Page 131 of The Shade of Things
“Do you believe Tatiana about Sadie?”
“Oh. Yes, okay. I believe her.”
“Are we in agreement on your continuing employment?” Tatiana held out her hand.
I didn’t want to type up a new résumé and look for another corporate gig and explain why I’d left the law firm. I thinned my lips. Perhaps because it was more fun doing this. And I might have missed the ornery old coot.
There was just one thing to iron out. No, two.
“Tell me the deal between you and Zev. Who did he let live?” Had he meant Laurent?
“You don’t get all my secrets, Miriam. In or out?”
“I want to be an equal partner with you,” I said. “No more minion status.”
Tatiana laughed. “Get over yourself.”
“Wait.” Emmett’s hand shot up. “I want that too.”
“Traitor,” she sniffed.
“Emmett too,” I said. “That’s the condition. Cassin, Feldman, and Associates.”
Emmett stomped his foot. “What the hell? You’re treating me like the Gilligan’s Island theme song where the Professor and Mary Ann got lumped together as ‘the rest.’”
“I have seniority and you don’t have a last name,” I said. “Well?”
Tatiana glared at me. She lifted a chair and slammed it down. “This isn’t a union shop. I run a dictatorship.”
My shoulders slumped, but before I could retort, she jabbed a finger at me.
“I was very happy with my high-handed ways, but you had to come in and screw everything up.” She took off her glasses and rubbed the lenses with a napkin, not meeting my eyes. “You hurt me.”
“I know,” I said softly. “You hurt me too.”
She put her glasses back on. “Cassin and Associates doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Sucker!” Emmett fired finger guns at me. “You’re ‘the rest’ too.”
I could live with that. “We’ll have more say in things?”
“You already bulldoze your opinion into every aspect of the business. What’s left?”
Laurent snickered, and while I didn’t smack him, my look promised retribution later.
“Emmett and I aren’t Ohrists like you, and I didn’t grow up accepted by the magic community. I want you to remember that we have important and valid viewpoints.”
The golem puffed out his chest. “Yeah, what she said.”
“Fine.” Tatiana held up a hand. “But it’s still my reputation on the line. Maybe, at some point, in the very far future you might make partner. Like when I’m dead.”
I held up a finger. “We also want business cards.”
Tatiana’s eyes narrowed. “Plain card stock and I’m not paying for a fancy logo.”
I crushed her in a hug because she’d hate it. “Mazel tov! You’ve got yourself an associate.”
“Two of them.” Emmett wrapped his arms around both of us, squeezing just as tightly.
