Satyr Play 02 Pt. 02

"She seems a little unstable," Dayshia observed. "I mean, who carries a stun grenade in her purse?"

Henry couldn't argue with that. He knew her over-indulgent father spoiled her, but he couldn't share that bit of insider knowledge.

"I hope what happened at the dance club hasn't turned you against the idea of going out dancing with us!" Tish said with a hopeful expression.

"No, I'd like to try it again, just without the booze." He sighed. "I still have to get over my awkwardness with dancing. I have two left feet!"

Tish's face lit up with a broad smile. "We can help you with that! You just need to learn a few steps and become comfortable with them. When you get out on the floor with the music playing, you follow the steps you've learned with the beat. Soon, it'll become second nature, and you can relax!"

He realized that was a great idea! He nodded, and she clapped quietly with a grin.

They finished their lunch and moved the coffee table to have room to move. Sandy put on some music at a low volume, as all they needed was a beat to follow and Tish started Henry off with some simple forward and back steps. Henry watched Tish's feet, and once he had her pattern, Tish reached over and lifted his chin so he couldn't see his feet. He bobbled a little, but she kept him moving, and he settled into the pattern.

The afternoon was spent learning moves, none too complicated for the noob dancer. Each of the ladies managed to work in a slow dance with Henry. Closer to dinner time, Michelle made an appearance and had a turn as well. As that happened, Sandy enjoyed a slow number with Marisa, though she blushed and grinned happily through the song. Marisa had to tone down her naturally sensuous moves but still got Tish's appreciative nod and grin and a slightly envious look from Dayshia.

They munched on the leftover sandwiches and salads for supper, then Marisa said she had to head home. She shook hands and hugged Sandy, then Henry walked her to the door and got a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He closed the door and walked back to the living room. Glancing at Michelle, Henry saw she was ready to leave, too. He turned to his host.

"Thank you so much, Sandy, Dayshia, and Tish, for the delightful hospitality, delicious food, and the dancing lessons. I feel ready for our next night out at a club... without drinking!"

He got smiles and chuckles for that.

"It was very nice meeting you all, and it was extremely generous of you to let me sleep in your bed," Michelle said to Sandy, who smiled and gestured dismissively.

They walked to the door.

"Henry? Aren't you forgetting something?" Dayshia said with a slight smile on her lips.

He looked back curiously. "What?"

"Our goodbye kisses."

Dayshia's lips were on his, and he squeaked slightly in surprise. Then he kissed her in return as she pressed her soft body against his hard muscles. Finally, she pushed back gently, and his lips followed until they parted. His eyes opened just in time to see Tish slip in against his body as Michelle watched in wide-eyed surprise.

Tish was an excellent kisser, and Henry was swept away by her passion. He was reaching for her ponytail when she suddenly released the kiss with a gasp. He was dazed and focused on her mouth as his neck tingled. Tish took another step back, and Henry looked down into Sandy's hungry gaze.

The blond tilted her face to him, and his mouth met her soft lips. Her hair swept forward to caress his face, and he gently pushed it back by running his fingers through it. Sandy's kiss was sweet, slow, and tender, and the tingle eased.

Michelle cleared her throat timidly, which broke the moment, and Sandy pulled back with a happy smile.

"Have a good night, Henry!" she said.

He nodded, still dazed from the kiss, and stepped out into the hall. Michelle followed him out and took his elbow to guide him to the elevators. They heard a burst of excited giggles as Sandy's door closed.

She glanced at him when they were alone in the elevator, moving up to their floor. "Does that always happen?"

He looked at her in embarrassment and thought about it. "I... yes, I believe so, though not usually so aggressively. They truly are lovely people," he said with a wobbling smile. She smiled and looked away shyly.

They exited the elevator and read a sign Johann posted on the opposite wall that said the floor was clear for habitation again. They walked towards their units.

When Michelle reached her door, she turned to Henry, and he looked at her with a smile. "Thank you for introducing me to your friends. They are, as you say, lovely people." He nodded and waited as she seemed to have something else to say.

"Could we... I mean, would you... can I—never mind," she finished in a huff as her face reddened.

