I run my hand down the Queen’s spine, trying to feel for an injury, just to be careful, then Harry helps me set him on the floor. I check his vitals: pulse is steady, breathing heavy, but otherwise healthy.

There’s a poison on the air, though I can’t quite name it, but just residue; Queen inhaled the rest. He starts to cough, and I help him onto his side in case he needs to vomit. Instead he spits up a rock of the poison on the carpet. “Mariri might be a life saver, but I wish it didn’t have to taste like a dead donkey’s cock.”

“Seeing as you nearly died, I won’t ask how you know,” Harry says.

“And that’s the poison,” Bishop says. “Unsurprisingly, poison tastes bad. The mariri itself tastes like charcoal- not pleasant, but not poisonous, either.” She’s looking over the necromancer, turning him over. There’s already a large pool of blood gathering beneath him.

“Can you save him?” I ask Bishop.

“Entry’s clean, just a tiny little hole where the bullet went in. The real bitch is the stomach wound, where the bullet and all the bits of bone and flesh blasted out of him like a really festering pimple.”

“I don’t need him to dance again. I just need him not to die in the next ten hours.”

That numbers give her pause, but she brushes it to the side. “I think I’ve got some blood in storage. Probably not his type, but”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Then I'll go get it. Put pressure, here,” she tells Harry, pushing his hands into the other necromancer’s stomach.

She leaves, and a second later there's a shadow in the doorway, and I assume Rook forgot something, or wants to ask a question I don't want to answer. It's the Arbiter. “I don't like being left behind,” he grouses.

But there's someone else behind him, and from the shape of the silhouette I know it's Pawn. He steps into the light. “You look a little pale,” I tell him.

“And you look a little stupid, ugly and shit-smelling.”

“Rough night, I take it? Where’s Rook?”

“Figured she’d be here. What? I’m suddenly her keeper.”

“That was the idea, yeah.” Then it hits me, all at once. “You split up.” I pull out my phone and dial Rook, it rings, but there’s no response.

“Was I supposed to take both the hunter and the vamp while babysitting your noobie?” I punch him in his fat face and he falls on the marble floor with a loud crack.

Then my phone rings. It's the VC. I need this like a hole in the head, but I answer, anyway, on the off chance it's good news- because really it seems I'm about due. “Hey boss,” Rook says, though I barely hear her. “The vamps got the hunter.”

“You left her to be murdered,” I tell Pawn. I shouldn’t kill him. But Christ do I want to.

But he can’t just take his licks and be thankful; no, he has to shoot back, “Well, seeing as she ain’t murdered, I feel I maybe made the right call.”

“Should I kick you while you’re on the ground?” He glares at me.

“Look,” Rook says, “I know the vamps are all buddy buddy with the guild and everything, but I can’t help but feel like the last roll at the Old Country Buffet, and the old folks look mighty hungry.”

“Pawn will pick you up.”

“Um, no offense, but could somebody else come get me, someone more, um, reliable.”

“He’ll be there in five minutes. Or I’ll flay him.”

“So that’s why you wanted that flaying spell,” Bishop says.

He doesn’t believe us, but it’s enough to make him move faster, anyway. “I’m going. Fuck. Apparently this is the thanks I get for helping to save the Gambit. Would you like a party, Pawn? Why, no thank you. How about a pat on the back and this mid-priced prostitute? No, I don’t do this job for that. A swift but deep kick in the child-berries? Now, there’s the benefits package I’ve come to expect…”

“His bitching really carries,” says Harry.

“It’s the hard surfaces,” I say, “and the high ceilings- and all that bass in his voice.” But out of the corner of my eye I get a glimpse of the King dead at his desk. “Bishop, can we talk a sec?”

Bishop's already got an IV in the necromancer's arm, and finishes injecting a sedative into the blood she's giving. “Yeah.” She comes over to me.

“I want your notes, on Castle, and Elise.”

“Notes?” She plays coy.

“I know you took them. Because prudence be damned, you can’t just let knowledge disappear. So you wrote it all up, even reverse-engineered the parts you couldn’t figure out at a glance- even if you’d never tell a soul where for fear they might use them.”

“You can’t.”

“I will.”

“No, I’m not sure you can. It’s complicated. Tricky. And there are some dangerous parts to the ritual. And I won’t help you.”

“The notes will be enough. And if I get in over my head, I’ll just end it, shoot him in the temple and be done with it. This prick isn’t claiming any more bodies.”

She has the notebook with her, in a small bag. I assume she's been working on it in her off moments. “I noticed some… inefficiencies in his spellcraft. Things that limited longevity. They were probably errors, but maybe they were mercy.”

“If you’re arguing for some of our own, that ship sailed a couple bodies ago.”

“Then at least, don’t use my suggestions,” she doesn't want to call them improvements, though we both know that's what they are. “They were, I only meant them theoretically. It was academic, thought exercises.”

“I won’t,” I tell her. I don’t think the lie fools either of us, or makes us feel any better about it.

“I think we have everything we'll need here, um, except”

“If it's necromantic supplies you need, I've got a guy,” Harry says.

“Okay. You two get those, I'll stay with our patient.”

“I've got a bandage for the gunshot wound- technically two of them, if you want to apply them,” Bishop says. “And I figured we'd shove it full of gauze, too. It'll get infected, but if we're not worried about the long term”

“We're not,” I tell her.

And then I'm alone with the necromancer. He's out, looking vulnerable. I could kill him with my hands, now. And maybe I should. Maybe that would be the decent thing. But I'm past decency. Only killing him now wouldn't be enough, not for everything he's done.

So I wait for the supplies. Harry's contact comes in a hurry, so he gets back first. “How much am I going to owe this guy?”

“It's gratis. I think he hopes that if the Gambit starts using some of his more exotic supplies, maybe the prohibitions on them will go away.”

“Maybe I'll just have him invoice me later,” I say. Because, hypocritical as it might sound, not everyone should be able to do what I'm about to. I'm not even sure I should.  

Bishop gets back a few seconds later, looking sad. “You haven't doctored any of this, have you?” I ask her. And that only makes her sadder- probably because she didn't think to do it when she could have. She shakes her head, no.

“Good. Then you should go.” She wants to stay, to try to make me keep my word about not using her enhanced version of the spell… but I think she knows she’d fail, and then feel a party to what I’m about to do next. And guilt isn’t supposed to be a part of her job description. She leaves the room, but stops in the doorway, to look back at me. And I feel worse about lying to her- though still not bad enough to reverse course.

“You can go, too, Harry.”

“You’re kidding me, right? This is necromancy, not a mix for your Easy Bake Oven. You’re as likely to turn yourself into an undead cantaloupe as pull off this spell,” he pauses, “without me.”

“It’s not something you need to be a part of.”

“Maybe. But it’s something you’re going to do. And if you think it’s the right thing to do, then I’m right here with you.”

“Arbiter?”

“In for a penny. Besides, it’s been ages since I attended a good vivisection.”  

“Tell me honestly, are you Death?” I ask.

“Oh God,” the Arbiter says, “is he behind me?” He whirls around with surprising agility. “Don’t scare an old man like that.”

Bishop’s notes are thorough, like they usually are. Creating a Dahlia is a complicated process. The most important element of the spell is the bind, creating a connection between all of the constituent elements of the body, and strengthening the connections that do exist. When it's alive, the human body is designed to be interconnected; it helps the process along.

The first element involves a red silk rope, knotted seven times around the throat. There’s an incantation that goes along with each knot, and ties the individual to the Seven African Powers by way of the Catholic Saint Anthony; magic makes for strange bedfellows.  

Then there’s a spell from Hungary with some Romany elements in it that uses mirrors; the more typical version uses it as a love spell, keeping people together and faithful, that kind of thing. I hold up a mirror the size of a sheet of paper to the necromancer’s face, and Harry pries open his eyes; it doesn’t matter that he’s unconscious. Then I smash it against his skull. I take the two largest pieces, and push them into his eye sockets- not through the balls, but over them, pressing them deeper into the socket wall. I set aside five more shards, for later.

Finally, there's a spell out of the French Antilles, involving nine acacia branch wands. The wands are inserted under the fingernails, one for every finger and the right thumb. The left thumb gets a silver of serpentine; unlike the acacia it can't be forced in without a hammer; there’s nothing that prepares you for the noise that makes. But that takes care of binding the body together.

But it isn’t entirely that simple; the universe has an immune system, of sorts- and the second step involves tricking it. Every culture and religious tradition has its own psychopomps, who herald the dead from this life. So the second step in creating a Dahlia is protecting the body from them.

I initiate the rights of Anubis with spells from the Book of the Dead, marking the body as property of that god. But I don’t finish the ritual, which should leave him in a purgatory. As insurance, I’ll weight down the heart by injecting it with coagulants later, making it solidify full of blood instead of draining, just in case Anubis gets grabby and tries to measure his heart against Ma’at anyway; it’s a cheap trick, but it should work.

And since it’s a putatively Christian nation, I cover my bases. That spell involves changing the dying person’s name, so the angel of death can’t find him. Classically people use Raphael, meaning “the Creator heals;” the irony isn’t lost on me as I gouge that new name into the necromancer's chest with a knife.

While I’m at work on the first two segments, Harry prepares the third. It involves putting symbols on various implants, painting runes on metal, carving sigils in wood, and dying magic words and symbols on cloth and leather. It takes time, and patience, and he finishes just in time for me to start inserting them under the necromancer’s skin.

That last step is another bind, making sure that the noncorporeal parts of him, call it a soul, call it consciousness or the id, are connected to the physical. This step is last, because it’s the one most likely to kill him- but so long as everything else is working like it should, it also won’t matter.  

I start with the razor blades, and force them into the bend of his arm, behind each knee, and under his arm pits. The rest go everywhere, but unlike the razors each one requires its own incision, and since we’re doing it right, we sew each up after the implant is in place. There’s seventy, in total, and by the end of it he’s got a foreign object in his skin every few inches.

Then I make an incision into his pelvis, and pull out several feet of his intestines. I knot them, nine times, to make a witch's ladder, embellishing each rung with a black hen feather. For good measure, while I have an opening to his guts, I sew a tseuheur to his ribcage; it has the remaining pieces of the mirror, seven pebbles, seven seed pods, antimony powder, and clotted menstrual blood and pubic hairs from a corpse. He’s cursed about as thoroughly as any man has even been.

It takes nine hours before the spells are all done. It's shoddy work, rushed as it is, and since it's the first time we've ever put together a spell like it. But just as we finish, the necromancer wakes up. “You don’t need to do this.” I jam a syringe full of coagulant into his chest. “You don’t have to kill me,” he pleads.  

“I killed you ten hours ago, when I didn’t have a choice. The rest was just the after-party. And the only part of it I regret is that you got to sleep through it.”  

I push down the plunger, and he dies with sadness on his face, but not for the people he murdered, or any of his other sins, but because he’s got a hell of a lot more pain coming, and he knows it. Everything that happens to his body as it decomposes, he’s going to feel. Everything that happens to his cells as they’re broken down, is going to torture him. It’s even possible, though nobody knows, that even when he’s nothing but atoms, that he’s still going to feel like he’s being thrown around, smashed together, having electrons torn off him; I smile at that thought.  

“He’s going to come back a poltergeist.” Harry says; I think he still wants me to reverse course.

But I can’t. “Good,” I say. “I’d love to have another chance to kill him.”

“Bloody,” the Arbiter says. “Violent. But they loosed the dogs of war on a sanctioned Gambit. I can hardly see condemning you for putting the mutts down. I don't suppose you'll put his head on a pike. Makes for an excellent deterrent. But kids these days, too 'civilized' to put a head on a stick to impress the neighbors. In my day, we'd have decorated this place with his entrails and had a party with his guts hanging from the rafters like streamers. And we all would have gotten laid for it, too. All of us.” He seems almost bitter about that last part.

But I do like King asked, and I ignore the old coot. I take out my phone and  text Vergara to come to the Centre. It takes some explaining, to even get her to understand the basics of what happened. “But how does a man having a cardiac arrest try to stab someone?”

“Not being a forensic pathologist, I'd guess that the attack came after and likely on account of the stress of having stabbed someone.”

“And why do I get the feeling you're lying? Almost completely. About everything.”

“That’s one of those questions you shouldn’t ask.”

“Why? It’s not like you’re going to answer it.”

“But eventually, you ask enough questions I can’t answer and they outline a response- and then we have a problem.”

“Then maybe one of these days we’re just going to have a problem.”

“Let’s hope not.”

The necromancer turns his attention to me, and impossibly I can see his teeth against his otherwise featureless silhouette. Then I hear someone else, behind him, in the doorway. “Hello, Anthony.”

“Queen,” the necromancer says, turning his attention away from me as the other man saunters into the room. “If I’d known you were coming I’d have done something to make the place more fancy.”

“If you’d known I was coming you’d be a diviner, and not a bastard.”

“That’s not pleasant.”

“And this is?” Queen gestures to the King’s body over his shoulder. “Is there really some dark part of your twisted little mind that believes he deserved this?”

“He was going to tell your Knight everything. Though I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

“You’re a tough man to pin down- and that goes doubly for divining you out.”

“What do you want?”

“I had hoped to watch Knight wring the life from you. But as it stands, I suppose I’ll have to improvise.”

Queen pulls something out of his coat, and I don’t have time to look away. It’s bright, whatever it is, and loud, an explosion of some kind. By the time I can focus my eyes again I can see the Queen doubled over a chair, unconscious. The necromancer’s still on his feet, and he looks back to me.

