She plastered a smile on and opened the door. “How can I be late? We didn’t set a time.”

“You’re a teacher. I thought you’d be here by seven-fifteen, or some crazy time like that.”

The office was large, but you couldn’t tell with all the filing cabinets Viera could almost hear groaning under the weight of everything they held. The windows that faced the street were blocked by bins filled with papers in disarray. Her friend’s desk had more stacks surrounding her laptop and large monitor. There were two chairs on the door side of the desk, but only one was cleared off. The avocado green seat and metal arms reminded Viera of images of offices from the fifties.

“You and Mother both. I’m no longer a teacher, and eight-thirty is early enough.” She sat in the chair and was pleasantly surprised at how sturdy it was.

“You spoke with your mother this morning?” One of her brows rose, asking for more details.

“And Father. They know I’m dating a woman and hopefully will stop trying to set me up.”

Betsy whooped. “About time.”

“Okay, can we focus?” Viera felt her face warm. “What have I gotten myself into?”

“One sec.” Betsy started typing on her computer. Then she adjusted the monitor so Viera could see it. There was a small camera sitting on the top of the screen. She saw five boxes appear. She recognized the other Pillars of Earth—the magic wielders, the wizards.

Marco took up the upper left corner, his boyish face all smiles. Behind him, he’d set a scene of a tropical beach. Or is he on a tropical beach? Anything is possible with these people. Next to his image, Ania’s older face beamed at her. Knowing how the Pillars aged, Viera couldn’t fathom what it took to cause one of them to get laugh lines around their eyes and to start to gray. She finally met the Australian woman a couple of weeks ago. Her fiery red curls bounced near her shoulders and her pale green eyes shone.

On the bottom row, Zuza sat in his office in London amongst his books. His crystal blue eyes, a contrast from all the wood and leather tomes. Finally, Kafi sat back in the last box. Like Marco, his younger face belying his aged wisdom.

“Okay, everyone,” Betsy said, her mouth twitching to hold back a smile. “Viera is finally here to learn about what we do.”

Yep, totally ready. That’s me. Do I need to take notes? She looked at the piles of paper and decided any notes would be lost in the crazy that was this office. She could always ask Betsy if need be.

Ania’s smile widened. “You do know it’s the middle of the night here, don’t you? I should be in bed right now, like a good old lady.”

Marco snorted. “As if, Ania. You’re probably just starting your day right now, midnight or not!”

The older woman laughed. “Okay, fine. Well, think of poor Kafi, he’s probably only just woke!”

Zuza shook his head. “Enough. Poor girl needs to learn what we do.”

Leaning forward, Kafi’s warm voice flowed over the computer, his African accent filling the room. “Most of our job is ensuring the general population doesn’t freak out. Our people don’t know about magic, but I’m sure they will one day. So, in a nutshell, our current job is to find anything that will give up the secret and hide it, and one day, when the secret comes out, help with the freak out.”

Viera bit her lip. “That second half sounds awful.” God above, please don’t let that happen on my watch!

Zuza snorted. “You are correct. We can just hope that we can keep aliens from letting our people know about themselves or from magic from becoming known to the public.”

“Oh! Aliens. I didn’t think about that.” Viera rubbed her face. “If the aliens become known, magic will surely follow. It’ll be the Big Bang of massive amounts of work. No wonder you all wanted me to join your crew.” Smiles and laughter followed her words. “My one other question is, you all live all over the world, but Betsy and I are both here. Is that okay?”

There were some shrugs and eye shifts, then Ania sighed. “It doesn’t really matter where we’re located. The work is what matters. Betsy has been working with the chanzii and a lot of her day-to-day responsibilities have been piling up. Having you there to learn from her and help will be fine. Once you have your own duties, having you both in the same office won’t matter. When we need to meet, we teleport. We have the technology, even without the chanzii around.”

Marco winked. “Do you feel like you're ready to start your job?”

Eyes widening, Viera slowly shook her head. “Not even a little.”

Chapter 7 - Sky’s Clear - Until They’re Not

Betsy

It didn’t take long for the full complement of Pillars to finish their discussion and end their call. Everyone liked Viera. Having another person to help, increasing their numbers by twenty percent, no one was going to be upset by that.

