We were gathered together to discuss the boss’s bad attitude when he called in to the office. Felix Culpepper always seemed to know when he was being talked about.

It was my job to answer the phone: “It’s a great day here at Culpex Corp., where we’re celebrating our 50th year as the city’s premier vengeance provider. How can I help you?”

“Cut the crap,” Felix said. “Don’t you even look at the caller ID? You think I have time to listen to all that?”

“Sorry, Mr. Culp—”

“Shut the fuck up, Mr. Sorry. Why’d you give that prick Bartleby my cell number?”

“Sorry, sir. I—”

“Next time you give out my cell number to a client, I will fucking kill you. Understand?”

Yes, sir.”

“But I didn’t call to shoot the shit with you, Bill. Fuck off and put my mom on.”

Throughout this exchange, the boss’s mom had been standing right behind me, listening. Shortly before Felix’s call, Mrs. Culpepper had come to my office to hear Gabe from accounting air a grievance against her son.

I was sitting in my cracked plastic chair at my desk, which was not really a desk but merely an old fiberglass door placed across two squat filing cabinets. I had asked twice for a conventional desk but had been told that the budget didn’t allow for it, despite Culpex’s position at the pinnacle of the lucrative vengeance-provider market.

It was about 80 degrees in the room; the budget also didn’t seem to allow for air conditioning. The only window on the whole floor was in Mrs. Culpepper’s private office.

Gabe was talking about Felix’s “unprofessional and derogatory discourse” and how it created “a hostile work environment.”

“Oh, please,” said Mrs. Culpepper. “Suck it up, whiner. What’d he say, anyway?”

“I’m ashamed to repeat it, ma’am.”

“Mm-hmm. So I’m supposed to take your word for it?”

“Well, it was a four-syllable oedipal epithet. And when I respectfully stated that his language was not appropriate for the workplace, he encouraged me to perform an autoerotic act. Bill heard the whole thing. Come on, back me up here, Bill.”

Mrs. Culpepper turned to me, one eyebrow arched.

“I guess I can sort of see where Gabe’s coming from on this one, ma’am,” I said. “Maybe you could just bring it up with your son. I mean, not to make it a big deal or anything, but he does tend to speak his mind.”

But before she could reply, the phone rang, and I answered it with the standard, Culpex-prescribed spiel, as previously described. And so then when Felix told me to put his mom on, she said, “I’m right here, Feel.”

Felix said, “Bill, you got me on speaker? What’s wrong with you, asshole? Put me through to my mom’s office. Never put me on fucking speaker phone.”

So I transferred the call, and Mrs. Culpepper left without a word.

Gabe said to me, “Think she’ll say anything to him?”

“Prob’ly not,” I said.

“Tell you something, if he gets away with this crap again I am, like, so out of here.”

“Should just leave now then, don’t you think? The guy’s pretty much untouchable.”

“Yeah, I know. Only surviving heir to the corporate empire and all that.”

“Since he murdered the others.”

“They never proved that, though, did they?”

“They never really tried to.”

“Hell with these people, man. Let’s go down to the Molotov.”

That was the name of our usual after-work watering hole. It was right across the street from Culpex Tower.

Over a glass of piss-colored beer at the bar, Gabe said, “I’ve worked for six vengeance providers in six states now.” His eyes watched the Molotov’s entrance reflected in the wall-length mirror behind the bar. “They hate to lose personnel. I expect we’ll have to leave town.”

“You really think they’ll come after us?” I said.

“Felix swats flies like us for sport, Bill.”

“I feel kind of stupid. It was a pretty good job we just walked away from, the way the economy is now.”

“You mean apart from the verbal abuse and constant threat of physical injury.”

“I guess so. But, like, what do we do now?”

Pulling three coins from his pocket, Gabe tossed them onto the bar and looked at them. “Heads, heads, tails,” he said. “A Young Yang line.” He drew something on his napkin with a Keno pencil, then picked up the coins and tossed them again. “Tails, tails, heads. Young Yin.” More napkin scribbling. And again: “Triple tails. Old Yin, that’s a moving line, interesting.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

“Ee ching,” he said. “Ancient Chinese secret.”

Suppressing a yawn, I ordered another beer.

“Now look,” he said, showing me the napkin. “See these three lines? They’re a trigram. There’s eight of ’em all together. This one is number six, Chen, meaning thunder. And the, what they call the moving line, remember I said Old Yin is a moving line, makes it seven, Li, which is fire, or sometimes a bird. Here, try it.”