“Not a hundred percent on what he threw at me, but I have the overwhelming urge to take down his pants and ravish him. That doesn’t sound right at all, does it? But that brings us back to you… I know, you’re going to have trouble taking me seriously, after this, but I lied about your aneurism, too. More terrifying, telling someone their brain is about to drown in blood, than letting them know that they’re just having a grand mal seizure. It’s a nifty little spell of my own design that lowers the seizure threshold to the point where normal brain activity will trigger seizure. You at all familiar with Baron Samedi? The Vodun psychopomp, not the Bond villain. He escorts the dead away from their body; this spell just has him take you for a stroll about town. Makes an excellent aphrodisiac.”

He snaps his fingers, I think for effect, and to cover up the incantation he uses to cancel it, but my muscles stop spasming, slowly. “You’ll be able to stand, but move carefully. Any one of your muscles could give out unexpectedly, and the last thing I want is for you to accidentally bash your brains out.”

“It seems I underestimated you- or perhaps that I overestimated my mercenary. I never intended to keep him, a man like that, too much wanderlust; bloodlust, too. But I never thought you’d catch him so quickly. So I’m willing to offer you the same bargain I gave the King. You can serve in my Gambit, or I can kill you, and likely the rest of your Gambit, too. I have a preference for less resistance, and you could be of value to my efforts.”

I want to tear out his heart with my teeth. But I barely have the strength to mumble “Elise;” I think I taste blood in my mouth.

“You knew her?” He seems to understand me and be genuinely surprised, and I can’t think of a reason he’d fake that. “That is an interesting coincidence. To me she was just a girl, one with wide eyes for magic- but no real talent of her own. But she'd seen magic, and knew it, and she chased it as surely as any other junkie after their fix. I'd presume, given your upstanding nature, you knew her when, not now.”

“Not that it would have changed anything. She was useful- eager- in a way some other woman, one perhaps unacquainted with you, would not have likely been. I’m sorry, for what that counts, if her death pained you- it wasn’t even in my calculations. But I needed her strength. Killing Castle took a lot of juice.”

“I thought you didn’t plan that,” I say, and I’m proud when I don’t stumble on any of it.

“That’s true. But I did plan for a contingency. He just happened to be that contingency.”

“And the mana bomb?”

“Trying to plan for the next contingency. And assuming I don’t kill you, one day you’ll have to explain to me how you accomplished disarming it.”

“I didn’t,” I tell him, as I work my hand into my pocket, around the reservoir.

“What?”

My muscles don’t want to obey, and it feels like I’m moving my entire body through mud, but I take a step towards him, and throw a punch with the reservoir in my palm into his stomach. The impact damages the reservoir, and its energy goes everywhere- though it’s mostly muffled by the necromancer’s body.

A moment later I’m on the floor again. I can’t feel my arm below the bicep, but I can smell cooked flesh. I’m pretty sure not being able to feel the arm is a blessing.

I manage to roll onto my side, and push myself up with my good hand. And then I see movement out of the corner of my eye. The reservoir hurt him- badly- but he’s moving, and, frankly, the room wasn’t destroyed.

It takes another moment for the implication of that to sink in: the son of a bitch absorbed most of energy. If he has long enough to turn that energy back around on me, I know no spell is going to be strong enough to counteract him.

I need my gun. But I pat my pockets, and it’s not where it should be. My mind reels. I pulled it, or tried to, on the King. Then I got blasted, and I must have dropped it. I scan over the floor, cursing the fact I didn’t go for the chrome that would glint in the light. But it’s there, under a chair. I make it half of a crawled step before I fall over, landing on my arm. I feel the grind of broken bones together, and the pain is so much I nearly vomit, and then almost pass out.

And then I hear the necromancer behind me, casting a spell.

But it hits behind me, and bathes the room in colorful light. I roll over to see what’s going on. Bishop and Harry are standing in the doorway. She countered his spell with one that transforms the energy of his spell into light and wind instrumental music.  

“You’re quite an impressive girl,” the necromancer says, still teetering on his feet. “And with that necromancer at your side, I’d dare say formidable. But I will kill the both of you. Or, as I’m a man who enjoys competition, if one of you kills the other, I’ll let the winner live.”  

I know Bishop. I trust her. She could kill Harry with little more than a thought. But she wouldn’t. She doesn’t even consider it, and spends all of her energy glaring at the necromancer, watching for any telltale sign of a new cast.

But I worry about Harry. People panic, sometimes, and I could hardly blame him for it. And I’m not certain the necromancer couldn’t kill them both- especially with the energy I just hit him with.

I get my good hand around my pistol, and manage to get up quietly enough the necromancer doesn’t turn around. Bishop sees me, and her eyes get wide, and I worry she’ll give away the game, until she casts a nasty spell, hurricane winds that peel wood off the walls and force them into dense little burning pellets.

“There we are!” the necromancer yells, as most of the spell cascades off him like water. “Finally, someone with a little fight!” He starts to swirl his arms rhythmically, beginning an electrocution spell. I wrap my burnt arm around his throat and yank him back, off balance, and discharge the pistol into his back.

He gasps, and drops to the floor. I nearly fall on top of him, and probably would, even after catching myself the first time, had Bishop not rushed to support me. Harry takes over for her, as I try to keep a wary eye on the necromancer bleeding out at my feet.

“How’d you know?” I ask, trying to control my nausea.

“The King told me,” Harry says, and we both instinctively glance over at the old man’s corpse at his desk.

“Oh.” I say. Then I notice Bishop, kneeling over the body, taking the necromancer’s pulse. “Can you stabilize him?” I ask her.

“Why the hell would I want to?” she asks.

“Because he doesn’t get to die yet- not nearly that quickly.”

It feels like I'm running past the same dark alley I've been past for the hundredth time. Portland is a rat warren. But I tell myself he’s foreign, and can’t know it any better than I do. Unless he’s been hunting in the area- which is a possibility. That twists a knot in my stomach. This shouldn’t be my fight- and certainly shouldn’t be why I die.

But I’m not an idiot. Pawn’s an idiot, and he’s managed not to die. So I should be able to get away from this guy.

So long as I don’t make idiot mistakes.

So what would Pawn do? He’d turn around and waggle his dick at the guy. The opposite of that is running the hell away- which is what I’m already doing. See, I knew my instincts were good.

But I’m getting tired. Fuck, I knew it was a bad idea to buy boots with heels on them. Hurray, I’ll look a little bit sexier when I die. And I can hear the hunter, still chasing me on foot.

I don’t know if Pawn was trying to protect me or not. Two assholes. One a vampire, attuned to preying on humans. The other a hunter, attuned to tracking down and murdering anything that offends his tender religious sensibilities.

He fought the vamp once before- even if he was probably playing opossum then. But maybe he thought the vamp was the tougher opponent. Though that’s kind of specious; I can’t even remember the few spells I learned in Salem that might help me out here, let alone all of Bishop’s crash coursing.

I suddenly feel bad for Heather Graham. You know, in Swingers? When they tell the one guy that she’s just a scared little bunny, and he’s a big bear. Well being hunted fucking sucks. Vince Vaughn’s character was a dick- though, I guess that was a fairly major part of the movie. Still, I'd like to immolate the fucker.

And then I remember the kimia. Bishop mixed it for me, but then wouldn’t elaborate on what it was. “If you know, you might hesitate to use it. So if you think you need to use it, just do.” When I pressed her, all she would tell me was it had to do with fire.

“Catch fire, asshhole!” I yell, and fling it. He does. His entire back and at least some of his hair go up. Holy shit. Flame on, fucker.

He ditches into an alleyway, but I keep running. I look back a second later and he’s after me again; he ditched his holy trench coat and he’s smoldering, but he hasn’t stopped. Goddamn zealot.

What do you do to somebody who shrugs off being set on fire?

If it's a terminator movie, you melt him down- possibly after befriending him. If it's not a movie, you hide behind somebody who's clearly better at this than you.

Which brings us to the real damn issue. When Pawn shoved me out of the way, I lost my phone. With my phone I could have called Knight, or Bishop or the police. Or at least pulled up a Google map back to Bishop's lab. Theoretically, anyway; I mean, I probably would have tripped myself on a homeless person sleeping in a doorway- but it would have been nice to at least have the option. 

I think I recognize neon from one of several trips to a strip club Knight had taken me on, and I take a hard right. The street looks vaguely familiar. I have hope, for a moment, as I recognize the skyline, but not as you recognize it from a car, which limits your view, but the way you'd recognize it on foot.

I take a left, confident I know where I'm going now, but he's getting closer. A hunter probably has to be in phenomenal shape, to compete with vamps. I might be swimsuit ready, but I'm not exactly a marathon runner, and I know I'm starting to slow down. I take a hard right down an alleyway, and almost immediately I know I've fucked up.

I'm ten steps in before I can see that there's no way through, and by that point I can hear him behind me at the entrance to the alley, so I don't stop, I keep going.

I notice a fence to my left, but he's so close now that there's no way I could climb it before he got to me. But there are bins, those retardedly big trash and recycling bins Portland has, and I leap on top of one of those, and jump.

It works well, because the can tips over and smacks into the hunter- it doesn't stop him, but it buys me a few more seconds, and every one of those counts, now. Of course, then I realize I didn't put much thought into my landing, and I hit the pavement too far forward, and barely scrape my toes before I land on my knees, then my hands. I'm bleeding, I know that much, which is bad, but I can see the building now, and I have my bearings.

If the sun wasn't already peaking over the horizon this would probably be far enough, but I know I'm going to have to go inside. I prepare the least timid unlock spell I can think of; if I didn't have for sympathetic spellcraft I'd probably be screwed.

I don't even bother checking the double doors- they're locked, by now, they'd have to be. The spell has enough kick it smashes through both sets of doors. Of course, it kicks me, too, hard, in the guts, and I want to fall to the ground and vomit, but I keep on my feet as I run across the room.

 “Friendly mage, friendly mage!” I shout out. “And the hunter's almost here!”
 
“Oh, don't worry,” I recognize the voice, and that only terrifies me more, as the Conservator says from the shadows, “we smell him.”

He bursts through the doors behind me. He's invigorated, by the hunt, practically high on the adrenaline. And on foot, I don't think he recognized where he was- if he ever knew that the colony was in the Brownstone. 

But then he hears it, the familiar sound of vampires, lots of them, too many of them, leaping down at him by the dozens from perches that the dim lighting didn't touch. They swell onto him, like a black tide, and envelope all of him, even his scream. 

I can’t believe I’m being sent on a fucking errand. I’m barely sober enough to hand over my keys to Rook. The King says he needs something, though I’m not real sure on the specifics. I kind of think this is just payback for drinking his liquor. Though that wouldn’t explain why he has Rook babysitting. Maybe he made a pass at her and she didn't reciprocate- so he's punishing her, too. 

But we've got his precious keys, and we're opening up one of the few brick and mortar magic supply shops in the city. I've never heard of the reagent he requested, though he swore up and down it was Maori, and that if I asked Bishop about it he'd have an ED curse put on my junk again.

When we get there, I pull the Judge out from under the driver's side seat while she's still sitting there. “Pardon my reach,” I say, though I'm hammered enough my attempt to balance against her leg only means I end up grabbing the dashboard and smacking my chin against the steering wheel.

“My God, what is that?” she asks at the sight of my piece, and I grin.

“My gun?” I bounce it in my hand. “I like the heft of it. Because it reminds me of my penis.”

“What are you compensating for?”

“How completely fucking awesome I am.”

“One of these days I’m really going to have to teach you the meaning of the word compensate.”

“So long as you do it with your mouth.”

“I think I may need to resort to flash cards.” It seems like there ought to be one more good innuendo in there, something to do with flashing, but my brain’s a little blood deprived at the moment, so you’ll have to forgive me about letting that one drop.

The keys do their thing, get us into the shop. It's run by a sweet little old lady, who doesn't even use magic. Her husband did, but he passed away, and she kept the store. Every couple of weeks she has a security mage come in and check the antitheft spells, but really it's nothing even a guy of my intellect couldn't get around with ten minutes prep.

But the keys make that moot, disable any security spells whatsoever. I hear glass break at the rear of the store. And I run, because I been a Pawn long enough that I run towards danger like a fucking moron.

And I recognize the asshole even in the dark shop. “Find a light,” I tell Rook, before training the Judge on him. It's times like these I wish I had a laser on my gun, so the fuckwit would know how dead to rights I have him. But I cock back the hammer, just to give him an inkling. “You know what the Judge'll do to a person at this distance- or at least, you've seen what it'll do to a bag of meat.”

He snorts, angry, but agreeing. To a hunter, that's all a vamp is- bag of meat, that has to be killed, to keep it from killing somebody else. The lights come on. Mikey's got a crossbow trained on me. It'd be a Mexican stand-off if it weren't so fucking gay.

“Crossbow? Best case scenario is you hit one of the pair of us. Meanwhile, the Judge all but separates your legs from your torso, and all of your organs do a Wile E. Coyote out of the hole.”

I feel something twisting around in my jacket pocket, and before I wonder if he's somehow magicked a scorpion into my coat I reach in and pull it out. Once I have it out of my coat I realize what it is even before I open up my hand to get a good look at it.

I smile. “You know, I never wondered to myself before. But the dirt, see, it could have been from the vamp- that’s true. But once we caught him, I didn’t even think to check. But I been wondering all the same, if maybe, maybe it came from somebody else who was there. Somebody like, say, you.” I drop the dirtsack out of my palm, but keep hold of the string its on. It spins around on the thread, but after it spins past him, it snaps back. I move it to the left, and then the right, and it follows him.

“Your dirt’s happy to see you, Mikey, and so am I.”

“I thought that was your gun” he says.

“Maybe we’re both happy to see you.”

