Spirit (Blackwood Security, #10.5) - Elise Noble Page 0,1
Nick and Nate with you.”
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Why do we let him do this?” but at least he didn’t give me the finger.
So, why did we let Bradley do this? Good question. I mean, we did pay his wages. Well, basically he got away with it because he was the most efficient person we’d ever known. He managed to oversee our household staff, redecorate constantly, refresh our wardrobes, update our fleet of cars, do my hair and make-up for events and most of my friends’ too, pack for trips, and still find time to create his “Christmas vision” each December. He loved Christmas, and we loved him, even if Black would never admit that out loud. So we allowed him to go a little over the top at his favourite time of year, although we always tried to rein him in a bit.
Just as we would today.
“Have you seen Bradley’s presentation?” Mack whispered as we trudged towards the meeting room. She was another of my besties and also Blackwood’s number-one IT geek. “It’s seventy-two slides long.”
Oh, hell. Perhaps I could check out the non-alert at the Catalan Building?
The meeting room was full already, forty or so people sitting in chairs and another ten hovering by the doors in the hope of making an early escape. Most were Blackwood employees, but a few had dragged along their significant others for moral support. As I said: Share the pain.
“Should I have brought a cyanide capsule?” Ana muttered.
“For you or for Bradley?”
“Preferably Bradley, but it’d be comforting to know there was a way out.”
“Maybe we could stand over by the window? In emergency, break glass.”
“Is this food or a decoration?” Luke asked, holding up one of the offerings from the snack table.
Thankfully Tia, his sister, answered for us because I had no idea. “It’s a sugar cookie. Bradley said the glitter’s edible.”
“But there’s more glitter than cookie.”
Yup. We’d all be pooping rainbows. And don’t even get me started on the pink mince pies. They reminded me of the inside of a colon.
Thankfully, I’d stuck with the mulled wine, and looking around, I wasn’t the only one. Some people—the ones who’d been at Blackwood the longest and were well used to Bradley’s shenanigans—had a glass in each hand. Precisely one person wanted to be there, and he’d made himself a little platform to stand on at the front.
“Quiet, quiet, everybody quiet!”
How bad would this be?
CHAPTER 2
THE FIRST SLIDE had pictures of a reindeer and a unicorn, and I realised the answer to my question: pretty damn bad. On a scale of zero to jumping off the top of the Empire State Building, we were on roughly the ninetieth floor.
“Has everybody seen the new Wonder movie? Rudolph and the Unicorns? Because if you haven’t, you should. It’s excellent.”
Unfortunately, I’d managed to watch most of it over the past fortnight because Bradley had been playing it on a loop and singing along to the soundtrack. Every time I was in the same room as him, I caught another five minutes of sugary Disney-esque cartoon action. Blitzen framed Rudolph for steering Santa’s sleigh into a chimney, and because reindeer didn’t have a union, Rudolph got fired. Rather than take it lying down, he set up a rival sleigh team with a bunch of ditzy unicorns, and when Blitzen and the other reindeer overate and couldn’t get off the ground, Rudolph and friends stepped in to save Christmas.
The room stayed silent. Either nobody else had seen the movie, or they weren’t about to admit it.
“Tia, would you mind handing everyone a copy of the DVD? They’re in the silver box by the door.”
Usually, Tia was quite happy to help with Bradley’s schemes, so her lack of enthusiasm led me to believe that she knew what he was planning and it was too much, even for her. Dread settled in my stomach like week-old porridge.
“Okay, okay, so this Christmas, we’re going to transform Riverley into a paradise Rudolph and his girls would be proud of. We’ll have sleigh racing… A build-your-own toy factory… A pin-the-tail-on-the-unicorn game… Ooh, ooh, and a giant model of Rudolph with a glowing red nose. Because we’re going environmentally friendly this year, we’re going to hook the nose up to a pedal-powered generator and we can all take it in turns to keep the light burning bright. Obviously, we can’t get real unicorns, but I’ve found a lovely lady who’ll rent us miniature white horses, and she’s agreed we can dye