They arranged themselves around the table. Ava’s instincts, the ones that had kept her ancestors alive on the plains and in the forests and in the long dark nights before fire, told her she was looking at things that wore human shapes the way other people wore suits. Costumes. Conveniences.
A man who looked like he’d stepped out of a Germanic folk tale, with a beard like iron wool and eyes like chips of winter ice. He took up more space than his body accounted for.
Next to him, a thin man whose fingers were too long, whose joints bent at angles that suggested extra knuckles. He smiled at Ava with too many teeth and she felt her stomach drop.
A dark-skinned man swaying slightly, eyes half-closed, lips moving in silent rhythm. A woman in crimson who Ava couldn’t look at directly — her face kept sliding out of focus, too beautiful to process, like staring into a light. And standing apart from the rest, arms folded, a man with eyes so green they looked poisonous.
“Grimm,” said the bearded one, his voice like grinding stone.
“Malphas.” The word scraped against Ava’s eardrums. She resisted the urge to step back.
“Beleth.” He was already looking past her, humming something she couldn’t quite catch.
“Azrael.” That was all. But her pendant went cold.
“Lilith,” said the woman in crimson, her gaze sliding to Victor with something that looked like hunger. “Such a pleasure to meet Victor’s new… project.”
Grimm leaned forward. “What did you find in the Henderson documents, Ms. Feng?”
Ava straightened. Her hands had stopped trembling. Whatever these things were, she’d read their contracts. She understood their language. That had to count for something.
“Section 847, subsection J contains a soul-binding clause hidden in archaic Latin. It’s void under US law and, I assume, whatever other legal system you operate under. The transfer mechanism is flawed; employees can’t sign away something that belongs to someone else, and Henderson’s subsidiary structure creates a chain-of-custody problem. Whoever drafted this was clever, but they made at least three critical errors in the hierarchy of claims.”
Silence.
Then Victor laughed, dark, genuine, unexpected. Her chest tightened unexpectedly.
“I told you she was exactly what we needed.”
“Needed for what?” Ava asked.
Lilith’s smile stretched wider than it should. “For keeping, of course.”
The partners filed out. Grimm nodded to her as he passed, respect, or at least acknowledgment. Malphas’s too-long fingers brushed the air near her shoulder without quite touching. Beleth hummed something that stuck in her head like a half-remembered dream. Azrael looked at her with those green eyes and something behind her ribs went cold.
Only Victor remained, moving to the window.
“You’ll start with the Morrison account tomorrow. Derek will have the files ready.”
“Mr. Morningstar?” She didn’t move. “What kind of law firm is this?”
He turned. For a moment, his eyes caught the light strangely, too bright, too deep, like looking into a well that had no bottom.
“The kind that recognizes talent when we see it.” He moved closer. “The question, Ms. Feng, is what kind of lawyer are you?”
“The kind who reads every word of her employment contract.”
That almost-smile again. “I’m going to enjoy working with you. Welcome to Grimm, Malphas & Associates.”
He left.
Ava stood alone in Conference Room Seven, surrounded by documents that made her skin crawl and her grandmother’s voice echo in her memory.
It will protect you from hungry things.
She should leave. Find another firm. Forget any of this happened. Go back to the job hunt, the rejection letters, the slow drowning in debt. Go back to being ordinary.
But ordinary had never wanted her. She’d spent her whole life seeing things others missed, reading between lines others didn’t know existed, finding patterns in chaos that everyone else called coincidence. Her professors had called it talent. Her classmates had called it unsettling. Her grandmother had called it a gift.