“What exactly am I trying to do?”

“Only you know that.”

“Right.” But I picked up the coins and took my turns. Gabe informed me that I got three Yin lines: Young, Old, and Young again. He penciled them on the napkin as they came up.

Then he said, “Your trigram is five, K’un, meaning earth. But then the moving line in the middle, there, makes it three, which is K’an, which is water. So now look here. Put the trigrams next to each other and they make a hexagram.”

He paused. After a minute, I said, “And?”

“Well, out of sixty-four hexagrams, this is number sixty-three, Chi Chi.”

“Meaning what?”

“Hard to say. Could be, like, an underwater bird.”

“Like a duck?”

“Duck!”

So I did. Duck, that is. An instant later a bullet passed through the space where my head had just been. The bar mirror shattered into silver shards that rained down on screaming customers. Felix had just stormed into the Molotov.

Gabe and I crawled across the floor through broken glass as our former boss bore down on us, shoving frightened drinkers out of his way. He was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall.

Then I heard someone stage-whisper, “Over here, come on!” A tall, skinny waitress was beckoning us.

“Piff!” was what I thought I heard Gabe say, as we scrambled toward her.

“Follow me,” she said, opening a hidden trapdoor and jumping through it.

Obeying her command, we found ourselves in a steeply descending tunnel. It was cool, humid, and strangely well-lit, even after she pulled the trapdoor shut above us. The light appeared to come from some kind of bioluminescent lichen growing on the walls.

“Sure didn’t expect to see you, Piff,” said Gabe.

“Your timing has always been impeccable.”

“Your name is Piff?” I said.

She turned to me and did a rather gawky half-curtsy. “Short for Epiphany. My great-grandmother’s name. Pleased to meet you.”

“You, too. Where does this tunnel go?”

“Where do you think?” she said.

“I don’t know. Like, the Underworld or something?”

“Naturally.”

And we scurried on down. What the hell.

Many other tunnels intersected ours at various points, going off in different directions. The passageway was about seven feet in diameter and uniformly coated with the strange glowing lichen.

The tunnel’s slope gradually decreased. After a while it leveled out, and after that we started to ascend again.

Finally a manhole cover blocked our egress. Piff pushed it out of the way, and we emerged, blinking, into scalding afternoon sunlight.

“Most all the bars round here are part of this little network,” she said. “A relic of Prohibition days, when people often had to get out quick. Here, this is my address. The door’s unlocked. I got to get back to work now.” She handed Gabe a piece of paper and popped back down the rabbit hole.

The address was a couple of miles away. The sleek, shiny Culpex Tower slowly receded behind Gabe and me as we walked. The sun hung in the sky like a surveillance satellite.

Piff lived in a disused warehouse, which she’d filled with large potted plants and her own abstract paintings at different stages of completion. Dusty sunlight poured through numerous high windows and filled the large, open room. The furnishings were sparse: a ratty orange couch and a three-legged table with a TV on it.

A phone on the wall started ringing as soon as we walked in. I answered it, a work-honed reflex.

“Just wanted to make sure you guys found the place OK.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Who is this?”

“Piff, silly. Go ahead and help yourselves to whatever comestibles you can find lying around. I’ll join you when we’re done cleaning up here at the bar.”

“What about Felix?”

“I’m sure he has no idea where you are. Just chill a spell.”

As I was hanging up, Gabe emerged from behind a huge geometric red-and-black canvas that blocked my view of the kitchen area. He carried two beers, a bag of candy, and a tin of herring in mustard sauce. “This is all I could find that wasn’t green and leafy,” he said.

“Trade you my half of the herring for your beer,” I said, settling in on the couch.

“No, I think not.”

Shoving a handful of candy into his mouth and taking a long swallow of beer, Gabe turned on the TV. The president was talking.

“What else is on?” I said.

“Looks like not much,” Gabe said. “Oh, here’s Funniest Hunting Accidents. This is a good one.”

“Seen it already.”

“How about Surprise Exorcism?”

“New episode?”

“Yeah.”

“OK,” I said. Then after a minute, “So what’s the deal with you guys, anyway?”

“With me and Piff? There’s no deal. Known her since we were kids. She went out with my sister a couple times. But last I heard she’d taken a vow of celibacy.”

“Really? She’s not, like, one of those born-agains?”

“No, nothing like that. For her art, I guess. She read about how sex dissipates the creative energies. Yoga type of thing.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that.

