“This would be so much more convenient for both of us if you just let me fly there alone,” Adah said.
“And let you get into who knows what kind of trouble?” Grace said. “No thanks. You’re still representing Michel and I in these meetings.”
Adah and Grace were making yet another drive to the heart of Region 1. As predicted, their meetings with Secretary Sirk had increased in frequency. The industry’s ringmaster wanted to keep a close eye on Elise and her most troublesome magical girl and, at the same time, Elise and Adah wanted to make their own moves involving Sirk. Now that Region 4’s coalition had been officially announced to the public, Sirk wanted to make sure they weren’t straying beyond his zone of acceptable behavior.
Adah was glad for the opportunities to learn more about Sirk, but considerably less thrilled about the long drives to his office.
“At least you’re not the one doing the driving,” Grace said. “Think of this trip as some time you’ve blocked off to get work done. On that note, any thoughts on the new office?”
While Grace handled the driving, she’d given Adah her phone to look through some real estate listings she’d compiled. The first step in upgrading their agency office was to find some options they’d be satisfied moving to. Cost wasn’t much of a limiting factor for the Last Light nowadays, but that generous budget hadn’t helped Adah make up her mind.
“I don’t know if I could vote for any of these,” she said, swiping through the tabs on Grace’s phone again. “Any place with enough space for five of us is in Padoux, and that’s too close to the Department for my taste. I’d feel like we’re being watched all the time.”
“You girls don’t need to live where you work any longer,” Grace reminded her. “We could rent you apartments or even a team house. If I can look for office space that doesn’t have to double as a dormitory, that’ll open up a lot more options.”
Adah looked out the car window. During the first stretch of their drive, they’d passed by numerous towns in Region 4, most of which Adah had visited at some point over the past four years. Maybe she and Rika had gone to one to try a certain restaurant; maybe she’d watched a fireworks show in another; and maybe a mission had brought her to a third. Even after visiting so many different places, Adah had never felt like she was missing out by living at the agency dorms. That old, cramped building had become her home.
“And what about expanding the current office?” she asked Grace. “Did you look any further into that?”
“It might seem counterintuitive,” Grace said, “but staying where we’re at would be more work than moving somewhere else. We’d have to buy one of the lots next door for starters. Assuming that went well, we’d need to deal with zoning and all the permits that go into that. We’re still technically a business operating in a residential area. It’s not like we’re adding a garage or anything like that either. Another bedroom, probably another bathroom, maybe a proper kitchen… At that point, we’ll be inviting a whole club of inspectors over. The new construction would be one thing, but who knows what they’d find wrong with the existing building.”
“But it’d be possible?” Adah asked. “Especially if a certain Secretary of Magic helped us pull some strings?”
Grace shot Adah a look with a squint before turning her eyes back to the road.
“So it’s your turn for some political corruption, huh?” she said.
“What’s so corrupt about our Secretary helping the region’s most successful magical girls secure an effective base of operations?” Adah said. “Besides, you live close to our current office, don’t you? It’s to everyone’s benefit.”
After a long pause, Grace eventually answered, “I’ll see what it’d take. No promises.”
Knowing Grace, she’d find a way to make the office upgrade work if Adah pushed her to. The woman had a talent for getting things done. No doubt their agency would have fallen apart long before the invention of Twilight Heartbreak without Grace quietly keeping all its cogs in place. As the Last Light grew in popularity—and now number—Grace’s work grew all the more valuable. Adah made a mental note to go above and beyond for her manager’s birthday gift this year—that’d be a start for showing her gratitude.
But before that, she had even more work to get through.
“Where are we at with Seliah?” Adah asked. “How long before she officially joins us?”
“At this point, we’re only waiting on her manager to return some paperwork,” Grace said. “We negotiated all the terms of her buyout ahead of time, so I can’t imagine she’ll send back any revisions at this point. She seemed checked out of her job anyway. Seliah was just passive income for her; all we really did was offer enough money to compensate for losing that.”
It sounded like the business side of adding Seliah to the roster was taken care of. The rest of the job lay in Adah and Seb’s laps, then. They needed to properly unveil Seliah as a new member of the Last Light, which was proving to be a more complicated task than Adah had anticipated. All of their fans were familiar with the witch from the coalition’s activities, so the issue wasn’t introducing Seliah as much as it was integrating her.
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What was Seliah’s identity in the context of the Last Light? Would she change her persona at all? What about her transformation outfit? Her name fit well enough, but her appearance could probably use some tweaks. In that case, how much could she change without losing the style her fans had grown to love? That hat surely had to stay.
