Hard Magic by Laura Anne Gilman

was not going to be a laugh riot on bad days. The vibe I’d gotten off Sharon yesterday was that she might be a control freak know-it-all, but she wasn’t going to be a tight-ass about it. We’d be fine.
    I hoped. I really, really hoped. I liked having female friends, but my college buds were scattered to the winds of employment now, and without e-mail or a cell phone, it was going to be tough to keep up with them. Knowing that it was inevitable didn’t make the knowledge any less painful, so I tried not to linger on it, instead looking forward. New job. New friends. New—
    “Wow.”
    Nifty had gone in through the office door first, and stopped so suddenly I almost broke my nose against his back. “Hello? What? Brick wall, do you mind moving?”
    “Oh, sorry.” He went all the way into the office, and I heard Nick behind me say something rude when he ran into my back as I stopped dead, too.
    “Sorry,” I muttered in turn, and moved aside. Nick, still pissed, didn’t even look, just walked in…and then stopped dead.
    “Ah, glad you’re here.” Stosser was sitting on a new, damned comfy-looking chocolate-brown sofa, looking up at us over a clipboard on his lap. His orange-red hair was tied back in a braid, and he was dressed in black jeans and a black pullover, making him look even more like some kind of satanic candle. “Try to be prompt in the future. We have a lot to hammer into your heads and not a lot of time to do it in.”
    “Good morning to you, too,” Nick muttered, sounding offended, and not just because we’d done a three-body pileup in front of the boss.
    “Right. Good morning. Sorry.” Stosser’s reportedly famous charm made a brief appearance, and then he turned it off. “You all dressed appropriately, good. Come with me.”
    He stood up and walked through the now totally redecorated space that had blown our minds for a moment, clearly expecting us to follow. The half-assed kitchenette of yesterday was now a full beverage station, with a brand-new coffeemaker, a hot-water dispenser, a wet-sink, and an open cabinet filled with plain white mugs and boxes of really nice teas and coffees. There was also a larger refrigerator that, I was guessing, had real cream in it now. The old rental-style waiting room furniture had been replaced with the brown sofa and a matching loveseat over a dark cream carpet where there’d been linoleum before. A bookcase took up the entire length of the wall, next to the door into the inner office, and was filled with what looked like textbooks. The room seemed larger now, somehow, although I knew that it had to be an optical illusion. Right?
    Obviously, the office design fairies had been through overnight. J’s concerns about them not having enough money to back up their paycheck promises seemed less likely now. Unless, of course, they were putting all the money into set-dressing…
    “Are you four coming, or not?” Stosser asked over his shoulder, and walked through the inner door.
    We were.
    It was easier to accept the transformation of the inside office, but only because we were all a little numb at this point. Instead of the cheap mock-executive layout, the room was now dominated by a dark wood table, oval shaped, with nine conference chairs placed around it. The walls were covered with more bookcases, filled with more textbooks, and I had a sudden thought that I’d walked right back into college. It wasn’t a good thought. I knew we were going to need training, but I could do without the reading assignments.
    There wasn’t anyone else in the room, and Stosser didn’t stop, either, walking across the room and reaching for a sliding door I was embarrassed to realize I hadn’t noticed before.
    Or maybe it hadn’t been there before to notice. Current can’t bend time or space, but if you’ve got enough money, enough mojo, or enough people working hard, you can do a lot of internal renovations. Evidence to date was pointing to Stosser and Venec having