“We haven’t decided yet,” Julia said.
“Maybe I can make you a better offer,” Ariel said.
“Isn’t your boss the one to make the offer?” I said. “I already turned him down. There is no bloody way I will ever work for him.”
“You don’t have to,” Ariel said. “The offer comes from me.”
“What are you talking about? Where’s Collins?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard? Laird Collins is on an indefinite leave of absence from Interzone. Has been for over a month.”
“Where is he now?” Julia asked.
“In the loony bin,” Ariel said. “And it wasn’t completely voluntary.”
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“Turns out he never really got over those magic mushrooms all those months ago. He was getting more and more erratic, talking about seeing gods and trying to see them again.”
Marcie and Julia both looked at me.
“I thought he would have recovered eventually,” I said, a bit too defensively.
“Dude,” Marcie said. “Some people never get over a bad trip. It can totally change their personality or create serious mental health issues.”
“Mr. Collins was becoming increasingly unfit to lead the company,” Ariel said with some relish. “He couldn’t make any rational decisions on contracts, which was hurting the company’s bottom line. He was saying some wacky things in board meetings, which got them worried. The last straw was when he was arrested running around his neighborhood naked calling for God and the gods to talk to him like before. His wife got him committed on a fifty-one-fifty, which is the rule for someone who might be a danger to other people or themselves. The board voted to remove him from the CEO position of Interzone.”
“I suppose I should be sorry to hear that,” I said.
I was not.
“You really did a number on him, Ravi,” Ariel said.
“Me? I’d been trying to talk him out of that stuff. I was trying to stop him from going off the deep end at the mansion.”
“Babe, your very existence did it for him,” Ariel said. “He was convinced you held the secrets of the gods, and he wanted that, too. He kept trying to headhunt you because he wanted to have a shaman working for Interzone. When he got doused that weekend for the first time, he experienced what it must be like for you, talking to the gods all the time. Turns out not everyone’s cut out to talk to the gods. It scared the shit out of him in a way that insurgents and suicide bombers never did. He blamed himself for being weak when he got to talk to the gods and wimped out, and he wanted a do-over. He was trying to figure out how you didn’t go crazy from having the gods around you all the time.”
“Did it ever occur to him that I was just insane?” I said.
“Are you kidding me? Babe, you’re usually the sanest dude in the room. You have the entire Hindu pantheon hanging around you and you can just act like they’re a bunch of annoying tourists hanging around in the background. Poor ol’ Laird wanted that for himself, and that led to his downfall. When they arrested him, he tested positive for enough psychoactive drugs to fill a pharmacy. He was formally and officially diagnosed as psychotic and schizophrenic. Ergo, indefinite medical leave.”
There was so much glee in Ariel’s voice as she told us all that. Should I have felt happy? Relieved that a menace had been removed from society? There were plenty more people out there in the same line of business as Collins who were just as bad, if not worse. No, I felt no joy at this, only a nagging feeling that things weren’t about to get any easier for me.
“So where does that leave you?” I asked.
“Me? You’re looking at the new head of Interzone,” Ariel said.
What the fuck?! What the actual fuck?!
“I’m wearing fancy dress suits now instead of khakis and camo.”
I was screaming inside, but outwardly I was still calm. Barely. Once again, Ariel had snuck up on me when I least expected it.
“How did you manage that?” Julia asked, since my vocal cords had frozen.
“Well,” Ariel said, “I do have a law degree, you know. On top of combat experience, I knew how to navigate the legal paperwork and political negotiations that Interzone had to deal with for our contracts. I’ve been working with our attorneys to keep the company going since Laird went whack-a-doo. Add that to the fact that the men in the field trust me, it wasn’t hard to put my case to the board. My track record spoke for itself, including my title as liaison with other private contractors like Golden Sentinels, where we ran a whole bunch of successful operations together that earned the company a bundle. All that was thanks to me knowing you and us working together, Ravi. I totally owe my promotion to you.”
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
“That’s why the board voted me in,” Ariel said. “We’re going through a rebranding right now. Don’t want people to remember us as the company where Laird Collins lost his marbles, so from here on, we’ll be called Luminous.”
“That’s just bloody marvelous,” I said.
“I know, right? Kali loves it.”
“Congratulations,” Julia said.
“Thanks. You wouldn’t believe the other candidates Jarrod and I had to murder to bag me the top dog spot.”
“I hope you’re kidding,” I said.
“You two kids have been a positive influence in my life,” Ariel said. “It was Kali who brought us together, all the way back to the first time I met you on that plane from New York. It was like everything clicked for me right there.”
“Considering you say Kali talks to you,” I said, “how does this make you different from Laird Collins? Or me, for that matter?”
