Putting it Together

Christine knocked on the door to Adrian’s apartment. A moment later, he opened it up.

“Hey,” he greeted her.

“Hey,” she replied, stepping past him. By now, she had been over at his place plenty of times and was comfortable making herself at home. She saw that Rhys was already there, sitting in the love seat. Christine took her usual spot at the table and set her canvas bag down by her feet.

“Can I get you anything?” Adrian offered.

“Water would be nice,” she said.

Adrian busied himself in the kitchen cabinets to get her a glass. “So,” he asked. “How’s everything going? Everything good with your program?”

Christine answered him while she unpacked a small stack of folders and her laptop from the bag. “It’s going alright. My grant proposal is dead in the water, but other than that, things are fine.”

“You know you can’t let anyone know about that book,” Rhys said.

“Obviously,” she shot back. Did he think she didn’t know that? Why else would she have given up her proposal?

Adrian set her glass of water down on the table in front of her. “Again…I’m really sorry about that.”

“It couldn’t be helped,” she told him simply.

Adrian grew serious, looking into her eyes. “I mean it. I want you to know that I understand how much you were set back, and I’m sorry.”

“Isn’t he handsome?” whispered someone in her ear.

Christine jumped, and Adrian gave her a funny look. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she lied. The voice had been one of those devils or whatever that served Araqiel, she knew. Adrian had explained it to them after what had happened in Scotland. Even knowing what they were, they still made her skin crawl.

Until now, they had mostly left her alone, and she hoped that if she just ignored them, it would stay that way. She understood that they had done something to her that night when she had…indulged in self-pleasure. That was something she had only ever done a handful of times in her entire life, but twice since then she’d had to stifle the urge to touch herself before going to sleep. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Rhys’s changes may have been more obvious, but Christine wasn’t getting off unscathed either.

“Alright," Adrian said, sounding hurt. "As long as everything is okay, then.” He stepped away from her to lean against the counter.

Christine frowned. She’d said something wrong. It took a second for her to work it out, but when she did, she felt like an idiot. She’d only been trying to avoid mentioning the voice she'd heard, but Adrian had taken that as her rejecting his apology. She wanted to say something to make it right, to let him know that she wasn’t angry at him anymore, but couldn’t find the words.

“Let’s get down to business,” Adrian said, moving past the awkward interaction. Christine knew that her window had passed. She’d talk to him about it later, she told herself, although she knew she wouldn’t.

It was all the fault of those damn whispers, she thought, growing angry. Wasn’t he handsome? What were they talking about?

Sure, Christine could concede that, objectively speaking, Adrian was a good-looking guy. But that hadn’t been the point. The voice had been making fun of her. It knew she was no good with that kind of stuff and must have chosen that sentence to deliberately derail her.

Besides, Adrian wasn’t even her type. She’d always liked guys who were a little on the skinny side. Even before Adrian’s transformation, he hadn’t been that. Although she had to admit, his new build suited him. He filled out his t-shirt well, and being in shape suited the confidence with which he carried himself. Another girl might have been caught up in that. Not Christine, of course. She wasn’t shallow enough to allow herself to be captivated by broad shoulders and a well-built chest.

“What do you think?” Adrian asked.

Christine blinked. “About what?”

Now he looked annoyed. Christine had made things worse. He’d been talking to her, she realized, while she had been lost in her thoughts. She couldn’t seem to catch a break.

“About the owner not wanting to sell,” Adrian prompted.

Christine pushed her emotions aside, her guilt over making Adrian think she was mad at him, and her very real anger at the voices for causing the problem in the first place. She’d make it up to him by being useful. That she was good at. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. He wasn’t interested at all?”

“Not even a little,” Adrian told her.

“He asked for triple,” Rhys added.

Christine furrowed her brow. “Maybe the club is doing better than we thought.”

“It seemed pretty run down to me,” Rhys said. “If he was making money, you’d think he’d at least have enough to pay for cleaning the place up a little.”

“Exactly,” Adrian agreed.

