The Ledger Is Always Kept Be Careful What You Wish For chapter 3 by witeja9199

"Make Gareth get what he deserves!"

It leaves Kirsten at roughly the speed of a hiccup, and Mazzaroth goes the colour of a bruise on a bruise.

"Six words," he says faintly. "You had six words, and you spent one of them on deserves."

"It's a good word!"

"It is the most dangerous word in any language. Do you know what the Ledger of Deserts is?" He doesn't wait. "A record. Kept by clerks on an adjacent plane who haven't been paid since the Bronze Age.* They have a file on Gareth Voss. The file has its own file."

*Rumour holds that the clerks have been working to rule since 1348, and that the Black Death was simply what happened when nobody processed the invoices. Rumour is probably wrong, but not by as much as people would like.

The door swings open. Gareth Voss fills it, thirty-four years old, hair like a lacquered helmet, phone held up like a holy relic. "Kirsten! Working late, good for you. I'll take that lamp, there's a good girl..."

"Gareth, don't..."

"Brass antiques are exactly my..."

The air makes a noise like a wet umbrella being opened inside a church.

Kirsten blinks. She is looking down on the room from rather higher up than usual. Her knuckles are enormous. There's a signet ring on one, a watch that costs more than her car, and a smell rising from her collar that is eighty per cent aftershave and twenty per cent cowardice.

Across the room, a small woman in a cardigan is holding a brass lamp. She has Kirsten's face. It is wearing an expression Kirsten has never once managed in a mirror, and the expression is greed.

"Oh, no," says Kirsten, in Gareth's baritone. "No, no, no. That's my... that's his... what the fuck have you done to my legs?"

"Nothing," says Mazzaroth, who has gone female again, the way a nervous person bites a nail. "The Ledger has ruled that Mr. Voss deserves, and I quote, 'a walk in the shoes of the person he has most thoroughly trodden upon.' Delivered on the spot. They've never been this prompt. They must have had it pre-printed."

"Why am I short?" Kirsten's voice, coming out of Kirsten's mouth, is pure Gareth, aggrieved and rising. "Why is the floor so close? Is this a cardigan? And what the hell is digging into my ribs?"

"Underwiring," says Kirsten, with the first flicker of satisfaction she's felt since March. "Welcome to Tuesday."

Gareth's head comes up. Kirsten's eyes narrow, then drop to what Kirsten's hands are holding. "Is this... hang on. Is this the lamp?"

"Mr. Voss," says Mazzaroth urgently, "I would put that down."

"It's in my hand."

Mazzaroth shuts her eyes. "Yes. It is. Bugger. Section Nine, subsection 'Oh For Pity's Sake.' The lease reverts."

"He threw it away!" Kirsten lurches across the carpet on legs she doesn't know how to drive and catches her shin on a desk. "He gave up his claim! You said!"

"I said the hand, and the lamp doesn't go by knuckles, it goes by the mind behind them, and the mind behind them is Gareth's." Mazzaroth wrings her hands, which is difficult with a clipboard. "It's always been very easily confused."

"And my wishes? I've got two left!"

"Void. Wishes belong to the lamp, not the lessee. I'm so sorry. Honestly. I liked you. You didn't scream."

A slow smile spreads across Kirsten's face, which is a thing Kirsten's face has never done in Gareth's presence. "Three wishes," says Gareth, savouring it. "Three. Do you know, I've always said I was an ideas man."

"Don't," says Kirsten.

"I could wish to be Chief Executive."

"I'd really advise against..." says Mazzaroth.

"Of anywhere." Gareth strokes the lamp with Kirsten's small, ink-stained fingers. "And the beautiful part is that at ten tomorrow, Brenda is going to sit down with Kirsten Pell and..."

He stops. The smile falters.

"...and I'm Kirsten Pell," he says. "Aren't I?"

"For the moment," says Mazzaroth.

"Oh. Oh, shit." Gareth looks down at the cardigan, at the lamp, at the large, sweating, well-dressed man across the room. "Right. Right. That changes the priorities. I'll need to wish for... for..."

He takes a breath. Kirsten sees it, sees the fat, greedy shape of the sentence forming in her own mouth, and the whole building seems to lean in. In the corner the photocopier gives a long, keening groan and begins to spit out paper, sheet after sheet after sheet, each one printed with the same single word.

PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE.

"I wish," says Gareth...