I told her that clearly and without room for interpretation, because I’ve been in those tunnels twice now, and I know what they demand. I’m not going back with anything less.
She said she had one option.
“Before he arrives,” Yasmin says, “there are some things you should understand.”
“About this bodyguard.”
“Yes.” She folds her hands on top of the folder. “He has never taken a female client before.”
I look at her. “Why not?”
“He is very old.” She says it carefully, like she’s testing the weight of each word. “His values were formed in another era. Literally, not figuratively. He operates under a personal code that has governed him for centuries, and that code is traditional. He comes from a time when men and women had very fixed roles, and he hasn’t revised that position.”
“But he’s agreed to this.”
“He has.”
“Is he going to be a problem?”
She doesn’t answer immediately, and in that pause, I read everything she isn’t saying. She cares about this one. It’s in the tension at the corner of her mouth, the way her hands press slightly flatter against the folder. Yasmin Bayard is professionally neutral about everything and everyone, except whoever is about to walk through the door of this conference room.
“He will complete the assignment,” she says. “His record is without exception. He has never failed a protection detail.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He will be professional. What he feels about the arrangement, he keeps to himself. I can promise you that.”
I let it go.
“What species is he? You haven’t said.”
Something crosses her face. It might be pride.
“We call them steel seraphim.”
I turn the words over. Steel. Seraphim.
“I’m not familiar with that.”
“Most people aren’t. There are only twelve in existence. He can explain more than I can, if you ask him.”
I want to ask more. I don’t know where to start, so I don’t start anywhere. I sit with it.
Yasmin refills her coffee and I decline when she offers, because my hands are already restless. And I’ve had this coughfor ten days that won’t leave, a cold that’s been dragging and testing my patience. I pull my sleeves down over my wrists and look at the window. The street below is gray and ordinary.
My mom doesn’t know I’m here. She thinks I’m still coordinating with the MSA remotely, buying time, that I haven’t committed to a third attempt yet.
Yasmin slides a document across the table and walks me through it, clause by clause. The contract covers the assignment parameters, what Monster Security Agency guarantees and what it doesn’t. She points to a section near the bottom and tells me that given the nature of the location and the absence of any communication possibilities underground, the agency cannot be held responsible for outcomes inside the tunnel system itself.
I sign where she indicates without arguing, because I already knew this. The only person responsible for what happens in those tunnels has always been me.
Yasmin is mid-sentence on the final clause when she stops.
Her eyes go to the door.
There’s a shift in the air that raises the hair on my nape. I turn in my chair.
The door opens.