She'd been watching his mouth the entire time, so he guessed she might be asking if they could kiss as she'd just witnessed. While he knew Michelle was an Arachnid with the body of an enormous spider, her shy and gentle nature muted his instinctive fears. He reached out to touch her hand as she turned away. He stepped closer as she faced him, and he saw her trembling. "I would like to kiss you if it would be—"

Henry found himself pressed against the opposite wall with Michelle's mouth held firmly against his. He moved his lips to kiss her, and she gasped quietly as her mouth tried to follow his lead. It was becoming awkward. He pulled back slightly. Resting his fingers ever so lightly on her jaw, he leaned forward and gently stroked her lips with his. She sighed and trembled under his fingers. He pressed a little firmer and dipped the tip of his tongue between her lips. She made a cute little mew of need and slipped her tongue out to caress his. He sucked on her tongue, and she squealed, pulling back from him to take a few steps back, staring at him.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asked cautiously.

She shook her head vigorously, making her lovely ebony hair swing back and forth. "I must go. Thank you. Good night!" With that, she slipped into her unit to close and lock the door.

He paused a moment, unsure of what had just happened. Michelle's assurance that he hadn't done anything wrong seemed to be refuted by her actions. Looking at her door, he sighed quietly and moved on to his. He stepped inside and locked up. He smelled nothing to indicate his unit had been affected by the fumigation.

He sat on the couch and wondered where his relationship with the three ladies at Sandy's place was going. He valued their friendship, but they weren't shy in letting him know in no uncertain terms that they were interested in something a little more intimate.

Having learned his lesson from Sandy's hair, if they wanted a physical relationship with him, he was going to have to insist on condoms and be extra diligent in preventing a reoccurrence of what Mary Carsten had done.

He had to protect them... from him.

Chapter 30

The chairs around the VRL Executive boardroom table were full except Henry's. He was late for the meeting. Camila frowned at Sigrid, who shrugged.

The door at the end of the room opened, and Henry rushed inside carrying his laptop. He stopped next to Camila and began to gush. "I'm so sorry I'm late! The N- uh, agency is back to poking at our firewall again but not so vigorously—"

"Henry, sit down so we can start the meeting," she said.

He nodded, and his eyes flickered over to the stern expression on Mahati's face.

He rushed to his seat and plugged his laptop into the table's built-in base station to re-establish his network connection. He quietly apologized to his neighbors Rosalind and Frank, who both shrugged it off with smiles. He sent a nod to Sigrid and caught Roy's concerned look. He was likely still thinking about what Henry had begun to say about the NSA.

Camila called the meeting to order, and the executives reviewed the minutes of the previous meeting, then went on to speak of new items. Henry's attention kept slipping back to his laptop's screen, which showed another NSA tech poking about his firewall unsuccessfully. Then they were gone. He checked the date stamp of the last attempt and calculated they'd been at it for thirty-six straight hours, almost to the second. This hacker followed the rules and ran checks for all the known exploits but lacked the creativity of Kent. It was like they were only going through the motions.

He paused. A distraction? He ran a script to look for any out-of-the-ordinary patterns in the reports he pulled from the server room equipment. Then he scanned the support hardware, like the power backup and the Cooling system, and spotted the anomaly. The chiller was working harder than usual, as the web servers consumed almost twice as much power as they typically did. It was like a custom denial of service attack. He checked the web servers and saw some unexpected calls. Examining the records closer, he saw the exploit they were using and groaned quietly. He adjusted the firewall rules to filter all queries to the webservers against the previous cache entries to detect duplicate calls. Subsequent identical calls would now be identified as such and ignored. Once he posted the rule fix, he watched the traffic on the web servers, and they showed an immediate decrease in spurious transactions. He kept his eye on the flagged reports, and soon, he saw the affected servers cooling as the redundant calls were skipped and the load decreased. He smiled. Clever hacker. If the server room's cooling stack hadn't been able to easily compensate for the additional heat of the overworked CPUs, they might have faced a meltdown.

"HENRY!"

He jumped and looked at Camila guiltily.

"What has your attention so focused that you missed me calling your name repeatedly?" Camila growled.

