We didn’t speak on the drive to the hotel, but listened to the playlist of my favorite music he’d created—classic and instrumental, as opposed to his modern tastes. He dropped me off at the entrance. “Have a good shift.”
I brushed my lips across his. “You too.”
A giddy buzz zinged through my system as he drove off—to the beat of his own playlist—and I went up to the Tech Hub. Time to get back to work.
As the hub door whispered shut behind me, I froze. Not because Rick was yelling instructions into his phone—loud, but manageable—but because on the far side of the room, Jim sat at his desk. I couldn’t move. I still remembered him standing over me with a gleeful look on his face after the energy glitch hit my system. He was hunched over now, typing furiously, shooting glances at Rick every few keystrokes.
Rick hung up and frowned at me. “Are you okay?”
“What ishedoing here?”
A pained expression crossed Rick’s face. “Yeah. Sorry. I was supposed to tell you, but I’ve been on the phone since I got in.”
“Tell me what?”
“That we need him back on night shift. I know Layla promised his shifts wouldn’t overlap ours until the ball, but I’ve been calling in every bloody favor, and no one’s available nights.None of us are happy with that solution, including Layla, but there’s no other option. And we all agreed to give him a second chance if he volunteered at the Vocational Center and ‘worked off his debt’ to the hotel.”
He must have seen something in my face because he hastened to add, “I had desks moved to the ballroom if anyone needs space. Actually… Riley’s in there now, checking the new scans. Maybe you’d like to look at them before you start on the third floor.”
I left without a word.
Riley sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by her lifeless chandeliers and three tablets, tapping away on her Bluetooth keyboard. She turned when I knocked on the door, her eyes red and puffy.
“They were perfect,” she muttered, sniffling. “Look at them now. One’s a write-off, and half of the LEDs are dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as I joined her on the floor.
One tablet displayed Riley’s chandelier schematics. She probably itched to work on them, but considering all that needed to be done, they weren’t very high on the list.
“What can I do?”
“About the chandeliers? Nothing until Layla finds a replacement.” She gave me a tablet. “Can you imagine the masquerade without the chandeliers?”
I shook my head. The ballroom would seem bare without them. Our schedule left little time for her to fix them, though.
“Anyway. Here are the scans.”
We bent over the tablets and compared the new scans to the ones we ran after the wall had stabilized.
“Ballroom systems are still a mess, but the lingering energy in the wall is still interfering with repairs. Same for the rooms above us, as you predicted. There are a few issues on the second floor that need our attention. The rest is unchanged,”Riley said. “Should we tackle those now? Or leave them for later?”
I checked the schedule. “Best leave it. Fred and Ted are doing finishes there—trim and fixtures—and I don’t want to delay them any further.”
“Oh. Right. I’ve been so focused on our schedule that I forgot they were back on-site.” She sighed. “I might have to hit them up for alternative ideas if we can’t get the chandeliers up in time.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, other than offering her first choice of repairs.
“Thank you. Why don’t we alternate rooms on the third and see how far we get before our break?”
With one last glance at the chandeliers, we grabbed our toolkits and went up to the third floor. It took us five hours and two snack and charging breaks to repair every issue, but when we were done, the energy flow on the third floor had smoothed out to a gentle hum that made me smile. We’d even won a few more hours on the schedule.
As we stepped into the elevator, Riley looked me up and down, then narrowed her—still puffy—eyes at me. “If you weren’t Niren, I’d have asked if you had your hair done, but I know it’s not that. But there is something… different about you.”
“You mean since I was hit by glitchy energy?”
“Ha. You’re deflecting.” She shook her head. “I bet it has something to do with a certain espresso wizard.”
“‘Wizard’? Is that something from fairytales?” Of course, I was deflecting. Though her question reminded me of what Sam had told me about the coffee machine wizard and the magical coffee it brewed, which two of his children had made up stories about.
