The next morning Caine once again escorted Jupiter to Kalique's downtown office. This time, her assistant asked Caine to wait in the lobby, directing Jupiter into the adjacent room alone. Caine gritted his teeth. It felt wrong to let her go in without him.

Inside Kalique's office, Jupiter was seated awkwardly on the settee, holding a small glass of whatever pretentious drink Kalique's assistant had offered (which she absolutely would not be drinking).

"So," Kalique chirped pleasantly, "how are you feeling today, Dr. Jones?"

"I'm feeling much better today, thank you." Jupiter tried to keep her voice calm and professional.

"And Mr. Wise?"
"What about him?" she couldn't help the small twinge of defensiveness in her tone.

Kalique considered the girl before her. Skin flushed, eyes intense, fingers toying with the cuffs of what is clearly another of Mr. Wise' shirts. She didn't have the time to play the patient game she normally so adored, Balem would be here momentarily and then the girl's fate would be sealed.

"Did you sleep with him?"

Jupiter gasped, mouth agape.

Kalique laughed airily.

"Don't misunderstand me, Dr. Jones, I am not here to judge your…proclivities," she hesitated, still hoping to use enough of her politic to talk an answer out of the girl. "Our goals are the same. I wish for your work to be as successful for others as I imagine it already has been for you. Now tell me, do you love Mr. Wise?"

Jupiter reemerged from Kalique's office practically beaming, eyes wild. "Let's go," she grabbed Caine's hand without a thought to their audience, and pulled him to the elevator bank. She didn't have to pull that hard. He came along willingly, as, he suspected, he always would.

Caine looked down at their joined hands, marveling at how something so small could alter his life so completely.

Finally in the safety of his car, she told him everything. "Kalique believed the potion worked!" she squealed, the shock evident in her voice.

"But you told her that—"

"Yes!"

"And she still—"

"Uh huh!"

"But your job—"

"I quit!" It had been a rash decision, but she'd made a lot of rash decisions this week, and all of them turned out better than this horrible job. She didn't wait for Caine to process, the rush of freedom made the words just pour out. "I told her that I had completed my assigned task, and that I would no longer be working for them. I was going to tell her that if she wouldn't let me out of the rest of the contract, I'd release details about their business practices, but she said she was more than happy to release me now that they had a viable sample to test. She paid out the remaining two years as a bonus."

Caine grinned a stupid, toothy grin.

She hadn't quite worked out all the details, but none of that mattered at this exact moment. She had Caine, and she didn't want or need anything else in the universe. Even though she had a six figure check burning a hole in her pocket. They could sort that out later. Together.

110 stories above them, Balem stared out the floor to ceiling windows behind Kalique's desk.

"Don't be unreasonable," Kalique chided him. He'd sauntered in only moments after Jupiter had left. "The girl is no longer important. Let her go."

"And the results of her study? Shall I discard those as well?" Balem rasped, furious at the thought of wasted resources, money down the drain.

"No, dear brother," Kalique smiled sweetly, "I think the results were very promising."