A Fae in Finance

Book 1: How to Do Business in Fairie

by Juliet Brooks

Genres: Fantasy; Contemporary Fantasy; Humorous Fantasy

Synopsis

When investment banker Miri is purposely trapped in Faerie by her client, the Princeling of the Faerie realm, she does what any 20-something would do: cries, eats cake, and worries loudly about her cat, Doctor Kitten. Instead of rescuing her, her boss simply confirms that she has solid internet access, leaving Miri stranded in a strange land with only a warning that the quality of her work should not decrease because of a change of address. 

But Miri grew up reading fantasy, and she knows there are always ways to work around magic—she just needs to find them. To affect a daring escape, Miri must navigate Faerie political drama, lies by omission, deteriorating mental health, and a mother who never hangs up the phone.

Release date: August 26, 2025

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 384

Sample

My manager’s email was titled YOU ARE LEADING THE CLIENT CALL.

I will be listening in but will not speak.

Jeff

I stared at the email for a moment, twisting the thin gold band on my index finger. Doctor Kitten, the black and white cat on my lap, also stared at the email for a moment.

I giggled. Doctor Kitten glared up at me, disturbed by the movement. “Sorry, it’s just kind of funny,” I said, scratching his head.

Obviously I wouldn’t agree to anything the client asked—obviously I wouldn’t bind myself in promises or pearls for the Princeling. But there was something mundane and hilarious about this note, delivered via Microsoft Outlook and not scrawled in black ink on the soft underside of a torn bit of bark.

I tapped my fingers lightly on the keys, unsure whether Jeff wanted me to confirm receipt. He might just find the extra email irritating.

Finally, I sent a quick Understood; thank you.

When I shifted in my chair, my thighs stuck to the faux leather. The tiny window air conditioner was more enthusiastic than efficient, and I was already sticky from the summer heat. I had two screens glowing an unnatural blue in front of me: my silver work laptop and my larger second monitor. The artificial light hurt my eyes.

Doctor Kitten remained stubbornly nestled on my knees, despite my attempts to remove him. In the background, my “Pop Punk Hits of the 2000s” radio station started its third Good Charlotte song, putting me in exactly the wrong mindset for a client meeting.

The computer pinged—the soft insistent blip of a Microsoft Teams meeting—and the pop-up on the lower right-hand side of my screen invited me to Join Meeting. Of course the Princeling had started it early.

“Robot Overlord, please stop the music,” I said, and the speaker turned off.

I joined the meeting, my left hand curled around a glass of what used to be iced tea.

The Princeling greeted me the moment the meeting loaded. “Hello, fair one,” he said, his voice distant and tinny.

“My lord,” I replied, scanning the attendees for Jeff. The Princeling’s unfairly attractive retinue had all joined, sharp faces against the artificially blurred backgrounds of the video software. No sign of Jeff, who seemed to feel that while timeliness may be a virtue, he’d never agreed to be virtuous.

“Share the agenda,” the Princeling instructed. I couldn’t tell if he was frustrated by my slowness, if he expected me to have it up and shared already. Perhaps I should have.

I shared my screen, the agenda now visible to everyone.

“Not much today,” I said, and my voice cracked. I wasn’t really new to this job anymore, but still in the liminal space where I didn’t know whether to start without my manager. Jeff wouldn’t talk, but he’d said he wanted to observe. “We should be done soon.” I shifted in my chair, which tilted backward unbidden.

The Princeling smirked, raising an eyebrow. “I knew I sensed prophecy in you,” he said.

I blanched. Did I just promise something?

“Not a prophecy,” I replied, frozen in place. “Just a guess.” My phone buzzed from the far side of my desk, beyond the lukewarm tea.

“She has prophecy, though,” the Gray Knight said, coming off mute. A loud shriek came through her mic, then cut off abruptly. “Look at her fractured eyes.”

Fractured eyes? I’ll fracture your face, I thought, because I’d spent half the night rereading the death-by-magic-flower adventures of The Jasmine Throne and the rest of the night formatting PowerPoint footers. Both of those activities made me feel murderous.

