My heart stopped, literally skipping a beat in my chest, and I felt the blood rush out of my head, with no powers at the ready to stop it.

Odin snorted. “So surprised. You shouldn’t be. They’re my runes. Of course I’m going to notice when they’re used for something as powerful as a recruitment drive. Credit where it’s due – you and Lucifer have paved the way to show how they might be modified by inter-pantheon collaboration. Just like that, a whole new branch opens up for business. The pope, though –” he sucked in a tight breath, “- very risky. Ham-fisted. You might as well have signed your name all over it.”

So, he knew about the demons. He knew about Lucy’s involvement. How much more was he sitting on?

“I signed a death warrant, yes,” I admitted, suppressing the alarm that immediately followed this statement. Substitute the words ‘death warrant’ with ‘pact’, and it would have been word-for-word what I’d actually been attempting to say. The litmus test had been passed… but barely. It had done a much better job of disguising all my other attempts to reveal its secrets.

It meant Odin wasn’t the manipulator behind the scenes; that much I could now be confident of.

It also indicated the pact wasn’t going to hold out much longer. Not unless I did something to take the heat off in the very near future. If I lost my memories now – or worse, if we all did – Odin would be the only one to benefit from the chaos.

“It seemed funny at the time,” I continued, keeping my tone cold yet blasé. “No one was supposed to notice.”

“Lucifer has a tendency to overestimate his own abilities,” Odin sneered. “All that notoriety’s gone to his head.” With a spring, he levered himself onto one of the empty plinths and perched there with his toes dangling over the edge, looking down at me.

“What do you want with them?” I asked, steering the conversation back towards the demons. “If they’re so risky, why bother?”

“Why wouldn’t I? They’re powerful tools. They bear my marks and they’re mine. Your job is simply to see to it they find their way home.” He cocked his head. “Were you labouring under the misapprehension they belonged to you?” From his smug expression, it was obvious he already believed he knew the answer. “We’ve already established you can’t take care of your own family, let alone any other living creatures.”

Blind rage surged through every bone in my body. “You –“

Echoes rang out across the vast chamber. The rest of my words died out as my throat clamped shut, dampening the vocal cords. I choked on the unexpected obstacle. My breathing remained unimpeded, but nothing else was where it was meant to be. It was the latest in a long line of violations; my body was my area of expertise. If I’d had any of my power remaining – any at all – he would never have been able to wrest control of it from me. He knew that, of course, and wanted me to be sure who was in charge. As if there was any doubt.

Odin lowered the hand he’d raised and the muscles slowly untwisted themselves. “Reckless,” he scolded me. “You want the whole office to know you’re here? Keep this up and I’ll reconsider hiring you on.” He glanced in the direction of the double doors, frowning. “As it is, we’ll be rumbled if we hang around.” He waved a finger in an anti-clockwise motion and I found myself mid-air again, back in mosquito form. I spread my wings and sailed into a hover before I hit the ground.

“Out those doors to the left, at the end of the walkway, is the lift to the foyer,” he directed in a low voice. “Don’t get any ideas. We aren’t dealing with the riff-raff up here. Just run away and expel the demons from your system.” He grinned. “Until next time.”

He watched as I left, the one eye piercing unerringly into me all the way to the exit. I snuck under the crack and dodged the immediate fall of a boot on the other side as Themis pushed both doors open with a determined shove.

“Hands off,” I heard her growl a moment later.

“What, this?” came Odin’s voice. “Doesn’t count if the soul isn’t present. I know the rules.”

I didn’t stick around to listen to them argue, following Odin’s directions towards the lift.

This was a whole part of Providence I hadn’t seen. Helpdesk made up a substantial portion of the office, but it didn’t end there. After Floor A, anyone who was on a dedicated team belonged to the upper floors; Security and HR had one each, as did R&D and Legal. Compliance had two, and Finance and Marketing both had three. Helpdesk employees didn’t have official access to those floors, but I’d weaselled my way up to them anyway on more than a few occasions. The security on them was no tougher than a standard office, more for discouragement than anything. The desks were a little roomier, the atmosphere a little snootier, and there were no erratic spatial distortions – but otherwise they were much the same as their counterparts further down.

Above those were the general-purpose floors, which translated to a variety of boardrooms and meeting spaces. On the rare occasion mortals were allowed into the office, they were brought here, dazzled with miracles for a short time, and booted out looking somewhat more star-struck than they had upon arrival. It was usually government delegations and high-rolling business moguls, though I remembered seeing one or two celebrities escorted through. Those floors were impressive.

Everything above that was restricted to management and above, however, and those had tight security. There were no buttons for them on the lifts, and you couldn’t bore through the ceiling to get to them. People had tried. One person had even managed to blast part-way through the dimensional fabric holding the office together in the attempt, collapsing half the building in the process. This had been before the restructure while I was off shift, and had apparently locked sixteen storeys into a state of interdimensional coexistence for five hours while management ran around in search of repairs like headless chickens.

I’d known bits from rumours and hearsay. White marble, check. Palatial architecture, check. I’d heard about the pearly gates, though I’d expected them to be more, well, gate-like. At the very top, it was speculated, the tyrant had his office and living quarters, which I could believe. Some of Providence’s more fanciful staff speculated there were even higher floors which linked into a very Structuralist idea of a line to a higher authority. But since these were the same people who tended to conclude Yahweh was the world’s special chosen leader, I was pretty sure it was all bullshit.

