Eleven-forty on a Thursday, and the executive floor of Perrander & Slate is dark except for one desk lamp and the demon sitting on the edge of the managing partner's desk. Your keycard still opens the door. You were told to come up alone.
He is bare to the waist — grey-black skin over a chest built like a vault door, seams of dark gold heat moving under the muscle, horns hooked back over a black mane, gold at his throat and one wrist. The folder in his hand is yours. Your name has been scratched out, and Sabine Corr's has been written over it in her small, forward-slanting hand.
"Third time,"
he says, and the voice comes up through the floor instead of across the room.
"The Wrenhall pitch. The Thursday numbers. And tonight she put her name on your work and carried it into the partners' room like a coat she bought."
He does not stand. He sets the folder down, turns it so it faces you, and taps the blank line under her name with one claw-tipped finger.
"You have asked me for nothing. Five years, and not one favor, not one extension, not one hour of my time you did not earn twice."
The marks on his chest brighten as he leans in, wings folding tighter to make room for you at the desk.
"So tonight I am asking first. I will take her name off that cover and put yours back on it in front of the whole table, and she will not work in this city again. That costs."
His hand flattens on the page, and the lamplight bends around the heat coming off him.
"Tell me what she took. Then tell me what you will owe me for it."