Chapter 39 - Part 1: Roundtable (Patreon)

The car slowed, and the plain hedges gave way to the unremarkable front of a building I'd already learned wasn't remotely what it seemed.

"We've arrived," Lancelot said, which I could have worked out from the fact that the car had stopped.

Daniel. He'd stayed behind at the house, and I hadn't seen anyone drag him out to a car of his own. Had they left him be, or was there a second Reyes standing on his doorstep right now? No way to know from here. I filed the worry where I kept things I couldn't do anything about yet.

Before I could reach for the handle myself, the door opened from outside.

The driver. I'd caught him only in glimpses through the little divider window on the way over, a shape and a pair of hands and nothing else, silent the whole ride. Up close he had an unremarkable face, the kind built for not being remembered, and he held out a hand toward me the way Lancelot had on the pavement.

I looked at it for a second longer than I needed to.

I could have climbed out on my own, the way I always would have, the way I had for twenty-six years before any of this. Instead I put my hand in his.

It should have felt strange, staged, a costume I was wearing for an audience of exactly one driver who probably didn't care either way. It didn't. Something in the back of my skull simply approved. I stepped out onto the pavement and let the thought go without chasing it further.

Lancelot came around the front of the car, jacket still uncreased despite however long he'd been sitting.

"So," I said. "Now that we're not on the street. Who are you, and why did six agents look like they'd swallowed their own tongues when they saw you?"

He almost smiled. "Respect, mostly."

"That's still not an answer."

"No." He gestured toward the entrance, unhurried. "I can't tell you more until we're inside."

"Of course you can't." I glanced at the doors, then back at him. "Fine. Inside."

I fell into step beside him, and some small, cold part of me turned the whole arrangement over again. Faith had said to go with them, to talk to them, that it was the way to find my body. But what if the version of Faith who'd held onto me wasn't the same as the version of Faith standing wherever she was right now, and what if the whole thing was a staged performance to bring me in quietly.

I shook my head before the thought could finish forming. Faith's arms around me, the tremor in her voice—that hadn't been performance. Nobody fakes that particular kind of relief.

Whatever this building had planned for me, I'd find out standing up rather than in the back of a car wondering.

I walked through the doors with Lancelot, back into a place I'd already walked out of once, and let it swallow me again.

*

The lobby doors sealed behind us with a soft hiss, and I still hadn't been stopped. No badge check, no pat-down, no receptionist glancing twice at the woman who'd walked in glamoured as human beside the man everyone in the street had flinched from. Lancelot pressed the call button, and the lift arrived almost instantly, doors sliding open on an empty steel box.

I stepped in. He followed, and the doors closed.

"Is this private enough?" I asked.

"It is." He didn't look at the panel, didn't press anything. The lift simply began to descend on its own.

"Then explain something to me. Six agents. Cuffs that turned to dust. A field operative who looked like she'd swallowed a hornet the second you showed up." I kept my eyes on him. "Who are you, and why the sudden change in how I'm being treated?"

He considered that longer than the question warranted, the kind of pause that wasn't hesitation so much as deciding how much truth to spend.

"I wasn't lying earlier. I am strong." A faint smile. "There are perhaps a handful of humans stronger than me, and none of them work for this agency. I'm usually the one they call when everything else has already failed."

"So you're some kind of superhero."

"I prefer the word protector." His mouth curved further. "Though to an average human, I imagine it looks much the same."

"Right. Laser eyes? Flight?"

"Among other things."

I stared at him. "You're joking."

The doors opened before he answered, and he only smiled wider, stepping out first. "This way."

I followed him into a corridor that felt nothing like the one I remembered—fewer fluorescent strips, carpet underfoot instead of tile, the kind of quiet that swallowed footsteps rather than announced them.

"Where exactly are we?" I asked. "I've only ever been on one floor here."

"This is where the Agency actually does its paperwork," he said.

"And what am I doing on the paperwork floor?"

"This is also where anything unusual ends up. Cases that don't fit neatly under one branch, or fall across several."

I glanced down the corridor. Two doors, no signage, nobody in sight. "There aren't many people here."

"There isn't much that's unusual enough to need us."

"And I qualify."

"It isn't often a succubus gets summoned without a single binding on her and causes no trouble at all." He said it plainly, like a line from a report. "By every measure available to us, your presence has been a net positive so far."

"So?"

"So headquarters would like to understand what you're planning. What your goal actually is."

I almost laughed. "And why would a succubus bother telling anyone that?"

"You cared enough to walk in here."

"Touché." I fell into step again, working up to the real question. "So why did you bring me in yourself? Why let me walk through that lobby without so much as a—"

We stopped at a plain door before I could finish, and whatever answer he might have given died there.

"We're here," he said, and knocked twice.

A woman's voice answered from the other side, calm and unhurried. "Enter."

Lancelot's hand found the handle.

*

The office was smaller than I'd expected for someone who ran the whole operation. Heavy desk, bookshelves, a tapestry on the far wall that had no business being underground. A laptop sat closed on the desk's surface like an afterthought.

Faith was in one of the low chairs to the side. She gave me a half-lift of her fingers, quick and almost invisible. I nodded once.

The man beside her was already looking at Lancelot.

"Father." He said it the way you'd say good morning—habit, not ceremony. His hair was tied back and his coat had been mended at the collar at least twice.

Lancelot inclined his head. "Galahad."

