Page 10 of A Light in the Dark
I functioned fine on twelve hours of sleep a day separated into two six hour sessions. However, only having four free hours a day, excluding transit time to and from work, did a number on my mental health.
This year, if at all possible, I would not be working two jobs.
I needed to live for me for a change, and if I did abandon Stonecreek for Moonriver, I’d likely make a decent profit on my home. The changes I made would last—and people in the city-state understood the importance of protection during the floods.
It was the transient population, including the refugees, that were at the highest risk.
The thought that the life of every refugee came with a price tag, the one my city-state could profit from, sickened me.
“I’ll give you a call to set up the day and time. Maybe taking someone with me means I escape with a sane number of flowers this year.”
Having seen his garden and his enjoyment of flowers, albeit from a distance, I wished him the best of luck with that. “We shall see, Joel, but I make no promises. Maybe I’ll indulge in some frivolous spending for a change and get some flowers for my yard.”
My frugal nature would cry, but I could use a few luxuries that served no purpose other than to be beautiful, and if I grew them in a container, they could come with me if I left.
“That way leads to darkness, a crying wallet, but a prettyyard,” he warned me. “That’s how it always begins, with one plant at the garden store. When you end up surrounded with flowers, know that I warned you.”
I laughed. “I shall do my best to be wary against this most dangerous enemy, the pretty flower.”
FIVE
On a good day, my job sucked.
Unlike most ofthe other internal employees at the bookkeeping firm I worked for, I dressed for the job I wanted rather than the one I had. I’d told Joel the truth about my job as a paper pusher. My status as a transient, even though I’d been born in the city-state, had limited me to a role where I would never run into any of the firm’s clients, mostly larger businesses that wanted to cut corners and overhead by outsourcing their bookkeeping.
Every sheet of paper to enter our doors went through me first. I evaluated every invoice, every file, and every scrap of information to be sent to us, making certain everything went into its appropriate place. Whenever I found something questionable, it went to our legal department for review. If an invoice had gone unpaid, it went to the accountants to follow up with the originating company. While I knew nothing about payroll, the logs of who had been paid whatand when fell to me, and the management expected me to ferret out any issues.
On a good day, my job sucked.
When I had been hired, for a janitorial position, I’d told them higher education had been on my list of things to do, but the cost had been beyond my grasp. I’d chosen to be a homeowner in Stonecreek instead of going through the hurdles of college or university.
When the city-state issued an education grant, they let the recipients decide how the money was used. I’d chosen buying my home, as I’d hoped I would be able to afford my education if I didn’t have to pay rent or a mortgage.
I’d lasted three whole weeks as a janitor before I’d been given a stack of papers and asked to help them clean things up. I still questioned how I’d gone from sweeping and vacuuming floors to digging my hands into every element of the firm’s work. But the move from janitor to paper pusher had come with a hefty raise, good benefits, and stable hours. My boss expected me to work, which I did, but I even got an hour of paid time for lunch, and nobody cared if I read a book in the break room.
My boss’s boss, Mrs. Lousrin, had praised me for my organizational skills, and after six months of making sure our bookkeepers could do their jobs efficiently, I’d been granted a second raise, one that put me at making almost double what a janitor made.
The math had worked out in my favor, and so I’d worked hard to keep my position, developing a severe case of perfectionism.
And so, dressed in a blazer with a silk top and a knee-length pencil skirt, I conquered the mountain of paperwork that had accumulated with the break from the floods. Life had gone on without any of us, and judging from the dates on the letterheads, our clients had started their work on Friday and had busted ass through the weekend.
Our clients reported ten fatalities from the floods, and rather than just put the papers aside and send them over to the appropriate contact within the firm, I took the time to read the overviews. When available, the notices included how the person had died. Six of the victims had been refugees, two had been transients from the outskirts of the city-state, like me, and the remaining two had been born in Stonecreek.
Those two had gotten unlucky, a husband and wife living at the very bottom of the hill.
The floods had eaten away at their foundations over the years, and the entirety of their home had collapsed. Their bodies hadn’t been recovered, and it was doubtful anyone would find them once the waters finished receding from the lakes at the bottom.
The transients had shared a similar fate, although their homes hadn’t flooded out completely. Their bodies had been recovered in one of the nets thrown out after the worst of the debris had passed through.
They’d held on long enough for the nets to have been raised into position.
I’d moved into Stonecreek properafterunderstanding the risks, having my foundations shored with a mix of magic and technology, and had picked a street with no known history of washouts. I wanted to live, and I’d been willing to drain my bank account dry securing my safety.
From top to bottom, I’d gotten lucky. I had an employer who had seen my worth despite my lack of higher education, one who had been willing to train me on the job and gave me a competitive salary for the work I did. I wouldn’t move up anywhere, but I had a role in an environment I liked.
I just dressed for the jobs I could never hold in Stonecreek.
The notes on the refugees claimed general misfortune at having been caught in the flood waters. I noted that, like Gabriella, they had resided near the top of the hill. While under a non-disclosure agreement, nothing within it barred me from reporting some of the details, like the deaths of six refugees, to the Hunters. The phone burned a hole in my purse, but I’d made the decision I would only use it when in the relative safety of home.
