Cambridge’s campus looked much like how she’d seen it last time. A mess. Consequences of stuffing every conference room with all the people required to do all the minutia required to run a modern government.
Seriously, why hadn’t they moved everything straight to Bristol, which was becoming the new center of government? It wasn’t that much further. Then again, maybe there hadn’t been the same amount of empty office space as at a university and the handful of surrounding business centers?
Jaclyn was a Londoner, born and raised, and while she had traveled, she wasn’t particularly familiar with other English cities. And this was how things had shaken out.
Then again, this was the same kind of government that had greenlit Brexit because the PM had decided to allow people to vote for it in full expectation they’d be against it. It was entirely possible that this had been a less-than-optimal decision. And the chaos following the jungle’s emergence couldn’t have helped matters go smoothly.
Either way, it was a decision made well above her head, one that had been made and therefore wouldn’t be changed.
Besides, it was hardly permanent.
Jaclyn made her way through the usual gauntlet of security and random boxes that peppered the building Frye had taken as his office until she was once again being let into said office by one of the numerous guards present.
The room wasn’t exactly clear this time around, but the staggering similarity to a mad scientist’s layer had largely fled. The cork- and whiteboards had been organized, and stacks of proposals had been replaced by simple folders that showed the final, accepted, project, blueprint, prototype, or whatever else one would use to describe the thing being put into reality.
One of the things that first caught her eye was the uniform design. The riot cop outfit that people only ever really saw on the news, beating on protestors, had been removed. The regular citizen on the street would probably have a motley collection of interactions with police officers, some positive, some negative, some neutral, with the kind of media they consumed further coloring their opinion of the police in one direction or the other. Riot cops, and people wearing those kinds of uniforms, though, they were never seen in positive circumstances.
Instead, the uniform was more military, kept in dark blues and greys, with enough armor that there were some superficial similarities to riot gear, but those faded into the background in comparison to the decoration, which was what really separated them from the previous design.
Lighter colors highlighted certain patches in an aesthetic manner, the whole thing just screamed “speed and power”.
And finally, a “unit patch” sat on the right shoulder of the wearer, with various patch designs along with the units they corresponded to visible on another page.
A shooting star for magic users, a caduceus for healers, what seemed to be a crossed DNA helix and periodic table for the scientific support staff, a design similar to the crossed swords of certain heraldry, and finally, a few variants on gears for the non-scientific support staff. Logistics, maintenance, etc.
That being said, the support staff would likely not be going into the field, or be forced to wear obligatory uniforms in the home base, whatever that would wind up being. Jaclyn was ninety-nine percent certain that Cambridge would not be housing this agency forever, or even much longer now.
However, it was the final patch that made her stop short. It was the one designated for frontline combatants, and it displayed a snarling Honey Badger. Sure, she was meant to lead the strike team for now, but that seemed a bit excessive. Or was it meant to evoke the spirit of her fight against the cultivator, of people fighting against even people so strong that they really shouldn’t even have stood the chance if it was the right thing to do?
“You know, Samuel didn’t tell me why you’re here,” Frye interrupted her musings. “So, are you trying to avoid causing a panic in case someone is bugging your phone, or did you find something … interesting?”
Samuel. Who was tha- … oh, right, Harper’s first name. Interesting that Frye used it, though.
“There’s a dragon in the jungle,” Jaclyn said, deciding it was for the best to just outright rip off the band-aid, and handed over the thin folder Daedalus had given her. “Some kind of deposed empress who’s actually at a high rank but crippled herself escaping the angry mob. Daedalus warned us, and asked us for any help we could give. We need to get a proper contract with Daedalus and the Worldstrider Tribe, yesterday.”
“And this is how you’re going to make it happen. But I wouldn’t call it interesting, I’d call it world-changing,” Jaclyn stated, deciding not to drag things out any more than that and producing the vial of potion, which she then set on the table between them. “This is a healing potion so powerful that we can’t even identify it. A few drops can fix basically anything. Gula kept some for her tribe, and I’ll take some for the delving team, but you can use the rest. I just need something to fill it into.”
Frye looked stunned for a moment before catching himself. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t think Daedalus knows either,” Jaclyn admitted.
“Broad timeframe, can we talk for an hour without the world ending?”
Oh, that’s what he’d meant.
“We should have a few weeks,” she told him. “But we shouldn’t rely on that.”
“Good, so we can make sure that potion is safely stored.”
He grabbed a piece of paper from his desk and took a few steps towards the door before stopping.
