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“If you boys are ever interested in linking up with a familiar, I could give you a couple references. Good people. Hardworking folk. Only if you’re keen, of course.”

Morrow politely declined. I said nothing, unsure of how to explain that I wasn’t worried about contracting my own familiar.

I was far more concerned about becoming one for a goddess.

CHAPTER 9

When it came time to pay the bill, Scrimshaw expeditiously vanished in a horrible puff of brimstone-scented smoke. No harm done since that was the deal, of course, but my eyes still bulged when I saw just how much our banquet had cost.

Morrow was sweating bullets as he signed the receipt. Our hostess was flushed, exhilarated. Our waiter was probably somewhere in the back, getting some well-deserved rest on an overturned plastic crate. Thank god for the Occultech company card.

We would have left with leftovers if Scrimshaw had actually left any. No wonder our hostess looked so flustered. It was physically impossible for the two of us to have put away so much food. Briefly I wondered if Scrimshaw’s belly was linked to its own pocket dimension. Seriously, you never know.

But Morrow wasn’t quite ready to call it a night.

“Post-mortem cocktails,” he said, stopping me from heading straight through the lobby, nodding toward the lounge. “We spent a small fortune on our small contact. What’s another couple drinks courtesy of the corpo?”

The jazz band had retired for the evening, the live music replaced by the stylish, soothing beats of electronic lounge music.

“Over there, maybe,” Morrow said.

He guided me toward the table by the small of my back, definitely not beating the date-night allegations. His touch was electric, even with layers of clothing between his fingers and my skin. He was handling me so delicately. This was a nice change, except that this sort of setup normally led to drinks, followed by more drinks, then a nightcap at someone’s place, then hot, sweaty sex. I tried not to let the most likely probability of us ending the night at ‘more drinks’ sour my mood.

A very sleekly dressed server came to take our orders, wearing a long-sleeved black gown in a heavy fabric that rustled with her every step. Morrow placed my drink order on my behalf, a white Russian. You know, something an actual romantic partner would do, like we were boyfriends on an actual date or something.

He leaned back into his seat and crossed his legs, watching me over the lenses of his nonexistent glasses. His posture was so confident, so cocky, and for what? I flushed under his gaze. It wasn’t fair how much this awful man flaunted his hotness in my face.

I coughed into my fist, unable to take it anymore, then shifted gears. “So was tonight worth it, you think? I mean, Scrimshaw seems like a nice guy, but I don’t know if we really learned all that much from him.”

Morrow shook his head. “It’s more the stuff in between the lines that helped fill some of the blanks for me, if that makes sense. I still think it was a night well spent. That stuff he said toward the end about figuring out the faction behind Happy, Inc.? That was valuable. Something for us to look into, for sure.”

He leaned forward in his seat, uncrossing his legs, folding his hands on the table. “Besides, we had a nice dinner, didn’t we? And it was sort of fun, getting to spend time with you outside of work for a change.”

“Getting to,” he said, as opposed to “having to,” which was something Morrow might have said about me at the start of our working relationship. Something tingled at the base of my spine, but I steeled myself again. He just meant that it was good how we were getting this opportunity to connect as partners. That was as important as getting our ducks in a row in a professional sense, wasn’t it? Understanding each other on a deeper level in our personal lives could only translate to advantages on the field and in battle.

And then I remembered something Director Sakamoto had said the first time Morrow and I sat down for a meal together. Something about how Spartan warriors bonded with their peers for the express purpose of excelling in battle. Said quality time commonly involved raunchy activities, too. I licked my lips, throat parched, praying our drinks would show up before I said or did something too embarrassing.

“Sure,” I said. “Getting to spend time with you is, you know. It’s great, too. I’m sure partners do it all the time. Um, corpo partners, I mean, field agents and mercs. I can totally imagine Angelica and Houston hanging out for cocktails together.”

And that was a bald-faced lie. As Morrow and I had both learned, Houston liked his beers and bars, gay or otherwise. Angelica looked like she wouldn’t drink anything short of the finest champagne. They worked extremely well together on the field, but I had my doubts about how much time they spent with each other outside work.

Morrow chuckled. “That’s not exactly what I meant and I think you know that. Actually, I was going to propose that we should make even more of an effort beyond the workplace. Team-building exercises, but just for our team of two.”

I gulped. He leaned even farther over the table. Morrow wasn’t that much taller than me — in fact, if anyone asked, I made sure everyone in a one-mile radius knew that we were both six feet flat. Even so, from where I was sitting, he seemed to loom over me. This man could pick me up and fold me like a card table.

“Exercises, huh?” I breathed.

“Sure,” Morrow said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth. “I had a few ideas in mind.”

Relax, Echo, I thought. Morrow was just being his weirdly flirtatious self again, though the most observant and hopeful parts of me couldn’t deny that he’d turned up the charm more than a few notches. He was just messing around like always, right? Trying to keep things light, as he liked to put it?

Which felt kind of inappropriate, to be honest, unless he was planning to put his dick inside me at some point. I sat there with a storm brewing inside me, confused, angry, and horny all at once. I bit my tongue, knowing I’d regret anything I said.

And then the sound of rustling cloth knocked me out of the warm, gooey, filthy place my mind had traveled to. Oh, good, our well-dressed waitress and her form-fitting dress was back. I looked up, grateful that this wonderful woman had come to pull me out of the fire.

Only to find myself looking up, then farther up, until I met the eyes of the exceptionally tall woman who was dwarfing me.

“Oh,” I said. “Alexandra Thorpe.”