Page 15 of Tusks And Conditions

"He's with me," I mutter, and I don't elaborate.

"Lin."

Gerald Whitfield III stands at the entrance to the executive corridor with a paper coffee cup in one hand and an expression on his face that I have seen him deploy against underperforming junior associates right before he reassigns their clients and restructures their desks. He is five foot nine, prematurely grey at the temples in a way he clearly believes looks distinguished, and possessed of the kind of brittle, manicured authority that comes from inheriting a firm rather than building one. His gaze moves from me to Jagger, who sits in the lobby chair like a dark mountain range that has inconveniently erupted in a golf course, and then back to me with a sharpness that makes my blood go cold.

"My office," he says. "Now."

I follow him down the corridor, my heels clicking against marble in a rhythm that matches my pulse. His office is glass-walled and immaculate, decorated with framed diplomas and a single, aggressively modern sculpture that cost more than my annual salary. He doesn't sit. He stands behind his desk with his arms crossed, and he waits until I've closed the door before he speaks.

"What the hell is that in my lobby, Lin?"

"He's... a personal matter, Mr. Whitfield. A temporary security concern. He'll remain in the lobby and won't disrupt..."

"That," Whitfield says, jabbing his coffee cup toward the glass wall through which Jagger is clearly visible, an immovable slab of grey skin and dark leather in a sea of polished marble, "is a monster sitting in the reception area of a firm that manages portfolios for the Hargrove family, the Dunbar trust, and the city comptroller. Do you have any idea what our clients will think if they walk in and see that?"

The word monster lands between us like a slap. My fingers tighten on the strap of my laptop bag.

"He's an Orc, Mr. Whitfield. And he's legally..."

"I don't care what he is legally. I care what he looks like, and he looks like the kind of thing our clients hire security to keep out of buildings like this. You have been a satisfactory associate, Lin. Not exceptional, but adequate. Do not test the limits of that adequacy by turning my lobby into a supernatural halfway house." He leans forward, and the overhead light catches the sharp edges of his jaw in a way that makes him look exactly like what he is as a small man wielding borrowed power. "Get rid of it by lunch, or start cleaning out your desk."

CHAPTER 8

JAGGER

The glass walls of this office don't do much to muffle sound, and the word monster travels through them with perfect clarity. I hear it from the lobby chair, which creaks beneath me every time I shift my weight. The receptionist with the frozen expression pretends to study her computer screen. The grey-haired man in the expensive suit leans across his desk and jabs his coffee cup at Sabine like it's a weapon, and something old and hot uncurls behind my ribs, something that predates language and operates entirely in the register of bared teeth and broken bone.

I don't move. Not yet.

Sabine's posture is rigid. I can read the tension in her shoulders from fifty feet away, the way she holds herself perfectly still the way prey animals do when they are trying to convince a predator they aren't worth the effort. She isn't prey. She's the sharpest person I've met in years. But this man clearly doesn't see that, and the thing behind my ribs uncurls a little further, and the runes along my forearms pulse with a faint heat that makes Claire the receptionist scoot her rolling chair three inches to the left.

I stand up. The lobby chair exhales with relief.

The walk from reception to the executive corridor takes me eight steps. I don't knock on the glass door. I open it, and the entire frame rattles in a way that is not deliberate but that I don't regret, and I duck my head to clear the threshold and step inside. The office immediately feels smaller. The aggressive modern sculpture on the shelf behind the desk, some kind of twisted chrome thing that probably cost more than my entire weapons collection, comes up to about my elbow. The grey-haired man stops talking mid-sentence and stares up at me, and the blood drains from his face in a slow, satisfying tide that starts at his hairline and works its way down to his collar.

"Mr. Whitfield," I say. I have learned over the years that quiet is far more effective than loud, because loud tells people you are angry, and quiet tells people you are in control of your anger, which is considerably worse.

"This is a private meeting. You need to leave, or I will call security."

"Go ahead." I let the door close behind me. The latch clicks with a soft, final sound. "While you're at it, you should probably call your legal department, too. You'll want them on standby."

"Excuse me?"

I reach into the inner pocket of my leather vest, and Whitfield flinches. Hard. The kind of flinch that moves his entire body backward and makes his coffee slosh over the rim of his paper cup and onto his pristine desk blotter. I pull out a small, battered notebook that I keep secured with a leather strap, the one I use to track case law and statute references that are relevant to my line of work, and I flip it open to a page I bookmarked months ago with a torn receipt from a weapons dealer in the Narrows.

"Section 14, Subsection C of the Interspecies Cohabitation Protection Act, enacted three years ago after the Thornwall v. Derrickson Employment Board ruling. Are you familiar with it?"

Whitfield's mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

"I'll summarize. Any employer who threatens termination, demotion, or punitive action against an employee solely on the basis of that employee's legally recognized bond with a non-human partner is in violation of federal interspecies discrimination law. The penalties are substantial. We're talking six figures in personal liability for the supervising manager, not the firm. You, individually." I turn a page in my notebook, even though I have the relevant numbers memorized, because the act of casually flipping through documentation while a man sweats through his shirt is a performance I have refined over dozens of bounty negotiations. "The Thornwall case set the precedent. The judge awarded two hundred and forty thousand in damages, plus legal fees, plus a public compliance audit that kept the firm's name in the papers for eleven months. Their client list dropped by thirty percent."

"That's... you can't just..."

"I can. Sabine Lin is my legally recognized mate under DMI Bond Registry filing number 4471-B. The bond is documented, stamped, and magically sealed. I have a copy of the certificate in my other pocket, if you'd like to see it." I don't reach for it. I let the offer sit, heavy and patient. "If you fire her, or demote her, or restructure her role, or make her working conditions intolerable in any way that a reasonable tribunal might interpret as retaliation for her bonded status, I will file a Section 14 complaint before the end of the business day. I know the forms. I fill out a lot of government paperwork in my line of work."

Sabine stands slightly behind me and to my left, and she looks at the side of my face. I don't look at her. I keep my eyes on Whitfield, because eye contact is a currency in moments like these, and I am not about to break the exchange.

"Furthermore," I continue, and I close the notebook with a soft snap and tuck it back into my vest, "I want to make something clear about the word you used a moment ago. The one that carried through your glass walls." I take a single step closer to his desk. Just one. But one step from me covers a lot of ground, and Whitfield's lower back hits his credenza. "My hearing is excellent, Mr. Whitfield. Significantly better than human standard. It's a species trait. Very useful in my profession." I let that land. I let him think about what my profession is. His eyes drop to the tusk piercings, the scarred knuckles, the faintly lighted lines of runic script that trace my forearms where I've rolled back my sleeves. "The Interspecies Dignity Amendment to Section 14 specifically addresses hostile language in the workplace directed at bonded partners. That's a separate filing. A separate penalty. A separate audit."