Christine mulled it over. “We're probably missing something, but I don’t see what we can do about it,” she finally admitted.

“That’s sort of where I landed,” Adrian sighed.

Rhys concurred. “Maybe it's for the best. That place was a dump. What other clubs are out there we could try?”

Christine shook her head. “None of the others are struggling. We could try making offers, but I don’t think any of them would accept.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Rhys said.

“Not really,” Christine replied shortly.

Adrian gave her a warning look, and Christine mentally smacked herself. She hadn’t meant to be rude, but there was something about Rhys that brought it out of her. He was a smart kid, but he was still young, and far too used to being the smartest person in the room. Still, he was nice enough, she supposed, and Adrian wanted them to get along. It wouldn't kill her to make an effort.

“Sorry,” she apologized. Then, as a peace offering, she held out a small stack of folders. “Here are some of the other prospects. You can take a look if you want.”

That seemed to satisfy Adrian, and Christine was happy that she’d at least avoided bungling one interaction so far.

“Thanks,” Rhys told her.

“I’ll take a look with you,” Adrian said, grabbing the folders and handing them off to Rhys before moving to stand behind the love seat so that he could look over Rhys’s shoulder.

That was the other thing that annoyed her about Rhys. Adrian babied him. Right now, things were calm, but Christine could see the writing on the wall. Sooner or later, Araqiel was going to drag them into more trouble like what had happened in Scotland, and Rhys wasn’t going to be ready. Adrian thought he was being nice, but he wasn’t doing Rhys any favors by coddling him. The boy needed to toughen up, quick.

“Are you sure you aren’t just jealous?”

Christine scowled at the intrusion but refused to interact. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? Of course she wasn’t jealous. Sure, Adrian tended to dote on Rhys and was firmer with her, but that was because she was an adult. She didn’t need to be handled with kid gloves.

She looked over at where Rhys flipped through the printouts she’d prepared for each club in the city. Adrian stood behind him, offering input and guidance. Her anger softened. Adrian cut an almost paternal figure at Rhys’s side. He’d make a good father one day, Christine shivered.

“Or a good boyfriend,” chimed in the unwelcome voice in her head.

Christine’s stomach jumped as if she’d just been caught staring. Which she had, in a manner of speaking. Her fury was back in full ****. The voice was like a child, needling at her on the playground for being friends with a boy when all she wanted was to be left alone. There was nothing romantic between her and Adrian, and there never would be.

Even if she was interested, which she was decidedly not, he wasn’t. Christine wasn’t the kind of woman guys tended to like. She was too educated, too bookish, too focused on her career. She’d learned the bitter lesson early on that guys didn’t like it when you were smarter or more successful than them, and she absolutely refused to debase herself just to make a man feel more comfortable. She stood by that decision, even if it meant that someone like Adrian would never look at her as a romantic prospect.

Which wasn’t a problem, she reminded herself, because she wasn’t interested. She wanted someone well-educated and successful. Adrian had never been to college, and he worked at a supermarket.

Christine winced. That had been deeply unfair. He hadn’t gone to school because he hadn't been able to afford it, and he worked his job because he had to. Besides, he may never have been an academic, but she’d seen proof that he was smart, albeit in a rugged kind of way. And as for success, he’d managed to become the right hand of an ancient demon. That had to count for something. His determination and perseverance reminded Christine of herself. There was a lot she had grown to admire in him.

There was a lot she didn’t, though. He had shown his violent side during their visit to Scotland. She’d seen firsthand how easily he resorted to throwing a punch. That wasn’t the kind of man she wanted to be with.

Sure, other women may have been attracted to the display of power, and she could see why. He _had _cut quite a figure standing over the defeated Rapture Knight in that early morning sunlight. Virile and strong. The kind of man that primal instincts told her to mate with…

Christine blushed, absurdly worried that Rhys and Adrian could have somehow overheard her thoughts, but of course they hadn’t noticed.

This was what the voice had wanted, she realized. To confuse her and twist her thoughts up into a pretzel. She wasn’t going to let herself be one of their playthings. She had work to do.

