Her Beautiful Monster

by Adi Tantimedh

  “But what does it really mean?” I asked. “Am I being groomed to be some kind of shaman? That’s untenable in this day and age, and the job I’m in. I’m not doing any kind of great work. You said it yourself. It’s a seedy world I’m in.”

  “Perhaps that’s where the gods are needed most,” Dad said. “Not as a means to gain more converts, but as a way to remain relevant, to become part of the fabric of people’s lives, and your clients are not ordinary. The gods must be in on whatever progress you’re making in the world. You are their conduit, their instrument for whatever plans they have.”

  “And what do you think I should do?”

  “Have they started telling you to do terrible things?”

  “No. They even saved my life.”

  “Then keep listening to them.”

  “This still feels outside the realm of rationality.”

  “We have to allow for some mystery, Ravi,” Dad said. “We are often the biggest mysteries to ourselves. You have an added layer.”

  “I’m so glad happiness and peace of mind don’t come into it,” I said. “Even if that’s what we really crave.”

  “Is it, though? Dad asked, raising an eyebrow. “We get bored when things become too peaceful. You’ve always been like that, and lately I’ve rediscovered that about myself.”

  “Bloody hell, Dad. Everything’s different now. We could never have had this conversation a year ago.”

  “You and I were very different a year ago.”

  “If the gods start exerting their influence, things might change even more,” I said, shuddering.

  “Perhaps they always did and you’re only now noticing,” Dad said. “Onwards and upwards.”

  Was that a wistful smile on his face?

  I’d never seen that on my father before.

  Things really were changing.

  “Do you feel reassured now?” Julia asked as we drove home from my parents’ house.

  “I suppose I should,” I said. “But I see the other edge of the sword. Yes, the gods look out for me just as I look out for them. It would be easy to just go for that, I could feel loved and cared for, but we both know all that also ties me to the firm even tighter. Roger’s a silver-tongued Machiavellian and we’re his gang, just as Interzone is Laird Collins’s gang. The two of them are after power in the long run, and they’ll use the rest of us to get it. I wouldn’t put it past them to sell us out if they had to.”

  “Are you scared, then?”

  “I’m always fucking terrified,” I said. “I don’t know how you’re not, or you’re really good at putting up a brave face.”

  “I should be afraid,” Julia said. “But I’m not. I’m not as blithe about everything as Ariel is . . .”

  “That’s because she’s even more damaged than you are. She’s empty. And she’s trying to fill that void with spirituality. She can understand it intellectually, but I don’t think she can feel it. It intrigues her because it’s mysterious and unfathomable, which is a contrast to her job as a mercenary. That part is all strategy and violence, which are not mysterious, and she gets bored with it once she has it down. Spirituality won’t get boring for her because its mystery is endless.”

  “And she’s very good at it.”

  “Which makes her monstrous. She likes us because she’s not bored with us.”

  “It’s you she likes, Ravi. You represent the mysteries of spirituality, and no one can predict what kind of chaos you’re going to introduce to any situation. That’s why she won’t kill us anytime soon. Even Laird Collins will keep you around because he wants to crack the mysteries he thinks you’re privy to.”

  “What he wants is access to the gods.”

  “I think his belief in his God might not be as strong as he claims,” she said.

  “Let’s not forget Interzone are monsters,” I said. “And Collins is the biggest monster of them all, because he’s genuinely mad.”

  “Do you really think he’s going to bring about the end of the world?” Julia asked.

  “He’s going to make a bloody good go at it. Rumor has it he has the President’s ear. At least Roger doesn’t want to bring about Armageddon. He just wants to make a shitload of money and get power.”

  “So we stick with Roger, then.”

  “Until we see a way out.”

  “Ravi, have you thought about getting married?”

  “Quite a bit, actually. But do you really want to get tied to my family, to all that dysfunctional lunacy?”

  Julia laughed.

  “It’s a tea party compared to what Louise and I had to live through.”

  “But we’ll have to have an Indian wedding. You were at Sanji’s.”

  “How do you know I don’t fancy some of that?” She smiled.