We watched TV until Piff came home not much later, bringing not only more beer, but also three pale, dark-eyed women of indeterminate age, dressed identically in black leather.

“April, May, and June,” Piff said, “meet Gabe and, hey, what is your name, dude?”

“Bill.”

“Gabe and Bill, meet April, May, and June. Old friends.”

On TV, a black-robed priest was shouting at a frightened-looking young woman in sweatpants and curlers who was being held down on her bed by the Surprise Exorcism crew.

“Piff told us you’re on Culpex’s hit list,” said April, May, or June.

“Did she,” I said.

“Yes. Now you must do exactly as we say.” Her voice was sibilant velvet.

“Ah-ha, you must be April, then,” I said, “the cruelest one. Love your boots, dear. They’re so tall and shiny.”

“Listen to us,” she said. “My sisters and I have done a lot of work for the Culpepper family.”

“I’m sure that’s been great.”

“Felix’s hubris annoys us. And don’t get us started on the old woman, that boring feeble has-been. We’re no longer amused with either of them.”

“I see. And you want us to get rid of them for you?”

“Yes.” The three of them smiled simultaneously.

“And you ladies are, what, like Fates, or Furies, or something?”

“If you like.”

“I see,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t know about this. I mean, I’m humbled by the honor and, like, thanks for asking and everything, but it’s, um. Gabe? Help me out, man.”

“Not too sure we actually have a choice here, Bill,” he said. “Check it out, they’re unfurling their wings. Doesn’t seem right to argue with girls who can do that.”

This was true. But I didn’t back down. “What’s in it for us?” I said. “That hasn’t been discussed.”

“Don’t waste our time, gentlemen,” the sister said, flapping her bat-like wings with delicate menace. “Everything has already been decided.”

The room was getting very cold, and I suddenly felt sleepy. “Was there something in that beer, Piff?” I said as I drifted off.

The relentless ringing of Piff’s phone woke me up. My back hurt from sleeping on the floor, and my head felt two sizes too small for my swollen skull.

I looked over at Gabe and deduced from his red-eyed dishevelment that his night had been much like mine. He was holding his arm up in front of his face, shielding it from the sunlight.

“Damn it, Bill,” he said. “Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“I don’t think I can get up,” I said. “Why doesn’t she have an answering machine?”

“Jesus, I feel like I died.” He rolled himself across the floor and then stretched out his hand toward the phone. It clattered to the floor.

He pulled himself up into a sitting position and picked up the phone as if he were afraid it might explode. Putting his head between his knees, he said, “Hello…. Yeah, Piff, we’re still here. Where else would we be?... I don’t know…. I’ll have to talk to Bill about it.”

“Hey,” I said. “Ask her why she drugged us.”

Gabe held the phone out away from his head so she’d hear me, then put it back to his ear again. “She says she didn’t want to,” he said. “The flygirls made her do it.”

“Whatever.”

“All she wants to know now is, are we ready to get started?”

“No, I can’t think right now. Ask her where the coffee is.”

Gabe said, “Look, Piff, can we talk about this later?... I don’t know, a while….Yeah, OK.” He dropped the phone on the floor, not bothering to hang it up.

“Is it just me,” I said, “or are we involved with some really weird shit?”

“I had a dream that we turned into screech owls,” Gabe said.

“Me, too. That’s what I’m saying.”

“I think it was supposed to be, like, our mission instructions or something.”

“Yeah, I think so, too. And I don’t like the mission at all.”

“OK, it’s a little weird. But could also be cool. We’re talking about shape-shifting, dude. That’s pretty kick ass.”

“But I was brought up not to drink magic potions from sexy strangers.”

“Well, Piff thinks they’re OK.”

“All this eye-of-newt, double-bubble-trouble’s really not my tea, you know?”

“I guess you can do what you want, Bill. But on the other hand, if we pull this off, then what are we looking at?”

“The Culpex empire could be ours,” I said. “Is that what you mean?”

“They’ve got to give us something.”

“As I attempted to determine last night. But I don’t really want to be like Felix. I just want some coffee.”

“Well then, look, if you’d care to suggest an alternative course of action—”

“Damn it all, my head hurts.”

“Piff’s still at the Molotov. There’s coffee there.”

“Tell you what, Gabe, you can have my half of the empire if you run over and get me some.”

“Come on, Bill. Get it together. Walk it off.”