“And it’s Michaelangelo.”

“So you were named after a Ninja Turtle?” Rook asks.

“I was named for the archangel, Michael.”

“So not the giant stone dong-toucher, either?”

That’s when the vamp comes through the back door. I’m not surprised, exactly, but I don’t welcome him, either. “The vamp I didn’t get a name of, on account of I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my dick in his mouth. I’ve just been calling him Sound of My Dick for short- though the fact that it always reminds me of the Sound of Music always makes me feel a little fruity.”

“So another man’s mouth on your dick, totally straight, but a little bit of Julie Andrews and your masculinity melts”

“In his mouth. But it’s not gay at gunpoint.”

“I don’t know if I should hope you’re joking, or worry that that’s the kind of thing you’d joke about.” 

We’re dead if we try to take them together. We need to split up. “Hey fangnuts, I’m going to torture you again before I murder you. Only this time I’m going to go in the back door, by which I mean I’m going to drill a hole in the back of your skull and put my dick in it. I hear it’s like being stabbed in the childhood, and cum in the brain is guaranteed to make you seize up like the neighborhood spastic- like God himself donkey punched you.”

I fire the judge high, smashing the rear windows the rest of the way out. Then I run, shoving Rook down and away. I tell myself Mikey’s an upstanding Christian man- less likely to bite on the first date. Of course, I would have pegged him as less likely to partner with a murderous cabal of fuckpigs- sometimes religion and politics makes for strange bedfellas.
 
I get out to the truck. Thankfully she gave me back my keys, so I start it up. The vamp's almost crazy enough to rush me in the Jeep, since the top's all cloth, but I gun the engine, and I think he realizes I'd run him over in a heartbeat, then empty the Judge into his head.  Wouldn't kill him, but I'd be fucked by a black clown if they'd get him scraped up off the pavement before sunrise.

He runs to their car, an impala, and follows. I gun it hard, and I know the way, which lets me open things up a little. But I can tell from the headlights in my rear view I'm gaining seconds, not minutes.

I run up the stairs to my apartment, each step the wood and my muscles complain about my damn diet. I bolt the door but that's probably time wasted, because even a solid door with a bolt ain't slowing him down. And there's none of that polite 'can I come in' bullshit, either. 

I make it to my bedroom, to a stash of reagents and ready-made spells, and grab a hand full. I get ten seconds to prepare before he shatters his way through my door.

I give him the other five barrels of the Judge, but I'm shaking, and they all go wide enough that he keeps moving- even if he picks up a couple of ounces of shot along the way.

But I expected that. I had another spell that would be better for the occasion, but I didn't grab it in the moment I had to, so I'm stuck with setting the bastard on fire. I know even before I do that it's a bad move; fire won't stop a vamp, not right away, and in the interrim what you're left with is a vamp that's on fucking fire.

I cast it, and the smoke detector goes off. He screams, but it only makes him come at me faster. I try to ready a good Norse poison when he grabs me by the neck and twists. But he isn't trying to snap it. He's going for a drink. He's going to have his way with me, first. Fucking sicko.

He takes a couple of gulps before he lets me drop. I cover the hole immediately with my hand, because I know if I don't I'm another second from passing the fuck out.

He throws himself onto my bed, and rolls himself up in sheets until the fire's out. Then he rises up, still wrapped in sheets I jerk off in regularly, for some reason convinced that just because he's smoking a little he looks cool.

And then he drops to his knees, wheezing. One of the things I got out of the stash was a bandage; mostly it ain't magic, though it'll help the hole in my neck heal faster. By the time I finish that and roll up my sleeve he sounds like he's drowning. I show him the fresh puncture wound in my arm.

“I don't do drugs- least, nothing I have to shoot. That thirty second head start I had in here, you didn't wonder what I used it for? I shot up a syringe full of liquid garlic. LD-50 on it's something crazy, but you vamps have a reaction just like ODing rats.”

“That explains the burning- and there'll be ulceration to go along with that. But I bet you’re also noticing you’re having trouble breathing; that’s acute pulmonary adema- your lungs are filling with fluid. With a normal human, that'd definitely be something to worry about. With a vamp? I don't know.” I disappear into my kitchen. “But Knight's been trying to get me to play things safer,” I emerge with a butcher knife, and I stab it in each lung.

He falls to the ground, gasping, but able to breath- just barely. But just as he's about to look up at me with puppy dog eyes, I bend his head fore ward and slice deep enough into the back of his neck to get his spinal cord. 

He's still conscious, after that, but he's got no control of his body. But I cocoon him in duct tape, then toss him in the Jeep, and we drive out to Warrior Rock Light, the automated lighthouse on Sauvie’s Island.

By that point he's crying and trying to whimper. In his head, he's probably telling his sob story about how his puppy stubbed his toe when he was a kid and that justifies him being a murdering prick. Or maybe the pain's just getting to him.

By the time I get him inside the lighthouse, his spine's healed up enough that he can talk again. “You don't have to hurt me. I'll leave.” 

“You've got it wrong,” I tell him. “Last time I wanted something out of you. This time, I just want you to die.”

“It's a lighthouse, so you've got sun exposure most of the time. But the kind of glass they have helps diffuse sunlight, so it won't kill you immediately. Last guy took at least nine days; I say at least, because after that I got bored of camping out here and went home. Came back a couple weeks later to be sure he’d gone to dust, so I can’t say with certainty how long you’ve got. Days are shorter, this time of year, so I'd say you've got more than nine days, but less than a couple of weeks. Bishop'd know to the millisecond; course, she'd probably murder me for being so cruel. Course, you did kill a friend of ours, so maybe she'd make this one exception.” I lean in close. “You really did pick the wrong guy to try to murder.”

I drop the sample off at Bishop's lab. But she's distracted. “The King wandered off.” She tells me. “He wanted me to give you a message, for you to meet him at the Centre.”

“The Centre? The building we fought our way out of earlier this evening?”

“Maybe there's another Centre we don't know about? Like how Batman kept multiple smaller batcaves hidden around the city, in the event that his main cave was compromised.”

“Yeah. Maybe. He take anyone with him?”

“No. In fact, he made me stay here, for when you got back with the semen sample.”

“And me, too, “Harry walks in with a bucket of KFC and a small chicken leg in his hand. “Despite the fact that I have virtually no expertise in this kind of tracking spell, and would be far more useful as an attack dog or sleeping under a bridge. At least he bought me chicken first,” he finishes, before tearing a hunk of flesh off the leg.

“Pawn and Rook?”

“He sent them on an errand. It was weird,” Bishop says. “I've never seen him so distant. It scared me, but... he wouldn't listen to reason. No matter what I said, whether it was begging him to just wait for you, or trying to convince him not to go to the Centre alone. It all had a very Obi Wan on the Death Star vibe to it.”

“Hopefully he's just melancholic about the loss of his precious Rhemberg. But I want you to get the tracking spell started.”

“So you harvested the semen, did you?”

“I got a little help from Vergara.”

“That only makes it grosser.” She takes the phial from me. “We're set up in the other room- the one I can hose down. Because I'm pretty sure when I open this thing up it's going to reek. And I'd prefer for my lab not to reek of week old corpse spooge.”

“I'll wait out here,” I tell her, “ because I don't want that smell trapped in my noise. Or hair. Or coat. Or really anywhere. Not if I have to go to the Centre from here instead of straight into a shower and change of clothes.”

“You coming?” she asks Harry.

“All the things he said about smell, only in my chicken; also, I’m pretty sure week old corpse spooge will even have an airborne taste, and I don’t want that in my chicken, either.”

“Okay, but don’t eat it all. I’m going to need something to get this smell/taste the hell out of me, too.” She takes a small paper mask and puts it over her mouth and nose, knowing full well it isn’t going to be good enough, and takes the sample into the smaller room.

She isn't gone two minutes before smoke pours out of the room. I can hear shouting, and the frantic casting of several spells. But she cast a safety protocol over the door, so whatever was happening couldn’t spread to the rest of her lab. “Suggestions?” I ask Harry.

“I could try and make the door explosively angry- which would be easier if it were wood and had a death to be upset about.”

“And might just kill her and both of us.”

“Well, we should decide quick, or it’s academic, anyway.”

Then the door opens, and Bishop is standing there, a little blackened, but otherwise okay. “What the hell happened?” I ask.   

“He booby-trapped his spunk,” Bishop says.

“How do you booby-trap semen?”

“With a very specific diet. Have you ever heard that diet can affect the, um, taste of semen?”

“Heard about it? Knight’s one of the premier cum-tasting researchers on the continent.” Harry slaps me on the back for emphasis.

“Well, it does. Changes in diet can have small impacts in the specific chemical makeup of semen. Apparently the necromancer was regulating his diet in such a way that his semen, when mixed with the usual locater spell, started a fire. A not so small, not so easy to extinguish fire.”

We hear a “mrrrow,” and Harry’s cat, caked in soot, scampers out from behind Bishop.

“He singed my cat. I didn't like this ass before. But now he's singed my cat. Just some of her fur, but still. She's flighty enough without being set lightly on fire.”

“So does that put us back at square one?”

“I'm not sure,” Bishop says. “It's not an exact science, using diet to mix a kimia inside your own body. So the spell was weaker than it should have been. It's possible I can counteract it. At the very least, I'd like to give it a try.”

“And how long's this try going to take?”

“Long enough for you to see what the King needs at the Centre.”

“Well that's shitty,” I say. “But wait. Where’s Queen?”

“He’s,” Bishop looks around, and realizes for the first time he’s missing. 

“Maybe he went with King?” Harry offers.

“He was here when King left.”

“After, then,” he adds.

His phone doesn’t ring through- it goes straight to voice mail. “I’ll keep an eye out.” I say. But then the smell of week old roasted semen hits my lungs, and I’m happy to have the excuse to leave.

The last thing I hear as I close the door is, “Gah, it got in my chicken!”

I can't tell if it's instinct or paranoia, but I don't want to be going to the Centre. Baldur quit his offensive, and I trust him at his word that he's going to stay out of things- because he values his own skin more than about anything else, including his crazy racist religion. But there's still something about going back to the Centre that puts me ill at ease.

I get a call, from a number I don't recognize. I pick it up, anyway. “Knight?” It's Devi, frightened, but hopeful.

“Yeah.”

She sighs, full of relief. “I was worried I wouldn't get to you in time.” There’s a long pause, and I look at my phone to be sure I haven’t gotten disconnected. “Don't go.”

“Go where?”

“Wherever you're going right now. Stop. Turn around, and go someplace else. Anywhere else. Come here, even.”

“Why? What happens where I'm going?”

“I don't know. I've been trying to figure that out since I started this divination for you. What I didn't tell you- there's a hole in your future. I can't see anything there. And it's not a matter of energy- I've expended more than I ever have and it's not a barrier that you can break through. There's literally nothing there. And you're rushing right to it.”

“And what's that mean?”

“I don't know. But I've been doing this for a while, now, and I've never seen it before.”

“And what if that hole is there because somebody is trying to prevent me from where I'm supposed to be.”

She's quiet a moment, long enough for me to think I've made a good point. “You of all people ought to know that nothing of the future is written.”

“Me of all people?”

“How many times have you come to me, or to Queen, trying to prevent something from happening?”

“A few.”

“Seven, for me. Four or five, with the Queen, depending on how you count interpersonal conflicts.”

“And if I do take you up on your request for my company, what then? Do things become easier? Do we swerve around the pothole?”

“It's a break. I can't see anything past it. No matter what you do.”

“So this is all general anxiety. Then? Not actually soothesaying- and the opposite of soothing, for that matter. You're just... scared.”

“Not just”

“I'm not discounting your feelings; I'm only saying that this isn't based on anything concrete. And for all we know, the break is being caused by this conversation we're having, that things are such a complete coin toss that how things shake out after this moment is impossible to divine.  I can handle this, okay? I appreciate your concern- really, I do. But this should be the least dangerous thing I do today. Seriously, it's been a pretty dangerous day, but this- should be a cake walk.

“Just... be careful.”

“I will. You want me to call you when I'm done? To help put your overactive imagination at ease?”

“Sure.”

“All right. This number?”

“Yeah, that's my cell.”

“All right. I'll talk to you then.”

The Centre's dark when I arrive. If it weren't for the fact that I confirmed it with Bishop three times that the King wanted to meet me here, I would think the place was deserted.

There aren't any lights on, save for a desk lamp, in the King's office.

“I’ve got Rook and Pawn running something down for me.”

“Bishop said you wanted her and Harry to do the tracking spell at her lab. And that you wanted to see me.”

“Our facilities here are serviceable, but inadequate by comparison.”

“Well? Out with it; because if you’re just feeling vulnerable again, either sit on it, or talk on the way. Because as soon as they get something to move on, I want to be there.”

“Sit. Stay a while.” I hear a familiar clack, a hammer pulling back.

“Is that a gun?” I ask, turning to face him; if it is, he’s holding it under his desk. And there’s nothing to read in his face. “Exactly what the fuck is going on here?” 

“The endgame.”

The second voice is new, but familiar. And I realize it only seems that way, because it reminds me of that dream about the necromancer. I reach for my gun, not particularly caring if it gets me shot.

But I'm not so lucky. The necromancer hits me with a spell I think I recognize- not that that does me any good, because before I even have a chance to think about what that spell means my brain is on fire.

Not literally, of course, but in pain. It takes everything I have just not to fall flat on my face- and I still fall, I just manage to force out a knee to break the fall down into two steps. I can’t move, from my place on the floor, I’m stuck just staring as my muscles twitch.

“You’re bleeding into your brain. It’s an aneurism. Not a serious one, yet, so long as we get you some medical attention. But I wanted to make sure you were pliable, like Castle was, when I do my song and dance.”  

