All Change

Part 4

I’ll want to keep it in case I get fired, plus I have an idea. “Might come in handy.”

He opened his door, just a crack, and looked out through it. As luck would have it, Domino, Don Copal’s new golden boy, was chatting to Eva with his back to him, wearing his reaper cloak. It might have been planned.

He closed the door. “Right. Stay in here, under the window.”

“I wish you’d tell me what you’re planning.”

“Simple enough. But we have to get rid of Domino and keep Eva busy. Give me a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere or do anything until I yell to you.”

Manny slipped out again and walked boldly past Eva and Domino. “Morning, Cally,” greeted Domino with a sardonic grin. Manny gave him his best smile, and glowered darkly inside. “Eva, is the server up?”

“Waiting for messages, are we?” she said sweetly.

Ignoring Domino, who was now openly smirking, Manny leaned across the desk. “The only message I’ll ever need will come from you, sweetheart,” he said. “Besides, I have plenty of mail.”

“Well, so do I, Cally,” said Domino with false camaraderie. “Like mail from my driver telling me he’s going to be late when he’s supposed to be here to take me to a client. Lousy demons. Can’t trust them to come in out of the rain. He’s not a premium client, just a basic job, but a client is a client is a client, right?”

“Well, I just rang down the garage,” said Manny, “and the supervisor said he’ll send up a note when your driver’s ready to take you.”

“Oh that’s just great. He’s going to send up at his convenience. So I sit in my office for half an hour with an unreaped client while he’s out gallivanting with some gal.”

“Great alliteration there, Dom,” replied Manny pleasantly. “Keep it up, you might get to a whole sentence by the end of the week.”

Without looking back he strolled to the lobby elevator, but he heard Domino huff and go back to his office, and suppressed a thrill of excitement at getting his own back.

(“Wait a minute, Manny, I thought you said there was no competition in the old days.”

“There wasn’t. Just me and Domino.”

“Suddenly a lot of stuff is making sense.”)

Manny headed down out of the elevator and poked his head into the mail server room. No sign of Brennis, the demon who looked after the server. Good thing too, or Manny would have been able to count his minutes of safety on his three fingers. He locked the door, just to be safe. Then he rubbed his hands together as he flicked the deadbolt and pulled open the door to the server itself. Domino’s message tube had been labelled because he was new on the job, and Brennis wouldn’t know which was his by familiarity. Manny pulled out one of his sales brochures and jimmied the lock on the tube: all tubes were locked to be safe, but Manny knew what he was doing. He flicked open the tube and peered down it. Nothing. Domino was just getting started. Then again, so was Manny. 

He took out the old message he had received that morning and folded up the memo inside so it would take a few moments to open. Then he held the message canister inside the tube for a second or so before letting it go. Quickly, he took his paperweight out of his pocket and dropped it into the tube after the canister. Then he locked and sealed the tube and sneaked out as quickly as he could.

Domino Hurley had his feet up on his desk. He felt ridiculous in this reaper cloak when he wasn’t flying along the Limbo Highway in a company car. In his opinion, the best thing about the DoD was the scythes.

 A flag popped out on top of his message tube. Finally that stupid driver had gotten his ass in gear. Domino opened the message tube, took the canister out and unfolded the message. Junk mail. An advert for a colour printer.

“What the –?”

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