  “Yeah, but who do you think will have to pay for it?” I said. “Dad and Mum will insist, but they don’t have the twenty grand or more it’ll take, which means I’ll have to slip them the money to make it look like they paid for it.”

  “Ravi, are you using that as an excuse to avoid marriage?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then we leave out the big fuck-off ceremony at first, none of the pomp and circumstance,” Julia suggested.

  “If you want to get married, we can just sneak off to a registry one day. Maybe during lunch break from work. We can ask Benjamin or Olivia or Ken and Clive to be our witnesses.”

  “Oh, Ravi! Are you serious?”

  “It’ll be our secret. That would be typical, wouldn’t it? Keeping secrets is part of both our lives and our work now. Then we’ll have to decide when to tell our parents. They won’t be best pleased that we basically eloped.”

  “Shall we do that and not tell them for a year? All right. Six months?” Julia mused, mischief in her voice.

  I pulled the car over and turned to her.

  “So you’re saying yes?”

  She laughed and kissed me, first with happy pecks, then a slow, deep kiss.

  I sensed someone smiling. A third party. I didn’t need to look. It was Louise. Happy for her sister at last. Her presence was fleeting, just long enough to be noticed, then gradually faded with a kind of sigh that felt like grace.

  “So then we save up enough money to pay for an Indian ceremony?” I said. “Then we tell our parents?”

  “You’ve already planned this out,” Julia said. “Why aren’t I surprised?”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “The gods are silent. They’re not here tonight. I don’t see them or sense them.”

  “That’s because you’re happy, Ravi.”

  “I’m happy with you.”

  Of course, this was a break. Even gods needed to go off and chill. They would be back, of course, the moment Roger handed me the next case, the next spot of bother, the next boiling cauldron of utter fucking mayhem.

  But for tonight, I was happy to be left alone with Julia, a full moon overlooking the Thames and pretending everything was right in the world.

  We got out of the car and danced and laughed and howled at the moon.

  “Reader, I married him!” Julia declared to the sky. She was still a literature student, after all.

  “Are we in the right type of story for that, love?” I asked.

  “Hush, Ravi! Just lift me up and spin me around!”

  I did.

  “My beautiful monster.” She laughed and kissed me.

  That was good enough for us.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As ever, there are friends who kept me on the right path as I wrote this second book.

  Years of conversations with Michael Wilson and Minh-Hang Nguyen continue to inform the world and the background of Ravi and his colleagues.

  Alan Moore’s presence continues to be felt. His thoughts on magic, gods and reality, and Britain, as well as his encouragement, fueled me to treat the story as a living, breathing thing.

  Richard Markstein has kept me fed with both literal food and
mind food as we looked back at the UK and shook our heads in bemusement together.

  Roz Kaveney for being a sounding board for the most outlandish ideas as we each wrote our novels.

  Leopoldo Gout for constantly reminding me that things should be crazy.

  And Avra Scher for challenging the things I took for granted and keeping me honest with my choices.

  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 scripts for the BBC and screenplays for various Hollywood companies, as well as graphic novels for DC Comics and 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 in 1995. Adi is the author of the first Ravi PI novel, Her Nightly Embrace.

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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 © 2017 by Adi Tantimedh

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  First Leopoldo & Co/Atria hardcover edition December 2017

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  Jacket design by Gregg Kulick

  Jacket photographs © Chad Griffith (Ravi); © Indiapictures/Getty Images (Hindu gods); © Scott Baldock/Getty Images (Big Ben)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tantimedh, Adi, author.

  Title: Her beautiful monster / by Adi Tantimedh.

  Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Leopoldo & Co/Atria, 2017. | Series: Ravi, PI; book 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017023775 (print) | LCCN 2017019224 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781501130625 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501130601 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501130618

  (paperback) | ISBN 9781501130625 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Private investigators—Fiction. | London (England)—Fiction.

  | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Media

  Tie-In. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3620.A6955 (print) | LCC PS3620.A6955 H46 2017 (ebook)

  | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019224

  ISBN 978-1-5011-3060-1

  ISBN 978-1-5011-3062-5 (ebook)