Jermaine Abbotts stepped into his office, picked up the pen-knife on his desk and then stabbed it into his own neck.

He did it again and again, like he was trying to carve open the back of his head till finally there was a screech and a hiss. A sound that was a cross between an infant’s cry and a cat’s pained yowl.

Something fell on the ground behind him with a wet ‘plop’ and he turned around and stomped down on it, nearly sending his foot through the aether augmented floor.

He stomped on it again, not caring if he broke the floor, because A) he was willing to pay for the damages if he had to,  B) he knew the whole building was enchanted to self-maintain and self-repair, sand C)the thing on the ground really, really needed to die.

Finally there was a squelch and a spurt of highly acidic blood, that ate away at the dark blue satin of his pants but couldn’t affect the well-muscled leg beneath. Jermaine glared at the human-faced, soul sucking, starfish.

The creature was a god-monster’s spawned minion. Something that had apparently come home with him, from his most recent job. He watched as it's suckers still waved and trembled despite the thing being dead.

He wouldn’t have known the creature had managed to attach itself to him had the elevators in the building not had mirrored walls. It was bad enough that he allowed himself to lose his cool veneer, just a little, just for moment.

He allowed himself a shudder since he was all on his own at the moment and then just for good measure he summoned an illusory hand to pick up the creature and then crush it.

The hand glowing red, cartoony flames pouring from between its fingers. The hand’s temperature rising as if the starfish was a piece of coal and Jermaine was trying to make a diamond.

The end result wasn’t a diamond of course, it was just ash. Plain white ash. Jermaine was okay with that, very okay. He allowed himself another shudder, deeply repulsed by the thought of having another of those starfish stuck to him and then checked himself over again with his aether sense, stripping down and casting a spell of annihilation on his clothes, because he’d deemed them a lost cause.

Even if the clothes weren’t completely ruined he knew he’d likely never wear them again. The association with soul sucking starfish, was already there.  He changed into one of the spare outfits he always kept in the closet of his office. Then he sat down at his desk looked at the time and then buzzed his assistant Cindy, to have her, have one of her assistants bring him some coffee.

Jermaine checked through his messaged finding several most of which he ignored,  or pushed to Matthew’s machine.

He took special notice of the message that came from, friend but not-quite-a-girlfriend, Darlene of the Maynard Association. It seemed they’d gotten some inquiries from the EITC that they needed answered.

It was playing favorites, but this was one of the few times he’d break his personal motto of prepare and ‘then’ make contact, by just immediately calling back.

The good news was that it wasn’t a big issue, just some decision making on whether they’d keep the old agreements that EITC had had with the Seven Sons or whether the Bone Tree Company would want to make new ones.

With a sigh, Jermaine thought of his two boss ladies and informed Darlene that they’d probably want to make new arrangements. It wasn’t directly his responsibility but somehow these things usually meant more work for him.

Even if it was just holding down the fort while they were off playing hardball, with the thousand year old Monsters of the Mercantile world.

*****

An hour went by while Jermaine did, the various tedious tasks and paperwork that came with his senior position. At some point his secretary’s assistant came in with the coffee.

Or at least he assumed so, because otherwise he’d have to question where he got the mug of dark black, well-roasted, warmth in his hand from.

He wouldn’t question it too hard though, his sixth realm cultivation, had made it nigh impossible for him to be poisoned. And any substance that would work, would likely have eaten through the mug.

“Mhm….This is some damn good coffee.”

It really was damn good coffee, the kind an office full of overworked interns would be willing to fight and die for.

The door to Jermaine’s office opened, he didn’t say anything because as the fourth most senior member of the company, there was a very small group of people who could freely come into his office. He just tidied away the work that was on his desk. Wrapping things up so he could give the newcomer his full attention.

“Oh...it’s you.”

He’d been expecting the ever boisterous, head of the accounting, for a three PM chat on this month's expenditures in the foreign markets. Instead the milquetoast head of research and product design was there. Looking plain faced as usual.

“Didn’t expect you here today, but its nice to see you. Where’s Ell?”

“Ell and Ed tired themselves out yesterday. I thought it’d be best if just handled things for today.” said Billy.

Jermaine snorted. The other man’s words was as inflectionless and plainly spoken as ever. Completely free of innuendo. The way he’d said it, one would think that he was talking about a job, or an intense training session.

If Elena hadn’t dragged Jermaine and Matthew to a bar three weeks ago and then graphically explained what she’d do and have done to her, once her ‘dear Willy’ returned, Jermaine might well have been deceived. Misunderstanding and just nodding along. Now he found himself just wryly grinning.

“Right.”

Jermaine eyed the other man and then smiled, flashing a mouthful of bright white teeth. He got up and hugged the awkward young man, feeling a rare bit of overflowing emotion.

“Man...I’ve missed you, motherfucker. Don’t ever go away again. Or at the very least take those other two with you.”

“Nh….Okay?” said Billy.

*****

The past three years had been quite the educational experience for Jermaine Abbotts. Billy went away and then Jermaine was left to work with the two leading ladies of the Bone Tree Company on his own.

An experience that had left indelibly scars on his soul, and would haunt his dreams for the rest of his days.

What Jermaine had come to realize within the first three months of working alone with Edna and Elena, was that the two women, were not the most well-balanced people in the world.

A Billy-less Edna still smiled as per usual, her school teacher, and magic nanny-esque demeanor growing ever more saccharine and genteel.