"Sorry, the hacker just tried to overload the web servers to cause them to overheat. The server room's AC was running harder than it normally does due to the temperature increase. I blocked the redundant calls on the website, and the CPU temps are returning to normal levels. That kind of attack won't be a threat anymore. What... what were you going to ask me?"

Camila snorted. "I was trying to determine if you had any ideas why we're receiving reports that our website is slow."

"Oh, well... that would be it. It should be back to normal shortly," he remarked.

His eyes went to Roy, who had that grim look again.

"Maybe we could add that to our marketing message. Servers so secure they keep their cool even under attack." Rosalind suggested cheekily, and Roy made an involuntary moan. Chuckles erupted around the table.

"Very funny, but we need to deal with this persistent attacker," Roy grumbled.

Camila nodded. "And we will. I have a meeting at five today with two representatives of the agency we believe is responsible. Henry, please make yourself available for this meeting which we'll take in my office. Try not to be late for that one."

He gave her a sheepish smile. "Sorry."

They moved on. Crisis averted, Henry paid attention.

-=-

When they concluded the regular meeting, Mahati once more asked for Camila, Roy, and Sigrid to remain behind for another matter.

Once the others had all filed out and the room was private, the lawyer looked down at the table and cleared her throat.

She looked at Camila and began. "I addressed the points raised at our last meeting with my mother. I asked how I could truly represent VRL when the Council was my client. She wasn't pleased that I was questioning her decision. I won't go into the details of our discussion, but I can sum it up by saying I'm no longer associated with my mother's law firm but have begun the process of establishing a headquarters for my own firm."

There was shocked silence from the others.

"I'll understand if you wish to look for alternate external counsel, but I assure you I have a tremendous breadth of knowledge and am highly skilled."

"Are you interviewing for the job?" Camila asked in surprise.

Mahati looked at her questioningly and then nodded slightly.

"You've never had to interview before, have you?" Sigrid asked curiously.

Mahati turned her eyes to Sigrid and shook her head cautiously.

"For an internal counsel job, you'd usually bring a resume indicating your training, skills, and work experience. For external counsel, we'd ask for references from your client base, interview some of them, and review your case history," Sigrid said with a kind smile.

"I have worked in my mother's law firm my entire life. Since I've been able to read. I've read all of the legal texts and case history in the firm. I have an eidetic memory, so my mother had me working in research. As I insisted, I was allowed to take the bar exam, which I passed easily. I've received training as a trial attorney, but while my mother paid for the training, she never allowed me to leave the family property unsupervised. Being assigned the VRL case was my first experience in the outside world. She did not want to do it, but I forced her hand when I volunteered in the presence of the Council members."

Sigrid rocked back in surprise. "Wait—what? You volunteered? Why did you give us such a hard time in our first meeting?"

Mahati looked distinctly uncomfortable. "It was my first time working outside the firm, and I tried to emulate how I thought my mother would act. I'm sorry for how I behaved that day." She looked down at her hands on the table. "Now that I have chosen to set my destiny, I cannot return to the family estate. I stayed in a hotel last night. I didn't like it. I need to find a permanent dwelling of my own."

"You're looking for a place in the city?" Roy asked, and she nodded. "How are you fixed for funds?"

"I have personal investments and accounts. Separate from my mother's accounts and completely under my control. I have... sufficient funds," Mahati said, acknowledging Roy's question. She looked at Sigrid, who was looking at her with a strange smile on her face. "What?"

"Are you aware of Angelus Vindictae Ultrices?" Sigrid asked her, and Camila turned her head to look at her HR Chief in surprise.

Mahati searched her memory and found an obscure reference from an ancient Hidden Races law book she'd read as a child. "Yes, it covers the transference of property rights of the demonically possessed to the avenging angel who dispatches the demon." She paused as she looked for an occurrence of its use. "That law hasn't been enacted in a long time. Not for... three decades. The last case was in Italy. A small village—"

"I've heard enough. Mahati has my vote," Sigrid said with a smile. Camila and Roy looked at her in surprise. "That last case was my mother. She dispatched a demon who'd possessed the village's magistrate. She still lives in the magistrate's villa on that mountain."

"Thank you for the trip down memory lane, Sigrid, but I'll need to consider this. Often, lawsuits can be avoided just because the law firm's name strikes fear into the opponent. That's one of the goals of having outside counsel."

