After a long and wandering talk, Shilloh agreed. The range of numbers was good —better than Sam had said.

  Godkiller, to his credit, had started with a simple summary. She had listened to him for a spell and grilled him for information, but his explanation was still the best summary, even after all her pushing. That earned him some credit in her book. Being forthright, honest, and not overselling was something she liked in a friend.

  It wasn't going to make her any kinder to him, obviously. Still, she wouldn't hold any personal dislike while she wrung him for every penny he had.

  A few of the career options she completely rejected. She was not going to grow ingredients for dangerous things that were manageable in the old world, but had no surviving institutional knowledge of their safe cultivation and use in the current world. Someone may accidentally start the zombie plague, but it would abso-fucking-lutely not be her.

  Some of the other offers weren't too bad, though. True to predictions, she was offered a beefy salary for what was essentially making maps of areas where seers predicted the possibility of crypto issues. It would require someone discreet—to avoid panicking the public—and able to navigate very dangerous areas where no one knew what threats might be present.

  That was in her wheelhouse. Especially since she would be able to choose which jobs she took. So she would still get to control her own schedule and keep some of the best parts of being a contractor.

  There were also more vague, higher-paying opportunities. Some were directly supporting Godkiller, others had more to do with highly classified research teams she would contribute to and help lead in the field.

  In the end, enough of it sounded good that she decided to take the oath. They confirmed that she could still walk away after swearing; the real question was whether she was interested enough to opt into the magical procedure.

  "Perfect!" Godkiller said.

  He waved an attractive, mid-twenties African-American man over. After the last break, he and Wade had sat in. The man had been introduced as Mr. Beige, and Shilloh was told that he worked closely with Godkiller and would be involved in some decision-making if she decided to take certain jobs.

  The fact that his name was 'beige' was hilarious on multiple levels. First and foremost, he was hot with a capital' sex.' Like, really, really hot. And not just physically attractive in the 'makes me want to bang him like a snare drum at band practice’ kind of way. He had a whole aura of warmth. His posture was excellent, but modest. His disinterested grin was so perfectly charming that she wanted to have his babies just so she could make some other suburban PTA bitches jealous. He was built, and handsome, and cute, and was reading a thick book about game theory and math. All in all, he couldn't even be measured on the bitability scale. In fact, no matter what scale she used, he consistently scored somewhere between 'make an incubus suicidally jealous' and 'what the actually fucking-fuck lets someone like that actually exist?'

  He stood up, grabbed a few boxes covered in duct tape off the tent floor, and walked towards her.

  For no apparent reason, Shilloh felt the urge to cross her legs and giggle.

  She managed to maintain her composure, but it was tough.

  "Hello," he said, seeming disinterested. "Which game would you prefer to play?"

  With that, he put down three boxes, all reinforced with duct tape and with a title scrawled on their cover. She saw Chess, Connect Four, and a trading card game she had never heard of.

  Before she had a chance to ask her question, Birch snorted and interjected.

  "Oh, so you're offering options now?"

  Beige looked at Birch, blinked slowly, and sighed. "I'm sorry if you found it presumptuous. Hopefully, this will make it less offensive for others in the future?"

  "Whatever. You're lucky I hadn't studied in a while."

  "No, M'am," Beige said. "I picked chess because it is minimally influenced by luck and most people never study it to any appreciable degree, and a trivial amount will ever have studied it as much as I have."

  Birch snorted, "Puh-lease. Your opening was apathetic, and you took so long picking your moves that I could have beaten another two players just in the wait."

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  "I guess I'm just very lucky it worked out for me."

  "Damn straight you are. Best of three?"

  "Wait," Wade said, looking between the two. "I've never seen anyone you made a deal with get you to struggle. Was it really that competitive?"

  Both spoke at the same time. Beige saying, "No." And Birch said something about, 'Having that little bitch on the ropes until she got distracted'.

  Shilloh slowly raised her hand, "So, not to interrupt, but—just guessing based on context clues here—does my losing the board game somehow let you bind me to secrecy?"

