie

"Miss Xiao! I was notified you'd checked in at the front desk. I thought I'd swing by to say hello."

Marie turned to see Tobias Mancini—Toby—emerging from the security turnstile. She wasn't surprised someone had come to inquire as to what she needed, but she hadn't expected him to come personally. She schooled her face into a pleasant expression, with a sweet smile. "Hello, Mr. Mancini, I'm just here to take notes on the lighting in several locations. It wasn't my intention to interrupt your day."

"I asked you to call me Toby," he reminded her.

Actually, he hadn't asked her. He'd told her. And she hadn't offered the use of her own first name in return. Apparently, that was something he'd noticed but wasn't going to address directly yet. He wasn't even looking at her at the moment. Instead, his attention was on something over her shoulder.

"Oh, I'm rude. I'm so sorry." She angled her body to include Kuro in the conversation. "This is Kuro. Kuro is learning about the type of consulting I do, so he's shadowing me for parts of this project."

"I see." Toby smiled, but it seemed a touch forced. "Well, it's good to have a strong back to lift some of those heavier pots and buckets in there."

Charming insinuation. If Kuro had truly been a team member on a project she was leading, she'd have countered Toby's words. But she and Kuro had discussed their approach on the walk over to Socrates Industries, and they'd decided it would be to their advantage for him to be underestimated. Allowing Toby to assume Kuro was manual labor was in alignment with their strategy, so, as much as it irritated the hell out of her, Marie let it slide.

"I'm likely to be back here over the next few days, at different times," Marie said. She tipped her head to one side, successfully drawing Toby's attention back to herself. "I'll need to confirm the lighting in each of the areas to be sure I have good placement for each of the plants in my designs. I'll probably need to take photos, too."

Toby nodded. "Sure, sure. I'm glad you're being so thorough. The previous designers didn't even ask. They just sent us proposed drawings based on the blueprints we provided."

"Ah well, everyone has their own approach." Marie wasn't going to put down other professionals when she didn't have context for why they'd done what they'd done. "We'll be down here a while, then we'll walk to each of the locations in the building. I'm sure you're quite busy with meetings. I appreciate you scraping together the time to check in on me personally."

Toby cleared his throat, looking from Kuro to her and back again. "Of course. You let the front desk know if you run into any problems. If you're still in the building by the time I wrap up for the day, I'd be happy to walk you out."

Marie just nodded. She wasn't going to give him any kind of response that could be interpreted as a confirmation. It was possible he wasn't extending an oblique invitation, but she didn't want to deal with it if he had those kinds of intentions.

"Mr. Mancini." A voice called out in the hallway. It didn't sound happy. "I thought we had reached an understanding."

A woman in a lab coat came striding toward them. She was an older Black woman, with springy salt-and-pepper coils that danced around her collarbone with every movement. Her facial features were elegant, with sculpted cheekbones and an angled jaw. She wore an ornate chain to hold her glasses.

"Now, Leslie, I'm just here to see to the needs of one of my subcontractors." Toby held out his hands, fingers splayed, as if he was trying to tone down a mood that wasn't all that heightened at the moment.

Judging from the sparks in the woman's dark eyes, it wouldn't be surprising if she could escalate it if the situation called for it.

"Uh huh." The woman crossed her arms over her chest. "Yet somehow you managed to encounter one of my direct reports the other day, took umbrage with the way he was traversing a public corridor, and decided an accident was grounds for firing him."

Ah. Well, that shed a little light on how the dead man went from safely inside the research and development department to roaming the streets of downtown Seattle.

Toby seemed to puff up, his face turning red and his rather significant eyebrows drawing together until they met across his forehead. "It is well within my purview to terminate employees who are in violation of the company—"

"You literally asked, ‘Do you know who I am?' and fired him. Within an hour, representatives from human resources were down here to escort him out of the building," Leslie stated. Her voice was still at conversational volume, her words clearly enunciated, and her tone sharp. "Rather than risk my key researchers in encounters with you, it was my understanding that you would steer clear of the research and development areas unless there are official meetings for executive management."

Marie was doing her best to keep a neutral expression. Kuro had managed to fade entirely into the background somehow, and no one was even registering his presence. She, on the other hand, noticed Leslie glancing her way. So Marie was careful to project as much distance as possible between herself and Tobias Mancini. She was going to need access to this floor and department, for more than just the plants provided for her project.

Leslie was continuing to set boundaries for Toby, and Toby was not getting in a word edgewise. The other woman had built up a decent amount of momentum and still hadn't raised her voice. "…because you took over a storage room down here in our area without consulting my team or staff. We have sensitive research going on in this department. Any contractors need to adhere strictly to the no-photographs policy in this area."

Marie said nothing, only nodded her understanding.

