"What the fuck is wrong with Jamdaggu today? He's getting no work done, and I know it's your fault, it was your poker night last night."
"He drank two botles of tequila and watched some YouTube videos about poker," Golnaarth says, tilting her office chair back so she can peer around for Malharaxxus, ready to enforce the "no personal phone calls" rule with extreme sadism. "He decided he could read everyone's tells and was going to clean us all out."
"So he's hungover," Jamdaggu's supervisor, Rhaamquat, sighs.
"Well, he also bet all of his fingers and his tongue," Golnaarth says. "It's really hard to remove someone's tongue without proper equipment when you're all drunk? And I don't think he's had as much practise at growing it back, he loses fingers every week."
"I ought to write him up. Who bets their tongue on a work night?"
"He wanted to bet something else, but Bernadette said in her experience tongues are worth more."
There's a long silence. "Golnaarth," Rhaamquat says gently, "has anyone let you know there are...you know...questions being asked about Bernadette?"
"What?"
"Apparently the Red and Thousand-Mouthed Goat of Atrocity came back from the Regional Overlords' strategy meeting with a tipoff that there's another wave of infiltrators."
"From Sales?" Golnaarth says, with a wavering note of uncertainty.
"No," Rhaamquat says. "Not from Sales. You know. Spies. From The Other Side. The Place With The Harps."
"Oh," Golnaarth says. "But. Bernie's not—"
"I mean, what kind of name is Bernadette," Rhaamquat says.
"It's not her real name," Golnaarth mutters, twisting the phone cord round and round her hand. "She's actually Byzuunam-Tsaa, the Fanged Hand of Blight. It's an affectation, like being a goth?"
"Golnaarth," Rhaamquat says. "She's roadkill, is what she is. You might want to stand a bit further back."
"But we're getting serious," Golnaarth says piteously. "I've got a — I've got a plan and everything! Like move in together and ruin her for other girls and wreck her life with lesbian bed death and adopt a puppy—"
"Is lesbian bed death a succubus torture thing?"
"...Whatever," Golnaarth says, hangs up, shoves the phone petulantly off the desk into the wastepaper basket, then looks up to find Malharaxxus' hideous beaming gotcha face aimed right at her.
