Guy Trousseau paused at the door to his office suite long enough to buff the new brass nameplate. He smiled at his warped reflection, and stepped into the reception area. He wasn't surprised there was no one waiting for him. He had only started as an agent seven months before; it would take time for word-of-mouth to garner more prospects. Besides, his current clientele preferred to remain anonymous.
He walked up to the receptionist desk and ogled his secretary, Lucy, though really he thought of her more as a sexretary. To be sure, her receptionist skills had improved considerably since he first took her on, but her real duty was the screwing she gave him every evening after he closed. Not to mention she was great eye candy, and as much as he would have loved to keep her naked twenty-four hours every day, he had to admit that Victorian dress she always wore tantalized and titillated him with hints of what it concealed.
She smiled as he sat on the edge of the desk, but her eyes betrayed her anxiety.
"Any messages today, sweetie?"
"Yes, sir." Her tone was quiet as she handed him a stack of notes. "Eight."
"Eight! Well, seems like things are finally looking up. We'll have to celebrate this evening, won't we?" And he grinned in a wolfish manner.
She frowned and flinched, trying to avoid looking at him. She didn't particularly like the way he celebrated.
"Anything worth while?"
"Most are routine. GlamGals wants to produce another Betty...Boobs movie." She blushed as she spoke the name.
He nodded, pleased. "That's the fourth so far. The others must be selling well. Anything else?"
"Starr Sapphire Productions has another role for Ruby Dahlia; a romantic farce."
"Rated R, I presume?"
Again, she blushed. "Yes, sir."
"Good, she likes doing those. Anything else?"
"Just one, a Jackson de Latora. He heard about you from Howie Ronald. He needs an ingenue for his next movie."
"A what?"
"That's what he said; he wanted a 'fresh face', someone whom no one would recognize."
"What the hell is an 'ongenew'?"
"I have no idea, sir."
He grunted as he leafed through the memos. Supplying an actress for Latora would be his ticket into the Big Time, if he could figure out what the stuck-up fatso wanted. Give a director four Oscars for his last three movies and he turns into a spoiled brat.
"I'm going to have to ask Lily about this one. Hold my calls." He stood up and turned towards his office.
"Sir!"
He stopped and looked back at her. "Yah, what's up?"
"You said that after six months you would evaluate my progress, maybe...decide to keep me on permanently?"
"And I will, sugar, I will, just as soon as it comes up."
"It's today, sir." She acted sheepish.
"It is? Well, damn, how time flies!" He walked back over and laid a hand on her cheek. "You've worked hard, you've done everything I asked without complaint, and I like the way you've thrown yourself into your work. Tell you what. I have something special in mind for tonight. We'll see how you perform, and if I'm pleased, I'll hire you full-time. We'll even make a holiday out of it tomorrow, go shopping for some nice clothes, find you an apartment, and then I'll take you to dinner and a show. How's that sound?"
"Really?" She sounded excited, and her expression appeared happy for the first time since she started. She even clapped her hands, like a kid at Christmas. He almost regretted deceiving her.
He patted her cheek. "Yeah, sure, why not. You'll have earned it, honey. Now, back to work, and I'll see you at five."
As she spun her chair around, barely able to contain her joy, he retreated into his office before he changed his mind. He could tell she was a good kid, and he had to admit that if he was a decent person he wouldn't have lied to her like that. But he had no more regard for her than the sluts he used to pick up in seedy bars. If anything, he had less, since he owed her nothing, not even compassion. She was a disposable commodity, pure and simple, to be used and discarded when he was finished with her, just like all the others like her. It would have been better if they had no humanity, because he couldn't help feeling for them sometimes, but when he had broached the subject to Lily, she had told him in no uncertain terms that it was impossible to have passion without humanity, so he was stuck with it.
Suddenly, the absurdity of his train of thought struck him and he laughed. "Here I am, thinking like some half-assed philosopher. I've got a great thing going here, and my damn conscience is trying to muck it up."