“I have some armored sample containers … somewhere,” he said as he put the paper back down with a sigh. “Two layers of glass, the outer layer’s armored, the inside is chemically resistant, we’ve also got two different versions in case something can eat into one version of glass but not the other, plus testing strips to make sure you know what to put in which one … they were meant for sample collection in the jungle, but they should work here too. I’ll send someone to find them.”
With that, he grabbed his phone and made a quick call to whoever was in the best position to go fetch the stuff, talking while walking in a circle.
Jaclyn just continued to look around.
Under normal circumstances, him neither knowing where his stuff was, nor whom to ask, would have been a bad sign for his leadership abilities. But Jaclyn knew he’d likely ordered literal tons of whatever he or his subordinates felt was useful.
However, that stuff was almost certainly lying in a storage room somewhere, likely not even unboxed in most places.
Sure, eventually, it would be a matter of minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour, to find what one needed. Just ask whoever was in charge of distributing the gear in the logistics branch of the organization and they’d either get it for you or fetch an expert when necessary. And dropping off Dungeon loot to be analyzed or processed would be practically automated by that point, with whoever was in a position to pick up that stuff either knowing what to do with everything or knowing who to pass the ball to.
Then, Frye gave the vial a nervous glance.
“How tough is that thing?”
Jaclyn shrugged but carefully grabbed the vial back and stored it in a pocket on the inside of her jacket. It was an outfit she used to cover her gun when she had it in a shoulder holster, and also had an inside pocket meant to hold something she didn’t want to have easily stolen.
“We probably should check once the potion is safe somewhere else. I wouldn’t want to find out it’s fragile by wasting millions of pounds worth of potion.”
“Millions?” Frye asked. “More like billions.”
As if only now realizing that he was still on his feet, he turned and returned to his place behind his desk.
Jaclyn had to admit he was likely right, her initial appraisal had been way off. Certain modern drugs could be incredibly expensive to produce, and this potion could do almost anything they did. Throw in the rarity of the potion, which would drive up the price further, and the sheer convenience of nigh-instant healing, and the Dungeon was likely to be overrun with treasure hunters the instant the potion became known to the public.
And then, the museum would run red with blood … at least until Daedalus took advantage of his Dungeon power to clean up the mess of blood and bodies so thoroughly that the delvers might as well have vanished into thin air. Turning the Dungeon into a black hole that had consumed a vast but unknown number of humans who’d overestimated their own abilities.
“Anyway, I have a few things I wanted to talk to you about,” Frye said once he was back in his chair. He used a key to unlock one of his desk’s drawers to produce two thin folders.
If these had been locked up when everything else was out and about, visible to anyone who made it inside past all the admittedly not-inconsiderable security outside, they had to be important. And they looked official. Not in the “has all the correct letterheads and so on” kind of official, but as in “something that will be handed over with all due pomp and ceremony to a head of state”.
“Proposals for the treaty with the Worldstrider tribe, and probably Daedalus too?” Jaclyn asked. Even if they hadn’t talked about making sure those were ready, it would have been obvious.
“Anything specific you want me to pay attention to?”
The corners of Frye’s mouth twitched up as he slid the folders across the tabletop.
“You’ve got more experience with them than anyone who drafted these, anything you feel matters probably does. And a general sanity check probably wouldn’t go amiss either. That shouldn’t be a problem, but it’s rather unfortunate how often small things slip through. I could also use some ideas for incentives for getting help with the dragon.”
So Frye just wanted her to give her opinion, based on the things she was actually good at/knowledgeable about. That was a good sign. Someone who decided to make a subordinate do a job that they weren’t qualified for wasn’t being a very good leader. You didn’t just need to delegate, you needed to delegate to the right people.
The contracts were long. Some fifty pages each, written in fairly small font. When she’d picked them up, Jaclyn had wondered how much of that could possibly be necessary, but as she’d started to read them, it was becoming obvious that everything in these literal blocks of legalese had its place. Its paragraph long, overly precise, surprisingly uncomplicated, place.
Legal documents were funny like that.
Though Jaclyn knew quite a few people who didn’t read contracts outside looking at stuff like pay, they were so fed up with trying to decipher all that legalese.
Anyway, it was pretty obvious that these treaties were meant to be signed by regular, albeit intelligent, people, not lawyers or diplomats. Someone had clearly put enough thought into the process that the final product had been adapted for its intended audience.