Sigrid shrugged with her enigmatic smile. "That wasn't my only reason for mentioning it. I now own a very nice two-bedroom condo in Henry's building. To be precise, the unit next to his."

Camila gawked at her. "A demon was living next to Henry?"

The tall blond nodded. "The original occupant was a bridge troll. Festil Vlodsky. No family, which simplifies the Human law side of things. Not sure when the Demon moved in and replaced him." She looked to Mahati. "The point is, I'll sell you the condo for market value with no markup if you're interested."

Mahati blinked at Sigrid in surprise. "Is it in Manhattan?"

Sigrid snorted in amusement. "No, if you want a condo in Manhattan, you're on your own. There, the availability is minimal, and the cost is maximum. For Stanley, we found a great Jersey City building with a lovely Manhattan view. It's right on the Hudson, close to the Path. If you want, you can join me at the unit tonight to take a look. I'll be doing my own cleansing of the condo to ensure no remnants of the demon remain. The clean-up crew is exceptionally thorough, but this demon was particularly sneaky and foul! I want to ensure the next tenant receives a purified home."

"Why aren't you keeping the condo for yourself?" Mahati asked.

"I own a brownstone in Manhattan. It's all I need," Sigrid said with a smile.

Mahati nodded to Sigrid and received a smile from the blond. She then turned to Camila. "I will leave you to contemplate the option of hiring my firm's services. I can assure you, what I lack in established reputation, I exceed in professional expertise."

"What's your firm called?" Roy asked.

"M. Chandra, LLP."

Roy smiled at Camila. "Is that intimidating enough for you? Her mum's firm is Chandra, LLP."

"How did you get away with that?" Camila asked.

Mahati raised a perfect brow. "It's my name. Besides, I registered it years ago before I knew my mother had no intention of allowing me to leave the research department of her firm."

Comprehension dawned on Roy's face. "You're her archive! As we have the backup technology Henry set up for us, Mahati's mum had her! You remember everything with absolute recall?" The lawyer nodded. Roy looked at Camila. "She has my vote, too."

Camila looked a little worried. "As you are so valuable to your mother, are you confident she won't try to interfere with your new found independence to draw you back to her employ?"

"Oh, I'm certain she will attempt it, but slavery was abolished quite some time ago, and now that I've come to my senses, I will not return to a life of false promises and servitude."

Camila watched her for a moment. "I'm leaning towards accepting your offer, but I must review the contract again. It wasn't written for signing on a new legal entity. That introduces some risk to VRL. I need to refactor the contract to address this. And before this, I still want to get Marisa's impression of you."

"I'm ready to do that now if you can guarantee she won't divulge anything she sees to anyone, including myself," the lawyer said firmly.

Camila nodded and called Marisa to join them in the boardroom.

Mahati tried to keep a calm expression on her face as she addressed Camila. "How often have you called upon your daughter to do this?"

Camila shook her head. "This is actually the first time."

There was a knock then Marisa entered and walked over to the table. "Yes?"

"I'm considering taking on Ms. Chandra as VRL's external counsel. Before I do, I would like you to read her potentials—just to get an impression from her. Nothing more!" She hurried to complete her request as Marisa's eyes flared with anger. "Should I or shouldn't I, based on the overall weight of the impressions you receive. The company is potentially placing itself at risk with an unproven law firm. The final decision is mine."

Marisa struggled to control her breathing as this was precisely what she wanted to avoid. Camila saw her unease. "I'm sorry to ask this of you. If it wasn't so important, I wouldn't have asked."

"Are you unwilling to do this?" Mahati asked curiously and with a little relief.

Marisa closed her eyes, took a deep, slow breath, and opened them to look into Mahati's nervous eyes. "No, it's fine. I have no desire to become the company Oracle as my abilities are untrained. I can see potentials very strongly, but I cannot interpret them. Assigning a value to them is something I'm not entirely comfortable with," she said stiffly.

"Oh! I don't want to know what you see," Mahati blurted.

Marisa nodded, understanding. "Then I suggest you keep your eyes closed as I can't promise what I see won't show in my expression."

The lawyer froze and then nodded. "What do I need to do?" She stood to face Marisa.