And so we went outside and slouched back to the Molotov. Piff had done a good job cleaning up. We saw almost no evidence of our recent scuffle. The broken mirror had been replaced, though, by an ugly painting of huge purple butterflies against a lurid yellow background.

“So, tell me something, Piff,” I said, once the coffee had started to kick in. “Why, exactly, do we have to turn into owls? Couldn’t we just, like, storm the castle and shoot it up?”

“I don’t think that would work, Bill,” she said. “April, May, and June know what they’re doing.”

“I’m sure they do. But, like, for one thing, how do I know they’ll change me back into a human afterwards?”

“The effects of the spell will wear off naturally.”

“Prove it.”

“You know I can’t do that. You’ll have to trust them. Trust us.”

“See, that’s just it, isn’t it? I mean, I just met you. No offense.”

“If you think it over, you’ll see that this way is the best. Do you have something against owls? Is that the trouble?”

“No, that’s not it. I don’t know. How about another cup of coffee on the house while I continue to consider it?”

“No more time for that now,” she said, inclining her head toward the entrance. “Here come April, May, and June, bearing your accoutrements.”

“Our whatrements?” Gabe said. We both turned to look.

“Show them what you brought for them, ladies,” Piff said.

One of the sisters tossed a small leather pouch on the bar. Inside were two tiny amber bottles. Someone had actually tied little hand-lettered paper labels around the necks that said, “DRINK ME.” Gabe held one up to the light and shook it a little.

“Let’s get on with this, then,” I said.

“No, not now,” said April, May, or June. “You must first re-enter the Tower.”

I sighed. “There’s always another hoop to jump through.”

Gabe and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, scooped up and pocketed our accoutrements, and crossed the street.

The guard outside Culpex Tower looked surprised to see us, but he didn’t say anything or try to stop us from entering the building. We rode the elevator up to our old floor, strode down the hall, and marched right into Mrs. Culpepper’s office.

“My goodness, you boys have a lot of nerve, coming back here,” she said.

“Where’s Felix?” I said.

“Oh, he’s never far away. Why don’t I call him? Do wait outside, won’t you?”

“We’ll wait right here, thanks,” said Gabe.

“If you must.” She picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Hello, Feel, it’s me…. Say, can you come up to my office? You’ll never guess who showed up…. Mm-hmm.” She hung up and then said to us, “He’s on his way, boys. Are you quite certain you want to go through with whatever you’ve got planned?”

“Certain is hardly the word,” I said.

We heard him coming long before we saw him, which gave me and Gabe plenty of time to swallow our potions.

“Yuck, it tastes like Jägermeister,” I said. “Told you this was a bad idea.”

By the time Felix burst into the office with his gun hanging out, we had completed our metamorphoses. It was a little like being in the Gravitron at the amusement park, when the chamber spins around so fast the centrifugal force pins you against the wall and makes your skin feel tight.

The next thing I knew, Gabe and I were swooping down on Felix, screeching and beating our wings in his face. He swore and threw his gun away, the better to wave his arms around frantically. We tore out beaksful of his hair and stuck our talons in his eyes.

We were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn’t notice Mrs. Culpepper moving in to pick up the pistol, until she started firing it erratically. Suddenly bullets were ricocheting off the desk and the floor. One struck Felix in the chest and he went down. Then I felt a hot, sharp pain at the base of my wing, and I listed sickeningly. I couldn’t steer, and I couldn’t slow down.

“I’m about to crash into the wall,” I said, or rather screeched, and then I did. Crashed, that is. Crashed hard.

Gradually I became aware of darkness, dampness, and cold. A female voice said, “How do you feel, Bill?”

“Well, I’m pretty sore,” I said, “and I’ve been spitting up hair, but otherwise, I’m fine, thanks.”

The potion had worn off, as promised. I was human again, and I was lying, naked, on a large stone slab. I could hear water dripping slowly into a puddle nearby. I tried to get up and realized my hands and feet were chained to the slab.

Then the voice said, “You are an idiot.”

“Mrs. Culpepper?” I said. “Is that you? I’m sorry—”

“Shut up. You’ve really screwed yourself, Bill. Allow me to remind you of your employee contract, in which the consequences of insubordination are outlined.”

“Where’s Gabe? I didn’t want—”

“Didn’t I just tell you to shut up?” She struck the bottom of my bare feet with her cane. “You are to remain here, restrained in the custodial supply closet, indefinitely. You will not be paid for this time.”

