Page 55 of Goblins Don't Count
She smiled when she saw me. “Good, you’re ready to go. And he’s still sleeping?”
I nodded. “But I’m not sure how to get out of the door.”
“Well, tell the door to open and see what happens.”
“But I don’t see a door.”
“Hm. Can you ask his helpers to show you?”
I looked around. There were no visible bots, but they seemed to come out of nowhere. “Spiders,” I said, loudly. “Show me the door.”
One tiny creature crawled out of a crack and walked up to me, and then turned and headed to the side where there was no screen. I followed, then stopped when it got to the wall. It kept going into the crack at the base, leaving me standing there, feeling like an idiot. “Okay. This is the door? How do I open it?”
A thousand tiny spiders came out of the crack, flowing up the wall until they outlined a door-sized rectangle. They left one hand-sized print bare, so, hesitating, I pressed my palm into that space. A light ran over my hand and then the door announced, “Sealed for your protection, Rynne Sato,” in a calm and light female voice.
“I need to go to work, and see my mom,” I told the door, feeling like an idiot.
“Your safety comes first.”
“Actually, if I don’t leave, my safety will be violated. My employment will be terminated, I’ll be fired, and lose my benefits. Also, I work to protect the city, and I need to stop my mother from raising an army who will attack and make me much less safe.”
The door was quiet for a moment, and then with a click, it slid open, leaving a narrow passage for me to take. I went quickly while the door kept talking.
“Rynne Sato must wait for the proper code to unlock the door. Your security is…”
Her voice was drowned out as a green hand grabbed my wrist, yanking me to the side, and into the courtyard. I’d barely gotten there when the stone wall slammed closed behind me. I looked back at the impenetrable stone and the tiny screen looking back at me.
“So,” she said, linking my arm and tugging me towards the other side of the courtyard, lit by the glowing stone. “What are you going to say to your mother? I tried to explain things, you know, how it was normal for people to spend the night with their boyfriends, but she kept getting stuck on the fact that Corcarn’s the Goblin King who steals away humans. She’s convinced that you’re stolen away.” She tsked and shook her head at the obvious confusion, thinking that I was some human Sashimi couldn’t live without.
“Did you open the door?” I asked.
“Only because you confused the monitor long enough for me to hack it. Well done.”
“And you’re concerned about my mother picketing Goblin Town. Why?”
She gave me a wide-eyed look. “It makes goblins look uncivilized. You had noticed the effort my brother puts into looking civilized, didn’t you?”
I shrugged and then winced. My shoulder wasn’t the best.
“Did you get hurt?” she asked, sounding sympathetic, but her eyes danced. Of course, because it had been the kind of date she could appreciate.
“A bit. The demon threw a bomb while I was trying to keep my boss from bleeding out, and most of the force hit Sashimi. That’s why he’s still sleeping, although I am pretty sure I got out all the shrapnel.”
“Sashimi? You call my brother sushi? That’s so cute!”
I squinted at her as she continued to drag me down a narrow pass between boulders into the darkness beyond. “You’re acting too perky. What’s your real deal?”
“Real deal? You don’t want to know. Also, I’m sworn to secrecy. Also, my brother would kill me if I revealed my true motives to an outsider.”
I stopped, yanking my arm out of hers, and took a defensive stance. “I’ve been told not to trust goblins.”
“Good. You shouldn’t.” She clicked on her watch and held out the screen so I could see my mother in a purple cloud of magical haze holding a sign and yelling about goblins being the bane of all civilized societies, corrupting the neutral witches that weren’t nearly as bad as goblins, and in general causing a ruckus.
“She thinks that if she puts the blame on Sashimi, it will diffuse the growing hatred against witches? That’s actually brilliant.”
Sashimi’s sister gave me a look.
I shrugged. Ow. “It’s not right, but it is a good idea. I still need to give a speech about the ball. I’ll have that nice reporter take it at the same time Joss gives a statement about…”
