Ribald was ignoring him. Again.

Usually TamLin wouldn’t think much of that—Ribald worked as front receptionist mainly to dissuade anyone from making trouble—but TamLin had picked a fight, yesterday morning, so he should’ve warranted at least a discreet sneer somewhere between passing the guard and scanner at the front entrance, and crossing the wide-open foyer in front of the front desk.

He paused before progressing over to the door that would continue his way to his office and the paperwork he needed to hammer out with Misha about the previous day’s events—namely for the class-five breach of this somewhen and the associated cyborg who’d decided to stick on their side of the bridge before they shut it down.

Okay, before Janni destroyed it.

Ribald was still ignoring him, so TamLin tapped the desk. “You okay?”

The man glared at him, and he scowled deeply enough that his beard failed to hide it. The bruise on his face was far too purple and swollen for the day that had passed since their fight.

That kind of injury warranted a regen shot, not a patch, so TamLin fished one from his belt and slid it across the desk. Ribald’s reflexes kicked in, and he caught it automatically.

TamLin strode for the door.

“Hey!” Ribald snapped, sounding as offended as he looked. “What’s this shit? You think you can buy me off?”

It was just a regen shot. “Why the fuck would I need to buy you off?”

The secretary-bouncer glared at him for a few seconds, still scowling…and then shrewdness softened his gaze. “Scatter on the street is that your girlfriend kidnapped the boss and you know where she’s keeping him.”

“Seriously?” Of course Ribald was serious—that was too…creative for him to have made it up. The man wasn’t stupid, but he had his job because he was quick to notice concrete threats, not abstract ones.

Well, and because he was too belligerent for other positions that would benefit from concrete thinking.

TamLin glanced back at the front entrance guards and scanners, but they’d waved him on in, so it was only gossip, not anything substantiated.

Not that evidence was necessary, in order to crucify someone.

“Well, that’s more interesting than the scatter around the office tends to be,” he said lightly. “Who’s my girlfriend?”

“You don’t know who your own girlfriend is?”

He gave a shrug. “I don’t follow the betting pool.”

“What, so you have a boyfriend?”

Playing along with that question could get amusing, but TamLin had things to get done. “I have a fiancée,” he said flatly. “And she’s never touched Puce.”

Okay, so Second napalmed his office two days ago, but that had been to destroy his blackmail material, not to kill him.

“Fiancée?” Ribald’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. He tapped his console, glancing at what was surely the employee record. “You’re not documented as having a girlfriend.”

“Just happened. I’ll file the necessary paperwork before the fortnight’s up.”

“What, so you got both together and engaged yesterday? That’s…convenient.”

“Not really, no.” TamLin nodded to the console, which had all the official stuff needed for his job and kept track of the office gambling. “Who do people think I’m doing? Kasy? ’Cause I can tell you right now, she isn’t my type.”

Ribald snorted. “That’s what I told Penn. Kasy’s too skittish for you.”

TamLin couldn’t help but wonder if that conversation with Penn had come before or after Ribald found out his favorite lover was their boss’s wife.

“You’d be too busy teaching her to protect herself in order to fuck her,” he finished.

Wasn’t that a ‘lovely’ image. “So charming, Ribald. No wonder you’re such a hit with the ladies.”

That wasn’t entirely fair. Ribald was a crass bigot, but his whores said he didn’t hurt them and he tipped them well.

“Look,” TamLin said. “I’m just asking who the office thinks I’m fucking so I can figure out why and warn my fiancée.”

Ribald studied him, and TamLin didn’t let his concern show.

“That girl shadow from the same universe you are,” Ribald said finally. “Jan.”

TamLin grimaced—and most of the revulsion wasn’t due to the accusation that he was sleeping with Janni.

“Absolutely not,” he said, and he progressed through the door and down the hall.

His coworkers had always known there was something odd about him, but this universe still treated travel through time and across universes as something classified and to be hidden from the masses. Only a handful in the office were supposed to know that refugees from other universes were even possible. Even fewer were supposed to know that such refugees were called shadows and their children were called shadowborn.

And only one would’ve actually broken the rules and unleashed that rumor in the office gossip pools.

Puce was far from the first manipulative asshole TamLin had ever dealt with, and he recognized the gossip from Ribald as an opening volley. Thanks to the napalm, Puce had lost the blackmail material he’d been holding as leverage over various shadows. It had been obvious for months that TamLin didn’t care for Puce or his methods, so now that there was nothing to stop TamLin from lashing out…

Puce was striking first.

Kasy would be a target, too. She was shadowborn. A sensate like him, except she was classified as a grade yellow. He had reason to believe she only rated that low due to lack of training rather than due to natural limitations on her ability, and Puce’s repeated games to have her dosed with fertility drugs then forcibly impregnated surely didn’t help that.

Wait a minute…

If Puce, the only one ‘in the know’ who would’ve told everyone what TamLin was, had forced Kasy to conceive and birth before, where were the children?

TamLin had plenty of leverage to get himself out of pretty much anything Puce sought to pin on him. But using what he had would leave others open to retaliation—thus why he’d been picking his battles and biding his time.

What if he could destroy Puce altogether? Now? While the man was too distracted from setting TamLin up in order to replace all the leverage that had been destroyed?

Slavery was illegal in this somewhen, and the enslavement of children couldn’t be hidden with carefully-designed contracts.

TamLin entered the office he shared with Kasy.

Okay, there were a few other coworkers with desks in this room, but he and Kasy were the main ones whose shifts were consistent.

A snort and grunt interrupted the snores coming from beneath the mop of hair covering one of the desks. TamLin frowned at the mophead as he went to his desk.

Kasy glanced up at him and followed his gaze.

He grabbed a stylus and pointed at the sleeping coworker, who had never been enough of a viper or a mouse for TamLin to bother to learn his name. “What the fuck?”

“Icarus got stuck with a triple and was denied six of his five-minute breaks, last shift.”

Breaks that were required by law to be made available hourly, whenever possible—never mind the illegality of the triple shift in itself.

Maybe he should’ve paid more attention to that particular coworker.

He looked from Icarus to the door. Anyone could walk by, spot the guy sleeping, and doctor some paperwork to trump up some bullshit charge on him, right now, though he was on a legally mandated break.

TamLin went back to the door, shut it, and glanced at Kasy to make sure she was okay with that.

She tensed but tossed him a wan smile and focused on whatever she was doing on her console.

He carefully kept his body angled away from her as he returned to his desk, to help reinforce the ‘I won’t rape you’ that she already knew. He ensconced himself in his seat, pulling the chair further under the desk than usual so it would take a second longer to extricate himself than usual, and she relaxed slightly.

Sometimes, he really wanted to kill Puce.