“Sound familiar to you at all?” Winder asked. “Like you, Laytham, we take the universe as it is, not as we wish it to be. We use whatever works, we know the only sin is to miss out on something, some scrap of experience. Can you honestly say you’re any different than us?”
“You corrupt souls and then you devour them,” I said. “You can’t justify that.”
“Nor do we see any reason to,” Winder said. “Laytham, my senses are as acute as yours. I see the scars and the stains on your aura. You have done everything you are accusing us of, yourself.”
I paused. I hadn’t slept or had a drink in over two days. I felt thin and full of holes. Winder’s words hit me hard, as hard as Ankou’s accusation. I kept getting locked in rooms full of mirrors and I wished I couldn’t see.
“This world is a moral vacuum,” he said, standing again, walking toward me. “We, those like you and I, those who follow us, possess the power and the wisdom to move through it like gods.” He stood before me, still placid. “Who can stand in judgment of gods, Laytham?”
“The Nightwise,” I said, feeling my resolve return. “They can, and they do. They stand between all the sick, twisted, hungry things in the darkness and the Jane Does, the Crystal Myths of this world. All the connections to the murdered women and you, to your companies and your sick little club, everything that we dug up, I had it all sent electronically to the Maven of the Nightwise. They know about all of you now and they are going to shut your asses down.”
The door, still to my back, clicked open. I turned to see why Winder was smiling. Gida Templeton, the High Maven of the Nightwise, returned Winder’s smile. “Hello, Max, Laytham,” Gida said. She paused to kiss me deeply as she passed me and then took an unclaimed seat at the conference table beside Winder’s. “I hope he hasn’t been too disruptive, Max,” she said. “He’s good at making messes. I know, I’ve had to clean up enough of them.”
Max patted me on the shoulder and then crossed to give Gida a peck on the cheek before he sat down. “Not at all. We’ve been having a nice chat. Can I get you anything, my dear?”
“Tea, please,” she said. One of the hangers-on in the room fetched Gida a hot cup and saucer. She regarded me. “Bewilderment does not suit you well, Laytham,” she said. “The unflappable detective struck mute. No witty quip? No lighting a cigarette with an accusing ‘ah-ha’?”
Another flutter of laughter from the room.
“How long?” I said to Gida. My throat was dry.
“Since before I recruited you, my dear boy,” Gida said, then sipped her tea and held up the cup. “A touch more cream, if you please?” The gofer obeyed as Gida continued. “I met Max back in … 1978, was it Max? We were so young! We crossed swords a few times when I was an investigator in the field. I dealt with some of his early efforts and made it my business to delve deeper into his background. Within a few years, I knew about his father and the cult, and that was when he made me his sales pitch. It was very convincing.”
“So you kept the Nightwise away from the Dugpa, from the murders,” I said.
Gida nodded.
“And from poor Roland Blue,” she continued. “He was our weak link, our necessary vulnerability, I’m afraid. Rolly knew it, though, and he accepted that he might be disposable one day. At least I like to think he understood that.”
“He found Crystal for us,” Winder said as Gida sipped her tea again. “He and my son, Brett. They recognized how powerful an … asset a full-blooded Fae would be.”
“Asset,” I said, shaking my head. “Why don’t you just call her what she was to you? A mchod pa, an offering, a sacrifice.”
“The strongest we’d ever hoped to have,” Winder said. “Even greater than the high workings my father orchestrated for the group in the late sixties.”
“Your father?” I said.
“Yes,” Winder said, “you met him at Corcoran, at the prison.”
“Manson,” I said. “Your father is Charles Manson.”
“Yes,” Winder said. “The group, they called themselves the Process Church back then, they hid me away in the early sixties. I was a mchod pa in a sense, myself. I was given to the group, by my father, raised in wealth, power, and privilege among other members, given a bulletproof name, the keys to the Hollywood kingdom, taught the true nature of reality, the jagged path to enlightenment. I was raised just as I have raised Brett.”
“So Helter Skelter, those murders were more sacrifices for you bastards,” I said.
“Yes,” Winder said with a chuckle. “The group has always had so many agents, knowing and unknowing in Hollywood. We control this city and all the power within it. My father may be a coarse man, like you, Laytham, but in his own way, he is a savant, just as you are.”
“Which brings us full circle,” Gida said.
“You’re going to try to kill me,” I said, “as a reminder of what happens when someone meddles in your business?”
“Furthest thing from it,” Winder said. “We want you to join us.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said.
“Laytham, I didn’t recruit you for the Nightwise,” Gida said. “I recruited you for us, for the group. You’d be perfect.”
“Why do you think you’re still alive?” Winder said. “We had opportunities to kill you back in the eighties when you began poking around in the sacrifices. Gida said you were worth salvaging and found other ways to keep you off our trail.”
I looked at Gida’s painfully sky-blue eyes, as guiltless as infancy. “You. You’re the one who set the frame on me back then.