Then again, the currently extremely slim government was working quite efficiently, with shorter chains of command that were more likely to properly convey orders, rather than the usual high-stakes game of Chinese Whispers that often bedeviled the administration.
That being said, though, a small government wasn’t all good. For starters, a few people running things with emergency powers for too long would be nothing other than a dictatorship. Not to mention that there were plenty of things that a slim and lean governing body simply didn’t have the manpower to handle.
There was a reason why the government had been as large as it had been, even if that also had its own drawbacks.
In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “democracy is the worst form of government … except for all others that have been tried”. Far from perfect, it may be, it was closer than everything else.
The treaty for Daedalus was filled with long paragraphs of mutually beneficial ideas and thorough definitions for every term mentioned.
But it basically boiled down to a few points:
- Daedalus had to provide adequate warnings about the dangers of his Dungeon
- Daedalus had to keep out people under the influence, as well as those who were entering the Dungeon against their will, though he had a considerable breadth of available options for dealing with it
- Daedalus had to provide a place for beginners to grow, as well as an area appropriate for each Rank above F in so far as that was possible, once there were people who needed those kinds of places
- Daedalus had to keep his Dungeon open for business, though allowances were made for retaliating against people who, somehow, managed to abuse him or his Dungeon, as well as closing his doors for the time needed to restructure his place
- Daedalus had to help with certain matters of vital importance on a national level, which threatened England as a whole
Jaclyn paused at that last one.
“We should probably add the current dragon situation as an example of something he should help with.”
“Which he won’t refuse because he already asked for our help with the dragon, so the point is unlikely to be refused,” Frye continued her train of thought, already having pulled up his laptop, but he was not typing something. Probably, he was already implementing her suggestion.
“Also, we should probably define the kinds of help he’ll provide. Is it just going to be raw material and the few monsters he can use outside his Dungeon, or do we ask for permission to lure all problems into the Natural History Museum and leave them there for him to deal with?” Jaclyn suggested.
“What material help can he provide?” Frye asked.
“Possibly potions, depending on how expensive they are to make,” Jaclyn said. “And he can hand out summoning tokens that let you send a tiger or something into battle for you. But if we’re asking a lot, we should probably offer a reward on top of ‘do it for your country’. And I don’t think he considers England to be ‘his’ country.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Uh, you haven’t reached page 35, have you?” Frye asked.
“We should probably move the section that describes rewards for that kind of help right after the section that asks for the moon,” Jaclyn suggested while she leafed through the treaty until she reached the part he’d mentioned.
Basically, they’d pay fair market value for any help they received, with “fair market value” being defined as “any requested materials equal in value to the provided material support, insofar as said support has a defined value, in situations lacking such definitions …” yeah that part went on for a while but it basically boiled down to “we’re paying, but if things go pear-shaped, we’d like our support up front”.
There was also a clause about how some loot would be given to Daedalus, and if the threat died in the Dungeon, he could keep it in its entirety but might be called upon to provide parts as loot.
However, that was really getting into the weeds of the situation.
Generally, the things Daedalus was getting were pretty simple:
- He’d get to keep the areas he’d claimed, the land would officially become his, though he might be asked to produce or replicate certain invaluable museum pieces
- He wouldn’t get blamed for the deaths of anyone who walked into the Dungeon with full awareness of the risks
- He’d be free from any taxes and similar government functions, both those currently existing and those that were yet to be written
Basically, Daedalus got to operate as he had, and the only thing that would really change for him was that he had to provide a place for Granger and people of his Level to grow.
“I think he’ll be fine with it,” Jaclyn said. “But I can’t guarantee I caught everything. And he might decide to try and add or change some things just to see if he has any control over the situation.”
“At least that’s better than him deciding to change some things just to prove the power of his position,” Frye shrugged.
Oh, Jaclyn knew exactly what he meant. Bosses who, when presented with a good, nay, perfect, project, would change something, potentially even making the end result worse, just so that they had made some contribution. That being said, it was more likely that it was a matter of proving their authority to their underlings. Though anyone who worked under such a person was doubtlessly fully aware of their boss’ authority and how said authority could be and was abused.
And with that done, it was time to move on to the second treaty. Which was simultaneously simpler and more complex than the one she’d already read.
Simpler because, well, it was simpler, being a variant of a general “immigrating to the UK” agreement, and there existed plenty of other documents that the writers of this one could crib from.
More complex, because it needed to cover so much more ground than the treaty with Daedalus, most of which had been a matter of “live and let live”.