“’Tis true,” said another—the Red Knight. The Red and Blue Knights should have been indistinguishable, with equally shiny spills of untamed chestnut hair, penetrating eyes the frozen brown of soil packed down under an ice melt, and shoulders broad enough to splinter a front door. Fortunately, the knights always wore their colors. “Observe the tilt in the zygomatic bone,” the Red Knight added, gesturing with his pointy, dimpled chin.

“Anyway,” I said, before they could begin discussing my cheekbones in earnest. “Today we just want to talk about the seller’s presentation, to make sure it lines up with your expectations.” I stopped again. My phone buzzed several more times, lit up by a flurry of messages in my Games Games Games group chat. I flipped the screen face down and tried to stay focused.

“Yes,” the Princeling said. “The seller’s presentation. Do you truly think mortals will buy our acorn cups and cobweb curtains?”

“Um,” I said, wishing my manager would join already. “Jeff says people will buy anything if you have a celebrity endorsement.”

Jeff believed that many things could be simplified by the mention of a “celebrity endorsement” but hadn’t yet explained how to obtain one.

None of the faeries appeared reassured by this statement. “And I think that people will want to buy faerie-made products either way,” I added.

The Red Knight unmuted himself and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Would that this debasement were not required.”

The Blue Knight remained muted but rolled his eyes with gusto.

“Look,” I said. “I think it’s a really good thing we’re doing. An important thing. It’ll help people know you—know faeries. Help humans and faeries… be friends. You know, like, uh, globalization.” I winced, experiencing the unique brand of agony that only comes after one has opened one’s own mouth.

“Globalization,” the Princeling repeated, his face wrinkled in either immense pain or disgust. “I know this not. Let us continue. I have many councils scheduled today, sorceress.”

“Right.” I glanced at the attendee list. Still no Jeff. “Not a sorceress. But let’s get started. We’ve got a valuation range for the company.”

I glanced up—with the Princeling, I was never sure how much to explain. “We think that we have an exciting story for investors, because of the, uh, supernatural element.”

Jeff always said “supernatural element.” Jeff said that if a celebrity wouldn’t endorse a product, you could just write supernatural element on your materials to achieve a similar effect.

“You have mentioned,” the Princeling noted dryly. “Is there no progress, then?”

“No, there’s a lot of progress! Did you get the new pages we sent?” I leaned forward, smushing Doctor Kitten a bit in my lap. He still wouldn’t move.

The Princeling sighed. “Yes. They were not to our taste.”

This was why Jeff was late, really. He’d taken a strong dislike to our client, in part over differences in creative vision. And to be fair, I also found the Princeling’s vision… creative, for lack of a better word.

“Okay, that’s fine,” I said. “Can you let me know what worked and what didn’t?”

“What worked?” the Princeling repeated. A tiny crease had come between his peaked brows, and I remembered that faeries are quite literal.

“Uh, what you liked about it,” I amended.

“Oh,” he said, almost brightly. “Nothing. I liked nothing.”

Faeries cannot lie. I fought the urge to cringe.

“Okay, cool,” I said instead. “That’s, um, a good start.” It was not really.

“I do not believe it is an auspicious start,” the Gray Knight said, coming off mute again. Her filter had slipped; she was leaning against a tree, silvery bark and silvery eyes and the cheekbones of a movie star. I flushed at the dismissal in her tone and tried to focus. She held her camera at an odd angle, tilted down toward the part in her hair, which should’ve been unflattering but just made her look sharper, mesmerizing like the thin blade of a knife.

“I have heard humans say that,” the Princeling told her. “It means naught.”

“Right,” I said.

“This means correct,” he added.

“Right,” I said again. I felt that I had perhaps lost the plot a bit. “Um, so, Jeff says that buyers will be used to seeing a presentation like the one we shared with you,” I told them. “So maybe we can think about keeping some of the elements of that presentation—”

“Miri, Jeff here,” Jeff interrupted, brusque. “It’s all good, let’s do what the Princeling asks.” He hadn’t turned on his camera. I pushed the annoyance off my face. He’d said he wouldn’t speak.

“Okay, well, um, my lord,” I said, voice rough. I reached with shaking hands to pet Doctor Kitten, who sensed my stress and took this opportunity to jump from my lap. “What would make this presentation more agreeable to you?”

“If it were expulsed from the world,” the Princeling said, “and expunged from the books of heaven and hell.”

