Page 27 of A Fae in Finance
No one answered.
“I’ll take that as a yes, and let’s end early so I can have a few minutes back.”
“Wait, Jeff—” I said, but they’d all already hung up.
Was I just supposed to, like, do work?
On cue, an email came in from Jeff.
Hi Miri,
Please take some time today to think through our strategy for the presentation. Remember it is due to the client at the same time as the final iteration of the model. When I reviewed it last night, I saw several mistakes and formatting errors.
Jeff.
Gritting my teeth, I opened our shared file drive and found the latest version of the presentation. I double-clicked on it, sighed, and stared at the outline of my black and white cat against the impossibly blue sky.
When the clock on my computer showed one thirty p.m., I stood up.
It was time.
I picked up my phone, the miserable pit in my stomach gaping. I was the most afraid I’d been all week. Standing, knees locked, I pulled up her contact and hesitated.
No.
I considered the room and sat back down in the chair, phone in my hand.
No.
The bed? I sat gingerly on the side without my suitcase, and then pulled my knees up to my chest.
No.
The floor, maybe. I slid down onto the floor and stretched my legs out in front of me.
I didn’thaveto tell her. I could just call her and lie.
Except I couldn’t. Iwantedto. But I couldn’t.
For a moment, I considered telling Thea or Jordan or my dad first. But there was no putting this off.
I had to call my mother.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I tapped the call button. The ringing started with surprising alacrity for cell service in a pocket realm, and I made a mental note to ask the Gray Knight about their service provider.
“Miri?” my mom asked, her voice cheerful through the phone. “How are you?”
“Mom, I’m trapped in Faerie and I can’t get out or I’ll explode into blood mist and bone shards,” I said in one breath. “But you don’t need to worry because I have Doctor Kitten and I’m fine.”
“Oh?” my mother asked, in a tone so far beyond hysterical that it veered back into calm. The calm then shattered with violence.
The light emitted from the sun takes eight seconds to travel the ninety-three million miles from thither to hither.
The sound my mother made next took approximately thrice that time to die down.
“Mom, it’s okay,” I kept saying, staring at the patch of brown wall underneath the window. I felt better now that I’d told her. The first half of the hard part was over.
“Who’s keeping you there?” she asked, in a voice octaves above human comprehension.
