Chapter 38 Mob Habits.

Chapter 38: 38 Mob Habits.

The following day, I drove back to Razer’s building.

I figured they were expecting me, because the moment I reached Lacey’s floor, Julia stood up and ushered me into the office.

Almost nothing had changed. The only differences were the missing exercise bike and the new punching bag, which a sports-bra-clad Lacey was enthusiastically beating the shit out of.

The solid impacts of her padded fists against the bag rang through the otherwise impeccably professional office.

She was definitely working up a sweat, and I realized I’d instinctively begun mobilizing my armour.

I immediately pulled it back before she could notice, though I didn’t retract it completely.

You never know.

"Miles!" she said between thudding blows. "Just the man... I wanted to see!"

"Yeah, good," I said. "So, about the job—"

"Shitshow!" she said with another thud on the bag for emphasis. "Absolute mess. But you and Glacia managed to pull out of there alright. Mysteria though didn’t get... a chance... to shine!"

"Right," I said. "I was thinking about that, and—"

"Stop."

"What?"

"Thinking about it. Ha!" She delivered another crushing blow to the punching back, the chain ringing as the sack swayed back and forth.

Lacey straightened with a deep breath, brushing her sweat-dampened hair away and resting her hands on her hips.

"There we go. Now, the job."

"Right," I said cautiously. Something was definitely going on here... "Well, obviously it didn’t go as planned. But I had a few ideas for how we might set up a follow up encounter to get Glacia and Mysteria against one another."

"That won’t be necessary."

Her sudden response hit me like one of the Masked Marauder’s flash grenades. "It won’t?"

"No," she said, walking across the office.

She moved behind the desk and placed her hands on its surface, fingers forming the classic peak of a schemer, her mirrored glasses fixed on me over them. "It won’t be. We’ve decided on an alternative model going forward."

"Alternative model?"

"Yes. Musical Magical Girls—"

I internally cringed. "What the fuck?"

"We’ve been working through our stable and have found several who would make a perfect accompaniment to Mysteria. Colour coordinated outfits, musical scenes, dances, big production values.

Mysteria is a little annoyed, of course, as she will now be an ensemble rather than on her own, but the sexual tension we can milk from this alone will more than cover our losses.

Perhaps in a few years we’ll revisit a solo, based on audience metrics, and we might have a chance to spin her off."

"Right, okay," I said. "And where does Glacia fit into this?"

"She doesn’t. We’ve let her go. Now—"

I brought my palm down against the desk, the impact reverberating through the otherwise silent office.

Silence immediately swallowed the room.

I’d surprised myself with that as much as I’d startled her, but when Lacey slowly raised her head to look at me, her expression impossible to read, I knew I couldn’t simply let the matter drop.

"Why?" I demanded. "Glacia has some real chops here. Her powerset is potent, she’s got the skills, the talent, and the voice to be a damn good villainess. Did you hear her speech before shit went down in that museum? Our girl could give a Disney villain a run for their money on sheer excess dramaticism alone! Why drop her?"

Lacey looked at me with a smile that never quite reached her eyes. "Take your hands. Off my desk."

I met her stare for several seconds before finally removing them.

It was like someone had thrown open the doors of a burning building; the pressure and heat seemed to drain from the room all at once.

But they hadn’t really vanished, and they were probably going to scorch some poor bastard who happened to cross Lacey over the next few hours.

I’d hate to be the intern responsible for bringing her coffee today.

For now, though, Lacey merely settled back into her chair, her fingers steepling once again in that thoughtful manner of hers.

"I’m afraid that is out of our hands. Naturally, we regret having wasted your time with Glacia, and I want to assure you that though the contract is broken, Razer will, naturally, follow through on our end of the agreement and transfer the money to your account. As agreed. And," she added with a benign smile, "should you, of course, be interested in another contract, we’d be more than happy to explore the potential. Perhaps even a relationship with some of our new group? Such drama would be well worth the price."

She was attempting to distract me.

Luring me with the promise of a larger paycheck, while simultaneously getting her hooks further into me and putting distance between Glacia and me.

What was she really after?

I watched Lacey carefully, but extracting information from her was about as easy as cracking a safe with a q-tip.

"And what about Glacia?" I said.

"As I said," Lacey said. "She is no longer associated with Razer. What she does is not my concern."

That settled it.

Lacey wasn’t going to offer me anything else, and pushing her further wouldn’t accomplish anything. "I’ll think about it," I said.

"Excellent. Looking forward to working with you again," Lacey said, maintaining that ever-present smile of professional neutrality.

I left her office, forcing myself to keep my anger under control and only partially succeeding.

I had to use the stairs to reach the ground floor because the metal surrounding me was vibrating so violently from my anger that I’d probably have wrecked the elevator.

Sure, I didn’t owe Glacia anything.

There was no real reason for me to continue pursuing this and potentially put myself in harm’s way, but something about it felt wrong.

Walking away from her like this didn’t sit well with me.

Especially after all the work we’d put into preparing her, only for Lacey to discard her?

No.

There was something here that wasn’t adding up.

I climbed back into my car and pulled out my phone.

The screen trembled from the magnetic energy I was giving off, but after I got it under control and the display stopped flickering, my thumb quickly typed out a message to Glacia.

Want to talk about what comes next. When can we meet?

I tossed the phone aside and started the engine, driving home.

Hopefully she’d see my message soon.

It wasn’t right to throw her out after everything that had happened at the museum.

Keeping those streeters out had been Lacey’s responsibility, and despite them getting inside, we’d still managed to deal with them effectively.

Mysteria failing to rise to the occasion wasn’t on us.

Sure, I’d gotten paid, but Glacia had everything needed to make one hell of a villain, and now she’d had that opportunity ripped away from her.

I hated it, and even after returning to my building and making my way upstairs, that feeling hadn’t gone anywhere.

But what could I do?

What could I do...

Someone was inside my apartment.

I knew it the instant the tip of my key touched the lock.

There was no obvious evidence.

The strip of tape I’d left on the doorframe remained undisturbed, and the lock showed no signs of being tampered with, but that didn’t prove anything.

When powers were involved, there was no practical way to secure every possible entrance and exit to your home unless you turned the entire building into a fortress, so I’d never bothered with some expensive high-tech security setup.

But after being in this business for as long as I had, my instincts had been sharpened to a razor’s edge.

And every single one of them was screaming that something dangerous waited on the other side of the door.

I extended my powers into the apartment, attempting to sense exactly what the intruder was.

The metal inside was familiar. There was metal everywhere in my place, which made things considerably safer when I could sense it—what could I say, mob habits die hard.