Page 88 of A Fae in Finance
I gestured to the screen. “We can finish up the Inputs tab,” I said. “We’re almost done.”
Doctor Kitten leapt from the windowsill to the bed in a cloud of dislodged cat hair, which floated across the desk and our laps in a majestic glimmer of sunless light from the window.
The Gray Knight opened her mouth, like she might say something else—but she clamped it shut and nodded once, that muscle in her jaw still jumping.
And we continued on.
An hour in, Kayla sent me another email. The preview showed the sentenceI think this company might be worth $18 billion. This was almost certainly inaccurate.
A few minutes after that, Jeff emailed me and Kayla both, subject line:WHERE IS MY VALUATION.
I glanced at the Gray Knight, but she only shrugged. “Jeff is not your primary concern,” she said. “I am.”
We were in an operational tab of the model at this point, talking through probabilistic weighting. I was bored nearly to tears.
“Well, Jeff is my boss,” I said, striving for a reasonable tone the way we all strive: with the best of intentions and absolutely no follow-through.
“That is a fact but not an argument.”
“I need to keep this job for about nine and a half more years, as you know,” I said. I was rounding down optimistically.
“You may have different jobs.”
I hunched over, like her words were a physical blow. “I can’t have different jobs. That’s not part of the bargain.”
“If you relinquish the bargain, you can have a different job.”
I seethed. Relinquish the bargain? Give up, having barely attempted it?
“Setting aside for a moment the obvious objections, how would I get a new job if I can’t get out of Faerie?”
“The Princeling would certainly employ you.”
I choked out a laugh. “Yeah, he seems like a great boss.” I paused, tried to bite down the next words. Instead, I bit my tongue, and they came out with even greater fury. “I guess it’d be very useful to have someone on the team who can lie. What’s the monthly kidnapping quota?”
The room exploded into gray. She shot out of her seat so fast the acorn chair spun into the side of my bed and cracked in half.
“You do not speak of him this way,” she intoned in a dark voice I’d never heard from her before.
I stood as well, my knees knocking against the back of my chair. I glanced at the bed, where Doctor Kitten had leapt to his feet, back arched in shock.
Another wave of rage swept through me, so potent I was shaking. I could feel my eyes burning with anger and hopelessness. “Your liege has ruined my life, lady. He trapped me here, and you helped. If I lose this job, he won’t help me leave Faerie. I will never be able to do human things. I will not marry or have children. If I lose this job, I will lose mylife. My friends and family will forget me as I rot away in silence and in isolation and in misery, and all because of your liege, who decided to make me a poster child for happy human-faerie relations. So if it pleases you, get out of my bedroom.”
She ground her teeth audibly, clenched her fists. I braced for a blow. Instead, she spun so her hair hit me in the face, and swept out of the room faster than my mortal eye could follow. She’d left her weird angry gray magic tendrils behind, and they convulsed in time to a rhythm I could not hear.
I sank back into my chair, staring at Doctor Kitten.
But I didn’t have time to cry. I opened my email again to find an exchange between Jeff and Kayla, wherein Kayla had emailed Jeff a table that I could tell from four seconds’ review was vastly incorrect, with the sentencePlease find attached the work Miri and I have done so far!
I was sure she was trying to cover for me. I wanted to puke.
Sure enough, my phone rang. I picked up.
“Hello?”
“Miri, it’s Jeff,” he said, like a man who hasn’t discovered caller ID yet.
“Hi, Jeff,” I said.
