Hanging up, I looked at Lucy for answers.

“This one gives me a bad feeling,” he said, drumming his fingers on one knee. “Too smart for his own good, I’d say.”

When Lucifer came out with a statement like that, it was a good idea to listen. Unless he was trying to cheat someone, of course, in which case anything coming out of his mouth had to be treated with suspicion. But after sitting opposite him for the better part of a century, I felt I had an approximate idea of when those instances were, and this wasn’t one of them.

“Do you think he has an inside source?” I asked.

“Possibly. Eris is out of the question. It’s not impossible he could have worked it out on his own.”

I didn’t see what harm could come of it either way, and said so. What was he going to do, report me to my boss? Short of causing a major incident affecting the future of the company – and I was more than capable of threatening those without outside assistance – I had little to fear.

We were still speaking Mandarin, and Clara was looking between us in confusion.

Lucy shrugged. “He has a larger agenda, mark my words. Speaking of which, you were just about to tell me yours. Care to elaborate?”

A voice bellowing across the floor saved me from having to answer.

“Kidnapping a child is a new low even for you, Loki.”

Lucy threw up his hands in exasperation at the second interruption. I twisted my neck to see an imposing Greek woman glaring down at me. Themis, goddess of law and justice. In corporate terminology, Head of Compliance, which had funnily enough been a promotion for her. She was the one who’d insisted on the alphabetical seating. Beside her were two goons from Security, Durga and Quil.

“Really, after our illustrious history together, I would have thought you’d know me a bit better by now,” I said as they approached. “Hi, goons.”

“Hi,” said Durga, raising a hand before Quil slapped it down halfway. I tried my best not to smile.

Quil was a wiry man, all skin and muscle, intimidating looks only emphasised by his close-shaven head and ears studded with garnets all the way from the lobes to the peak of the helix.

Themis sniffed. “Take her back to where she belongs,” she ordered, nodding towards Clara, who was staring at the newcomers like they had two heads. Durga was currently in possession of four arms, even though one of them was occupied nursing a cup of coffee, so it was probably that. “Lucifer, you should be at your desk.”

Themis would have been better titled the goddess of missed opportunities. The nature of her power gave her the ability to enforce rulings, bargains and decisions, and if she’d been at all inclined to use it to its full potential, I would have rightly feared her. Hell, she’d effectively be running this place and doing a better job. Instead, she operated by some kind of ridiculous honour code, a system of petty warnings and incentives. Her obsession with structure and process gave her little room for flexibility. So tied up in monitoring hierarchies of authority, she destroyed her own chance at becoming the authority herself.

But it made her loyal, which was at the top of every list of job criteria the tyrant had ever written, so it guaranteed her a spot in the good books.

She was also one of the most boring people I’d ever met, to the extent it could have been a power – I honestly wasn’t sure. Also loud.

“I am at my desk,” Lucy said in a sour tone. “It’s literally three metres away.”

“Doing your job,” Themis specified.

“Make me.”

Themis pointed at him, and reality schismed for a split second. On the other side of the restructure, Lucy was seated in front of his computer, hands on the keyboard. He yanked them off again like the plastic was made of lava.

Clara had fallen to the carpet with a small thud, because of course Themis knew which chair belonged to who, and of course all office assets had to be in their correct place. I swore I could feel the last vestiges of joy being sucked out of the vicinity.

“For someone who decries kidnapping, you don’t seem to have a problem with forcible displacement as long as you’re the one doing it,” Lucy articulated. “Just a touch hypocritical.”

“You have four arms,” I heard Clara say softly from the floor.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Loki is exploiting her position of authority -”

I snorted at this.

“- to abuse someone weaker than herself,” Themis declared. “I am removing an obstruction.”

“Still don’t see the difference,” said Lucy, staring her down.

People rarely messed with Lucifer. Well, not past a certain point; he was on Helpdesk, after all.

Without our powers, we were both as helpless as puppies in a direct confrontation, but Lucy had the weight of reputation behind him. I was always fascinated watching it from the outside. The unspoken acknowledgement that here stood (or sat, in this case) the sworn enemy of God (capital G), millions of people still worshipping his name, and an order of magnitude more boasting belief in him even if it came from a place of hate and fear rather than anything positive. It was a powerful placebo.

Whatever else could be said for Themis, however, she was not easily cowed. “Two weeks,” she told him. “And you,” to me, “One year.”

It was and was not a prison sentence. Next time I checked my employee profile, helpfully included on the staff intranet, I had no doubt I would find my suspension increased to a full dozen years. Providence liked to dangle hope in front of us like a ribbon in front of a kitten, and like every cat owner, had every intention of whisking it away just as we were about to pounce.