But her judgements and decisions would grow more cold and calculated, and disconcertingly macchiavellian as time passed. She wasn’t a dove dipping its toe in dark waters, she was a kraken returning to the inky depths.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Forced to handle the protection of Lloyd, the subjugation of Albrecht and the acquisition of all of the Seven Son’s former assets by herself, she’d had to learn to scheme, to keep the nobles and master merchants from tearing their company apart.

Mastering the skill and gaining an ability of knowing what strings to pull to make people react in what she eerily termed, ‘the most interesting of ways’.

A phrase that was generally accompanied by a raspy chuckle and a steepling of the fingers, whenever she said it.

The girl could now create the most calamitous of chain reactions.  They’d always be profitable for the business but whatever she made happen would almost always be the subject of horror stories and dramatic tragedies for some time to come.  

Though those instances were all based in the increasingly unlikely possibility that anyone was made aware of her manipulations.

And she got better or in this case, worse, as time went by. The more it seemed that she should be hosting a pre-k children’s show, or working at a daycare, the more sinister her plans and schemes became.

Which wouldn’t have necessarily become a problem if it weren’t for the fact that she kept pulling poor Jermaine and his Thousand Ghosts into it. Though most of it was either straight forward seemingly harmless requests. They always seemed to end with someone dying.

With the realization that he was perhaps working with some manner of megalomaniacal monster only striking Jermain, when a seemingly benign wedding gift, was used to reignite latent hostilities, and instigate a war between two nations in Aruna.

Just for the sake of lowering real estate costs in the area. Jermaine couldn’t help noticing that the difference was only marginal and that the company could have made for the costs in other ways.

He brought it up during a meeting, and Edna just sort of looked at him and shrugged.

As if she, had either failed to see that simple point, or as if it had never occurred to her to ‘not’ use political and social upheaval  to break a nation and its markets to slightly widen the company’s profit margins.

He’d  suggested they make things right somehow before their actions were found out and it became a pr disaster. Then somehow that turned into them quietly taking over both countries for the sake of reducing the suffering of the citizenry. Buying up all the public and private institutions and running it through their subsidiaries.

Manipulating things so that they held arrangements similar to what the Bone Tree Company had had set up in Lloyd and Albrecht. Except on a slightly more permanent basis.

As for Elena. After Billy retreated into his gray world for his closed door cultivation, Elena quickly resumed the practices and traits that she’d held when she was one of the Thousand Ghosts.

Her work as an accountant was fine and at the very least it didn’t seem like ‘she’ was slowing turning the Bone Tree Company into an goldbergian doomsday machine. Her work in the field however, and her general day-to-day conduct was off the wall. Her mood, simultaneously melancholic and overly jovial.

She was always cracking wise. With a taste for jokes that seemed to center around inflicting grievous bodily harm on someone. He’d forgotten how much of a pain in the ass she was to work with sometimes.

Maybe it was because she was generally just to efficient and self-sufficient for it to matter.

Or maybe how annoying she was, would stand out more if she weren’t so very terrifying.

She’d been scary when he’d first hired her off the streets as one of his first lieutenants. Now a few years later, with a whole eight realms added to her cultivation she was unsurprisingly still terrifying.

He, Jermaine didn’t feel threatened of course and he didn’t think his ghosts were in trouble, but still it was a cause for concern.

Now finally, here was Billy, who in Jermaine’s estimate was just as crazy as either of the other two. Or rather than crazy would could him alarmingly anomalous. Possessing a mechanical, insect-like, outlook and way of operating, that was both ‘sub’ and ‘super’ human in nature.

Jermaine had once watched Billy eat a man. Sure, it was ‘just’ the man’s soul, but it was still a disquieting event to witness. The impact worsing when Billy went on to eat more people.

 Eating them too, to verify that the information he’d picked from the first man’s innermost being was legit. All for the sake of ensuring a corporate merger went through smoothly.

Jermaine had once wondered what the two girls saw in the boy. And now after five years of working together and three years of seeing what the two ladies were like when left on their own, he knew.

Somehow these three individuals, could only manage to feign normalcy, while working in tandem and keeping each other in check. Jermain wasn’t sure how and no force in either the heavens or hells would ever move him to ask why. But he didn’t really care.

After all it wasn’t like he’d have quit if Billy hadn’t walked in just now. He wouldn’t have quit even if Billy hadn’t been due to show up for a thousand years.

In all honesty he’d likely not quit even if he was fire. The profits, opportunities and  fringe benefits were far too good.

There was nothing like being a narcissist whose delusions of grandeur kept quickly ceasing to be delusions.

A very gloomy realization that Jermaine found out about himself on a rainy day, where water, mud and blood, mingled in the gutters. While his Ghosts swarmed through a martial school, purging its students and teachers because of an attempted assassination attempt.

Either way  it was nice not to have that whole hot mess on his hands any more. Edna would stop being ‘overtly’ evil. Elena would calm down a bit and stop knocking over natural landmarks. And Billy would likely always stay Billy, but Edna and Elena seemed to know how to keep him focused in a way that made him less existentially frightening.

“Um…” said Billy.

Jermaine still held his friend in his arms. Still hugging the man, because he was truly glad to know longer have to play straight to the two wild cards, that were technically his superiors at the office.

“Shush...Don’t make this weird, man.”said Jermaine. Eyes closed as he continued holding the other man in his arms.