We stared at each other through the cameras, his long face earnest and his green eyes somber.

I cleared my throat. “So, ah, if I can’t do that, what would work?”

Silence.

“More green,” the Princeling said, after a long, considering pause.

“And more leaves,” the Gray Knight chimed in helpfully.

The Crone, the Red Knight, and the Blue Knight—the others in the retinue—did not speak but nodded in their respective frames.

“Miri can add more leaves,” Jeff said, which seemed unfair to me because our graphic design and software budget was approximately seven dollars and a pack of washable markers. No one was giving me funds for a glue stick, let alone for digital art packs.

“Yeah, totally,” I said aloud.

“We shall see,” the Princeling said. “When will you provide us with this new document?”

“Soon,” I said.

“Will you provide a span of moon or sun?” the Princeling requested. Do not agree to a deadline.

I waited for Jeff to speak.

He didn’t.

My air conditioner huffed indignantly.

“Perhaps within the arc of this day,” the Princeling prompted.

“Uh, we’ll do our best to get it done soon,” I said. Do not commit to a deadline.

“Very well,” he said, and in one moment his entire retinue had signed off.

“Jeff?” I asked, hoping to talk about the art packs. Silence.

With a sigh, I exited the meeting.

I really had to pee, but the second I stood up, Jeff pinged me on Teams. I answered right away.

“You need something,” he said accusatorily as soon as the call connected.

I debated saying You called me, but that wouldn’t be productive.

“How do I add more leaves to the presentation? Do we have access to leaf art somewhere?”

“How the absolute fucknuts am I supposed to know?” he snapped.

“Uh.” I didn’t have my camera on, so Jeff couldn’t see how my eyes were wide with exhaustion and stress. “I don’t know. You agreed to it, so I thought you might have an idea.”

“No, I just don’t want to deal with their moronic bullshit anymore, Miri. They’re the stupidest people I’ve ever dealt with, and that’s saying something.”

“I don’t think they’re stupid,” I said, hunching my shoulders and staring at the computer screen. The Princeling doesn’t need a human girl who can’t throw a punch to defend him went the voice in my head.

Jeff huffed. “Okay, Glinda the Good Witch.” The impassive circle bearing his initials stared back at me.

I flinched at the attempted insult but didn’t reply.

The voice in my head, which is of the dual opinions that violence solves everything and that I am bad at violence, growled. But the voice in my head had also never felt so defensive of a client, supernatural or otherwise. Ugh—truthfully, I’d never even thought about anyone so much outside of work before. I tried to tell myself something magical was at play, that I was falling under some faerie spell—

Exactly the type of prejudiced bullshit I’d have called anyone else out for.

“Don’t we just need to teach them what’s normal for the industry?” I ventured, after some tense mutual silence.

Jeff snorted. “No. Just do what they want. It’s fine. Everyone who sees the presentation will know it’s because the client is a faerie, and faeries are crazy.”

This sounded like a logical fallacy. It also sounded like something he wouldn’t say in the office, where our few faerie and werewolf colleagues could hear him. The vampires would remain blissfully ignorant via the simple expedient of not coming into the office until after dark.

“Okay, but the leaves?” I prompted.

“Just google some free leaf graphics, I guess.” He sounded distracted. No doubt he was, already reading a different email.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you want to see it before I send it?”

“No, I don’t care. The whole thing is stupid.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Okay,” I said again. I felt a lump in my throat, frustration burning hot behind my eyes.

He hung up without another word.

I glanced around my living room, feeling itchy and stagnant. I desperately needed a walk but was afraid to leave the apartment, worried that as soon as I got out the door someone would call me about work.

Sighing, I opened the PowerPoint document titled Faerie Trade Goods and stared at the front page again. The entire presentation touted the sedate colors of our bank, a sea of blues in RGB (0, 0, 255) and (0, 180, 255) and (70, 20, 230).

I thought about the best way to change the presentation. I could mock up a few slides and send them to the client, but if Jeff saw that email he’d be annoyed that I didn’t ask him to review, even though he’d just told me not to. I could try to find a style guide for our company (the style guide does not exist; this was just stalling). I could stuff my face with tofu noodles and then deal with another irritated lecture from Jeff when I didn’t get this done as quickly as he wanted.