“Are you freaking out yet?” Betsy rose to get Viera a mug of coffee. Her friend had sat still during most of the meeting, a smile plastered on her face. Even without a sensing proficiency, she knew Viera was nervous.

“Yes? No? I mean, that call gave me an idea what the job is, but I really don’t know what you do, besides make a huge mess in here.” She took the coffee and drank deeply. “God! This is good.”

“Well, bring it with. Let me show you around.” Outside her office, she pointed to the right. “The first door leads into a janitorial closet. The cleaners come to vacuum the main hallway and conference room. I don’t let anyone in my office. We’d deny access to the level if we could, but the owners of this building don’t allow that.” Maybe if I let them in, they’d see all my stacks of paper as recycling, and it’d cut my workload down. She smiled at her thought and waved her hand to the left.

As she spoke, Viera nodded, taking it all in. They turned to walk. “Across the way is a huge conference room. We sometimes use it for our group meetings, though we have other options as well.” At the end of the hall, the corridor turned right, hugging the large group space. “There are three doors along this hallway. The first is the restroom. Then a kitchen. And finally, at the end of the hall, is a second office I’d been debating using for a storage unit for my piles of paper. I may still do that, and let you deal with all the crap … I mean very important documents.”

Viera chuckled, but it sounded more like a nervous laugh.

Since Viera hadn’t planned to start working today, they did a quick look into each space, then headed back to Betsy’s office. “That’s it for today, unless you want—” A ping on her computer interrupted her. “Hold that thought, let’s see where this goes.” Opening up the communication app, she connected with the chanzii ship. “Horax, this is Pillar Doeth. I have Pillar Kor sitting in with me, if it’s private.”

Horax’s deep baritone voice rumbled through her tiny laptop. “Nothing private, Pillar Doeth. The long-range sensors have picked up a ship. We believe it’s krottel. There’s no immediate indication it’s heading this way, but I wanted you to know.”

Annoyance and dread fought within Betsy. Despite her emotions, she kept her voice calm. “Thank you Horax. I know the chanzii ship is heading off to Torville Station Number Six on Monday, but would you be able to take me and a few others out to check that before you leave?”

His large blue qynad head, so like the dragons of legend, slowly nodded. “If we head out today, we should have the ship back, ready to prep for the ride by tomorrow. It’ll be tight, but I can make it work. I’d need approval from Flower Prancer or Commander Firoza.”

“Thanks, old friend.” She signed off and prepared for another call, one she was less happy to make. Before she dialed, she turned to Viera. “Okay, that was the easy part. Next, we call the Earth authorities. I don’t need their approval, but they need to know what’s going on. I’ll have to submit paperwork as well.”

Viera’s mouth twitched. “Are you calling that asshole? Juk Purple… wait, what was his name? Juk Asskisser?”

Betsy laughed. I’m going to love working with Viera! “Juk Hopkins.” She resisted rolling her eyes like a teenager as she picked up the phone and dialed his number directly. The ability to call into an office of that government building shouldn’t be possible, but age had its privileges.

“Juk Hopkins, how can I help you?”

“Hiya, Juk, Ms. Doeth here.”

“Betsy … ah, Ms. Doeth. How did you get through to me without contacting our operator?”

Betsy huffed out a laugh and waited. She figured his brain would catch up before too long; he did end up as her handler after all.

“Er, I mean, it’s nice hearing from you. How can I help you this fine Friday? At least, I assume it’s fine where you are … I mean, I don’t even know where you’re located. Are you in D.C. like us? I mean, you don’t have to divulge that, I was just. Gah! Can I start over?”

Viera’s hands were over her mouth holding in a laugh. The kid’s nerves were taking over worse than any of her other contacts. She didn’t want to get a third person, but this kid was awful. “Juk, I’m just calling because a krottel ship was picked up on long-range sensors.”

There was a small gasp. “Do we need to … I mean, I’ll have our people focus our searches. We haven’t picked anything up.”

Betsy massaged her temples. This kid was going to give her a migraine. “I’m going to take the chanzii ship out to the edge of our system to see if we can get a better idea of what’s going on. No guarantees. They are leaving Monday for Torville Station Number Six, so this will be a quick mission. I’ll include any findings in my report. I just wanted to let you know what was going on.”

“Um…”

“Good-bye Juk.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Ms. Doeth.”