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SEE ME ASAP, one of them reads.

I haven’t taken my coat off yet.

It’s seven fifty-three in the morning, my coffee is still hot enough to burn my tongue, and somewhere between the elevator and my desk, I’ve acquired a miniature packet of candy corn that I don’t remember picking up. I turn it over in my hand, decide this is a problem for later and drop it into my purse.

My phone buzzes before I can sit down.

VERONICA

Lobby. Emergency

I stare at the message, then at Hell’s closed office door. I can hear faint murmurs from inside, and I can’t quite grasp if there’s another person in there or if she’s on speakerphone on some call that is not on her calendar.

ME

Define emergency

The response comes immediately.

VERONICA

Dani has information

ME

About?

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

VERONICA

Come downstairs

I should go into Hell’s office.

The sticky note is very clear about that, and Friday mornings are usually when she realizes all the things she intended to accomplish during the week have somehow failed to accomplish themselves. By nine, I’ll probably have three meetings to move, a deck to track down, and at least one person insisting Helena approved something she absolutely does not remember approving.

I look at the seven folders again.

Then at my phone.

ME

Five minutes

“Merryweather.” I hear my boss’s voice from her office, and quickly stand. So much for as soon as possible being open to interpretation.

“Good morning.”

Hell has already disappeared back inside by the time I pick up my coffee and follow her.

Her office looks exactly the way it always does: aggressively clean, despite the amount of work generated from inside it. Nothing on the enormous desk except her laptop, phone, and a legal pad covered in handwriting so small and precise that I’m convinced she could fit the entire federal tax code onto a single sheet of paper.

She doesn’t look up when I come in.

“Close the door.”

I do.