“I admit, you've run me a merry chase. I never anticipated the gambit showing me half the resolve you have. If I'd suspected that, I'd have gone to Seattle, or Boise or some other city in the general vicinity.”

“Of course, you had help, didn't you?” He turns his attention to the King. “I'm sure you've got questions. And that's why I arranged this little sit-down. To talk. I recruited the King first. If you're going to try a takeover, why go through the extra hassle of it being hostile? I mean, it was always going to be a little hostile, because it's a takeover, which is an essentially aggressive act.”

“And he joined you?” I spit the words out between jerks of my body, equal parts angry and unbelieving.

“That is loyalty; even in the face of him calling you here, even with him pulling a gun on you, you're still unwilling to swallow it. That's pretty, in its way. But you remember his heart attack?'

I stare at the necromancer. “No...”

“Just a little something I picked up in Ghana. Strangely, it's actually not that difficult to give a man a heart attack; but it's a real bear trying to give him one he can survive. Having made my presence known, I approached your king, and told him what I'd done. Then I told him I could the same, any time I wanted, to you, your bishop, queen, pawn and castle. Except for the rest of you, since you'd be abject lessons, the attacks would be fatal.”

“He was pliant at that point- though not a complete idiot. He negotiated for your safety. Requested very specifically that we avoid casualties, at all costs. I asked if he thought there was any chance you'd all go for some kind of a merger, to which he said some fairly unrepeatable things. And having seen you all in action, now, I'd tend to agree with his assessment. After all, you wouldn't get into power in the first place if you didn't want to exercise it.”

“Now I'll spare you the details of my forty point plan, but we were all set to nudge you out of office quietly, when Castle got wind of what we were doing. I still don't know how that went down, exactly; I'd been awfully careful not to let him notice that we were in the process of infiltrating his mind. But we had this same conversation with him, the one replete with threatening language and the aura of menace. And despite being nearly paralyzed, he lashed out. Broke the vampire's arm in four places. Had he not been so ridiculously outnumbered he might have killed one or several of us. But he went down.”

“And that could have been the end of it. His death did put us on a far more adversarial trajectory, I'll admit, but really, had it not been for your King playing both sides, we still would have had you wrapped up at least a week ago.”

He turned his attention to the King. “Now, I played it through in my head, and we could have a traditional wizard duel, you know, probing the limits of one another’s defenses, you summon a dragon, I give your dragon ebola and make it shit itself to death. But this is more succinct,” he stabs the King in the back with a knife I never saw, “and besides, more poetic, stabbing you in the back as you tried to do to me.”

The King fights, tries to raise that pistol from underneath his desk. The necromancer garbs hold of his wrist, and the King barely gets it high enough that I can see it. The knife has already stolen so much of his strength that he can't aim it at the necromancer, who manages to twist the gun away from him. The King collapses back into his seat.
 
“For what it’s worth, Erik, I had no intention of murdering you. Or your Castle. But he was too clever; when he found us out, there was no other way to handle things. And I knew it from your face that night, seeing one of your people die, eventually you would turn on us. I never guaranteed Baldur your seat- but I did inform him he was your second if you just didn’t work out. And I feel badly for having lied to you. Your heart attack- that wasn’t me. Just bad genes. And opportunism.”

“I’m going to let you bleed out. It’s a great waste of talent, and it saddens me, but you chose the wrong side, so now I can’t trust you. And trust, well, it’s everything.” He grabs the knife still sticking out the King's back and twists, and the King- Erik- his body tenses one last time before he falls onto his desk. 

But the bouncer did. He heard the difference, and when he pulled the curtain back he saw the difference, too. He threw Dylan against the far wall, and shoved Ryan to the floor, where he stomped on his chest. Before either Morgan could even ask a question as to what had happened, he was on the phone with the police.      

“You don't understand,” Dylan said as he was being led away in cuffs. “She begged us for it, she was practically demanding it. Tell them.” He looked at me, himself begging.  

“She wanted it? That’s your excuse? Kids these days. Christ,” I said, and shook my head.

“Sir?” the policeman asked me. I was disappointed it wasn't the pretty homicide detective, but of course nobody had died, so there was no reason it would have been her.

“At first, everybody was having a good time, but you know these trust fund kids, they took it too far, you know? And when I tried to stop them,” I pointed to my swollen jaw, “they hit me, put me out cold. But how is she?” I nodded in the direction of the coat she left behind when the paramedics took her away.

“Hurt, but most of the damage is superficial. And psychological.”

“It's just... you go most of your life, feeling like humans are better than their instincts, that we're civilized and we've risen above all of that. But under it all, we're animals. Ready to do terrible things to other people to get what we want.”

“Yeah.” It was in his eyes. He'd seen that world I was alluding to. He worked in it. Breathed it in. He had a ring on his finger, and every time he thought about Grey, he touched it. She either brought out his protective instincts, or reminded him he needed to beat his wife some more.  

When I was done with the police, went back to the office. I still smelled of sweat and sex, and I knew I should probably shower. But I'd spent so long working, fighting, for this moment. I didn't take the elevator. There was a single glass stairwell on the south side of the building, with a view of the harbor. I wanted to savor every moment of my ascension.

When I got to the executive floor, I wheeled Richard's chair by the window. I checked them all, to make sure they were locked, because I was wary of becoming some kind of Icarus cliché. And I sat, for hours, looking down at the city from my new perch.

When she was released from the hospital Grey came looking for me. The fact that she found me without having to call, or even question, made me feel warm inside. Julee understood me, like an entomologist understands a beetle, on account of having some similarities. But Grey got me, without trying, without needing to.

She sidled up to my chair and straddled me. Even in the limited light coming off my desk lamp, I could tell her face was misshapen, swollen and bruised around her lips, her right eye, and cheek, with several smell cuts to punctuate it. “I don't know if it's a turn on right now, but the police confiscated my panties. Under normal circumstances, sure- but the Morgans did not pull their punches.”

She felt self-conscious, beat up like she was. “You were wonderful,” I told her. “More than transcending your physical beauty. If I weren't tired from taking the stairs up here, I'd have you over the desk right now.”   

“You're full of crap. But it's nice of you to say,” she said, resting her head against mine. “What's next?” she asked, and I was certain she meant more than our Morganciding scheme.

“There's almost literally no one left. The board was going to name me CEO a few days ago, had it not been for George- who at the time they could have potentially sought out, but didn't. And now, after Hookergate, they'll find a way to strip him of his vote.”

She got up off my lap, and walked to Richard's liquor cabinet, and got us each a glass of his best brandy. “And the Morgan twins,” I continued, “thanks to an inspired evening, are going to lose their vote, as well. The board will probably beg me to take the post, now.” She handed me on of the glasses, and clinked with me as she sat side-saddle on me lap.

“You've got the power, the booze, the girl, what do you want now?”

“A trip to Disneyland?” I asked, not quite sure what she was getting at.

“I was worried you'd never stop looking, for more.” It was the same self-consciousness from a moment before, and again directed at herself.

“I think you misunderstand me. Most of my relationships have been means to an end- which I'm sure you can sympathize with- and I mean that both professional and personally. But more? From here, I can't imagine what more there could be.”

“You'd better mean that,” she said, and kissed me very softly on the neck, “because you're not the only one who knows how to push people out windows.” She hopped off my lap, and jogged on over to Richard's flat screen TV. It was the evening news. At first, it was just the wrap up of a segment on pet hats being sold to benefit a local charity, but then they broke away for continuing coverage of a developing story.

I recognized the picture immediately, but it took me a moment to hear the words the reporter was saying. Sam Warwick was shot in a break-in at his home. He was dead. “What did you do?” I asked her.

“Consider it a wedding present.” She kissed me. Well, she kissed me and put her hand down the front of my pants. But that seemed like a slightly less romantic note to end on.

The office was feeling decimated. Julee cleaned out her desk on her way out earlier- she wasn't coming back. George didn’t show up, despite reclaiming his old office the day before, though I’d heard him on the radio this morning categorically denying his relationship with a hooker. Which was stupid, on its face. He’d been seeing Caprica for weeks, taking her out in public, to events. It wasn’t even a lie he could hope to hide behind.

But it also made things easier on me. I’d scheduled a meeting with George and Richard’s twins, to see if we couldn’t, with cooler heads, come to some sort of an agreement. It wasn’t until the end of the day, really, after the end of the day, starting at 6 pm.

George didn’t show, but by then I expected that. And if I knew Caprica, she already had most of her memoirs written out, and would have them out on Kindle before morning.

But I wondered if the twins wouldn’t make it, either. They turned up ten minutes late, though whether that was from a lack of paternal upbringing or from a newfound sense of entitlement I couldn’t really say. Not that I’d ever worried.  

For the first time I get a real good look at the twins. Blonde-haired, I presume like their mother, since they didn’t get it from the Morgan side. Young, late teens, maybe early twenties. Their uncle had dragged them into this to back his play, but they were only just acclimating to their $1000 dollar suits and $500 dollar haircuts. They weren’t prepared for the world he’d abandoned them in to tend to his own burning homestead.

“I’m not sure we should even be here,” Dylan said. I only knew that because Dylan was the assertive one. Ryan hardly ever spoke at all, to anyone, except his brother.

“I know what you think. What your uncle said. About me. And I assume about your father. And, look, boys, I know he's your uncle, but he's made some bad decisions in his life. Your father, what they're saying about him in the papers, it isn't true. All he was trying to do was build a company, to support his family and the people he cared about.”

“But George was always a jealous kind of man. He wanted what your brother had, to the point of nearly destroying the company. And when he couldn't have it, he went about destroying other aspects of his life. It’s sad, really, how much of his life he dedicated to ruining other people, but I think his recent behavior, and the fact that he’s finally getting called out on it, means he’s not going to be in a position to hurt anyone anymore.”  

“But what I'm saying, here, is you boys are going to be fixtures at this company. And your family has two legacies: one of personal sacrifice and loyalty, and one of greed and wanton destructiveness. And I hope you two choose your legacy carefully. I know what George brought you here to do, but I also know what your father would have wanted for you.”

“What do you know about our father?” Ryan asks. He’s got tears in his eyes. It’s hard to know, from the research, exactly how much Richard knew about them. He was certainly paying their mother to keep something hushed up. But that didn’t tell much of a story.

“I worked with him, albeit briefly. And I respected him, for who he was at work. It’s kind of hard to square that person I knew with someone who wouldn’t even know his kids. But I guess the best answer to that is that we’re all of us complicated creatures. Any time you think you’ve pegged people simply, you’re wrong; he had reasons that made sense to him, is about all I can suppose. But in the time I’ve worked for this company, I’ve never seen him want anything but for those around him to succeed.”

“But I didn’t want to meet you here to ask you to turn against your family. Family’s important. I just wanted to spend some time with you boys, talk about the business, and where you see it going now that a new generation of Morgans are taking an active role in the company. But I suppose, then, the operative question becomes: you boys old enough to drink?”

They were, if only just. I took them to a club I knew, one with a healthy supply of young women that didn't water down the drinks too much. The twins were young, inexperienced, possibly virgins, even, so they followed my lead. I got us seats a little back from the stage.

Grey met us there, dressed less provocatively than the strippers, but more than the girls taking drink orders. The way she worked the twins they probably assumed she worked there. She bought each of them a lap dance and she was in, and we moved things into the VIP room.

She spent the first girl's set on Dylan's lap, with her hand in one of his pants pockets. She spent the second girl's set on Ryan's lap, and I'm not entirely sure he didn't blow in his pants. By the third girl our drinks were almost dry. “I'll get the next round,” she said, standing up as the third girl left. The twins asked for mudslides. I told her to surprise me.

And the moment she was through the curtains that separated the lounge I told him, “I know the girl. She likes it rough.”

“Hairpulling and shit?”

“I don’t think you understand. She likes to be choked. Smacked around. If she’s not bleeding, she’s not wet.”

“I can’t hit a woman,” Ryan said.

“That’s awfully sexist. Would you hit me?” I set down my drink on the table and started to undo my tie. “I want you to hit me.”

“What, so this is Fight Club all of a sudden?”

“Hit me. Come on. Your uncle thinks I killed your father, and whatever rage you may have felt for the man, at a minimum, if George were right, I robbed you of being able to confront him. You've been living with that idea for at least a few days; I’m sure a couple of rounds and a couple of lap dances don’t erase all of that suspicion, so I’m sure there’s some part of you who’d like to take a swing at me. Go on. Free shot.”

“Truth be told, I been wanting to hit that fucking chin since we first walked into that board room.”

“Here’s your shot.” He did. And it wasn’t a bad punch.

“Fuck. Fucking chin’s harder than it looks,” he said, shaking his hand. He helped pick me up off the floor. I used my drink to ice my face. Ryan picked up his, now just ice, and put it on his hand.

“Not so bad, right? And kind of exciting.”

“Whoa, now, we’re not part of some boy fetish you have, are we?”

“What? No. I’m saying hitting somebody, the force, the feeling of putting that much power into dominating another human being. It gets the blood pumping, doesn’t it?”

“Little, maybe.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I’m with you, really. I can understand the appeal, but it’s also not really my cup of tea. But for her-” I gestured towards curtains, draping suggestively like a female genitalia, “she comes like a fucking banshee if you smack her around a little. And trust me, when someone’s that turned on, there’s no fucking comparison.” I reached into my coat pocket. “But I’m not asking you to go in their without a little extra courage.”

“I thought she was getting our courage.”