Focusing on the task at hand, Christine leaned over to dig through her bag and pulled out a folder dealing with Gilt specifically. It might not end up mattering why the owner wouldn’t sell - he could choose to do so for no reason at all - but it bothered her. She wanted an answer.

“Let us help.”

Christine froze. The last thing she wanted was help from the voices. Who knew what twisted ideas they would come up with?

“We aren’t your enemies.”

“We will show you.”

Christine’s pulse quickened. As the voices began to crowd her, she shouted in her mind for them to go away, but they didn’t listen. She brought her hands to her temples, overwhelmed by the cacophonous riot of whispers. Her vision began to swim, but before she fell out of her chair, her mind went blank. Her head was empty, completely devoid of thought. She understood on some level that she needed to try to think, but she couldn’t manage to string anything together.

The voices faded, and for a moment, Christine’s mind was a placid lake, silent and still. Then, like starting up an engine, her mind roared back to life. Her thoughts were faster than before, more crystallized, clearer. It felt like, somehow, her brain had expanded, like she had more room to work with inside her head. She could almost feel her synapses. New connections were forming in her brain, supercharging it as the pathways between her neurons grew.

“See?” the spirits spoke.

“We told you.”

“We’re on your side.”

Christine gasped. Trying to think was like wearing a new pair of shoes: nice, but not yet broken in. Overwhelmed, her breathing was coming in short, rapid pants as she struggled with the alien sensation of feeling out of place in her own head.

“You ok?” Adrian asked.

Christine looked up. “I’m fine,” she answered quickly.

Adrian didn’t seem convinced. “You sure? You look a little off.”

“I…got a paper cut,” she lied, holding up her finger. She hoped that from across the room, he wouldn’t be able to tell there was nothing there.

“I have some bandages in the bathroom,” he offered.

“It’s not that bad,” Christine told him, hoping he would let it go.

Thankfully, he just shrugged and went back to helping Rhys.

Christine’s heart hammered in her chest. What had they done to her?

“We made you smarter.”

“We told you we would help.”

Christine’s nerves were fried, and she had trouble getting a handle on her newly supercharged thoughts. She did not trust a bunch of demons to mess around with her brain.

“Your question,” the spirits prodded.

“Gilt.”

“Concentrate.”

Like a spark catching on tinder, Christine had an idea. She seized on it, **** for a distraction from the terrifying hold that the members of Araqiel’s court had over her. Christine turned her attention to her laptop and began typing away. It took her only a few minutes to track down a handful of shaky videos of shows hosted at Gilt over the last year or two. She counted the audience members, not hard since the place was only ever half full, and made a note.

Next, she rifled through her notes, tracking down several real estate listings in the area that she had printed out for reference. They featured, among other things, how much rent was going for.

Finally, Christine pulled open a calculator on her laptop and punched in some numbers. Making a conservative estimate for the head count per show, multiplied by the average cost of the tickets Gilt sold and the number of shows they were booking per year, she put together a working guess at their cash flow. She also accounted for sales from the bar, using an average of four drinks per guest.

The numbers weren’t adding up.

Christine pulled open the club on her map and zoomed in to street view. She futzed around with the angle until she could get a good look at the side of the building. The wall was coated in a thick layer of graffiti. Most of it was faded or barely legible, but one piece stood out: a flaming machete.

She started searching through news articles about crime in the area. It was difficult to narrow it down to the exact neighborhood where Gilt was located, but before long, she’d found what she was looking for. A year and a half ago, there had been a shootout four blocks away from the club. Reports attributed it to a street gang named the 14th Street Bangers. Looking them up didn’t turn up a lot. They weren’t a large presence outside of the city. She did, however, manage to track down a letter put out sixteen months ago by the police department about what to look out for with regard to gang activity on school campuses. Included in that press release was a list of gang insignias. The one used by 14th Street? A flaming machete.

“It’s a front,” Christine declared.

“Huh?” Adrian looked over at her.