  "Yeah," Beige said. "Sorry. It's a ridiculous and juvenile ability, but," he shrugged big masculine shoulders, "I was the closest asset that could enforce the oath, and this is what I've got."

  "Huh," she said, forcing herself to look at the games and not him lest she start drooling. "Then let's play Connect Four."

  "Perfect," he said with all the enthusiasm of a DMV attendant.

  Very quickly, he showed her a printed version of the oath she had been given to examine a while ago. Shilloh carefully read through it, making sure nothing had changed, and had Birch confirm too. After agreeing that she was fine with the oath, he moved on.

  "If you win, I will give you this." he looked around and eventually grabbed a small pebble off the ground, one not even as big as the nail on her pinky finger. "If I win, you will be incapable of breaking this oath," he tapped on the paper, "unless released by someone with the following authorities." He went through a very long list of the authorities and emergencies that would allow her to break the oath.

  "Lame!" Birch called out, cupping her hands around his neck. "Make him do something funny."

  Beige looked at her evenly, "I will not do something funny."

  "Have him get us something to drink."

  "I don't drink."

  Shilloh interrupted before Birch escalated. "How about you have to play Birch in a rematch if I win?"

  "Sure. Anyway—"

  Then he kept expelling the process. It was very informative, and Shilloh did not at all wish she had worn a shirt that showed more cleavage. While she absolutely didn't think about that (or strangling Wade for suddenly waking up a libido that had been pleasantly and perfectly hibernating), Beige even clarified, very helpfully and handsomely, that she didn't need to worry about remembering the situation because the magic wouldn't let her voluntarily or involuntarily share the information unless they met the criteria. Deception was not an option.

  "Neat," she said. Demonstrating her quick wit, verbosity under pressure, and kick ass business communication skills. "That sounds fair."

  "Good. Because I let you choose the game, I'll go first."

  "Okay."

  And then, like most adults making profoundly powerful magical oaths impacting national security, they played Connect Four with that one friend in the corner who kept muttering increasingly profane encouragement under their breath.

  Shilloh lost. She put in some effort, just in case the magic required both of them to participate, but she didn't try particularly hard.

  Just before she lost, Beige piped up. "Don't mind the light show. It will look like magical lightning and a magic spear, but you might as well consider them illusions.

  True to his words, magical energy raced around him in the coolest display she had ever seen. There was not a movie director in the world who wouldn't have paid to see this physically perfect man go through a summoning ritual.

  In a dramatic sequence, living lightning was summoned from all around them, conducted through his body, and forged itself into a metal spear with a relatively long and sharp-edged tip.

  The whole thing was so cool, it made her feel like a kid watching her first superhero movie. Beige dipped the head of his solid metal spear at her so that the semi-sentient electricity could scrawl itself through the air in patterns she almost thought she could read. With a pleasant tingle, they hit her, crawled around her, and, gently, installed themselves around her soul.

  "Why the fuck do they call you Beige?" She burst out, unable to help herself.

  The man in question let go of the spear, and it disappeared, appearing to fall into a hole in the ground that she knew wasn't there. He then cleaned up the game of Connect Four, somehow making it look confident and sexy.

  "The appeal is a curse, and an asshole would benefit if I were any more flashy or noteworthy than I have to be. Beige is aspirational."

  Before she could ask any follow-up questions, Birch bumped her hips against Shilloh's back and looked meaningfully at the flap of the tent.

  "Oh, uh, Godkiller, sir. Am I officially sworn in now?"

  "Yes. The papers will be delayed for a little, but consider your clearance to be set at a level that some people don't even know about."

  "Perfect! Then I think I need to step out for a little bit. That was a lot to process."

  The masked figure's head tilted to the side, "Are you sure? Obviously, I won't keep you, but the next part should be done relatively quickly."

  "Absolutely. This has been a long process, and I think I would like to eat and get my wits about me before making any more profoundly important bargains."

  "But we just took a... Actually, never mind. Do whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable. I'm not going to stop someone from—"

  Godkiller had barely given his assent before Birch had her by the arm, and the two of them were all but sprinting off to Birch's tent.

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