“Hard liquor? What are you, field hands? You’re Morgans, now, kings of business. And these are your spoils.” I tapped a little cocaine out onto the table, avoiding the moist rings from our glasses. Then I spread the pile out into three lines, and rolled up a hundred dollar bill and did mine. Then I passed the bill to Ryan.  

He looked up to his brother, then snorted his line. Dylan didn't hesitate, but by then the peer pressure was awfully thick.

The bouncer poked his in. “You gentlemen ready for the next girl?” he asked.

I handed him a benjamin. “Think we'll take a fifteen.”

“S'cool, so long as no one else wants the room,” he said.

Grey came back a minute later; she must have waited tables, at some point, since she carried our four drinks with ease. I took my drink over into the corner, and pretended to pass out.

Grey went to work. I kept my eyes shut- to avoid being noticed, I told myself, not because I was jealous. I heard her unzip their pants, then the rustle of clothes, the friction of flesh. Then there were little masculine gasps and moans.  

From the way Grey gave direction, it sounded like Dylan had taken to rough sex easily. “Choke me harder,” was about the extent of her criticism.

I wondered if maybe I'd given him too much courage when he told her, “I want your ass.”

“Slow down, tiger,” she said. “Give little brother a turn.”

Ryan required more... specific instruction. “If you want inside me you'd better show me you're enough of a man.” I could hear Ryan swallow from across the room. “Hit me, you bitch, or I'm going to tear your fucking balls off.”

There was the sound of fist on flesh, then sound of flesh against flesh as he entered her, and Grey came immediately and loudly, and from experience, I'd say it wasn't all just for show.

There was more, after that. But that was the tipping point, when the sounds of pleasure started to be eclipsed by an undertone of pain, woven in so delicately, and so expertly, that if you weren't listening objectively, you would never notice the change. By the end, she was practically pleading with them to stop, but they were in so deep they couldn't see it for what it was.

I called Julee into my office.

“Erection?” she asked.

“Yep. Even if you’re doing a racist Chinese impersonation, you’re still right- though it’s just in poor taste. But how'd you know?”

“I have a sixth sense about these things. Plus, anymore, when you call me in here, there's an erection involved.”

“I thought you liked to stay informed.”

“Oh, I do... but some of the naughtiness is gone, now that Princess Whitebread isn't one cheap corporate wall away from 'Oh, God, yes, give it to me right there, un, un, un!'”

“I'll have what she's having.”

She sat down in my lap like I was Santa Clause. “And right now I'm more curious about why you have a beautiful erection, than what we might do about it.”

“George is challenging me for control of the company. Which could be difficult, and awkward. Except he's been embezzling from the company, to prop up his flagging campaign. And he's been embezzling from his campaign to keep a hooker on retainer; she actually lives with him.”

“Okay, now I'm wet, too. But this information's reliable?”

“I just finished tracing the money myself this morning, right before my meeting with the board. And the hooker... her I recognized. Some clients, especially German ones, like to celebrate the conclusion of a multimillion dollar deal by screwing an eighteen year old stranger.”

“You don't have to lie for me” she leaned in close and kissed my neck. “You got a little harder when you mentioned her.”

“Professional courtesy; you ought to know the, ahem, merchandise, is good before handing it out as a party favor.”

“You not having to lie about it isn't synonymous with me wanting you to drone on about the time you banged a hooker. My girly boner's starting to go soft.”

“Stand up, then.”

“Ooh, I like it when you get bossy.”

“Well I am your boss,” I said, standing behind her with my hips pressed against her.

“And that makes it even naughtier,” she said, sliding her panties out from under her skirt.

“Now bend over the keyboard with your fingers clawed outwards.” She did. “Now type.”

I unzipped my pants and lifted up her skirt. “The 'paper' trail is all open on my desktop, for you to peruse.”

She took hold of the mouse. “My God. It's not even well done frau-od, that's good. Of course, looking at where these came from, if Richard hadn't been deposed, we probably never would have had access to this information. He was just... cocky.”

“Was that a sex pun?”

“Not an intentional one.”

“Good. But I don't hear the clicky clack of little fingers on littler keys.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to type with you thrusting behind me?

“Now that one had to be a sex pun.”

“Maybe a little- and that one definitely was.”

“You are cruel.”

“Good. And you need a little cruelty in your life.”

“Maybe I do at that.”

She finished most of the report fifteen minutes before we finished each other. But she still had to call Caprica, and give George's campaign a chance to respond, before she sent it in to her editor. “I’ll wait to do that part until I’ve caught my breath.”

She emailed the reporting to herself, so she could finish it in her office, then left. That was George taken care of, or at least taken down enough of a peg to ensure that he wasn’t going to have the clout. But I knew the twins were going to require a little more finesse.

Of course, after their Uncle’s public shaming, they were going to want less to do with him. And that would make everything easier.

It’d been a busy day. I’d taken over Richard’s secretary, which was a little odd. I think he’d been screwing her, once upon a time, and for whatever reason she seemed to believe I would take up with her now, silvering hair and added weight and all. It was a toss-up, I’d say, between M & K- but only because she looked like a woman who could bake a good cookie, and I do love chocolate chip cookies.  

When I got home, my apartment felt emptier than usual. And for some reason, my mind drifted to the last time Petra had been in my apartment. I felt bad. Perhaps I even missed her a little. But this was no life for her. Even if she could have overlooked what I was, ignored the fact that we were fundamentally different animals, she wouldn’t have been happy. And now, hoping she hadn’t completely fucked up her career, she’d have that chance.

But I didn’t get to wallow long. I heard Julee’s key in my front door. She was wearing that trench coat again, but I could tell from the awkward way she moved, and the way she tried not to show that she was shivering, that was wearing very little underneath it. Something frilly, I suspected.

But the look on her face wasn’t at all sexual. “Being with you, it’s impossible not to become paranoid. You use people, like moist towelettes, then discard them. It’s something I admire about you. But it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that I’m outliving my utility. And I’m sure by now you’ve read my book.”

“You don’t even bother locking down your computer when I’m there. It was almost insulting. Not as insulting as the way you portrayed me in the book- if I were a more melodramatic person I’d have styled it ‘betrayed.’ But I’m assuming you’ve brought one honker of a boot you’re planning to let fall out of that trench coat.”

“Well,” she said, and reached into her purse. She placed a small white vial on the edge of the table in my breakfast nook. “After everything with Alice, I thought, maybe you’ve made inappropriate advances on me. And maybe I felt pressured into a sexual relationship with the new CEO. That vial is physical evidence. I figured worst case scenario I get one of those golden parachutes. But best case, I lock in our arrangement without having to worry about backstabbing red-headed usurpers.”

“You really are like Woodward and Bernstein- only with much nicer breasts.” It was just a small amount of semen, in the vial- but I saw it for what it was: a bluff, and a weak one at that. “And that’s an interesting rub. But I think you’re done with this relationship. You wanted me to want you- though I think the next line in the song is closer to the truth: you needed me to need you. Yet, you’re the one trying to blackmail me. You realize the truth, here: you need me, and sorry to say, but I don’t think your ego can handle that. You won’t be able to work with me anymore, because seeing me, even if it’s only fleeting, will be a reminder of what you’ve always feared: dependence.”

“I’ll be sad to see you go; I had that wanting part down, even if I’m not sure if I have it in me to need. But you’re a beautiful apex predator, and you’re going to do fine out there in the wild.”

“One last screw?” she asked, opening up the trench coat. Frilly, stockings, a garter belt, a corset that did very nice things to her curves, all in a very deep red.

“I wouldn’t ask you to go cold turkey; I’m not inhuman.”

She screwed my brains out. No holding back, this time- because there was no longer any point in keeping anything in reserve. I was bleeding more than a little, from the biting and her fingernails. It was intense enough that I passed out straight away when we finished.

She snuck out after that. I went to the office, since I knew that was where she'd be. She was going through my computer- not that there was much of anything left on it, except a lot of misdirection. “I never really expected you to go so quietly into that good night; I wouldn’t,” I told her. “You and I, we’re both creatures of premeditation.”

“You spent more than a year just getting yourself into a position to gather the information you needed to write your book. But I found myself wondering: what would you need for that kind of espionage? And also, because our legal department isn’t retarded, what would they have done to prevent you from having what you need?” I snapped my fingers. “Your nondisclosure agreement.”

She couldn’t help herself:  she smiled. “Which went missing.  Except for the copy in my desk.” She opened the top drawer, and stared down at it. And she reached for it, wondering if she could simply tear it up to free herself. “And the dozens of copies I’ve made of it since.” Her hand relaxed, and she pulled it back.

“But what was more interesting, was this.” I walked behind the desk and loomed over her, took my mouse out of her hand, and pulled up a video file on the desktop. “Security footage of you rifling through personnel records-”

“I was looking for Alice’s home address,” she protested.

“A relatively small transgression, but also in that same area, we keep hard-copies of interdepartmental memos, some of which contain classified client secrets- which again, on their own, are not terribly important or damning. But in combination with what’s in that side drawer,” she opened it up, “receipt for the purchase of $10,000 worth of stock from a pharmaceutical company a day after we found out that the FDA had approved their leukemia drug, in your name- but a couple of days before that news went public. These are all your copies, for your records.”

“And I’ll admit, insider trading is petty; we Elliot Spitzered George, and I honestly wish, now that I’ve gotten a chance to know and screw you, that I’d planned out more than a Martha Stewarting for you, because you really do deserve better. The NDA guarantees no one will ever publish your book, but if you’re thinking of going rogue, putting it on the internet or turning it into an ebook, the insider trading should keep you at bay.”

“But I hate to see hard work wasted, and I’ll admit Im narcissistic enough that I think I’d enjoy seeing my story in hardback. So go ahead, publish it under a man’s name, and label it fiction, and I bet it’ll sell like gangbusters. But if you try to pass it as investigative journalism, I’ll destroy you. You’ve watched me do it a dozen times to other people; sometimes you helped. But each one of those transactions, were business. If you cross me on this, because of our relationship, it would offend me, personally. And you’ve never seen me personally offended. And I’m sure you wouldn’t like to.”

She stood up, out of the chair, and faced me. “It’s okay to need. You don’t have to be king to be a terrible lizard.” She kissed me.  

“You still need me?” she asked, her lips trembling.

I sighed. “I need you to get the hell out of my office.”

Grey was in my office first thing.

“You know, you could have told me you were going to push him out a window. Would have saved me a lot of time, and a hell of a lot of swallowing.”

“That makes this funnier. But I hadn’t been planning on that part. I expected him to resign. But he wouldn’t. So I suicided him.”

“Eh. He had balls beyond his years, and I can’t say I’ll miss having my face near them. But now the question becomes: did you mean what you said about the power on top of your throne? Or were you just blowing smoke up my skirt to try to stick your majesty up it?”

“To the victors, the spoils. I feel awfully victorious; and I intend to spoil the hell out of both of us.”

“You think they’ll give you control of the company?”

“Who else is left?”

“Well, I guess we’ll see this morning, won’t we? Because you just smashed the other basket where I had eggs.” She kissed me. “Good luck.” Then she left.

Daria came back. It was earlier than she scheduled to, but following Richard’s death, I hadn’t expected anything less. I met her in her office.

“At first, I thought you killed Rich, just like I thought you killed Cliff and Clarence.”

“Daria, I know we've had our troubles. But I'm the only executive level VP left in the company. I'm acting CEO, and that all but guarantees the board will make that position permanent. I don't care what you think of me, or whether you curse my name when you go to bed every night.”

“I never think about you in bed,” she said, protesting too much.

“But you will respect the position, even if you can't respect me. And if you can't, then I'll have you out on your ass. And I won't have the same kind of discretion about your drug abuse Richard did.” If she were armed, she probably would have shot me for that. But that had been one of the conditions of her leave; until she was cleared by the CEO, she wasn't allowed to carry on property. “Do we understand one another?”

“Absolutely.”

I wondered if I was going to have to find a more permanent solution for her. There was a chance she'd fall in line, not a great chance, probably 2 to 3 against, but a chance. And really I could use someone like her. She'd always been excellent at her job. And she saw me coming- which was more than I could say for most. But she also wasn’t done speaking, and as I was about to leave her office, she said.

“I wasn’t taking barbiturates. At least, I wasn’t supposed to be. I realize now my medication was tampered with. And at first I… I actually thought it was you. I spent the first couple of days of my leave trying to figure out how you could have done it. Interviewing neighbors to see if you’d been in my place. I probably would still be looking into it, but I remembered my pharmacist calling me, because there’d been a recall of my prescription- which in retrospect sounded fishy; I thought maybe you’d had something to do with that. But when I went to talk to him about it, he wasn’t there. The weekend guy was filling in, because my pharmacist had been arrested. He was using ketamine and other medications to knock women out so he could sleep with them. I don’t know what he had planned for me- but if his indictment is anything to go by I’d say rape.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve acted like a crazy person, and I don’t know that it’s enough to say that I was being drugged. Because now I’ve got a little more perspective. And I have to say, that what makes more sense in all of this is that I was paranoid, and delusional, and hunting for a bogeyman that didn’t exist. I loved Clarence, and I so wanted him to be innocent that I tried to help him frame you. And you’ve done nothing but try to help me, and in the end, you probably saved me from being raped.”

“I’m… I’m just glad you got better. I think Richard was right about that one thing: we work well together. You’re an asset to this company, as its conscience, and its superego. And it’s good to have you back. But I also want you to take it easy. You’ve been through a lot. And now that we’ve lost Richard, and Alice, and with all of the attrition we’ve suffered, I don’t want us to lose you, too. So the moment you feel like things are getting too tough, say the word, however much leave you need, I’ll see that you get it. And I’m sure Joel can keep your chair warm in the interim.”