And with that, she walked away. I listened to her footsteps fading into the distance, and I imagined I could still hear them long after I knew I could not. Then I was alone, thinking of nothing in particular. I think I slept for a while.

Eventually, I heard different footsteps approaching, much livelier than Mrs. Culpepper’s. Then another voice came out of the darkness: “Hey, Bill, can you hear me? You still alive?”

“Piff!” I shouted. “How’d you find me?”

“Well, Mrs. C. is not very creative. April, May, and June said she’s been taking all her prisoners down here for, like, fifty years.”

“I’m so glad you’re here. Can you get these chains off me?”

“You bet. I brought tools. Give me a minute.”

I heard sounds of sawing. Then the chains fell away, noisily, one at a time. I sat up slowly and tested my limbs, stretching and twisting them.

Piff helped me to my feet. “Think you can walk OK?”

“Yeah, I’m all right.”

“Here, I brought your clothes.”

“Thanks.” Trying to put on my pants, I fell over, landing in a patch of slime. I heard Piff stifle a giggle as she reached out to pull me up.

“One of your secret tunnels would sure come in handy now,” I said.

“Not necessary,” she said. “We’ll just walk right out the front door.”

Culpex’s supply closet was incredibly vast, but we finally got out of it. As we made our way down a dark and empty hallway, I clung to Piff.

When we reached the elevator, we found it inoperative, so we had to climb innumerable flights of dark stairs. Culpex Tower reached as far down below the earth as it did up into the sky. I could hardly breathe when we got to the ground floor.

The lobby, also, was vacant and unlit. “Where is everybody?” I asked. Piff just shrugged. Outside it was overcast and windy. She walked briskly, and I struggled to keep up. With each step, I became more aware of my many injuries.

When we got back to the warehouse, I took a shower, and then April, May, and June dressed my wounds, keeping their wings tucked out of sight, while Gabe debriefed me about the mission.

“Man, you really took a dive, didn’t you?” he said.

“Your grasp of the obvious is remarkable,” I said. “And by the way, thanks a lot for leaving me there.”

“What would you have me do, haul you off by the nape with my beak?”

“You could have made the attempt.”

“Sure, OK,” he said. “So anyway, after your header, there, Mrs. Culpepper just kept firing that gun around at who knows what. Like she’d never used one before, which I have to say, I found that surprising. She wasted the whole rest of the clip, and then she got this ‘now what?’ kind of a look on her face.” He arched his eyebrows and made his mouth into a tight O, re-creating her expression.

“But she’s still around,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I don’t get that,” he said. “Because I harassed her ass right out the window, Bill. I was all, like, the avenging owl. You should have seen her, trying to cover her face with her hands, moaning, ‘please stop oh god.’”

“A delightful mental image, definitely. But when you say ‘out the window’—”

“As in defenestrated, totally and verifiably. The big window behind her desk. She went right through it.”

“But that’s, like, a really long way down,” I protested. “How the hell did she survive?”

Gabe shrugged. “I guess she’s one tough old bird,” he said. I considered that. “But Felix, he’s—”

“As dead as a metaphor,” Gabe said. “Hence the complete collapse of the corporate infrastructure.”

“The defection of the security, the cutting of the power.”

“Exactly. And so with nothing left for her here, his mom’ll prob’ly just go retire somewhere like Crete to write her memoirs and order waiters around.”

“So that’s it, then. We won.”

“Pretty much.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s just, it’s the funniest thing. You look just like that guy, what’s-his-name. You know. The French guy with the bandages.”

“Apollinaire,” said Piff, coming in from the kitchen bearing a bottle of champagne and six glasses on a tray.

“Yeah, him,” said Gabe. “Doesn’t he look like him?”

“I don’t really see it,” she said.

“Let me see that bottle,” he said.

“Compliments of the Molotov,” she said. “Don’t thank them, though, ’cause they don’t know they donated it.”

“Le Canard Gauche,” he said, reading the label. “Nice choice.” He grimaced as he twisted out the cork.

“You know what I was thinking?” said Gabe, as he poured champagne for us. “I was thinking I might like to try being a full-time owl. Could that be arranged?”

“Yes, it can be done,” said one of the sisters.

“All right,” he said. “Done with the human race, then. How about a toast to that?”

We all clinked our glasses. Gabe drained his in a single gulp and immediately refilled it. “I’ll miss you guys,” he said.

“Maybe we can keep in touch,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll drop a dead mouse in your shoe when you least expect it.”