Page 61 of Great Service from Top to Bottom

She thrust the phone up, pointing its multiple lenses at me.

“You’ll what, Adam Vex?” she asked.

I shoved my hands back into my pockets. “Are you filming?”

“Even better. Live streaming.”

Oh dear. I gulped.

“I heard you’re not fond of cameras.” Agatha beamed. “Looks as though that rumor is true.”

Gideon Cain must have told her, but how could he know that? “I don’t mind cameras.” I smiled, and willed my face to appear sweet and innocent. “Can we please have our Tom Collins, that you stole from us, back now?”

“Of course, but you’ll be leaving Zodiac here as payment. As I said, a fair trade.”

“Which one of us is holding a big fucking sword?” Zodiac asked, then raised Shareen, the mean looking scimitar. “Hand over Tom or lose your fake fae glamored head.”

“Now, now, Zodiac. That sounded like a threat in front of a live audience? Haven’t you already been arrested for multiple murders? How many of your fans will stick around when they see the real you?”

Zee pinched his lips together and visibly deflated. He needed social media to feed.

With a camera pointed at me, my options for how to deal with Agatha had just been dramatically reduced. “Look, let’s be clear. You can’t have Zee for your illegal cosmetics business like he’s a box of body parts. That’s never going to happen.”

“Then whatever your Tom Collins unit knows will soon find its way into Mr. Cain’s hands.”

I ambled around the side of the table, joining Agatha. She still had the camera trained on me, gleefully recording, but we were just talking, like normal people talked. Nothing untoward was happening, or would happen . . . while the camera was on me.

“Zee, put the sword down?” I suggested.

“What? Not while Tinks wants my dick.” He shivered all over. “I’m gonna need another day off after this.”

I inched closer, and Agatha backed up, keeping her distance. “It’s alright, Zee. We’re just going to talk,” I said. “No harm ever came from talking. Isn’t that right, Agatha?”

“But this fae wants my cock for face creams, Adam. Naw, imma hold Shareen.”

“Alright, that’s okay, you can keep hold of the sword. Can’t he, Agatha? Nobody is going to hurt anyone. All our body parts will stay attached. We’re going to talk and figure this out like civilized creatures.”

“You have my terms.” She eyed us warily, sensing we were trying to trick her, but she was more concerned with Zee than what I—an unarmed human—was doing. Now she’d backed up some, I spotted Tom’s little black drive on a shelf under the lab table. The small device wouldn’t do much, until it was plugged in. But to my left, a computer hummed. I had no idea how to use it, but I did know that when a drive such as Tom’s was plugged in, it became connected to a power source. And Tom needed power.

I also knew our Tom Collins was no ordinary AI bartending unit. He shouldn’t have worked at all, but he had. More than that, he’d become part of our team. The SOS Hotel needed him, and he needed us.

This had to work.

“Oh no!” I gasped, and pointed behind Zee. “A frog!”

Zee whirled, sword up, wings splayed, tail lashing. Just like when he’d poofed into the kitchen, his generous dimensions displaced everything around him. Test tubes went flying, his tail toppled a canister of something gloopy, and his right wing smacked Agatha in the face. She yelped, dropped her phone, and as she scrabbled on the floor for it, I grabbed Tom’s stick and shoved it into the laptop’s side socket.

Tom would know exactly what to do. He always did.

“Where’s the frog?” Zee growled.

“Oh uh, sorry, must have just been a shadow.”

The lab’s bright lights flickered. The laptop whirred, sounding like a swarm of angry hornets.

“Time to leave, Adam Vex!” Agatha demanded, fumbling with her phone.

Something behind us sparked as the building’s power surged. Half the lab went dark, leaving just a few spotlights illuminating the long table’s array of shiny equipment from above.