“Thanks,” she said as I left.

It was almost time for the board meeting, so I headed towards the board room.  

The board had been decimated. I ran the meeting, as the only executive VP left standing. Our first order of business was to formally accept Ed Noakes’ resignation, even though he hadn’t been into the office for a week. Then we moved onto Richard’s death.

Warwick proposed we name him CEO. But he didn't have the votes. Arnie, who was acting VP of Finance now, put my name up for consideration. After all, I was the executive with the most experience now.

Then, of all people, George Morgan shoved his way into the board room. He said he wanted to suspend any voting until he could get a feel for what had happened. Warwick demanded a vote. George had two people with him, men in their early twenties. And inexplicably, they voted with George.

“My brother, Richard, had more voting shares in this company than anyone- in fact, he had enough for two votes. But he never used them, because he thought there might come a day when surprise might be more effective than naked power. I believe that day's today.”

“But,” Sam Warwick said, “Richard's shares are tied up. He had no will. You can't just exercise them as if you were his successor.”

“I'm not, but I needn't be. These are his sons.”

“He didn't have any sons,” Warwick said, indignantly.

“He had no legitimate sons- but that's not the same as having no inheritors.” George was invigorated; I’d never seen him like this.

Warwick was flustered. “Very well. Then I'll vote for this hold, as well, until we can get to the bottom of this.”

“He had bastards,” I said, only a little admiringly.

I knew George wasn't stupid enough to fake bastard children. This wasn't a soap opera, and that wouldn't pass legal muster. At best, he might be able to get himself put into a federal prison for fraud. So they were legit. Had to be. And it didn't take much digging to confirm that. Warwick was likely to demand blood tests, and pursue all manner of legal wrangling, but in the end it would come to naught, and make him look weaker in the interim. No, I wanted to tear this thing’s throat out, directly.  

Which worked out, because George was waiting in my old office. “I'm about 80% sure you killed my brother. I told the police as much. And they laughed. Because it wasn't the first time somebody had accused you of murder for personal gain. They even joked about arresting me, since the last time it was the guy who pointed the finger first who went to prison for it.”

“But that's fine. Legally, right now, I can't touch you. But I'll be damned if you'll have my brother's company. I'll stop your nomination, and then I'll see to it that the new CEO cans you, and in such a spectacular fashion that no other company in the world will bother even looking at your resume.”

“George,” I said, “we're not rivals in this. We both want what Richard wanted: what's best for the company. If you'd like to stand for CEO...”

“Get something straight, Dane. I've spent the last month pressing the flesh of the people in politics who are too slimy to ever be seen on camera, the ones who really control the money and the power in Washington. And you're good; as a liar, you're among the best. But I've had assholes blowing smoke in me for days on end, and I now recognize how completely full of shit you really are.”

“If you want to challenge me, go ahead. I have support of half the board.”

“And I own voting shares. I don't need to beat you. I just have to outlast you. And do you honestly think your machinations are that air tight. That there isn't someone out there whose gotten hold of a major piece of the puzzle, and is just waiting until you're the most vulnerable to use it.”

I want to tell him his fiance is a whore- professionally. But then I'd be blackmailing him, and he's pissed off and crazy enough he might just let me rat him out, then accuse me of blackmail, try take the both of us down. No, what I need to do is have Julee leak it. I knew Caprica would be sad. I knew she was enjoying his money, if not his aging balls.

But that was the point of the failsafe.

The beauty of the failsafe was I'd been using company money to pay her, and not just any company money, either. I'd made it look like Richard was raiding operational funds to put into his brother's election campaign- that was the last scandal that had broken before he tripped and fell out of a window. The part the press hadn’t heard about- yet- was that George then turned around and paid that money to a prostitute. It was glorious.

ID: You’ve previously waxed poetic about Dick’s positive effect on your life. What’s the worst moment he helped pull you back from?

B: When the Joker murdered his replacement, things got pretty dark for me. I felt like I’d failed him, that if I’d only trained him better… I wanted to murder the Joker, and then quit.

And I might have done it. By then Dick was Nightwing, and we’d had a pretty big fight about his replacement; he wasn’t living in the Manor anymore, and I wasn’t going to find him to talk it over. But he found me. He tracked me down- despite the fact that I didn’t want to be found.

And he told me that we were all mortal. That he and I, we’d survived for two reasons: the first was that I’d put us through Hell, a training regimen that burnt the imperfections off of us. And the second was luck. Dumb, stupid, thoughtless luck. That we were alive only because chance hadn’t claimed us yet, because we were always only one lousy ricochet or one missed landing away from death.

And I’m not explaining it well. Let me see if I can remember the part that really got me. He said, “We’re in a war. We fight every day for a better world, one where children don’t lose their parents. And when we fail, we mourn our losses, and we fight the next day harder for them.”

He gives a hell of a speech. I was never good at those, not like he is; you have to love people to really reach them the way he does, in a way I’ve never been good at. I care but… love is a vulnerability I’ve rarely allowed myself. It’s one of the many reasons I tell people my son is a far better man than me. Because he isn’t scared to love people knowing what it could cost him. It makes him a better leader. And it also means that he feels his losses even deeper than I feel mine. And I knew if he could do it, if he could look past the reasons we’d been fighting, if he could look at the world with optimism for everything we’d seen, then I could keep going, too.

ID: Fighting the good fight?

B: And doing it the right way. Joker had to be brought to justice. Though I’ll admit, since then I hit him a hell of a lot more than I used to. Not that that’ll ever even things out. I could keep him tied to a chair in the Batcave, and beat him until my fists bled, every damn day, and even if he lived to a natural old age, he could never live through that long enough.

ID: Yeah. I wanted to know about what I think is probably the most controversial Dick-related decision in your life. This is actually the second time you’ve retired. Last time, you passed over Dick to take over for you, in favor of a sociopathic brainwashed zealot. Why?

B: Because Dick Grayson was Nightwing, who by simple right of having done the job longer than anybody else, should have been given the job- at least offered it. But Dick Grayson was also my son. And I was afraid of Bane. He destroyed me, almost completely. If it hadn’t been for Barbara, at least at first, and later the rest of my family and friends, he would have succeeded. And I couldn’t bear having that happen to Dick; I couldn’t stand the possibility.

My first successor- whose name isn’t among those leaked by Lex News, so I won’t be dropping it here- wasn’t Dick. I mean no disrespect, but he couldn’t be. Dick had been doing this his entire life, from a boy. My replacement… he was prepared to do it most of his life, but it was a different system. It wasn’t experience. It wasn’t living years of his life on the streets.

But there was a… ferocity in him. If, no, when, Bane was provoked by the appearance of a new Batman, I thought he stood a better chance of surviving the encounter. Or maybe I was scared of him, too, and I just hoped my two fears could cancel one another out.

ID: Like kill each other?

B: Nothing like that. If I’d really thought my replacement was still capable… he tried to reform. Looking back, I think he had a similar upbringing to Damian, and like my son, he tried to combat the horrors done to him in his childhood. But unlike Damian, he wasn’t quite so adept at conquering his demons. I don’t blame him. I think, on some level, I knew he wasn’t ready, wasn’t tested. I hoped he would gain what he needed on the job, but… the mistake is mine. The failure was mine.

ID: And the deaths that occurred on his watch?

B: Are regrettable. But, I weigh it against the lives that would have been lost if he hadn’t been in the cowl. And maybe… it’s actually the fulfillment of an old fear of mine; I always worried being close to people, loving them, would make me make poor decisions, and I think my fears drove me towards this one. But my replacement did take down Bane, at the height of his powers. And I don’t know if that’s something Dick could have done, then. Now, I have no doubt, but then? I’d still be loathe to push it.

ID: I fear we’re getting a little too dour for our own good. What was your funniest Dick in costume moment?

B: There have been a few. Probably the funniest stretch was when he was going through puberty. And like most teenagers, he was gawky, had acne, and his voice broke. And there are few things more comical than a bunch of hardened criminals running away in a panic from a small boy whose voice is cracking as he yells for them to stop.

But I think the funniest in costume moment, and he’s going to hate that I’m telling this story, but it was the first time he was dealing with Poison Ivy

ID: That’s plant-lady doctor, Pamela Isley.

B: But it was their first encounter after he became a man.

ID: Mazel tov.

B: Ivy doesn’t wear a lot of clothes, and she uses pheromones to manipulate men, um, sexually. Well, she had us caught, but she figured since we were who we were, it wouldn’t last for long, so she had this concentrated form of the pheromone that she’d made into a lipstick, that she said would turn us permanently into her slaves. She kissed Dick first. And I guess it must have required prolonged contact because it lasted a while, and after a moment he joined in, and being the overly enthusiastic boy that he was, there was way too much tongue. It was awkward, watching that.

And when she pulled away, he’s pitching a tent in his tights. She turned red; I didn’t know before that through the chlorophyll skin she still could, but she turned red, or maybe a darker shade of green with just a hint of crimson. She said, “Now I feel dirty about this. I think I have to go.” And she just left. I mean she had us dead to rights, held captive by her Venus mantraps, and in the middle of her crime, she just walks away, because being Mrs. Robinson creeped her out too much.

Dick was pretty embarrassed. So to try and relieve some of the tension, I asked if he thought we might be able to get the same reaction from the Joker. And he said, “Not worth it if I have to tongue kiss him.” 

ID: I have, in my prurient personal moments, wondered about that. The women in your world seem to wear rather… tight clothes when they deign to wear anything at all. And be otherwise in the kind of physical condition Olympic swimmers and gymnasts are envious of. And your clothes don’t seem to leave any place for, uh, discretion.

B: It’s weird all of a sudden you being the discrete one.

ID: I get awkward around discussion of adolescent boners.

B: But remember the crotch padding I talked about in my costume? Excellent for keeping that kind of thing in check. It was because Robin was constantly growing that his suit on that particular night didn’t have the padding; in fact, I think he was wearing an older suit while Alfred let out his current one, so it was even a little extra tight.

And Ivy’s usually such a fan of growth.

ID: Thank you and good night.

“We’re still on for tonight?” Julee asked, standing up straight.

“Yep.”

“So I shouldn’t try to unsex my hair, then?”

“Looks beautiful the way it is.”

“And my rumpled clothes?”

“Admittedly less beautiful, but it’s the look we’re going for.”

“Good,” she kissed me, hard, passionate, and voracious, like she was trying to suck my lips off. “And that’ll give you that ‘just been kissed’ puffiness. If she doesn’t get the hint this time, then nothing short of us banging on her desk in front of her is going to get her attention.”

“Could be hot.”

“You only say that because you’d like her to join in”

“That would definitely be hot.”  

“Men,” she sighed. “If only I liked eating boxed lunch.”

Julee walked out first, being sure to hike her skirt back down off her ass in as incriminating a fashion as possible as she passed Petra.

“Another meeting with Julee?” Petra moaned.

“She’s part of our department, now. I asked Richard to transfer her someplace I could use her. Oh,” I feigned surprise, then zipped my pants back up. “Wish somebody would have told me I was unzipped earlier,” I said. Too much? Maybe. But oversubtlety can be a problem, too.

“Are you free tonight?” Petra asked, annoyed. “Because it’s almost been a week; I’m starting to feel like this ring was the consolation prize for not getting you.”

“Late meeting with Julee.”

“Another dinner meeting?” she was forelorn.

“Yeah. At Breen’s. Terrible food. But it’s close to home, and with a belly full of that crap, there’s no way we sleep- keeps us up all night. It’s better than coffee.”

“I’ll pencil it in,” Petra said, not even looking up at me.

We ate at Breen's at nine, and I made a point of being awfully handsy at the restaurant, and putting away a little too much champagne. I walked Julee back to my place, and we took a shower. I figured that was the only place where we weren't likely to be heard.

“So you honestly think she’s got us under surveillance?” Julee asked.

“Yep.”

“Isn’t that not really legal?”

“Yep.”

“Not to mention a gross misuse of government resources and- holy shit, you’re finally kicking that skinny white bitch to the curb, aren’t you?”

I felt a little bad, maybe just about referring to Petra as ‘that skinny white bitch.’ “Yep.”

“You think we can get a copy of their surveillance? I’ve always wanted to have my own sex tape.”

“I doubt we'll see her again.”

“And that makes you sad face?”

“This is necessary, but I don't enjoy it.”

“Well, it's necessary, but I plan to enjoy it. Is there anything you've always wanted to do? Maybe something you mentioned to her but that she was never comfortable doing with you? Because I figure that'd twist the knife a little deeper- because it's necessary, obviously; not because I'm a sadist.”

“Actually I find your sadism adorable; this is petty jealousy, which is less sexy.”

She pressed her soapy self against me. “For a guy asking for some FBI defrauding espionage, you sure ask like a jerk.”

I grabbed her hair and pulled it, and pushed her against the shower wall. “It's ugly, and it's beneath you.” I kissed her. “And you're better than that- and I'm not just saying that because you look exceptionally good soapy.”

“It's at least a little the soapiness,” she said, smiling, trying to hide how pissed she was I was challenging her.

“But you know I need you. None of this would have been possible without you- my erection included.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Only the ones I'm showering with.” I turned, leaning past her to turn off the water. “Showtime.”

“I'm going to rinse a little longer, and warm myself up,” she said.

“Then, as your new supervisor, I should stay, and supervise.”

“Super-creepy,” she said.

“Says the woman now masturbating.”  

“I know you’re a compulsive mood-killer, but on the off chance there is an FBI surveillance team waiting to watch us bang, wouldn’t it be a let-down if we came out of here and decided to just go our separate ways because you were being an ass?”

“Maybe I should shut my mouth, or at least find something more productive to do with it.” I started to kneel, but she stopped me, and turned off the water.