“So I get one year for doing my job, and Lucy gets two weeks for not doing his,” I grumbled. “I thought consistency was supposed to be your thing.”

Quil scowled. His striking features let him wear the expression like a pro. “For crying out loud, Themis, they feed off each other. We need to move them apart.”

“Yes, do,” I responded. “Then we’ll be the only ones here who aren’t sitting in a perfect naming sequence.”

Themis twitched. “Durga.”

The warrior goddess looked up guiltily from where she was crouched on the floor, lowering her arms – eight of them now – from where she had been giving Clara a series of high fives. Both she and my new daughter had wide grins plastered on their faces, although the former’s was fading fast. “Ahem,” she coughed, rising to her feet. “We’re going.” She extended a hand to the girl, who immediately took it in a grip as strong as a five year old could muster. Was I losing the parent war already?

“For the record, that’s my daughter you’re making off with,” I said in Portuguese for Clara’s benefit. “Only fair you should also get a year.”

“She’s not your daughter, and even if she was, she’s still forbidden from entering Providence,” said Quil. “Them’s the tees and sees.”

Themis glanced at him and shook her head slightly. I knew why. Kidnapping was one thing, and Providence did have some racist policies against mortals. But there were as many earthly laws about parental guardianship as there were varieties of family structures, and Providence wasn’t officially aligned with any one of them in particular. I was perfectly within my rights to claim a child as my own, blood relative or no, and the fact it was on my task list was a point in my favour, not theirs.

“Let me tell you about fair,” said Themis, winding up for a lecture. “Do you know why we have rules?”

Urgh. Better to keep quiet for this one, lest Themis take it as a signal to further educate me. I shot Lucy a pleading look, but he ignored me – no help there.

I pretended to listen, but my eyes were following Durga’s retreating back. Clara was practically bouncing with excitement along next to her. Even discounting the extra arms, the goddess did look spectacular, rivaling Lucy in sheer physical beauty. She liked to dress in red and gold and rarely strayed far from her cultural roots, wearing a maroon sari with gold trim – subdued by her standards, smart by everyone else’s.

She looked over her shoulder at me. She likes you, her voice sounded in my head. Can you be trusted to take good care of her?

It said good things about Durga that she bothered to ask that question. By most people’s standards, I ranked only slightly higher than Lucy on the trustworthiness stakes, which was, if we were being honest, a reasonable assessment. But I did have a moral compass, as it happened; it just happened to operate along a number of different axes.

By my values, I’d always been intending to take good care of the girl. By most others’… not even close. That there was a mismatch between the two wasn’t my problem. So when I thought Themis wasn’t watching, I inclined my head.

Durga gave me a thumbs up on three separate hands and disappeared around the corner. Quil was staring at me suspiciously, but I didn’t think he’d caught his fellow goon’s end of the exchange. I aimed a winning smile his way and was rewarded with another glower. He did them so well.

At this point, Themis realised nobody was paying attention to her and visibly bristled, raising her voice. “There are too few real consequences for bad behaviour around here,” she said. “One more incident like this, Loki, and I’m demoting you from Helpdesk. Consider this your last warning.”

She gestured to Quil and the two of them breezed past, no doubt on their way to ruin more people’s days.

“You festering dungheap,” I muttered, once they were out of earshot.

A sinking feeling settled into my stomach. A demotion was bad news. As far as I was concerned, the best selling point of hierarchical structures was the fuel they provided for mockery, but Helpdesk was already at the bottom of the corporate ladder. And Providence did not let people go. Not even if they set the entire office on fire, which had happened multiple times in the company’s history. Which meant the demotion Themis was referring to could only be one of the old punishments, dating back to times since before the business started play-acting at being civilised.

Those were worth fearing.

“You know,” began Lucy, “the irony doesn’t escape me -”

“Not in the mood,” I said, and he didn’t push the point.

With so fragile a position suddenly on the line, I’d have to escalate a few things. Namely, a way to get my powers back and escape this joint. If the gambit failed, there were only going to be bad things ahead for me in my future. But if I didn’t try, it would only be a matter of time before I slipped up badly enough to warrant them anyway, while having wasted my chance to get what I wanted. Wasn’t much of a choice.

I might not have been the most cooperative person around, but I could be decidedly competent when I put my mind to it, and if I couldn’t pull this off, I wasn’t sure how much hope there was for anyone else. Someone needed to be first to show it could be done.

There were 15,092 tasks on my to-do list, plus a few new ones, and there was work to do.