Once again, though, it was a matter of simple concepts having to be described thoroughly enough that all reasonable and most unreasonable misunderstandings could be avoided.
The Worldstrider Tribe would be granted British citizenship, with all the rights and privileges that entailed, as well as a sizeable chunk of land northeast of London for them to use however they wanted.
In addition, they’d be getting some additional privileges, such as tax exemptions, and an immunity from Compulsory Purchase Orders and various other government processes that could be abused to screw them over.
“How thorough is that list?” Jaclyn asked. “I don’t know half of these, damned if I know if it covers everything.”
Frye shrugged. “I don’t know either. There is a lot of legislation out there ...”
He trailed off and began to type something. Jaclyn waited a few seconds before saying something, hoping that he wouldn’t have stopped like that unless the thing he was doing would take very little time. And she was right.
“Basically, I just added a sentence about how the next paragraph is complete according to what we know, but also covers anything similar that we missed, and that would be an oversight, not maliciousness.”
“Good idea,” Jaclyn said. “Now they’re going to ask if we mean that paragraph, and if something that … diffuse is legally binding.”
“It probably is,” Frye said.
“It’ll take … maybe a year for someone with their system to become Sherlock Holmes,” Jaclyn pointed out. “And they won’t even have to sacrifice much if they only focus on lie detecting.”
It had taken her a few weeks to get her physical Skills to the “supernatural” degree, but those had started out already quite high and she’d taken full advantage of the ludicrous growth rate in Dungeons for most of that. Leveling up a non-combat Skill during the course of regular life should be far slower.
But becoming Sherlock Holmes was just a matter of picking the right set of Skills and focusing on boosting them.
She’d even created a loadout for that, but never equipped it since playing detective was a job for, well, detectives, a group she was no longer a part of.
Situational Awareness, Bullshit Radar and Focus for information gathering combined Logical Thinking and Deductive Reasoning for information processing, and finally, Learning to increase the rate at which she picked up general information that could support her deductive reasoning, as well as helping her retain any information she picked up.
That last one in particular was what really defined Holmes, in her mind.
As a police officer, if there was some kind of exotic pollen on someone’s clothes, or the victim had been killed with a unique weapon or rare combat style, the lab would tell her. That, or they’d send matters to some kind of expert, and then it would be them who told her.
Holmes just … knew, almost never having to pick up a book or ask around for someone more knowledgeable on the topic.
But that was a tangent that didn’t really matter. At least not beyond the fact that the Worldstrider Tribe almost certainly had people capable of seeing through any chicanery set up by the government. And if they couldn’t see through it, they were still likely to smell a rat. Jaclyn’s Bullshit Radar Skill had already reached a point where her ability to detect lies had noticeably increased, and she hadn’t even been at this for a month.
Jaclyn continued to read through the treaty proposal.
The entire Tribe would also be explicitly insulated from government overreach in an oddly sincere promise, followed by a request for access to the Village Nexus to a broad but still not unlimited degree, a pattern that repeated a few times.
Overall, in exchange for helping England through this mess, the new orcish citizens would gain privileges closer to that of the aristocracy than regular folks. Largely fair, though, Jaclyn admitted. And it was likely a vital part of the treaty that they did have those protections. Widely disliked nomads would doubtlessly be wary of tying themselves to a given location, potentially trapping themselves.
There were a few clauses that were so complicated that Jaclyn suggested they be changed. Not because she thought the members of the Worldstrider Tribe were stupid, mind you, but because she knew their values.
Honestly, and openness, things that the overly complicated and elaborate phrasing prevalent in official documentation were the exact opposite of.
That was when she reached the final part of the treaty, which stated that the tribe would get to keep up to a third of London … if they cleared it. The British Government had to be given the right of first refusal on items of national importance, and access had to be granted to any Dungeons in the claimed area,
Jaclyn sucked in air through clenched teeth as she read that.
“That … that reads like something you’d find in a book about the history of colonialism,” she said, turning the folder around to show Frye what she was reading. He had the good grace to look abashed.
“Yeah, I told them that too.”
And he’d been ignored.
“Add some language about being paid market price for the items, and that a list will be provided ahead of time so no one can just decide that something is of ‘vital historical importance’ because they want something. And if they discover new Dungeons, they’ll get something out of it,” Jaclyn suggested.
“Half of all tax income generated?” Frye suggested.
“How are delvers taxed?” Jaclyn wondered.