“Uh-uh,” she said, “not until the audience is seated.” She reached outside the shower for a towel, and stepped onto the bath mat.  

“There’s my dirty girl,” I said, as I got my own towel.  

“You just watched me lather up; I’m as clean as a woman gets.”

“Well then let’s go defile you in front of a live studio audience.”

“There’s my dirty boy,” she said, and grabbed me by the hair and yanked me towards the bedroom.

Julee was even more filthy than usual. One particular roleplay, which Julee playfully named “Fuck my ass like you did that stupid fiancé of yours” seemed in especially bad taste, but if we had rattled Petra enough to put her job with the bureau on the line, I was sure it would do the trick.

Petra didn't show the next morning. Around noon I got a form letter resignation in my email. About an hour later, a courier delivered her engagement ring.

I worked late that night. Around ten, I got a call to come into Richard’s office. He was more than a little drunk.

“You screwed me,” he said.

“This is why I usually don’t drink at office parties.”

“And now you’re making jokes about it?” He tossed the day’s paper onto his desk in front of me. The front page story said that George and Richard Morgan were being investigated for election commission violations and embezzlement, on top of the fraud investigation reported late last week. There were even RICO implications. “That lawyer was supposed to give the company a cleaner image- not clean us out.”

“I don’t think this was all her doing, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Our company is being dragged under a microscope. No one will be able to question anything we do once all this is finished.”

He waited, expecting there to be cover there for him, somewhere. He waited for me to tell him he was worried over nothing, and that he'd be safe. And then it hit him: he was part of my plan, but not a beneficiary of it. “Holy crotch-throating Christ- you did fuck me. This was your plan? Well I've got something to tell you, fuckwad, it's not going to work. This board sucks my dick better than any woman I've ever seen. You could tongue each one of their assholes dry, and you'd still never get them to put you in charge. Mark my fucking words, you're going to be out of the door by tomorrow. So why the fuck are you smiling?”

I pushed him.

He stumbled backward, uncomprehending. Then he hit the floor to ceiling window, and expected to stop against it.

Custodial had a key for his windows, so they could be scrubbed nightly after he left. They had a guide, to keep them from swinging out- unless you disabled it, like I had. The window swung open on its hinge, and he fell into the cold night air.

The lucky bastard managed to catch the edge of the floor as he fell. But there wasn't anything to grab hold of, so he kept sliding, trying to dig his fingernails into the carpet, but finding no purchase, and sliding, slower, now, agonizingly slowly. “Help me,” he cried. Then it dawned on him, that he was going to die. “This is stupid. It's business. It's not worth letting someone... Jesus. You killed Cliff, didn't you? I thought it was silly, but in your eyes I can see it now...”

“The Dilly Bar killed Cliff.”

“Are you insane?”

“He was fat, moron. Which packs with it a whole host of higher risks, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, to name a few. He basically died of being fat.”

“Then Clarence...”  

“He tried to frame me for a murder no one but Hostess was guilty of. Which almost worked. I liked his plan so much I stole it. But unlike Clarence, I didn't half-ass things.”

“And everything else that's happened?”

“I can't take credit for everything. Just most things. But some of it was York. Other times it was you, and your greed that set the wheel in motion. All I did was make sure it always came up black.”

“I won't tell anyone, just, please, help me.” By this point he was barely resting his chin on the floor.  

“Just try to hang on,” I told him, sitting down at his computer, “while I type up your suicide note. You strike me as the kind of person who’d write something saccharine and sappy.” I got the first sentence and a half out, having to backspace as often as hitting the space. “Hard to type in gloves,” I said. Then I was done. “’I’m sorry for my failings, professional and personal. I didn’t leave you for lack of love. I loved you enough to leave.’ Suitably trite, don’t you think?” I hit print. “I don’t supposed you’d sign it for me, save me the effort of the forgery?”

“Please,” he whimpered, just eyes peaking over the edge of the windowsill.

“I didn't want to murder you,” I told him as I walked over to him, and I meant it, too. “Shallow self-interest should have dictated to preserve your share price- your own fortune- that you'd step down once the scandal hit. Scandals, now. But you care about this company, or at least about the power it affords you. So you wouldn't just go. You'd have stayed, and undone all of my hard work. Just for your ego. It's depressing, actually, once you get right down to it. But look at me, chewing scenery like a Bond villain. I should kick you out that window now.”

It didn't take much of a kick, actually, more just stepping on his head. He tried to grab my leg, either to pull himself up or to pull me down with him, but he hadn't really thought it through, so when I stumbled forward, just a little, he fell.

Bishop is waiting by the front door, and opens up her lab as soon as I get there. Pawn’s sobered up enough that he and the King are laughing. Bishop rolls her eyes at the two of them; I have even less patience for their reverie.

“You did have more important things to do than investigating the King’s liquor. Like tracking down that vamp’s place in Camas.”

He looks hurt, like a pug with boxed ears. “I did. Place was torched. If I didn’t know better I’d say the Conservator tipped him off.”

“But you do.”

His eyes flash with what little cunning he has at his disposal. “Well, I know you’d hit me for implying anything being wrong with your fanged concubine.”

“Is that something I need to worry about?” King asks.

“His florid prose? It does indicate that his blood alcohol levels are still dangerously high. But he’s also got a high tolerance; I wouldn’t worry about calling an ambulance until he starts telling dirty limericks- and over-emphasizing his penis metaphors.”

“I don’t have to tell you the… complications that could arise, from a dalliance between a Knight and a Conservator.”

I sigh, and turn to him. “You ever met her?”

“From your tone I think I know the type. Beautiful. Dangerous. Makes your heart go pitter patter- though it’s always difficult to know if that’s excitement or fear- or both.”

“And that’s all it is. I wouldn’t even call it a flirtation. I’m not sure it goes beyond her having a nice rack and wanting me for a late night snack.”

“Not necessarily as unpleasant as it sounds.”

“You’re telling me you had an affair with a vampire?”

“No,” King says, and for an instant I think he’s going to leave it at his usual coy, but he doesn’t. “I’m telling you I loved one. All relationships are based on trust. But with a vampire, you have to trust them to ignore the basest of all instincts- to feed. It’s… exhilarating. Terrifying. And unlike any love you’ll ever try.”

“Hey, you two are alive,” I say with mock surprise as Bishop lets Queen and Rook in.

“So are you,” Rook says with bemusement.

“Yeah, the only reason any of that worked is Baldur and his idiots all believe Norse magic is so superior they won’t learn anything else; it’s Seiðr or the highway; just one sigil out of Kaballah could have screwed me in there.”

“It is kind of ironic that their superiority complex actually makes them inferior,” Bishop says with a grin. “But I really wish you hadn’t brought the police to Elise’s murder.”

“Couldn’t be helped. And I’m not thrilled about her corpse being interred as evidence, but what more did you want to accomplish?”

“The necromancer left semen behind. Blood. They aren’t going to find him in a DNA database. But maybe Rook and I could. Like we did with Han’s saliva. And if there were enough,”

“Maybe we could have reached out and hit him where he lives,” Rook finishes her thought, “or at least in the stones.”  

“Shit,” I say, because I should have thought of that days ago. But with everything happening…

Bishop sees my mind racing and groans. “You have to break into the PPB’s evidence storage, don’t you?”

“You want me to come with?” Rook asks, and it’s brave of her to volunteer even that much, even if it’s plain from her tone she wants nothing more than not to.

“Nope. This is dangerous and stupid. Worth the risk of losing one of us, but not two.”

“Then I should go,” she says, “If we lose someone”

“We’re guaranteed to lose you,” I say. “But I’ve got a chance.”

“A good chance, or, an ‘if I could only flip a few dozen more coins’ chance,” Bishop asks.  

“I’d give myself 6 in 10.” I don’t tell them that the 6 is me ending up in lockdown, because the combined power of their mother-henning would probably kill me- or at least deter me long enough to question the wisdom, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that overthinking strategically important but conceptually terrifying things only makes it harder to do what needs to get done. “But if you want you can stay here and cast some helpful spells. Who knows, maybe shifting the probabilities a little is exactly what I need.”

Bishop knows me well enough that that worries her, but she tries not to betray it to anyone else. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I say, and leave before anyone tries to stop me.

I’ve been downtown, to the Portland Police Bureau a handful of times. Half the time I was in cuffs, and even the other times I wasn’t happy to be there. At least at night it was darker, with only the emergency lights on, and the occasional night officer’s desk lamp.

If you walked in wearing a shirt and a tie and moved like you had someplace to be you could make it decently far inside before anybody thought to ask who the hell you were. Unless you were unlucky enough to bump into a detective who’s arrested you at least once. Vergara smiles seeing me, but then notices I’m alone and not in cuffs.

“Damn,” she says, “for a second you had my hopes up.”

“I was shooting for dashing, but maybe I missed my mark.”

“So if you’re not here with an adult, why are you here?”

“To visit you. Conjugation optional.”

“We don’t do conjugal visits here. That’s prison.” One of the cops riding a desk perks up at that, and she glares him back into his work. But it makes her worry, too; she doesn’t really want to be seen with me, given that she’s still hoping to get a chance to perp-walking me through this place some day. “Let’s take a walk,” she says.

She leads me away from the desks, but stops in the doorway to the break room, because there’s someone in there, too, delicately cunnilinging a donut. So she leads me down another hall, and then another, and at that point the blank white government building walls have me turned around. And then she turns to face me, and smiles. “You’ve never come here willingly.”

“I wouldn’t want to join any club that’d have me for a member.”

She stops walking. “You’re using me to get access to the station.”

“Kind of,” I say, and start walking again. 

“Then I should just escort you out. Save you from yourself. Or follow you, and feather my nest with an arrest when you fuck this up.”

“Or, and I’ll admit this is unorthodox, but you could help me.”

“You know, that’s a strange coincidence: I had decided I hate my life and career, and was just waiting for an opportunity to flush both down the crapper.”

“People are dying. And I think I know a way to find the man responsible.”

“I’m listening.”

“I need some evidence. Specifically, the semen he left behind.”

“We ran it against the database. This man hasn’t so much as raped a basset hound- you know, unless he’s identified in one of the half a million untested rape kits in the country.” She’s not happy about that number- which maybe surprises me- but she projects more onto my reaction than is there. “What? Don’t look at me. It’s not like I’m the one who underfunds testing. But we didn’t get a single maybe from any of the tested specimens.” 

“Yes, but I have ways…”

“You’re not going to… ingest the semen in order to track him, are you?”

“No, and please stop making that face; you look like a worried shar pei.”

“I don’t know that I can stop, it’s just, ingesting week old semen collected out of a flesh wound that was humped into the corpse post mortem- I don’t know if there’s enough squinging in the world to cover it.”

“Okay, but nobody’s ingesting it. No one. You can put that thought out of your head- and that expression off of your face.”

“I don’t know if I can. Like how my mother used to say your fast could get stuck- I think mine’s stuck doing this.”

“You have never been less attractive than this moment,” I tell her, because it’s damn true.

“So you’re usually attracted to me?” she asks, and normally it’d be the gentle ribbing brand of flirting, but instead it just calls to mind a scene from Army of Darkness, and it’s hard for me not to tell her, “Honey, you got real ugly.”

“It’s a sliding scale, and right now you’re in danger of breaking it.”

She rubs her face with her hands. “We wouldn’t want to break your ‘scale’; especially since I can’t imagine mysterious rogue comes with good health insurance, and the cost of those little blue pills can really add up.” She looks at me from between her fingers and I raise an eyebrow. “I work with cops. High stress. Most of the ED here at the PD is stress or alcohol related, but the cure’s usually still the little blue pill.” She stops massaging her face, which is red from the pressure, but back to normal. “Better?”

“Eh,” I say, because she deserves it.

“That was mean. I should have anticipated, but still, mean. But I don’t think ‘I have ways’ qualifies as even approaching an explanation that would get me to help you.” 

“You know that Clarke quote, that sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic?”

“Yeah.” 

“Clarke was wrong. By its very definition, magic is something that defies the usual rules of existence. Except from a psychological standpoint- because humans actually do treat the unexplained as magical by default.”

“Technically, that’s what the Clarke quote was about- the way the lay monkey would observe advanced tech. And he’s completely right. I can play games on my phone more advanced than I had access to as a kid; I mean, seriously, my phone is more magical than technological to me, because I understand only the roughest ideas behind its construction.”

“But my point: I think I can use the genetic material this bastard left behind to track him. But there’s nothing even approaching a reasonable explanation I could give you that could hope to explain how, or why, or any of it, really. Running into you here, was an odd kind of serendipity, but I certainly hadn’t come armed with a convincing rationale to win you over with.”

“You’re a strange guy. I’d honestly think you were an alien, but I’m pretty sure you’d have probed me by now.”

“Is that an awkward come-on?”

“No.”

“Well if it was, I was going to say you got to buy a fella a piece of pie, maybe a cup of coffee first, before you demand to probed in the evidence room.”

“Evidence room?” She looks around, surprised. “How’d you do that?”

“Magic. Or I started to walk in this direction while you were embroiled in the conversation, and I led you where I needed to be.”

“And where you needed me to be.” She clinks her keyring against the bolted door keeping the evidence cages separate from the corridor. “Unless you really were planning on breaking in. And please tell me you’re not stupid enough to break into the police station storage to steal semen.”

“Of course, because that would be idiotic.”

“Oh my god. It’s fortunate I didn’t respect you, because I would have just lost all respect for you. But assuming you get your sample. Then what?”  

“Do you really want to know?”

“Is this what Tamsin warned me about?”

“You’ve talked to her?”