He laughed again and shook his head as he crossed the room to his desk. He dropped the messages on the blotter and took a moment to push down the upper panel of his window to get some fresh air, glancing at the street twenty stories below. He then turned and opened the desk file drawer. Inside was a bottle of whiskey, half full, a thick-walled pewter bowl a foot across, and a crude ceramic jar stopped with a lead plug. He took out all three and set them on the desk. Pulling loose the plug, he poured a handful of grayish-green powdery salt into a glass from the wet bar and weighed out a gram on a slip of rice paper using a pharmacist's scale. He poured the unused dust back into the jar and replaced the plug before dumping the gram into the bowl. He walked into the middle of the room carrying the bowl and the whiskey bottle, set the bowl on the floor, and poured in a libation of the liquor. He sprinted back three feet as the contents began to fizz.
Within seconds, a column of fine mist rose into the air. It billowed and swirled, and took on a female form. As he watched, it coalesced into a solid object and faded away, to reveal a nude, voluptuous woman with skin the color of bread crust. She stood as still as a statue for a few moments, her eyes closed, then she inhaled sharply and started to breath. She tilted her head back, raised her arms, and stretched her entire body, as if trying to reach the ceiling. She lowered her arms in a languid manner, bending her elbows, and ran her fingers through her billowing mane of fiery crimson hair. Still lowering her arms, she caressed the sides of her face and neck, her shoulders, and her voluminous breasts. It wasn't until she rested her palms on her hips that she relaxed and opened her eyes.
She stepped out of the bowl. "How long has it been this time?" Her voice was a low contralto, with a sultry burr that sounded like a purr.
"Three months, Lily my dear." He raised the whiskey bottle to his mouth.
She frowned and raised an eyebrow. "That's the longest yet."
He took a swig. "Not as long as when I first woke you up. What year were you processed again?"
"1912." Her voice sounded tight as he took another drink.
"And the first time I let you out was last year. So, ninety-five years. Get the picture?"
She gave him a look that could curdle milk. "What do you want this time?"
He took one last pull before recapping the bottle. "Most of it's routine, but I have a couple of new requests. First, I want to replace Lucy." He turned and went back to his desk to set the bottle down.
"Isn't she working out?"
Her snarky barb stung, but he ignored it. "She expects me to permanently resurrect her." He turned around.
"Whatever gave her that idea?"
"I told her I knew how to do it, to get her to do what I wanted."
She scowled. "That was stupid. All you had to do was threaten to torture her, though you would have to do it at least once to make it credible."
"I'll keep that in mind. So, can it be done?"
"No."
"That's plain enough. I'll need someone new for tomorrow. Who would you recommend?"
She smirked. "As I remember, you prefer them sweet, adorable, and naive, true?"
He licked his lips. "Most definitely."
"Then I suggest Helen; front row, third from the middle."
He looked over to his left. That entire wall was covered by a bookcase. In its center was a display cubicle with a glass front. Inside were three rows of ceramic jars, similar to Lily's, but only a third the size.
/> He glanced back at her. "Stacked?"
She favored him with a grinning leer. "Most definitely."
He went over and opened the front. "From the name, I assume she's a blonde."
"That she is."
He reached in and picked up the jar in question. "Why can't they be permanently resurrected?"
"The reconstituted body is held together by the salt matrix. The salts are vulnerable to oxidation, so the integrity of the matrix only lasts about a day. Once the body starts to break apart, it crumbles very easily. If you could seal her in an airtight vessel filled with helium, she would stay intact indefinitely; she doesn't need to breath. But that wouldn't do you any good. Of course, the more powder you use, the longer she would remain reconstituted, but the fewer times you could resurrect her."
He examined the jar as he returned to his desk. "I've always wondered why your jar is so much bigger than these others."
"That's because living tissue condenses that much smaller. Your granduncle poisoned me first; I still don't know how."
He snapped his head around and stared at her, his gut crawling. "They were alive when you...?"
"Of course. You need special procedures to render a dead body. Your uncle didn't know that and he almost botched my processing. I survived only because I hadn't been dead long enough to matter. It also helps if the subject is aware."
He felt the blood drain out of his face. "They're awake when you...process them?"
"At least for as long as it takes the chemicals to begin decomposing their bodies."
He glanced back at the jar in his hand. "Is it painful?"
"Excruciating. And they remember every