Ariel chuckled.
“For one thing, I don’t believe in fulfilling God’s mission to bring forth the Rapture, which is a huge relief for the board. I don’t believe we’re heading towards Apocalypse. I believe in continuity. Life goes on, and we just do our bit in that equation. And unlike you, I don’t have any angst about being in touch with the goddess of death and rebirth. She’s totally my jam.”
On the beach, Rudra laughed, patted his stomach, and bellowed his fearful roar of righteous fury. Kali laughed and took a photo of him on her phone. I think I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown at that point, but I still held Marcie’s phone in my hand. Julia’s hand tightened on my shoulder to steady me.
“Sounds like you’re going to be busy, what with so much work coming in,” I said. “I guess we won’t be seeing much of you from now on.”
“Are you kidding, babe?” Ariel laughed. “I’m in a position to offer you and Julia a job.”
I tried desperately not to wince.
“I’m not sure about having you as a boss,” I said, croaking a bit.
“If you really are quitting Golden Sentinels, you can come work for me. Unlike Collins, I’m not going to convince you that there’s any grand cosmic plan. I don’t believe in any prophecies or the Second Coming. I’m not working to bring all that down.”
“You just like the chaos,” I said.
“You get me, Ravi. We’re the same. We’re both Kali’s children. Destroyers of worlds. We bring the chaos. And now I get to pick where. So how about it? I promise all the chaos you can ever ask for, millions of dollars to be made, and we can have threesomes anytime we want. Or twosomes. Whichever you guys feel like. It’ll be our own private Idaho here.”
“Is that what you’ve been after all along?” I asked. “A space of your own aside from the war and mayhem you wage?”
“It’s not separate, Ravi. It’s part of the chaos. That’s how I roll.”
“It’s not how I roll,” I said.
“Oh, please. You’re the master of making chaos. You just don’t like to admit it. The gods just wind you up and off you go. It’s your default mode. You can deny it all you want, but you are beyond natural at it. You can cause total fucking mayhem with just one word or gesture. We’ve all seen you do it, and you don’t have any malice or evil i
ntent as you do it. You’re spinning the wheels of death and rebirth, burning away lies and crap like Kali’s right hand. You do that from micro to macro. That’s your function in the universe, babe. Get used to it.”
“If that’s true, then I should do nothing at all,” I said. “Just retire someplace quiet where I do no harm.”
“That’s not gonna happen and you know it, Ravi,” Ariel said. “Eventually you’ll get bored and you’ll do something, and the ripple effects take care of themselves. You might as well go where you’re needed most.”
“You’re right,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. That’s why I won’t work for your company, whether it’s called Interzone or Luminous or War Crimes ‘R’ Us or whatever the hell you call it. I don’t do security or combat. I’m an investigator. I look for answers.”
“I figured you’d say that,” Ariel said. “That’s why we’re going to be part of each other’s lives for a long time.”
“I imagine you’re going to be busy behind a desk now that you’re the head suit of the company,” I said, hoping this might be true.
“Maybe,” Ariel said. “But if I get bored, I can just put on the camo and go out in the field with Jarrod and the boys to shoot some fools in the head.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Anyway, I just wanted to check in, say hi. Marcie figured your vacation was gonna be over soon, so I just wanted you to know I’m here and it’s a whole new world.”
“The more things change, the more things stay fucked, eh?” I said.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Ariel chuckled.
“You’re forgetting something about destroying and death,” I said. “Kali is also about rebirth. Something new always has to come out of the mess you and I make. That’s the other half of the equation that Kali represents.”
“Yeah, but somebody’s gotta be the one that breaks the eggs first, babe.”
“Ariel, I want to be perfectly clear. I am not going to work for you. It’s bad enough worrying about what kind of shit you’re going to wreck. It would be even worse to be taking orders from you.”
“Yeah, yeah. You protest too much. I’ll be waiting. Oh, and your Cheryl might want to rename the agency, too. Rebranding is everything in a fresh start. Later, babe.”
She hung up.
So that was it. Marcie’s play. If Julia and I ever wanted to stay safe from Ariel and what she might drop us into, we were better off staying at Golden Sentinels under her and Cheryl’s protection. It was bad enough before when Laird Collins wanted me for my soul. Now Ariel wanted me for my body as well. Marcie must have sussed this out all along. She didn’t have to plot anything, merely let events unfold. I began to realize that underneath her cheerful PR agent façade, she took an insidiously Zen approach to tradecraft.
“You know you don’t have to blackmail me into staying, right?” I said.
“That’s just how all the chips landed,” Marcie said. “I’m not going to force you to stay. Cheryl would be happy to have you since you two are good investigators. She won’t force you either.”
