“We’ve got a long list,” Archie said. “Not all of the complainants are dead. But the reason we’ve decided to terminate you today, Wendy, is that Darkness Fallz doesn’t want to work with you anymore. They never want to see you again. They’ve gone to the length of writing that into their new contract with their record company.”
Now Wendy felt like she’d been slapped. Darkness Fallz had sunk so low by the time Wendy was sent to them that they were getting fired from pub gigs in Tacoma because their meth-addicted lead singer couldn’t drag his ass to work at nine o’clock at night. The rest of the group had been grateful to Wendy when the funny, self-deprecating video she arranged to be shot for them went viral. They were invited to tour the talk shows, then to sign a new recording contract. She’d thought the lead singer might have been grateful to her, too, in the end, despite some of the things she’d said to him about acting like an overgrown Halloween trick-or-treater.
As the sting of the slap faded into a deep ache, again she felt like crying at the betrayal. Instead, she laughed shortly. “Their contract actually says they don’t want to work with me again?”
“Show her the contract, Katie,” Archie said.
Katelyn peered into her designer tote, thumbed through a stapled sheaf of papers to a particular page, and handed the contract across the table. Wendy took it as if Katelyn were dressed in a red rubber Satan costume like the lead singer of Darkness Fallz himself. She peered at the underlined sentence: Manhattan Music agrees that it will not employ Stargazer Public Relations to work with Darkness Fallz for the period of this contract.
To be on her bosses’ desks this morning, the contract must have been on its way while Wendy was still in Seattle, helping Darkness Fallz through their issues. Which hurt even more.
“The contract doesn’t specify me,” she grumbled.
“They meant you,” Jonathan said.
Katelyn told Wendy, “You’ve lost their business for everybody at Stargazer. We hear Manhattan Music has already retained another firm for them. Can you guess what firm that might be?”
Wendy knew. Katelyn wouldn’t have posed the question otherwise. Manhattan Music must have hired Stargazer’s biggest enemy, whose heir apparent was Wendy’s own arch-rival from college. Daniel Blackstone was the undisputed expert among PR experts at getting stars out of trouble. He was also one of Wendy’s least favorite people, along with her ex, Rick. But she was trying to save her job, so she swallowed her medicine. She attempted to look contrite rather than ill as she ventured, “The Blackstone Firm?”
“The Blackstone Firm,” Jonathan repeated in a whisper, as if he dared not say the name of the dragon too loudly for fear of calling it down from the icy mountain to slay them all.
“We can’t keep you on staff if you’re losing us business,” Katelyn explained.
“What about my current business?” Wendy asked, realizing as she did so that her bosses had already finished up her current business. That’s why they’d sent her all over town this morning, touching base with her clients. Her stars would feel taken care of for a few days, until Stargazer was able to send in someone else. But there was one client she’d met with on her own. “What about Zane Taylor?”
“We’re giving him to Tom,” Jonathan said.
Which was why her bosses hadn’t put Zane on her visitation list. She wanted to say something cutting about Tom Ruffner’s chances of whipping Zane into shape, but she couldn’t. She was Tom’s mentor and friend. And despite his youth and inexperience, Tom was good at this.
Wendy was beginning to feel expendable.
“But I get you business,” she said weakly. “Maybe my sunshiny personality doesn’t, but my results do. I’m the best you have at pulling stars out of scrapes. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Archie said, “but you’re not doing us a lot of good if the stars employ us for a month, you pull them out of their scrape, and then they fire us. We need long-term relationships.”
“One more chance,” Wendy insisted. She realized her voice had risen again when a flock of pigeons burst from the window ledge behind her bosses in a flurry of wings.
Startled, Katelyn and Jonathan turned toward the window. As they faced the table again, they looked at each other and, barely perceptibly, shook their heads no. Archie told Wendy, “It’s so much easier to fire you.”
Lowering her voice, Wendy said, “Most workplaces would counsel an employee and allow her the chance to improve before giving her the ax.” Wendy understood that most employees didn’t cost their workplaces hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight, but she left that part out. “I’ll prove to you that I can help some guy out of the gutter and make him love me, too.”
Katelyn and Jonathan shook their heads more vigorously. Archie said, “The only star we’d even think about letting you near—” Now Jonathan was wagging his head no in an exaggerated fashion so Archie could see him out of the corner of his eye. Archie put his meaty hand on Jonathan’s shoulder to stay him, then continued, “—is the star who asked for you specifically, Wendy.”
“Lorelei Vogel?” Wendy guessed. It was that kind of day.
Archie watched her grimly, which meant yes.
Often when a huge star like Lorelei approached the agency, Wendy, Tom, and six other operatives fought over the account like lions over a piece of meat while a laid-back and calculating Sarah watched them as if she weren’t even hungry—which often resulted in the bosses handing the job to her. But nobody was touching Lorelei. Stargazer never turned down a difficult case, and the tacit message to employees was Deliver or die. Wendy knew if she saved her job today, Lorelei would likely be the death of her career anyway.
And she had another, much more personal reason to stay as far away from that chick as possible.
But Wendy’s future lay on the metal table in front of her, with Jonathan pulling the IV out of its arm, Katelyn holding her finger on the button to turn off life support, and Archie waiting with the body bag open and ready. Lorelei Vogel was Wendy’s only sad, unlikely chance at resuscitating her job.
“I’ll take it!” She slapped her hand on the table. The wood reverberated, the coffee sloshed, and all three bosses jumped. “You said Lorelei asked for me specifically. What do you have to lose?”
“A lot, honey,” Katelyn said. “This girl is the head-lining act for the Hot Choice Awards on Friday. If she melts down, she’s doing it on national television and taking our good name with her.”