Jenna cracked the knuckles of her right hand. Training her new personal assistant was going to take a lot of patience. 

“Are you there, Ixy?” Jenna asked.

“I’m peeing,” Jenna’s new PA said crankily. “Can you give me a minute?”

Jenna bit her tongue. 

She had no idea how many human rights violations she’d been guilty of when Sardius had been her personal assistant. She had never noticed when he went to the bathroom or if he ever did. She didn’t notice him sleeping. She didn’t notice him sipping water. She had worked him like a slave and she was still asking for more of him up until the very last moment.

Ixy and Ivy were the two assistants Jenna and Excelyn had managed to get from the Double X Chromosome Prison. Jenna got Ixy and Excelyn got Ivy. Between Jenna and the lamp post, she thought Excelyn got the better of the two girls. Jenna had managed to get five more on standby, and they were training another one named Conrad who was not a woman, but he was sentenced to a life sentence in the Xypher Zone and there was no other prison to put him in for the time being. The warden had asked them to take him on as his role as a personal assistant would keep him away from the other prisoners and stimulate his mind. He took over for Ixy and Ivy for the night shift so the girls could sleep and neither Jenna nor Excelyn needed much in the middle of the night. He was fine to look after both of them during that time period. 

Ixy and Ivy were sisters the warden would allow to bunk together if they signed up to be Jenna and Excelyn’s personal assistants. The upswing was that they were very happy. The downswing was that they talked to each other a lot. As a consequence, Jenna didn’t leave the line open all the time. She only spoke to Ixy when she needed her. 

Ixy and Ivy were in jail because they had tried to break a friend of theirs out of jail in the Xypher Zone. Needless to say, it didn’t work out. When they were caught, all their previous crimes came back to haunt them. For their crime spree, they liked to steal drugs and crash starships. The AAMC hated their guts because they didn’t steal the ships they crashed. They partied with pilots and then convinced their dates to let them take the wheel and then they’d steer it into the first thing they saw… usually the platform where the ship was docked—double damage. Sometimes triple damage if they crashed into another ship.

Jenna wished she didn’t think that was hilarious, but she did. 

The girls were incredibly sober now, but in their hearts, they still wanted to do drugs and crash starships.

The first person Excelyn hired was a bodyguard for her and Jenna to share named Crimp. She was a poison-touch girl with a terrible resume, but Excelyn wanted her badly.

“It’s fine,” Excelyn said, reminding Jenna that everyone had a terrible reputation.

“What if she touches you?” Jenna wondered.

The doctor scoffed. “Do you have any idea how many poisonous Octavians I’ve treated? I’m immune. Besides, her poison doesn’t kill many Adamis races. It just stuns them. Her skills are perfect for us.”

When Crimp arrived at the Stone Palace, Jenna thought she was more interesting than when she had only seen her profile picture. She had short pink hair and experienced wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. When Excelyn talked about her, she made her sound like a baby. Well, she was a baby compared to Excelyn, who was in her eighties. Crimp was older than Jenna. She wore back caps on all her fingers that melded into vine tattoos that went up her hands and forearms.

Jenna welcomed her easily, putting out her hand to shake hers.

Crimp looked at her outstretched hand and huffed out a breath of air. “Don’t shake hands with anyone,” Crimp advised before walking past her to greet Excelyn, who would be her real employer.

Jenna glanced over her shoulder at the poisonous woman. She knew Sardius would have liked her. She could practically hear his phantom approval through her earpiece.