Seliah wasn’t the only one who’d have to change as a result of her acquisition either. The Last Light was a full-fledged brand at this point. The group photos of their members, the bio sheets on their website, any reference to “the four of them”—all of that would need updating. Those changes were simple, if tedious, but the real challenge would be integrating Seliah into the team’s upcoming projects. They were gearing up to film their first music video; what would Seliah’s role in that be? Should they reorganize the lyrics across five members or just leave Seliah out for now? In the first place, did Seliah even have any interest in singing?
Perhaps Grace was right. Adah ought to be grateful for a long car ride during which she could think all these questions through.
“That reminds me,” Grace said, “your and Rika’s contracts are almost up, too. We should find time to talk about your renewal terms with Michel soon. Unless some other agency has already poached you?”
The idea was so absurd, Adah had to laugh.
“I’m still too small to be worth the trouble to anyone else,” she said. “What agency wants a girl who does nothing but pick fights with the Department?”
“And what would you want to do with them?” Grace said with a smile. “Despite everything, I’ve grown quite fond of our tiny troublemaker.”
Though they were joking about it, their situation was truly odd among magical girl agencies. In fact, all of the coalition teams shared this strangeness. Throughout their underdog, underground region, an inverted power structure had formed. Magic users in the other regions would never have so much say in how their agencies were run.
While Adah and the Last Light were the most extreme example, even a more traditional agency like DreamRise was under the control of Iris more than its manager or producer. The region’s circumstances likely played a role in this—anyone looking to work for a serious agency with grand ambitions would have joined one in Region 1 or 2. As for founders, one had to look no further than Michel to understand the kind of attitude that led someone to form a new agency in this region. Adah had heard that Fifty Flip’s producer created their agency for the same reason. If Region 1 was full of buttoned up industry titans, Region 4 was filled with laid back passion projects.
Under those conditions, it was inevitable that a couple of hotheads like Adah and Iris would snatch the reins as soon as they got a taste of success. The top agencies in other regions fielded double-digit rosters of magic users across multiple teams, and the branding and objectives of those teams were decided by the agency’s staff and investors. If a magic user didn’t fit one team, they could be moved to another. If they caused trouble, they could be benched and replaced.
Although Michel and Grace had the legal right to boot Adah from their agency, they could never do so in practice. Her teammates would refuse to work without her and, even if Adah had pissed them off too, no one could fill Heartbreak’s shoes. She’d become synonymous with the agency itself.
That was a far cry from how the industry functioned in Region 1. Agencies built their reputations on producing magic users, not merely employing them. One girl might grow more popular than the rest, but the most successful agencies always had a dozen girls ready to take her place. Each of them had been trained and managed the same as the rest, always in that agency’s style. Whatever the fans had grown to love about that first girl, the others could most likely replicate. They were mass-produced idols, after all.
Those were the conditions that had led to Sirk’s rise to power, and that had allowed him to establish the control he had over the region. Though Adah believed it to be an illusion of power, it still behaved like true power. Region 1 had no shortage of magic users willing to play his games. As long as that held true, any troublesome magic users could easily be replaced. If the magic users pushed back, Adah believed Sirk’s stranglehold would slip, but thus far they seemed content to play by his rules.
All of them except one—a boy that Adah hoped she might see again today. If nothing else, she needed to thank Locke for his gift.
These thoughts occupied her mind for a while longer before Adah took Grace’s advice and began to get some work done. She tapped out some notes about next moves for both the Last Light and Region 4’s coalition in her phone, breaking every now and then to message with Seb about how to execute her plans. To her surprise, working in this way did help the time pass faster.
As Region 1’s Department of Magic and its glistening glass exterior came into view, Izzy materialized in the back seat of Grace’s car. His presence had become something of a routine as well. Whenever Adah met with Elise or Sirk, she always had her mascot by her side. Now that she’d learned of Kodriel’s relationship with Elise, having her own mascot with her seemed more important than ever.
Today, Adah wanted Izzy to do more than simply help her make a statement.
“When we’re walking through the building,” Adah said over her shoulder, “and especially when we’re in Sirk’s office, see if you can sense any mascots hanging around. I’m sure Kodriel will be there with Elise, whether he shows himself or not, but I want to see if there are any others.”
“Did something happen to spark your suspicion?” Izzy asked her.
“Plenty,” she said.
Kodriel making his presence known at the coalition’s press conference had confirmed one of Adah’s theories. The little lion was not a passive observer of what went on at the Department of Magic. He had a stake in how Elise’s plans played out. Adah couldn’t be sure whether his interests aligned with hers, but the fact he was one of the Keteriel made him worth keeping tabs on.
With Kodriel so often by Elise’s side, Adah had started to wonder if the other Secretaries kept mascots in their own entourages. She had yet to see any in their physical forms, but that didn’t mean they weren’t watching from one pocket dimension or another. Given Sirk’s obsession with control, it seemed only natural he would want an influential mascot as part of his inner circle.
“I will search for them,” Izzy said, “and if possible, determine their identities.”
And from their identities, their allegiances.