You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, but It Helps by Tom Holt

Author:Tom Holt
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Magic, Humour, Fantasy, Humorous, Family-owned business enterprises, General, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9781841492841
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2006-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cassie Clay picked up the phone, put it to her ear, reached out for the keypad and hesitated. A promise was a promise.

Furthermore - well, furthermore, she was a professional, but she did still have a few conscience-coloured stains in the lining of her soul that wouldn’t come out, not even with the boil-wash. And (more to the point) he’d asked her to, and even though she now had some idea of what was going on and why she was suffering these stupid symptoms, that didn’t stop them having at least some effect. He’d asked; and that was why she was doing it.

Eiven so. Even bloody so.

She dialled in the number. It’s extra-extra-ex-directory, and a hideous fate awaits anybody who discloses it without due authorisation, but here’s a hint: it’s three digits long, and if you called the Fire Brigade while standing on your head—

Three rings, then the click; then the voice. This was the bit that Cassie hated.

‘Thank you for calling the Powers of Darkness. Your call may be recorded for security and training purposes. For general moral or ethical enquiries, press 1 on your keypad. To make a reservation, press 2. For details of our special discount packages for lawyers, politicians and Microsoft executives, press 3. For the deep blue sea, press 4. To speak to a sales adviser, please hold.’

She held. They played country and western at her, thereby nailing once and for all the old lie that the Devil has all the best tunes. She waited.

They wouldn’t be interested, of course; they’d laugh in her face. But just suppose they didn’t, just suppose they were prepared to agree. Was she really prepared to make it possible for them to get their claws on an innocent man in place of a scumbag? If she really did still have vestigal traces of a sense of right and wrong—

‘Your call is being stored in a queue. Please hold. Your call will be answered shortly, unless, of course, you are already a resident, in which case—’ Cassie held the receiver away from her ear so as not to be deafened by the peals of cackling laughter. The implications of that gave a whole new penumbra of meaning to the phrase ‘the torments of the damned’.

The phone sang ‘King of the Road’, ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ and ‘Stand By Your Man’. Cassie shuddered, made a resolution to be very, very good from now on, and endured.

‘Enquiries, how can I help you?’

Rumour had it that they, like so many large concerns, had relocated their call centre; being who they were, however, they’d relocated it to Newcastle. ‘Hello,’ Cassie said. ‘My name’s Cassandra Clay, I’m calling from J. W. Wells & Co in London, England. I was wondering if I could speak to your reference S/blb/purchases/45115.’

‘Please hold.’

To help pass the time, she mused on the strengths and limitations of Funkhausen’s Loop. It wasn’t easy, resolving the subtle nuances of temporal metaphysics with ‘Jolene’ thundering through her head like a waterfall, but she considered the final scene of the drama, in the tea shop.

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