Leslie finally turned her attention to Marie. Marie didn't change her posture, still standing upright with her head held high. She might have looked to one side or the other to indicate she didn't wish to engage directly in the conversation between Leslie and Toby, but now Marie wasn't flinching from Leslie's regard.

Fine lines smoothed away from Leslie's forehead and at the corners of her eyes. Her mouth relaxed from the frown she'd been wearing. She took in a breath, starting to speak, but someone else came around the end of the corridor.

"Leslie? We're ready to start the next test run."

Leslie turned to face the speaker, and it was lucky for Marie that she did. Marie was absolutely positive she hadn't managed to control the shock on her features as she recognized the man speaking to Leslie now. It was the researcher who had bumped into Toby the other day, and later crashed through the conversation she'd been having with Kuro and Joe. It was their dead man.

Only his skin was flushed a healthy color, and his movements were normal. He was talking, and the look in his eyes was alert. Obviously not dead. Now.

And he wasn't wearing the amulet anymore.

"I have to go," Leslie said. She glanced back at Marie. "We'll introduce ourselves formally another time. Or not. If you need anything on this level, you come find me first. Ask for Leslie. I'm the only one in charge on this floor."

"I'll remember to do that," Marie responded.

Leslie looked her up and down for another moment, then headed away to follow her very much alive researcher.

"I've got a meeting," Toby said, his face still flushed. "I'll leave you to it. Like I said, go ahead and let the front desk know if you need anything."

Abruptly, Marie and Kuro were alone, standing in front of the storage room. She looked at him, and his face was resting in a decidedly bored expression. He was, she thought, really good-looking in a bad boy kind of way, even when he was just standing there not doing anything.

She let out a slow breath, releasing tension she hadn't realized she'd been carrying in her neck and shoulders and abdomen. It was like she had progressively braced herself for some kind of impact. "That was a lot."

He nodded.

"Let's finish taking pictures of every plant here. We've got special permission within my contract to do so. Then we'll go up to each of the garden locations in the building and take notes on lighting, just like I said." She took out her phone and tapped the camera app. She stepped closer to him, lowering her voice. "Once we've done that, we'll come back down and go looking for the restroom. Figure out what we can gather from an innocent walk around that corner."

He nodded.

She smiled and started taking pictures of plants. It might be paranoia, but she didn't want to risk speaking freely about any of their intentions while inside this building. She didn't have the skills to spot listening devices, and she was sure she'd miss some if she tried to look for them. She could probably come up with a spell to reveal them, but that might damage them, and then they'd be replaced. Plus, all of them becoming inoperable at once would be suspicious and draw unwanted attention. So it was better to just act like they were there and not actually worry about finding them. It was easier to be discreet.

They had finished their tasks, both in the storage room and at the various locations for the gardens elsewhere in the building, when she felt it. A surge of magic. It was witchcraft, of a sort. It wasn't blood sacrifice, but the feeling of death tinged the energy flowing throughout the building.

She hurried back to the elevator. Being caught in the rotating entryway while security confirmed her was especially uncomfortable. All of her senses were jangling, on edge. Kuro was there with her, standing close enough that she could feel his solid warmth at her back. She stopped at the storage room and looked in, just for appearance's sake, then headed right down the corridor.

Kuro followed her without a word. Which was good, because she was following her intuition at the moment and wouldn't have been able to explain anything even if she'd tried.

Turning the corner let them into an open-plan cubicle area. She could see over the cubicle walls, down the length of the long room. There seemed to be more hallways along the inner wall. There weren't any heads visible to indicate anyone was sitting in the cubicles at the moment, so she walked down the aisle hugging the inner wall to peek down the hallways.

There wasn't a lot to hint at what was there. Each hallway had two doors on either side, marked with door numbers. They could be conference rooms or they could be labs. No way to know unless she opened a door. She thought they would be conference rooms, though. Some of her other clients had laboratories, and those all had windows to see into the laboratory space.

One of the cubicles, at least, had notes on the dry-erase board. She did her best to pause and unobtrusively memorize the sketch of the blue lotus on it. If she lifted her phone or appeared to be taking a photo in any way, she was certain a security camera somewhere would have caught it. Instead, she reached out and pointed at the cute corgi calendar pinned next to the dry-erase board, then walked away. She had a strong enough visual memory to re-create what she'd seen: notes on extracting blue lotus essential oil and formulating a standard dosage.

She didn't breathe freely until they finally left the building. "Well, that left me with a whole bunch of new questions."

"Is that good or bad?" Kuro rumbled.

"I honestly don't know."

Kuro was silent for a moment, then he asked, "What's the worst outcome you can think of?"

She considered that as they walked. "They could be intentionally resurrecting dead people. And that's just one accident away from starting a zombie apocalypse."