With another sigh, I opened the Noun Project on my computer and searched leaf. A bunch of black and white icons appeared. I glanced longingly at the sliver of afternoon sunlight bravely reflecting off the windows across the street while the results of my search loaded. Cartoon maple, clover, and ginkgo leaves filled my screen. I probably should’ve asked for slightly more guidance from the Princeling.

Doctor Kitten mewled and hopped back into my lap. He looked as annoyed as I felt, which was kind of unfair, because he didn’t have to make any PowerPoints and his ability to sell this stupid company likely wouldn’t impact faerie-human relations for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and I still had to pee, but I couldn’t get up because Doctor Kitten had settled in for a long scratching session, and also if I got up I would possibly be pinged on Teams.

I looped my arms awkwardly over Doctor Kitten, who was smugly coating my shirt in white cat hair, and started to type.

I shouldn’t have gone out with Thea and Jordan. I should have stayed in my musty apartment and worked. But Thea had texted me just as I felt the phantom oozing trickles of my own brain fluid down my neck, so I’d shut my laptop and agreed to meet them at the convenient restaurant beneath my apartment.

Thea, my first absolute best friend in the whole wide world, stood waiting in the entrance, wearing her summer uniform of jean shorts and a tank top. When she saw me, she strode across the almost steaming pavement and swept me into a hug. “Hey,” she whispered, squeezing me until I lifted onto my toes. I hugged her back; even just seeing her face improved my mood.

I felt someone barrel into me from behind and realized the arms of my other best friend, Jordan, had come around both of us. I sighed and sagged between them, a boneless noodle being supported by her two besties.

“Let’s eat, I’m starving,” Jordan said fervently into the back of my skull.

“Same,” Thea agreed. “I had meetings all day and had to skip lunch!”

Jordan let go of us, and then Thea and I parted. “You could’ve eaten if you’d texted the group chat less,” Jordan said, leading us into the restaurant. “No one cares about your character’s lists of attacks; this one shot is about a game show.”

I snorted.

“Jordan, I’m spending my entire Saturday playing Dungeons and Dragons with you,” Thea said. “And I don’t even like Dungeons and Dragons. So you will appreciate the effort I put into my character, even if all we do is role-play Jeopardy! as orcs.”

The host, who’d heard the end of this little tirade, hid a smirk behind one hand.

“You’re coming Saturday, right, Miri?” Jordan asked as Thea requested a table for three.

The host led us through the dimly lit low room to a booth at the back, where the worn vinyl seats and exposed brick wall waited in muted reds. I sagged into the booth and leaned a shoulder against the wall for support.

“I… don’t know,” I said, while the other two slid in across from me. I tensed up at the twinned expression on their faces: This was an intervention. I was about to be intervened. Again.

“You need to take care of yourself,” Thea said. I tried to hide how piercing I found both her remark and her speckled hazel eyes by staring at the menu, where absolutely none of the words resolved themselves into anything recognizable. Since this was a burger joint, that was probably a function of my currently limited brain power and not a language barrier.

“I am taking care of myself,” I muttered, toying with my ring.

“Miri, this is worse than your old government job,” Thea said. She reached across the table to hold my hands, stilling the frantic motion of my fingers. I stared at her clean, short nails and held my breath. “At least there, you were making some kind of positive difference for supernatural people.”

“Integrating supernatural folks into business is the best and fastest way to reduce prejudice,” I said, mulish. “And at least I can afford my apartment now,” I added, since one of their (fair) gripes with my last job had been the low pay.

I got the impression of a waiter from off to the left; a disembodied voice asked what we wanted. “Grilled cheese and tomato soup,” I guessed, and that must have been on the menu because no one said anything. My friends ordered, but I couldn’t really hear them over the buzzing irritation in my own ears.

“Miri,” Thea exhaled. “Financial services don’t make a positive impact.” She squeezed my hands for emphasis.

“In fact,” Jordan added, in the voice that meant he was being clever, “the biggest measurable impact of financial services is that you’ve missed every important life event and several fantastic romantasy books since you joined that company.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced at my friends, whose twinned expressions had turned simultaneously disapproving.

“It’s work,” I said. Thea let go of my hands and propped her chin on her fist. Jordan made a face.

