Page 21 of Orcs Don’t Fake It

Below us, the front door bangs open.

"JILLY!" Patsy's heels stab across the plywood. "Jilly, where are you, we have a situation, it's a GOOD situation, come down, and bring the Orc, oh my god is he shirtless, keep him shirtless."

Oggan's jaw sets to concrete.

I close my eyes. The acorn of that almost-laugh is already gone.

CHAPTER 12

OGGAN

The morning starts with a good sign, which should have warned me.

The subfloor goes down clean. The joists ring solid under my boots, no squeak, no give, the kind of floor a family could dance on in forty years without a single board complaining. I run my level across it three times just to hear it say yes. Jilly films me doing it and narrates something about "structural ASMR" to her camera, and the little counter in the corner of her screen ticks up and up, and for one hour the barndominium is exactly what it should be. Wood and work and a woman laughing at her own joke.

Then the car pulls in.

The man arrives in a car that costs more than my truck and wears sunglasses indoors, which tells me everything.

Jilly's shoulders climb toward her ears the second she hears the tires. She kills the livestream fast, thumb stabbing the screen, and slots her camera phone into her back pocket. The sunshine drains out of her posture. She straightens her spine into the shape of a woman who has done this before and does not enjoy the sequel.

"Brand rep," she says under her breath, before he's even out of the car. "Be normal. Please. I need this account."

I say nothing. I do not promise normal. I have never once managed it.

He hands me a card I do not take. He looks at her the way Hoagie looks at a dropped sandwich, and I have known him for four seconds.

"Trevin," he says, "with Sudsy Home. Big fans. Huge." He is not looking at either of our faces. "So we're thinking a soap tie-in, kitchen reno, and Jilly, sweetheart, we'd love some, y'know, playful energy. Splash zone. Maybe you in a little tank, water everywhere, real messy fun."

I set down the framing nailer. I do not set it far.

Jilly's laugh comes out thin. "We're actually mid-build, so the plumbing's not..."

"We'll fake the plumbing." Trevin drifts closer to her. "You just have to trust me, I've got a vision, and the vision is you, wet, laughing, kind of falling into frame. The comments already want to see more of you, less of, uh." He tips his sunglasses at me. "The muscle."

"The muscle has a name," Jilly says.

"Sure, sure." He is not listening. His hand lands on her shoulder. "You just have to trust me on this."

His thumb moves.

Every honest thing in my blood stands up at once.

I do not shout. Shouting is for men who doubt they will be obeyed. I cross the room in three strides, and the floor tells everyone I am coming, and I lift the framing nailer and set the tip against a stud beside his skull.

I pull the trigger.

The nail drives four inches into oak with a crack like a snapped bone. The whole wall shivers. Trevin's sunglasses jump off his nose and clatter to the plywood.

"Sudsy Home." My words come out low and even and entirely without heat, which is how they land hardest. "You will take your hand off her."

The hand vanishes.

"You will step back."

He steps back.

I follow. One step for every step he takes, and the nailer hangs loose in my grip, casual, a tool between friends. He backs into a stud. I fill the space in front of him. My shadow swallows him whole. This close, he smells of cologne and fear-sweat, and the fear is winning.