“Gilt,” Cristine repeated. “It’s a front. It has to be. There’s no way they are bringing in enough cash to cover their rent and operating expenses without a secondary income stream.”

Adrian stood up and walked over. “You’re sure?”

“I was pretty generous with my estimates, and they still fall short. By a lot. Look at this,” she said, turning the laptop so that Adrian could see. “That graffiti means they’re affiliated with a local gang.”

“I’d believe it,” Rhys chimed in. “The owner seemed like that kind of guy.”

Christine rushed on, missing Rhys’s look of discomfort at the mention of the owner. “This has to be why he wouldn’t sell. It doesn’t matter that the club is in the red because they don’t need it to turn a profit.”

“They’re using it to launder money,” Adrian realized.

“Exactly,” Christine said.

“Holy shit,” Adrian laughed. “Christine. Good work.”

She beamed with pride at Adrian’s praise, delighting in his impressed look. Eat your heart out, Rhys, she thought smugly. Let’s see who’s the favorite now.

“I hate to be a downer,” Rhys said, “but I’m not sure this helps us. He still isn’t going to take our offer.”

“There has to be some way to leverage this,” Christine disagreed.

“There is,” Adrian said. “I have an idea.”

He walked over and put his hand on Christine’s shoulder. Despite herself, her heart leaped up into her throat at Adrian’s touch.

“I don’t know what we’d do without you,” he told her, and Christine melted. She was a puddle of girlish glee beneath Adrian’s appreciative gaze. She grinned like an idiot, delighting in his favor.

“What’s our move then?” Rhys asked.

Adrian took his hand back and stepped away to better face them both. Christine lamented his distance.

“You’re going to like it,” he told Rhys glumly. “Myself, I’m not so sure.”

“It involves another squire,” Christine guessed.

“Yeah,” Adrian sighed, crossing his arms. Christine couldn’t help but notice how firm his forearms were. That had never been a turn-on for her before, but on Adrian, it looked good.

“Who?” Rhys asked, suddenly curious.

“I got pulled over on the way home the day I first summoned Araqiel,” Adrian explained. “The cop got roped into this with us.”

“You want to point the police at Gilt?” Christine asked.

“Something like that,” Adrian told her.

“It’ll be good to pull her into the loop,” Rhys said.

Christine wasn’t sure she agreed. Once again, Rhys showed that he may not fully appreciate the danger their positions put them in. Maybe it was better for these people to remain uninvolved.

“I don’t know her at all,” Adrian grumbled, “and we didn’t exactly leave off on good terms. I’ll need to be careful with how I approach her.”

Christine drank in the sight of Adrian, musing over how to handle his new squire. Not a week ago, he had wanted nothing to do with them. Now he was acting like a leader. It was a good look. Not every man would have been able to handle the pressure so well as he did.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Rhys asked.

“I could go too!” Christine blurted out. She hadn’t intended to say that, but Rhys was always tagging along with Adrian. It wasn’t fair that she got left behind.

“No,” Adrian told them both. “I think I should handle this one myself.”

Christine found herself strangely disappointed.

“Come on,” Rhys whined. “I can help.”

“Leave it alone,” Adrian told him.

Rhys dropped the issue immediately, although he seemed too pleased with himself for someone who had just been told off. Adrian must have seen it too, because he also looked slightly confused.

“So with the cop and that girl you saw a movie with,” Rhys counted on his fingers, oblivious to the fact that Christine and Adrian were looking at him funny, “that leaves two more squires we need to get a hold of.”

“Yeah,” Adrian breathed, dropping his quizzical stare. “Two more.”

“Who are they?” Rhys asked.

“Well, one of them’s my neighbor, actually,” Adrian responded.

“That one's easy then,” Rhys said. “Why haven’t we gone to talk to her yet?”

“Because I don’t know her at all,” Adrian answered defensively.

Even Christine had noticed that Adrian didn’t like it when Rhys pressured him about the squires, and she felt a smug sense of superiority as Adrian glared the boy down in frustration.

“You can’t just say ‘hi, you and I serve a demon now’ to somebody you’ve never met before,” Christine explained.