I yanked my phone out of my pocket. It was an email from Jeff, which had the subject line WHY AREN’T YOU ONLINE? and absolutely no other text in the body.

Wordless, I turned the phone for them to see.

“What a dick,” Jordan exploded.

“Has he never heard of dinner?” Thea asked with righteous indignation.

“I’ll get dinner to go,” I said, pushing down the guilt as I slid out of the bench seat and toward the front of the restaurant. “And pay separately.”

Before either of them could voice displeasure, I stalked away.

I finished my draft of the deck around two a.m. I stared at the cover page on my computer for several minutes, now adorned with green, leafy borders that had taken forever to format. But I was finally satisfied that this would please the Princeling.

I stayed seated at my desk, eyes scrunched shut, and wondered whether I should send it to Jeff or straight to the Princeling. Jeff had said he didn’t want to see it, but we’d played this game before—if I didn’t send it to him, he’d likely ream me out in the morning. I pulled up a blank email and wrote:

Hi Jeff, please see attached the draft for the client. Please let me know if you want to take a turn or if I should send it over.

I attached the draft, confident that it was flawless and also that Jeff would find or fabricate some mistake. There was nothing more to do, so I stumbled into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash up. I was too tired to shower, and when I got into the bedroom I flopped onto the bed, butt-up on the mattress. I didn’t even have the energy to lie flat.

Doctor Kitten hopped up next to me and mewled, annoyed.

With a groan, I rolled onto my back, my eyes still shut. Glowing green leaves danced behind my eyelids. The conversation with my friends floated up from my subconscious to join the terrible, stupid party in my brain.

My team was the Supernaturals and Preternaturals Banking and Brokerage Group Business Development chapter of Tartarus, the fourteenth-largest financial services firm in the world. I’d joined four months earlier to help companies with nonhuman founders and inclusive business plans raise money. On nights like this one, it was hard to see the connection between my work and the world I wanted to build. But business was fast, and government was slow, and I’d hoped—well, at two thirty a.m., it didn’t matter what I’d hoped. It mattered that I got four hours of sleep.

Doctor Kitten stepped onto my stomach, making biscuits with his front paws. It hurt. I sighed and put my hand out, feeling in the darkness for his head. I scratched behind his ear until he settled on my chest. We both fell asleep on top of the covers.

My dreams were restless, full of the Princeling, broad and cold. He sat at the foot of my bed and watched me, his green eyes glowing in the dark, just like those damn leaves. When I kicked out, he put a hand on my ankle, holding me in place. “Human girl,” he said. “You do not yet know what you will give me.”

I woke up exhausted, having slept through four separate alarms.

It was an in-office day. I arrived at eight thirty in the morning and set up at my desk, plugging my laptop into the docking station, logging into the system, then kicking off my sneakers and sliding my feet into the heels I kept under the desk. The shoes pinched my toes even more than usual this morning.

My computer pinged and my pulse spiked. I jabbed at the mute button. Luckily, it was only a daily industry update, something I could easily delete. I didn’t even skim the headlines on those emails anymore. I knew what they would be: snippets about Elf off the Shelf, the elvish home goods company that had hurled the supernatural into public consciousness four years ago; the capital raise for the fitness company founded by six vampires ranging in age from four hundred to nine hundred years old—all of whom swore by “this one simple routine to stay fit”; and some other new entrant, a company started by an entrepreneurial immortal with wings, claws, or fangs.

Soon my colleagues would come in, and I would be surrounded by men in matching white button-down shirts who made me feel completely alone.

On cue, Corey rounded the corner and plopped into the cubicle next to mine.

“How was your evening?” I asked him, though I already knew what he would say—

“Terrible,” he said, “I worked until two a.m.”

I didn’t know what he spent all this time working on. He didn’t have a deal going. Or any clients. Or a manager. He spent all of this time on his computer doing… PowerPoints? Research? One time, I saw him rendering a video game background in MS Paint.

“Bummer,” I said.

He shrugged.

I sighed, still trying to engage him in conversation for some reason. “You hear we might be going to Faerie soon?” I asked. We meant me and Jeff.

“Yeah, travel sucks,” he said.

This didn’t feel like the appropriate response to being told your colleague was one of the first humans invited to Faerie in centuries.