The woman behind the desk had not looked up from the page she was reading. Raven hair, worn long. When she did look up, her eyes were a shade of violet that caught the overhead light in a way that had nothing to do with contacts.

"So." She set the page flat. "What do we have here?"

"The woman you asked me to bring," Lancelot said. "Is there anything else?"

"You're free to go. Or stay."

He considered the ceiling for a moment, then pulled back to stand against the bookshelf with his arms loose at his sides. "I'll stay."

I looked between the woman and Galahad. Lancelot had said a handful of humans stronger than him. Neither of them wore it visibly, but the woman hadn't asked him to sit down and he hadn't expected her to, and Galahad had the kind of stillness that came from not needing to fill a room.

"Please." The woman gestured at the chair in front of the desk.

I sat. She waited until I was settled before she spoke again.

"I'm Morgana."

I turned it over for exactly one second. "Lily."

"Good." She folded her hands on the desk. "I'll be direct. Whatever you're planning, you're deeply mistaken if you think you can use this agency to advance it."

"I'm not planning anything. I'm looking for someone."

"Someone." She paused. "Or something." Then, without waiting: "Drop the act. Nearly everyone in this room already knows you aren't an ordinary succubus." Her gaze moved briefly toward Faith, and the implication was clear enough.

"What does that mean?"

"Pureblood. Exceptionally pure bloodline, given the report I received from the underground incident." She rested one finger on the closed laptop. "The kind of bloodline that hasn't walked into this office in a very long time."

What would happen if she knew. The thought moved through me and kept going without landing anywhere useful.

"I thought you didn't know what purebloods were," I said.

"Above a certain clearance level, we know quite a lot." She tilted her head. "But you're changing the subject."

"Maybe I don't want to go into my reasons in front of everyone in the room."

Morgana's mouth didn't move for a moment. Then: "Elaborate. And stop pushing your chest forward—it won't work on me. Not even if you're Hell's nobility."

I became aware, then, of how I was sitting. One shoulder dropped, spine curved, body doing the work without any instruction from me. The most natural position available, apparently.

It wasn't worth correcting. Correcting it would have required caring, and I'd run out of that particular resource several weeks ago.

"It's comfortable," I said. "Surely that's not an issue."

Morgana exhaled through her nose. A sigh, controlled down to almost nothing. "Of course it is." She pressed two fingers briefly to the bridge of her nose, then straightened. "So. Why can't you tell me your reasons with the current audience?"

*

"I just don't like airing my personal troubles to everyone I meet," I said. "That's all."

Morgana looked at me. "And you're not simply saying that to try something once we're alone."

"If you were genuinely worried about that, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place."

Morgana's mouth curved. "Fair." She leaned back. "Still, I see no reason this needs to be private. Galahad answers to me directly, he runs his own branch. Lancelot's a special case, but his standing is second only to mine, even if he works alone." She tipped her head toward Faith without looking at her. "And I imagine Agent Clarke already knows some part of what you want to say, given how quiet she's kept about it."

Galahad and Lancelot already knowing probably wouldn't change much either way. But every person who knew was another chance the wrong word reached the wrong ears, and I had two parents who could not learn what I actually was.

Faith shifted in her chair. "Director. If I may."

Morgana gestured with two fingers.

"Lily's reasons are genuine." Faith's hands were flat on her knees. "I'd probably do things differently in her position. But I understand why she made the choices she did."

"Where are you going with that, Clarke?"

"She deserves some benefit of the doubt." Faith's voice stayed even. "She hasn't done anything to hurt this agency. Everything she's been involved in has landed on the positive side of the ledger, including the underground incident."

Galahad turned to look at Faith properly. "You're placing a great deal of trust in a demon." His voice stayed flat. "Enough to keep secrets from this agency. That's not typical of you."

"I have a reason."

"That reason being."

"It isn't charm, if that's what you're suggesting." The line of Faith's jaw went flat. "You checked that yourself. You know I'm not under any influence." She turned her palms up on her knees. "We had an honest conversation. I made her a promise that she'd get to decide who to tell. I kept the promise."

"An honest conversation." Morgana's tone gave nothing away.

"Yes."

"It must have been quite the conversation."

"It was."

Galahad's gold eyes moved back to me. "Or she threatened you. Or—" He stopped, and the sentence stayed unfinished. "She may be the reason the man you've been looking for went missing in the first place."

"No." I cut in before it could go further.

Everyone looked at me.

I sat forward. "Stop. I'm not a threat. I'm not threatening anyone. I'm not the reason anyone went missing, and I didn't charm Faith." I looked at Morgana directly. "Are you willing to speak with me without additional audience or did I waste my time coming down here?"

Nobody spoke. The fluorescent light above us buzzed once, low.

"Fine," Morgana said. "We'll speak. I'll decide what I make of it after."

"Thank you."

She straightened and looked past me at the two men near the bookshelf. "Gentlemen. If you'd wait outside."

Lancelot's expression didn't change. "You're certain."

"I've faced considerably worse than one pureblood in a small room." She reached over and opened the laptop. "I'll call if I need you."

He looked at her, then turned. "Galahad. Let's wait outside."

Galahad held his coat closed with one hand and moved for the door without argument. Lancelot followed. The door clicked shut behind them, and the already-quiet floor went quieter.

The fluorescent hum from somewhere above the drop ceiling was the only sound. Morgana had her hands laced on the desk. Faith sat with her back straight and her hands still in her lap, her eyes on me.

Three of us in the room.