Adrian flung his hand out at her as if to say ‘exactly’. “Christine’s right. I’m taking my time for a reason.”

She did her best to keep the smarmy grin off her face. Adrian wouldn’t like it if he saw.

“Who’s the last squire then?” Rhys asked.

“Just…somebody that I met once,” Adrian answered carefully.

“That’s not a lot to go on,” Rhys said.

“You don’t need to know everything,” Adrian snapped.

Rhys clammed up, and Christine stifled a small smile.

“Sorry,” Rhys apologized in a small voice, cowed by Adrian’s sudden temper. “It’s just…we’re all going to meet eventually, right?”

Adrian remained stern, but after several beats his visage softened into resignation. “Yeah. You’re right. Not much use hiding it, I guess. Her name’s Opal, or at least that’s what she told me. She’s…” He let out a deep breath. “She’s an escort.”

“Oh,” Rhys squeaked.

A rush of emotions roiled inside of Christine’s chest, jealousy and judgment both contending to be the front runners. Absurdly, the first thought that formed from that milieu was ‘if Adrian was looking for sex, why her and not me? ’ As Christine’s brain caught up with her subconscious and processed what she had just been thinking she blushed furiously.

What did she care if Adrian slept with some prostitute? It wasn’t like she and him were involved or anything. He was free to do whatever he wanted, even if it wasn’t the sort of thing she would have expected from him, she thought bitterly.

“Any more questions?” Adrian asked.

Rhys shook his head, saying nothing.

“Good,” Adrian said, letting the matter die.

Christine was still reeling from the revelation, though. The idea of Adrian having sex with a hooker was, for some reason, an emotionally confusing one for her. Her attempts to process it were being constantly thwarted by intrusive thoughts of Adrian’s naked body, sweaty and taut from lovemaking.

“I should get going,” Christine said. She started trying to pick up all of her research folders and, mind frazzled, fumbled one of them onto the floor, scattering papers everywhere.

“Let me help,” Adrian offered, starting to kneel.

“I’ve got it,” Christine said, waving him off. The last thing she needed just then was to be close to him.

Adrian backed off and let her handle it on her own. Down on her hands and knees, Christine went about picking up her papers. That was when she spotted something. Shoved unceremoniously beneath Adrian’s bed was an unassuming bag, but she’d seen it before. It was the bag he’d always used to carry around the book.

Like a shattering pane of glass, Christine suddenly understood what was happening to her. A wave of vertigo washed over her as her entire perspective reoriented. Now that she saw it, it was breathtakingly obvious that she was being manipulated. The demonic influence had been pushing her to be interested in Adrian. Before today, she'd never once thought of him that way. Now, though, she was filled with jealousy and longing and giddiness.

Thinking quickly, Christine checked behind her. Neither Rhys nor Adrian was paying her any attention. She snatched the bag from its hiding place and shoved it into her canvas sack along with the spilled papers. She finished as quickly as she could, then stood up and smoothed her shirt. “I’ll see you next time,” she said with a wave, rushing to get out of the apartment.

“Bye, Christine,” Rhys said back.

“I’ll keep you up to date,” Adrian promised. Then he stepped in for a hug, and Christine froze. Her brain sparked as she tried to decide what to do, and in the end, she did nothing. Adrian’s arms wrapped around her. Tentatively, she hugged him back. Her heart fluttered. Just knowing that her feelings were artificial was, apparently, not enough to make them go away. She took a deep breath, smelling Adrian in his closeness, and for a brief second her panic abated, replaced by the warmth of his presence. But the hug was only a friendly goodbye, and it didn’t last long. When Adrian broke it off, Christine was thrown right back into the chaos.

“Bye!” she almost shouted as she practically ran out the door. She closed it behind her, too quickly and too hard, then leaned over and caught her breath. Whatever was happening, one thing was clear. She wasn’t in control of her own emotions. She needed space to think, away from Adrian. Christine clutched her canvas bag to her chest, where the book was hidden. What she needed more than anything was answers.