“They aren’t, not yet,” Frye said. “The plan is to tax income based on where the value of the loot would put you in a regular tax bracket, but loot you personally use for delves is exempt.”
“We can work with that,” Jaclyn said.
***
They wound up spending almost an hour talking about this or that, until Frye finally took the folders back and put away the laptop.
He then looked at her across the table, retrieving yet another sheath of paper, though this one was laminated.
“I recently finished the organizational chart for the Bureau of Preternatural Affairs, including assigning titles to each role. And I was hoping to invite you onboard on a more permanent basis.”
Jaclyn took the proffered paper. She was already seconded to the BPA, just operating out of the precinct due to proximity to the Worldstrider Tribe’s camp, but permanently transferring … that was something to be considered, but not immediately be said yes to.
Frye’s role was, of course, the big guy in charge, with the title of Director.
The slot directly below him, that of the Deputy Director, was empty, devoid of a name, but it had an additional title. “Strike Team Commander”. The job she was supposed to carry out once there was something command.
There were more names in the chart, some that she recognized, like one Samuel Harper being in charge of all things medical, but most were new to her. Like a Ms. Nicole Foster, who was the Director of Operations, directly beneath the Deputy Director.
But there were two things that stood out to her.
First, the confusion of whether someone else had taken the job she was supposed to get, or if her position had just been massively elevated.
And second, the split of the chart at the directorate level.
Frye was in charge of everything.
The Deputy Director slash Strike Team Commander was in charge of, well, the Strike Teams and while they technically had authority over the rest of the Bureau, their area of responsibility was fairly small while most of the logistics ran through the Director of Operations to the Director himself.
Was that what Frye had meant when he’d promised to keep the paperwork out of her head as much as possible?
It had to be, didn’t it?
And yet, that was an insanely high position to give her.
But before she asked why she’d gotten it, she had to make sure she wasn’t misreading it.
“Did you find someone else for the position of Strike Team Director?” she asked.
“No, still you,” Frye shrugged, looking calm as can be.
“The job’s a hot potato, isn’t it?” Jaclyn asked.
In her mind, there were three possible reasons for why someone relatively inexperienced would have gotten this job. Sure, at thirty-seven, she was no immature kid with zero life experience, but people in these kinds of jobs were usually older … though that being said, Frye couldn’t be any older than her age.
So, she could have gotten the job because she was literally the last person in the country with the correct qualifications, but she doubted it. Even with a gutted government, there had to be more than one candidate.
Another option was that he needed someone to fail so that their successor could look better by comparison, but Frye needed to make the whole Bureau look good right now, so that was unlikely to be it.
And the third option was that the job was a hot potato she needed to get rid of right the hell now.
“It’s more of a ‘use it or lose it’ situation,” Frye admitted. “Things are stabilizing, and the old boys’ network is starting to figure out how many new positions are open and ready to be filled. I’ve already gotten several ‘unofficial applications’ from old school ‘friends’ of mine, and they aren’t exactly qualified.
“I need to appoint a deputy while I can still pretend that I’m not snubbing half the political dynasties in the country.”
“And what does that make me, your only option?” Jaclyn asked. To be honest, the more she thought about it, the more she wanted the job, but she was also not about to step straight into the middle of some kind of political shitstorm because she’d been so enamored with a job offer that she’d failed to ask any of the relevant questions.
Better to lose the offer than take Frye up on it only to later discover a disastrous sting in the tail.
“Are you aware of the book ‘On War’, by Carl von Clausewitz?” Frye asked, but she shook her head.
“Think ‘Art of War’, but five times as thick, and German. Both books are recommended reading in most military academies the world over. ‘On War’ has a really interesting chapter that discusses the difference between theory and practice, how theoretical knowledge is useful but practical experience is essential. And that critical thinking is utterly essential in a military officer.”
Jaclyn nodded. Neither of them was in the military, but this role seemed to be getting pretty close. So she just waited for him to continue.
“I can think of a hundred armchair generals who’d love to have the job of deputy director, and I’ve personally met more than half of those. But I don’t need someone who’s all book learning, zero practical experience. I can afford to have a deputy who’s got some stuff to learn about politics and high-level leadership as long as they’ve got a good head on their shoulders and I know they’re not going to crumple under the pressure or the current mess.
“And you, specifically, are going to keep me honest, and make sure that I hear about any issues with the troops when they crop up, not ten weeks later after everyone between me and the problem tried to fix things themselves and failed.