Or at least one of the first humans publicly invited.

Jeff rounded the corner, wearing a full pinstripe suit and matching blue tie that made his skin look positively pink. He was always clean-shaven and had reached the age where men’s chins start to sag into their neck, no matter how slender they are.

He grunted toward us and strode past into his office.

This was a good greeting, for Jeff.

I turned back to my computer and alt-tabbed over to an Excel spreadsheet, shushing my roiling stomach. Maybe it would be a calm day after all.

“Miri, get in here!” Jeff barked from his office at the end of our row of cubicles. “When you have a minute,” he added, perhaps for the benefit of a colleague walking by.

When you have a minute meant now. I pushed away from my desk and stood, my knees cracking. So much for calm in the office.

The thirty steps to his office were muffled by the gray carpet and punctuated by sharp pains in my big and pinky toes. I leaned against the doorframe.

“Jeff,” I said, because he’d already turned back to his computer.

“Miri,” he said. “What do you need?”

I blinked, unsure what to say. He’d just called me over like, fifteen seconds ago. “Uh, did you—uh…” I stopped, stumbling over my words. Jeff’s window looked over New York City, out west to the Hudson and Jersey City. Up into the endless sky.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We’re going to dinner tonight in that shithole. Dinner’s outside, can you believe it?”

“We’re going to Faerie tonight,” I said in disbelief.

“Yes, the Duke said tonight.”

“Princeling.” The title of Princeling didn’t exactly mean a prince or a king, wasn’t a name like Rowan or Oberon, and wasn’t a descriptor like Fairy Godmother.

The Princeling just was. And most of all, what he was was in charge of everything Faerie. The very few public statements we’d gotten about the Fae bore his signature, and the faeries who’d come out of the woodwork to join the mortal realm all claimed loyalty to him. As far as I could tell, he was their ultimate authority.

“Yeah, Princeling. I know.” Jeff stuck his pinky in his ear and started scratching.

I shifted my weight away from the doorframe. “Are we bringing our own food?”

Jeff finally looked at me, his eyes narrowed. The purple bags under his left eye were bigger than the bags under his right. “Why would we do that?”

I rubbed my thumb against the gold band on my index finger, queasy. “Um. Doesn’t faerie food trap you in Faerie?”

Jeff snorted. “Food can’t trap you somewhere, Miri,” he said, his tone cool. He leaned back in his chair. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I swallowed. “Jeff, I—”

“Where did you even hear that? Seriously.” He chuckled, shifting in his seat. He’d taken off the suit jacket and I saw the perspiration stains under his arms.

“It’s the only legend they’ve confirmed, actually,” I said. “There’s a New York City Department of Public Health advertisement campaign about it in the subways.”

Had he not seen Just Say No, the campaign they’d enacted when faerie fruit sellers started popping up on street corners? Had he not noticed their slitted pupils and their berries that gleamed golden like little spheres of sunshine?

“I don’t take the subway,” Jeff said, matter-of-factly. Of course he didn’t.

“I’ll grab us takeout,” I said.

“You’ll embarrass our hosts if you do that!” he snapped.

I gulped.

“Don’t bring any food, Miri,” he said. “We need this dinner to go well.”

Jeff stared at me, blue eyes cold like the wind between the buildings in the winter.

“O-okay,” I said, my stomach tight. I just… wouldn’t eat anything. And if Jeff wanted to get himself stuck in Faerie, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

I shoved down a wave of nausea and left his office.

At lunchtime I took the elevator downstairs and stood in the courtyard of our building, staring at my phone.

My mom had called me three times that morning. I’d let the calls go to voicemail, keenly aware that her friend Mrs. Phillips’s nephew had just tragically broken up with his fiancée and moved to New York City and this meant that I was about to be conscripted into a blind date.

With a sigh, I called her back. The phone rang once before she picked up. “Good afternoon!” she said, sounding delighted. She always sounded delighted to hear from me.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, ready to derail. “I’m going to my first client dinner tonight.”

“Oh, sweetheart!” she squealed. “Are you excited? What are you going to wear?”

I groaned.

“The black suit,” she said firmly. “And don’t forget makeup.”

I pictured my mom sitting at the kitchen table and playing solitaire on an iPad.

“Do y. . .