“You’ve no idea the amount of trouble you’ll find yourself if you don’t stop meddling in my daughter’s affairs.”

“Well, someone has to deal with her problems since you clearly don’t! All Tegan needs is for someone to listen to her.”

Just as I reach the third floor, a door slams shut followed by a twin sound a few seconds later. Wary, I step on the landing. It’s empty except for a girl braced against a set of industrial metal and glass doors. She’s an Archie Panjabi lookalike in her mid-twenties.

“Don’t mind our neighbors,” she tells me. “They bicker all the time. Personally, I think it’s only foreplay. Are you here to see one of them or one of us?”

There’s a plate next to the metal doors saying Inceptor Magazine. I swallow; I’ve walked into a madhouse. “Hi, I’m Blair Walker,” I say, extending a hand. “I sort of have an appointment with Richard Stratton for a job interview.”

“Ah, Blair, I’m Indira.” She shakes my hand. “The boss told me you might stop by. He’s on a call right now, but I’m to give you the tour. Come in.”

As I close the five-step distance between us, we give each other the ultimate once over. I take in her Brooklyn Soccer League pullover, skinny jeans, and black-and-white All Stars. Indira does the same with my below the knee dress and beaded sandals and it’s as if we mutually acknowledge that we come from two different planets. Except her expression tells me I’m the alien in this zip code.

She guides me into an open-space office with oversized sunlit windows, exposed walls and beams, and wood flooring—straight from the twenties by the look of it. Someone would call it cool and modern; to me, it screams hipster.

“So.” Indira points at a room with glass walls. “That’s the boss’s office.”

Richard is sprawled out on a chair behind a giant black desk, talking on the phone. Seeing him is enough to make my throat clench.

Strangled, I only manage to hum an acknowledgment.

“Richard is our Editor-in-Chief, of course,” Indira continues. “All other editors are based here in this lovely open space, coexisting as one big, happy family.”

I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not.

“That’s Hugo, the News Editor.”

A guy with ginger hair and a short beard lifts his head and waves.

“Then there’s Saffron. She’s our social media and digital guru.”

Indira points at a cute girl with long dark hair no older than twenty-two or twenty-three. Even their names are hipster-y, though Saffron’s style is more grunge than bohemian.

“Zane is our Communications, Partnerships, and Distribution Manager.”

Another bearded hippie waves.

“Ada is at entertainment.”

A blonde girl out of a commercial from the fifties smiles and pushes her Cat-Eye glasses up her nose. I guess going vintage is equally accepted over here.

“And Nico is in charge of business and politics.” Indira lowers her voice, “Never pick an ideological argument with him. Even if you’re right, he’ll bore you to death before you can prove your point.”