“Don’t be so melodramatic,” she said. “You were in descent after Nico died. You were on your way to being a dirty cop. I just moved that process along a bit.”
“Did you have Nico killed when he wouldn’t drop looking into the killings too?” I asked. Gida pursed her lips and sighed. She ran a hand through her fine, silver hair.
“Yes. I tried to aim him toward the same path you were staggering down, avoid anything so messy and sad, but he wouldn’t have it and he began to suspect me, so I had Roland kill him.”
“The only reason we tried to eliminate you at Roland Blue’s club,” Winder said, “was we couldn’t be certain if you’d accept our offer and we couldn’t allow you to compromise the integrity of the group. When you blackmailed Roland, we had to do something to shut him up. You would have just been collateral damage in that. You understand, Laytham. How many times have you thrown someone under the bus to serve your own interest? It was nothing personal. Crash Cart is an excellent tool, but I’m afraid he gets a bit too exuberant in his work.”
“Manson, your dad, he taught you how to dredge that thing up, didn’t he?” I said, walking to the wall-length window that gave an inspiring view of the studio grounds and past that, the city. From up here everything looked clean and ordered. It was a great special effect.
Winder smiled. “Yes,” he said, “and I taught Brett. My father was unable to be very present in my life for reasons both practical and psychological, but he did his best to impart to me his truths, and I have found him to be very wise. In a different age, a different world, he would be an oracle, a sage. A Wisdom, like you and your grandmother.”
I turned from the window and it began to crack, a wide, radial spiderweb with me at its center. The room dropped several degrees and many of the faithful suddenly looked less smug, more frightened.
“You,” I said, “never mention her again. She’s too good for your toilet of a mind, your filthy fucking tongue, to ever even acknowledge her existence. I will turn you inside out and keep you awake while I do it.”
Winder’s smile never left his lips. “Of course, my apologies. I know how sensitive that subject is for you. We cultivate our children, show them the wisdom we have culled from our experience, and set their feet upon the path. They are the future, our future. While it is regrettable that Crystal’s father caught up to her before we could, her child will find sanctuary with us.”
“What did you say?” I asked, narrowing my gaze at Winder.
“Max, you think Laytham and I could have a moment alone?” Gida asked.
“Of course,” Winder said. “Let’s take five, everyone. Give our new potential recruit a few moments to process all this.” The conference room began to clear; there were murmurs of normal water cooler conversations, the game last night, the big joke on the latest sitcom, plans for the weekend, not the kind of things you’d ever expect soul-corrupting and ritual-sacrificing dark tantric sorcerers to discuss.
Winder was the last out to ensure the room cleared fully. He put a hand on my shoulder and spoke to me as earnestly as a preacher at a funeral. “Think about our offer, Laytham, please. We can give you a place to belong. We can be your family.” He nodded to Gida and then ambled out of the conference room door and shut it behind him.
“He’s right,” Gida said, “about everything. You’d be so good here, with us, we’d be so good together again.”
“Were you ever really what you pretended to be?” I asked as she pulled me close to her. She had the faintest scent of Clive Christian No. 1 and alcohol. Her hair smelled of wind shivering through wildflowers. Her voice was intimate, close to my skin.
“Were you?” she said. “All that talk of nobility, agonizing over honor and duty. I tried to show you when you came to my office. We are animals, Laytham, delusional animals. We stumble between what we believe is right and wrong and then try to justify our every action to ourselves, to some fairy-tale god, to each other. That is an exhausting way to live. It wore me out.” She brushed my fallen hair out of my eyes. “I know it wears you out too.”
Her lips pressed gently to my throat. I was back in that conference room, that frozen moment with the metal stinger of the syringe to my flesh, the wildfire panic, the scramble to survive, undamaged, no matter the cost. Ankou’s words, now Gida’s words. “What happens if I refuse?” I said, stepping back from her. It was harder to do than it should have been. Gida sighed.
“You’d be committing suicide,” she said. “The Nightwise will hunt you down wherever you go; no one will believe you if you try to tell them about me. Your reputation is less than dirt, mine is immaculate. Best case scenario: they capture you, convict you of our crimes and send you into the Hollow Lands, you never see Earth or another living soul again. Since I know you, I am fairly certain you’d go down fighting before you’d let the order banish you from Earth. Either way, you die.”
“Can you give me some time to think about it?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “You walk out that door without committing to us, then you are going to die, Laytham. No threat, no hyperbole. Just a fact. For once in your life, do the right thing.”
“What makes you so sure that Crystal had a child?”
“Our people got onto the crime scene,” she said. “I saw the photos on the wall. Yours too, from the neighbors’ cameras. Don’t worry, I swept up after you with the regular cops, had the amber alerts and the BOLOs canceled. We gathered the
