“Gigs.” If he insisted on this foolishness, he might as well start using correct terms.

“The gigs are once again properly assigned. Mercs once again make money. It gives us instant goodwill.”

“What will happen when that money runs out?”

“We need to make sure that the money lasts until the Guild’s finances bounce back. We use the goodwill we earned and our shares to break the budget lock. People don’t like chaos. Chaos means they can’t earn money. They need strong leadership. We need to develop a reputation as the people you come to when you have a problem you need solving.”

“How much money would we need?”

“My budget projections indicate we need at least $142,860 to bankroll admin operations with a skeleton crew for the next four months, which is how long I estimate we’ll need before the Guild becomes financially solvent.”

I chewed on that number.

“Kate?”

“Give me a second.”

“It’s a doable number. Curran gave me a $300,000 budget.”

Wow.

“Kate?”

Well, he spent millions on the forest, why not the Guild. “Go on.”

“The individual contribution is capped at $50,000. Jim doesn’t want any Pack members involved, and the stopgap prevents us from enrolling Curran or anyone else. We are stuck. We don’t have enough people to donate the necessary money.”

“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea.”

“I will be sure to note your objection,” Barabas said.

“Look in the membership chapter under corporations. I can enroll up to three people as my auxiliary support. The flip side of this coin is that if they screw up, I’ll be directly penalized.”

“I saw that. That requires you to be a corporate member for at least six months.”

“I’ve been a corporate member for over a year. I converted my membership when Curran gave me Cutting Edge. A very smart Pack lawyer with spiky red hair advised me to do it for tax purposes.” Also, the Guild had good dental insurance for its corporate members.

“Pack lawyers give good advice,” Barabas said. “Even if they don’t always remember it. I’ll call you back.”

He hung up.

Well. I guess Curran did take care of it.

If we were going to take over the Guild, we’d need the Clerk. I flipped through the phone book. I had no idea where the Clerk was, but I knew where Lori would be. She was his favorite protégé, because, as he had confided to me once late at night, she had more than half a brain. Lori’s parents, Karen and Brenda, ran a bakery off Campbellton Road, which was called Sweet Cheeks. I remembered because I had stopped by there to buy a cake pop once, and one of her mothers—I thought it was Brenda, but I wasn’t sure—teased me about my sword until Lori came out and told her to stop messing with me.

Ah, here it is. I dialed the number.

“Sweet Cheeks Bakery.”

“Can I speak to Lori, please?”

“Hi, Kate, what can I do you for?”

Nice to be recognized. “You wouldn’t know where to find the Clerk?”

Lori sighed. “You know how he always talked about running a bar when he retires?”

I didn’t, but that didn’t matter. “Did he buy a bar?”

“He’s got himself a job at the Steel Horse. He says he wants to get a feel for the business.”

The Steel Horse was a border bar that sat on the invisible boundary between the Pack and the People’s territory within Atlanta. It was a neutral watering hole and I had a lot of pull with its owners. “Hypothetically speaking, if someone offered you your old Guild job back, would you be interested?”

There was a pause before an urgent whisper filled my ear. “Kate, you get me out of here, I’ll buy your drinks for a year. If I have to pipe cream on one more carrot cupcake, I’ll stab myself.”

“Thanks for your help.”

I hung up. The Steel Horse wouldn’t open for another hour or two.

The answering machine’s light blinked at me. That’s right. More messages.

I pushed the answering machine’s button again.

“This is the attendance department of Seven Star Academy. Your student, Julie Lennart-Daniels, has been marked absent in the following periods . . .”

Julie didn’t skip school. I went cold.

“First . . .”

She wasn’t sick this morning.

“Second . . .”

Curran would’ve taken her straight to school.