“Well,” Julia said. “I think we’ve been on holiday long enough. I was starting to get bored anyway.”
“Julia—” I said.
“You said it yourself, Ravi,” she said. “What else is there for us to do? Go back to London and apply to work at the local bookshop?”
I glanced at the gods. They all gave me the thumbs-up. Even Louise winked at me.
“I think we should get some things clear.” Julia turned to Marcie.
“Totally,” Marcie said.
“As I see it,” Julia said, “it’s in your best interests to keep Ravi and me close and safe. We know far too much. And you need us as your off-the-books backup.”
“I’m betting there’s more you’re about to ask for,” Marcie said, her smile not wavering.
“Just one,” I said. “Don’t get us killed.”
“Dude, I’m not going to send you into a situation like Vanessa van Hooten. You need to be used properly. Lookit, you managed to fuck up both the US and British governments without even getting near them. That’s major chaos. You’re a nuke. It means I keep you away from anything that causes you to blow up. I know that now.”
I saw Louise standing over Julia, resplendent in a Versace one-piece swimsuit and sunglasses, her hair fabulous, backing up her younger sister. Every now and then, she glanced at Julia and smiled, beaming with sisterly pride. She looked over at me and winked.
“All right,” Julia said. “We’re not blackmailing you, just asking for assurances. Not from the Company, but from you. As a colleague and a friend. That you’re not going to sell us down the river. We keep working, because it’s what we do, and thanks to your training, we’re bloody good at it. That includes not selling us out to the likes of Ariel at Interzone or any other entity that might pop up.”
“You’re my peeps,” Marcie said. “I keep my peeps safe.”
“Until you decide we’re not your ‘peeps’ anymore,” I said.
“Because if Golden Sentinels comes a cropper again,” Julia said, “we go down and you go down with the rest of us.”
“And don’t I know it,” Marcie said, sipping her margarita. “But hey, the firm is Cheryl’s now. That’s a safer pair of hands than Roger’s ever were.”
“We do make a good team,” I said. “And I’m sure Cheryl has her insurance policies squared away even better than Roger ever did.”
“I looked,” Marcie said. “I don’t know where she keeps them or what they are, and we know she’s scarier than Roger. She trusts me even less than he did. Cheryl will never sell you guys out.”
“So we’re joined at the hip, then,” Julia said.
I raised my glass.
“To Occam’s razor,” I said.
“To Occam’s razor,” Julia and Marcie said as we clinked our glasses together.
The formalities over, we sat and watched the sea. I watched the gods dance as they waited for what came next.
And that, dear reader, is my tale for the time being. Do you see why Julia and I needed to keep a record of everything now? If you’re reading this, it means something might have happened that caused us to release it so that everyone would know. I hope we’re still around. I hope I’m still working. And if I am, Julia and I will probably keep writing it all down.
The gods are watching. They’re raising a glass to us and to you. We’re riding on the wheel of karma that just spins and spins, and we continue to do what we do because that is all we are. And I have a feeling Julia and I might be filling up even more journals and hiding them away for insurance.
Wish us luck. I shudder to think what might lead to you discovering and reading all this.
But for now, we’re going to sit here, drink our margaritas, watch the gods frolicking on the beach, and contemplate the forever-blue sky.
And wherever Julia wants to go, I will follow her fugitive heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the friends who provided advice, sounding boards, lessons and discussions, the same friends who kept me going through the entire trilogy:
To Michael Wilson and Minh-Hang Nguyen, whose lessons continue to inform the world of Ravi.
To Roz Kaveney, who grappled with her own writing issues as I did at the same time, across oceans.
To Richard Markstein, who kept me fed both mentally and literally.
To Alan Moore and our chats about gods and stories.
To Avra Scher, who kept me honest and whose suggestions always made things better.
More from this Series
Her Nightly Embrace
Book 1
Her Beautiful Monster
Book 2
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adi Tantimedh has a BA in English literature from Bennington College and an MFA in film and television production from New York University. He is of Chinese-Thai descent and came of age in Singapore and London. He has written radio plays and television script
s for the BBC and screenplays for various Hollywood companies as well as the graphic novels JLA: Age of Wonder for DC Comics and La Muse for Big Head Press, and a weekly column about pop culture for BleedingCool.com. He wrote Zinky Boys Go Underground, the first post–Cold War Russian gangster thriller, which won the BAFTA for Best Short Film. He is the author of the previous Ravi PI books, Her Beautiful Monster and Her Nightly Embrace.
RaviPIseries.com
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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Adi-Tantimedh
Facebook.com/AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks
ALSO IN THE RAVI PI SERIES
Her Nightly Embrace
Her Beautiful Monster
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Adisakdi Tantimedh
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