“What I can’t have is some old-money fop who might have memorized the biographies of every important military and political leader since the signing of the Magna Carta, but who’ll fold like yesterday’s laundry the moment they come face to face with an orc.”
So, he’d picked her for a lack of better options. How nice.
Not to mention that by now, Jaclyn was pretty sure he ran in the same social circles as these “old money fops”, even if he seemed to be much more down to Earth than she pictured the usual high society blowhards to be.
“How likely is this job going to bite me in the ass?” she finally asked after a long, awkward, pause.
“You stopped a rogue cultivator who would have done God only knows what if you hadn’t caught him, managed to broker preliminary deals with both the supernatural forces that are probably going to be what ensures we, as a country, survive this catastrophe, and you’re already one of the strongest people in the world. If you do half as good a job here, you’ll still do better than any candidate I can think of.”
That … she hadn’t thought about it too much, but when he put it like that, it did sound like she was the most qualified candidate, even if it was theoretically possible for Frye to find someone better.
Jaclyn liked her current job, she really did, it was important, impactful, and fulfilling, but she was also more than aware of its darker sides. How some people saw cops, reacted to them, what image they’d have of anyone who put on the uniform.
She certainly didn’t run around announcing her status as an officer to all and sundry, and she knew some colleagues who treated their jobs as secrets comparable to a superhero’s secret identity. And the worst part was that, sometimes, she couldn’t even blame them.
Setting everything else aside about this new job, it was a place away from all that. Somewhere she could set the rules, and shape the perception of this agency. A place where she could do more than she ever had thought possible, in the greatest crisis she was ever likely to encounter.
“Alright, where do I sign?” Jaclyn asked.
And that was that, for the most part. She learned that the BPA was actually going to stay in Cambridge, the city that was, not the university, since the Worldstrider’s soon-to-be domain was just a few kilometers east and they needed easy access to the Village Nexus.
However, until the jungle was properly tamed, they’d likely be operating out of a satellite office in London, in which both she and the Director of Operations would likely be running directly. Well, the Director of Operations would be dealing with the paperwork and fighting politics, Jaclyn would be training new fighters and just generally combatting the jungle.
In a few weeks, at least. Right now, her focus would be on making sure those treaties were signed and preparing things against the dragon, while Frye made sure to build up the Bureau that would back these operations.
She also wound up asking him how he knew Harper, just in case she was running the risk of getting the boot the instant the Director’s boyfriend or similar got injured.
As it turned out, they knew each other from school, that was all. At least that was what Frye had told her, but she believed him.
Jaclyn also arranged to have Granger transfer to the BPA too, as a high-ranking member of the research division. But not one with much authority beyond the ability to requisition the materials he needed, since the more time he spent having to deal with paperwork, the less time he was spending doing what he was actually supposed to do. Specifically, coming up with new stuff.
Eventually, though, it was time for her to return to London to finish things up there, start searching for a good place to set up the satellite office, and potentially find a new apartment.
She bade the Director goodbye and left, only to be interrupted before she reached the door.
“Oh, and one more thing, Deputy Director Abrams,” Frye called out to her, waiting for her to turn around before continuing. “No more tests, I promise. You’ve got the job, and you’re going to keep it until you decide to leave …
He chuckled softly.
“ …or wind up getting promoted to replace me. Point is, from today and until the end of time, you can trust that when I say something, it won’t be part of a test or job interview.”
“You know, that could be just another test, Director,” Jaclyn responded with a hard stare before cracking a smile to show she was only taking the mikey. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”
She wasn’t upset.
Sure, he’d woven tests into their previous conversations, trying to make sure she was qualified, and wasn’t that his job? Making sure that the people he hired wouldn’t cock it all up?
He hadn’t sent or off on weird tangents or made her do superfluous tasks. He’d just observed how she completed the jobs he’d asked her to do.
***
The road trip back to London was fairly peaceful, if silent. Granger was focused on the road with one train of thought while occasionally casting cleanse around the car. But judging by how he wasn’t driving any worse when multitasking like that, he was taking full advantage of his power to make this safe.
And Jaclyn was deep in thought. But her mind wasn’t drifting off in random directions this time around. Instead, she was making plans. Concrete, thorough, plans for the future. Imagining how she’d proceed from here, where she’d move since she couldn’t live in a hotel room forever, and her previous thoughts on the matter weren’t exactly up to date anymore since she didn’t know in which location she’d be working from now on.
Not to mention that there was that dragon that needed to be brought down at some point.
And so on, and so forth. Until her radio practically exploded with noise.