“Yeah. When she gets drunk, she calls me to warn me about you. I don’t think she remembers, though; like, I know call to call she doesn’t remember. It’s always like she’s talking to me for the first time. It was cute the second and third times, but it’s getting a little…”

“Sad?”

“Worrying, I think. I don’t know her, but does she have Alzheimer’s?”

“Alzheimer’s can make people really mean, because they’re angry they can’t remember and overcompensate by bullying people, right? Because if so, you might be onto something. But yeah. I worked with her a little, in my formative years. And when it came time where I felt I needed to tell her the truth about how I did what I do… she kind of freaked out. Angry denial sort of way. Some things are hard to explain. And sometimes those things are equally difficult to believe. She found it less trying to just assume I was a”

“Lying huckster who would do or say anything to get me into the sack. Her exact words. I can show you my interview notebook where I jotted them down. Though I’m not sure if she thinks you have a thing for me, or that had a thing for her… and I’ve looked at her driver’s license and I really hope it’s the former. Not that dating older women isn’t a totally valid lifestyle choice. It would just be kind of gross.”  

“You hope I have a thing for you?” I ask with a smirk.

“You are a crafty devil,” she says, putting her key into the lock, “convincing me to help you like this.” I’m fairly certain it’s a deflection- but it’s a deflection that gets me exactly where I need to be, so I’m fine with that. “But presuming that I believe you, which is presuming a lot, how were you planning on finding the samples you need?”

“I assumed there was some kind of an organizational system, folders, drawers, something. This is a bureaucracy; I assumed paperwork would be everywhere.”

“That’s fair. Although translating our arcane organizational data without a guide would be about as difficult as speaking Latin.”  

“Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.”

“Now you’re just making shit up in an attempt to impress me; it’s sad.” She stops to check a ledger. “See, without me here, it’s not likely you’d have had a case number. Without a case number, our system is basically meaningless. Beyond which, even if you lucked your way into finding where the evidence for this investigation is, DNA is special. It’s in the fridge. It’s over here.”

“I’m not examining this horse’s teeth, or anything, but why are you being so helpful?”

“Because the more I look into the things that have been happening around you, the less any of it seems to make sense. The only thing that I have been able to put a finger on is you. You seem to be at the center. But you seem to be there trying to put things right. I don’t know why you’re not a cop, or working for the government rather than just intimating that you do, but I think you’re on the side of the angels. And sometimes it’s nice when those ‘mysterious ways’ work in our direction.”

Then she turns to face me. “And also, I know that if you screw me on this, I’ll hunt you down myself, and plant whatever evidence on you I have to to ensure a looong stay in the State Penn. And I’ll pull every string I have access to to make sure they have you bunking with an enormous man with AIDS and a predilection for cellmate rape.”

“That is fairly harsh. But I’m on the up and up. So I’m not worried.”

“That’s good to hear, because here’s the fridge, and if there was going to be a moment for you to face heel turn and hit me in the head, this was it. And you didn’t. So hurray. For the moment.” She opens up the fridge and reaches into the back for a phial. 

“How much do you need?”

“The more the better,” I say.

For some reason that answer renews her skepticism. “And you’re not going to eat this, right?”

“No. And you’re making that face again.”

“And this really isn’t some disgusting sexual thing?”

“No. It’s scientific, or protoscientific, anyway.”

“Fine,” she says. She gets an empty phial and pours half the contents into it. She holds the one without the label out to me. “But remember, things go bad, rapey cellmate.” I take the phial from her, and hope to hell Bishop can make this work.

“I don’t know that I’m ready for this, boss,” Monty hemmed.

“You been here half the time I have, and way more than me when we got our first citizens. And you’ve got a contingent of Army shitkickers at your beck and call. You’ll be fine.”

“But they don’t fear me the way you do. They laugh behind my back.”

“And to your front. Try scowling more. Failing that, just hold your radio up and mumble about needing reinforcements any time you feel scared. That usually buys you more space than even you could ever need.”

“Was that a fat joke? I’m having serious anxiety issues, and you’re making fat jokes.”

“I’ll never understand how a fella with such big bones can have such thin skin.”

“I am big boned, at least, that’s what your mom tells me.”

“There’s the Monty I’ve come to know and work with.”

“Ain’t that phrase ‘know and love’?”

“I respect you enough not to lie to you. But you’ll be fine. Everybody has their work assignments and their routines. Place practically runs itself. Just don’t go running down the street in only your tighty whities yell-singing ‘school’s out for ever.’”

“Floyd’s classic.”

“But it did kind of undermine your authority, was my main reason for bringing it up. And that time I was only going to Fort Gates for a few hours. This time, you’re the only adult, at least officially, here. You can handle it, I’m sure.”

When I got back to the car, Grey didn't look up from her game. “Teryl?” she asked.

“It's taken care of. The single-mindedness is actually even less sexy than you'd think.”

“Not sure why you'd think I care. I'm not here to sexually arouse you.”

“No, but it wouldn't hurt you to value-add. But it's taken care of. I've planted the seed. She'll divorce her husband. It's only a question now of sooner or later.”

I dropped Grey back off at her place, and went home. The police kept Julee around until after midnight, answering questions. By that point she was less interested in sex than in sleeping.

We met the next night at Breen's, and stayed long enough to share a piece of pie. Then we walked, hand in hand, back to my apartment. I couldn't be sure if Petra was following us. It takes paranoia time to mature. But if she were, or if she knew anyone who saw us, that would help her along her way. 

The sex was all right. I think we both knew Petra wasn't watching, not yet. And that made the entire endeavor more perfunctory.

I left early in the morning, a little before five. I dialed Teryl. “I can't sleep.”

“I can't eat,” she said back to me.

“Can I see you?”

“Is that a good idea? I haven't come to a decision yet.”

“I need to see you. I've already made that decision.”

“You remember that coffee shop? I live right upstairs. I'll buzz you in when you get here.”

When I arrived, she did. She had papers spread out all over her bed. “I got the papers the day I moved out. Had my attorney draw everything up. I never wanted Dick's money, and I didn't care if I lost any claim to it. But...”

“It's okay,” I said, putting my arm around her. “I didn't come here to pressure you. I wanted to see you. I couldn't stay away.” I gently kissed her jaw, where it met her neck. She purred.

“To talk?” she asked facetiously.

“We could talk if you like,” I said, kissing my way up her cheek towards her ear. “But I didn't come here to change your mind.”

“I haven't made up my, mind,” she said.

“But isn't that basically choosing the status quo?” I asked, kissing my way across her forehead.

“It isn't that simple,” she protested, and pulled my lips down to hers. She pressed herself against me until I fell down on the bed, on top of the spread out pages of her divorce.

She made love to me on top of them; for my part I mostly laid there.

When she was asleep, I gathered the pages and scooped them into an envelope; well, that's what I did with the dry ones. The moist ones I microwaved first. I'd made an appointment for a courier pick up at six, which meant he'd be by in less than a half an hour. I set the envelope on her porch, and took a shower.

She still wasn't awake when I got out. Which was fine. I wasn't angling for a goodbye kiss. I left. I must have startled her, closing the front door, because she called me a few minutes later.

“My divorce papers?” she asked.

“I sent them to Richard. Had a courier pick them up. You can hate me, if you want. But I'm... starting to care about you. And I'd rather see you happy but hating me, than watch you keep torturing yourself.”

“Thank you. I never would have sent them. Probably not for another million years, anyway. Any now that they're not sitting in my davenport, I can't for the life of me see what the trouble was with just sending them off. Our marriage has been over a very long time. There's no shame in making that official.”

It was still early when I got into the office. I went straight to work. It'd been a busy weekend, and I knew the fallout was going to be exciting.

Around ten, I recognized my handwriting on a parcel under a courier’s arm. Richard's divorce papers. He called me into his office a few hours later, fuming. “Your pet US Attorney sold us out, and she's already 'resigned' her post on account of the ethical misconduct of our firm. How she can resign a job she's never fucking done is anybody’s guess.

I was thrilled to see her go. She was a well-placed political ally. And if she ever decided to come at me, I had proof that she’d violated attorney client privileges, and could see to it that she was disbarred. Keep your enemies close, and a gun to your friend’s faces.

“Warwick called for an emergency board meeting. He doesn't have the votes to kick me off, but that's probably a matter of time. I've called George. His campaign is sputtering, and he still has enough voting shares to qualify for a seat on the board. And after what happened to Alice, there's an opening.”

“Wait, what happened to Alice?”

“She was attacked. By Rob Kierkegaard. Man's a fucking asshole. He was the one who raped her, years ago, practically made Alice's career. In exchange for not suing the shit out of him, we guaranteed her a fast track to upper management. But apparently Rob's been stalking her. He even sent himself messages, pretending to be her, setting up a time and a place for her to be 'willingly' raped. Then he broke into her house and was going to have his way with her. I'm surprised you haven't heard of this. It was your new AVP who found it out, putting in long weekend hours. If it weren't for Julee Hendricks, Rob would have raped Alice. Again. And I can’t imagine the ransom she would have asked for to silence that bell this time.” 

“Rob’s a sick shit. It makes me feel ill. It's my fault he's been around all these years. I thought he was a friend to the company. But apparently he just liked swimming in a pool he could piss in whenever he wanted. And I was enabling him.”

“But he's off the board. Conduct like that, we don't even have to have a hearing or call the question. But Alice... she took it hard. Being helpless again, at his hands... she tried to cut her wrists. Did a shitty job of it, so she ended up in the hospital with only minor blood loss, but still. Doctors got her lucid, and Sunday evening she asked to have herself put into a long-term care facility so she wouldn't hurt herself. That's a board member and a senior executive, gone.”

“But this shit happened on your watch. This is bad, Mark, I'm sure I don't have to tell you. But this is the opposite of what a strategy officer is supposed to accomplish, and, frankly, if I didn't need you to get me out of this, you'd be on your ass out the door.”

“As I see it, my hand-picked second is the lone thing that salvaged the weekend for you.” 

“Has haggling with God over blame ever gone well for anyone? No? So get out of my office, and Moses me a course to the Promised Land, before I get old testament on your ass.”

I closed the door behind me, and a woman's voice startled me.

“I want you to know, it wasn't just that he needed you. He took a lot of convincing before he decided to keep you.” It was Grey, and she walked, with her sultry little wiggle, towards me. “Of course, it was the least I could do, after you got Teryl to send through their divorce papers. But you know the shitty thing about Richard?” But she didn’t stop in front of me, she kept walking, and like a greyhound after a robot bunny I gave chase.

“The dead frog eyes?”

“Thankfully I don't have to see them when I blow him,... no, it's that I blow him. I finish him in my mouth, which gets me all worked up, and then he's back to the salt mines, and I'm stranded back on touch myself island.” She led me into the copy room and shut the door behind me.

“Richard's a selfish lover? Who'd have guessed.”

“And I thought to myself, where can I find a grateful, selfish bastard who overcompensates for his limitless greed by being about the most giving lover I can think of.”

“I'm flattered, that you think of me immediately after blowing other men.”

“And sometimes during.”

“That's sweet. I think.”

“You know I've got a schedule, right? I can't banter-flirt in here with you all day. Richard will eventually wonder where I've gone. So sex on the copier, in or out?”

“I usually find copious amounts of both are necessary for good sex.”

“Humor's not as sexy as comedians want to think it is. Now shut up and get inside me.” She sat up on top of the copy machine, and accidentally kicked it on.

When we were done, I wheeled the copier back to where it started, and checked the print trays. “Is there anything you'd like to do with a thousand photocopies of your vulva?”

“Would it be too meta to papier mache a giant replica of my vulva out of them?”

“No, but it would scare me a little.”

“You're afraid of female power.”

“No, I'm afraid of vaginas large enough to swallow me whole.”

“And the central metaphor of that fear is anxiety about strong women.”

“I’ll just put them into the confidential shredding bins, then,” I said, and started feeding the pages a dozen at a time into the slot in the big blue receptacle.

When I was done, I stopped back in my office to call Julee. “How much does your editor love you?”

“Just this morning it reached tongue another man’s come out of my ass levels of ecstasy.”

“Literally?”

“Figuratively. Why? Would that make you jealous.”

“As a rule, felching isn’t one of those things I get possessive about. But after this he’s going to try to put a ring on you. That other shoe we discussed. It’s time to drop it.”

“I’m going to have to see some proof, here, about all these money transfers.”

“Do you think I’d ask you- or your felching editor- to take anything on my word? It’s in my office. I figured I’d help you write it up, just like last time.”

“I’ll be right there, then.”

I’d ordered a new chair from the workplace managers. Some people would have thought it unromantic of me, replacing the chair she’d Fatal Attractioned in so many times. But her eyes lit up, because she understood my thinking on the chair exactly. “Low back, without arms. You always get me the nicest things,” she said, and wheeled it around behind my desk. I sat down in it. Then she pushed me so my back was to my computer and keyboard, and straddled me. “Like a glove.” 

“I’d say more like a tailored pair of slacks. For a more glove-like fit,” I unzipped my pants.

“How’d you know I wouldn’t be wearing panties?”

“How’d you know I wouldn’t want you wearing them?” I retorted as she lowered herself onto my lap. 

Fifty minutes later she relaxed against me. I was glad I’d brought a change of clothes, because I was lacquered in our sweat- and other fluids. “Some of my best work,” she said in my ear, “and the writing’s not bad, either.”

I twirled the chair around, so she was facing the door and I was facing the screen.

“You don’t name Richard as the one shunting money into his brother’s reelection campaign.”

“Is that a problem? He’s not in the documents.” She was right on that point.

“No. I’m sure that’ll be enough.”