Read Temping Is Hell for Free Online

to let a few thugs spook her.
    Especially not paper-pushing thugs.
    “Seriously? Really? Are you kidding me with this Deliverance bullshit?” She glared at the men approaching, focusing on the one talking to her. “Back off, pal. I’m here to work.”
    The guy laughed. “Work?” he echoed, looking her up and down unpleasantly. “On what?”
    “Contracts,” she said shortly. I assume . In her usual passive-aggressive and completely disorganized way, Maggie had sent her down here blind.
    “They’re a huge mess, completely unproductive,” Maggie had said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “Just the sort of thing a super secretary like you ought to be able to straighten out in a heartbeat, hmm?”
    The guy was still staring at her, but some of the other workers were muttering amongst themselves. Finally one guy who must have been seven feet tall stepped forward. He was wiry thin, not brawny like the others.
    “We’re already being punished for the last one,” the thin man said to the guy she was now mentally calling Dexter—the guy with the cut face. “We cannot anger the Overseer further. We have enough problems right now.”
    Dexter snarled out something in a really weird language—something between German and a hairball.
    Thin Guy ignored it. “Come on,” he said to Kate, standing between her and Dexter. “You can sit by me.”
    “Dickless bastard,” Dexter snapped. Thin Guy kept walking, and Kate scurried quickly alongside.
    “Don’t mind him,” Thin Guy assured her. “Never be alone with him, but don’t worry. I won’t let him hurt you.”
    “Thanks,” Kate said, and meant it. Just because she had the pepper spray didn’t mean she thought she was a badass. She wondered if the Dexter guy had some kind of complaints lodged against him. Then she turned to her protector. “I’m Kate. What’s your name?”
    “Ah…” He quickly said something that seemed to be mostly consonants, with a little gag at the end. She blinked.
    “Okay. No offense, but I’m going to call you Slim, because there is no way I can pronounce that,” she said, apologetic. When he nodded affably, she pushed forward. “So. How do I get started? What are you guys doing here?”
    “I don’t know how you get started.” The tall guy looked at her curiously. “I’m surprised that you are on this level at all. Do you know what these are?”
    “Um… contracts?” Hence the name?
    He didn’t even crack a grin. “Can you read this?”
    He handed her one of the documents in the stack. It was surprisingly thick parchment paper, with the words seemingly burned onto it. And the writing itself was odd, like a cross between the angular runic symbols she’d seen at Prue’s bookstore, and the bubbly cursive that she’d seen in the Lord of the Rings movies.
    “No. What language is that?”
    He looked uncomfortable. “Not a language exactly.”
    She frowned, studying it more closely. “This is like a cipher or something, huh? Some kind of code?”
    She felt a little tingle of excitement. She’d heard that Fiendish was super-secretive. The newspaper articles had suggested it was something sinister, but she’d assumed it was the usual tabloid bullshit. This would suggest otherwise.
    “That’s it,” Thin Guy said, and he sounded relieved. “A secret, ah, code.”
    “So, what do we need to do?” Even if it was nefarious, she reasoned, if she couldn’t make sense of it, she couldn’t really feel responsible for it, right?
    She shifted uncomfortably in the already uncomfortable metal folding chair. She really, really hoped it wasn’t something terrible—like labor negotiations to hire orphans for a nickel a day or something.
    You need the job, Kate.
    She felt a little nauseous.
    “Since you do not read this, I am not sure how you can help,” he admitted. “We are… looking. For a specific word, on a specific kind of document.”
    “Um, okay.” She frowned, doing a quick headcount. “And there are, what, forty of