Sta.sh
Deductions
This was supposed to be an easy job. A cushy job. Take advantage of all the loopholes, make sure the boss doesn't pay too damn much in taxes, keep the penalties down concerning the years when the boss claimed he was "dead at the time".
Didn't work out that way. Of course not. Not with a boss like Vlad Masters. Being the tax preparer of any rich guy was supposed to involve hiding a lot of funds offshore, sure. That wasn't what made this job difficult. Heck, hiding things in the Cayman Islands was easy. Much easier than this.
Some of these receipts glowed. Actually glowed. Some of them were only somewhat solid, falling through the fingers at the most inopportune times. Some of them were never solid, had to be kept in their own specially shielded boxes. Had to use the gloves to hold those.
The glowing receipts were always the weirdest. A custom desk valued at "three pints of blood". A book paid for with "sacrifice of one black cockerel". Services rendered in exchange for "one hour of time". A "curse cast upon thine enemies" paid for with "head of one black goat". It would not have been surprising to find something out of Macbeth in these pages. "Eye of newt and tongue of dog" or something.
Maybe itemizing deductions was a bad idea.
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...and now I'm wondering just what sort of mystic being Vlad sold an hour of time to, or what sort of 'time' was given - an hour of life, an hour of freedom, an hour of companionship, a literal hour of time (which would be incredibly interesting, given that Clockwork is the only being I know of that is affluent in 'time').
Although it's never specifically stated that the being whose taxes being done is Vlad... Danny, perhaps? Or maybe Spectra? Or what if it's someone else, someone much less alive...
This just makes me giggle so hard at the ambiguity of it all.
An hour... of possession? of sanity? of distance? Time can be a measure of distance if you twist the dimensions enough...
It's a fine line. Doing a good enough job that he won't find himself disappearing but not so good a job that he gets asked to do this again next year.
Though... if those receipts are correct... an unwilling sacrifice is worth much less than a willing one...
My tax license is showing...