Outside the gate/furnace chamber was only an expansive hallway lined in more white marble; one long, unbroken piece coating every available surface, a feat I doubted neither mortal engineering nor bank rolls were capable of replicating yet. For a restricted area, it was a little on the disappointing side. Big empty room indeed.

Concerned about the pact, I took Odin’s advice and headed left, encountering no other doors until I hit the end of the walkway. It resolved in lift doors identical to the ones everywhere else in the building; stainless steel covered in fingerprints and the odd dent. A round silver call button, bordered in blue glowing LEDs, taunted me from the vicinity of the wall beside them.

Odin was probably having a laugh at my expense right now, I thought to myself, as I settled onto the wall above the metal doors. There were many things I could do as a mosquito. Operating human-sized controls wasn’t one of them. There was no gap to squeeze through, either. Dented and unremarkable as they seemed, those doors had been built to counteract shapeshifters who could turn into gas. Not much I could do but wait and hope whoever came past was as bad at extra-sensory perception as I was.

Ten agonising minutes passed, during which the elevator approached and departed without stopping several times, before eventually opening with a small ping. Idiyanale, a chronically-underdressed junior HR manager from Mayari’s pantheon, stepped out carrying an enormous pile of poorly-stacked lab equipment which threatened to topple over at the slightest provocation. They took three steps out of the lift, paused, looked around and saw nothing, then shrugged. How the action didn’t cause a mass collapse could only have been down to a divine miracle.

That they didn’t investigate further was down to sheer luck. Just in case, I waited until the last possible second before swooping into the elevator to put some physical distance between us.

Unlike the lifts I was used to, this one had only one button in it, another mocking artifact I couldn’t press.

I had to wait again. I thought Idi might return, but after a minute the conveyor moved on its own, heading downwards for longer than I expected before opening out into the familiar white foyer.

It was no junior manager who shuffled in, however, but Enki.

I almost panicked. Of all the times. It could be argued that Providence’s CHRO had the best perceptive abilities of anyone in the executive short of the tyrant himself.

Although, I reconsidered a moment later, that was when he wasn’t staggeringly drunk. If the gait didn’t give it away, the reddish bags under the eyes did. Enki was young and sturdy to all appearances despite being one of the oldest gods in the business, but there was only so much alcohol you could imbibe over the course of seven thousand years before it started to show. This, I gathered, was one of the bad days.

Nothing for it but to go for it – I made a break for the door and almost made it out before a soft hand closed around me, preventing my exit.

“You’re not meant to be here,” my captor slurred. The fingers opened just a crack, my wings still trapped between others, just enough for me to make out the giant brown eye peering down at me. The eye was bloodshot. “What’s your name?” he asked. “I forget. Begins with a Z. Or a J. One of those.”

Was he for real? Not only could I not answer, I had a bad feeling he was mistaking me for Zeus, which was just insulting. If I ever got out of this compromising position, I was going to have to take a long look at myself in the mirror – in mosquito form and in a metaphorical sense – and make some serious adjustments. Zeus didn’t have his powers, either, and wouldn’t be getting them back for a long time, but Enki seemed to have forgotten that as well.

The eye moved back a little, revealing more of the face around it. Smooth olive skin (except for the bags) and a light dusting of facial hair I knew had been trimmed with magic rather than razors. The style was just a little too pristine, and the hand holding me too shaky to have not stabbed himself in the face every few seconds otherwise.

So I hung there, trapped, wiggling my legs at him in a wishful attempt to convey some sort of urgency in what had to have been up there with my less dignified moments.

The eye squinted, and the gap in the fingers widened. “Alright,” said the god of magic. “It’s your first offence and you haven’t stolen any sensitive information, so here’s what we’ll do.” My wing sockets ached as his fingers waved me up and down in gesticulation. “Overtime.”

I waited for the other shoe to drop, but it didn’t come. Enki looked inordinately pleased with himself. A few moments passed, during which I stopped wiggling my legs and resigned myself to the discomfort.

After an awkward amount of time his brow furrowed, before uncreasing again with a widening of the eyes. The pressure on my wings became worse, and he let out a delighted snigger. “And,” he began, “no accepting tasks from women. For, I dunno, a month. Especially the pretty ones. If you do, I’ll know. One slipup and I’ll make it so you never receive a job from any again.”

I would have given both my wings to see the real Zeus react to that threat. Zeus sort of inhaled women, like he needed them to breathe. It was very strange. They always seemed to come out of it a little sheepish, as if some of the desperation had clung to them in the process and needed washing off with acetone.

But the role fell to me at the moment. Insects were not suited to portraying contrition, but I did my best and gazed up at his giant face, forelegs in the best beggar's pose I could manage.

He hiccupped and put the hand holding me to his chest, thumping it with the blunt of his fist. “Thought so,” he said, as I fought back the resulting dizziness. “Maybe you could tone it down a bit in the long term, too. Not very –” he hiccupped again, “- professional. Seventeen people mentioned you, specifically, in the last internal survey. Which I know is down from last year, but there’s still work to do, you know what I mean?” He groaned and finally let go of me, fingers spreading apart to steady himself against the door he was still obstructing. “Oh no. Work. I’m late. Why do they need this many meetings? First the church, now something-something Pacific trade embargoes. People just need to calm down.”

I was already zooming away, albeit on a bit of an impaired cant.

“And no women!” he called after me, voice ringing through the foyer and startling the sizable crowd of Hungarians who’d gathered there wondering why their apartment block had turned into an unrecognisable fortress overnight. Some had bought tents and pitched up in there, and were liable to be carried along to the next location if they weren’t careful. It happened a lot.