Nothing Gained: West Hills Season Three: West Hills, #3

By R. T. W. Lipkin

After you burn your bridges, who are you?

If you're Jillean, you must search for the parents you never knew.

If you're Xan, you must rediscover the self you've lost along the way.

If you're Verna, you must stay loyal, despite your confusion and doubts.

If you're Simeon, you must find your power and reinvent yourself.

If you're Bettis, you must set things right, even if it seems impossible.

But the rush flu is rearing its ugly head again. War is on the horizon.

And, despite all your efforts, nothing can be gained.

Read the third book of this exciting new dystopic series right now!

Nothing Gained is the third season in the West Hills saga. Up next is Nothing Lost, the fourth and final season.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. T. W. Lipkin
• Release date: Jan 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393581406

Book preview

Chapter 1

She’d lived alone too long, Ysmay thought, and now she was hearing things.

If what she’d heard were the angry recriminations of everyone who’d been kept in their restricted place with the gurus’ complicity, she would’ve understood. She’d been responsible for that part of the post-Collapse structure. She’d been the first guru.

But she’d given that up long ago, and for years had fought with herself over what she’d created, over her part in the takeover that Exalted Prince Harold and George and she had engineered and implemented. Back then it’d seemed almost like a game, like a very involving, very intricate, wonderfully stimulating, exhilarating game.

Sometimes it seemed like a necessary game, like this was what the world required, especially in the wake of the first rush flu pandemic. The basic necessities were order, structure, direction, and a definite focus, one that would benefit everyone. Or so she’d told herself.

But Ysmay had never given a thought to everyone who’d be affected, to anyone who’d be affected, which was everyone on the planet—and perhaps even beyond—if she’d permitted herself to think that far. Instead her thoughts, her plans, and her ideas had been about what to do next, what would be interesting, how things might work, how things should work. What was the next great idea.

Even though she herself didn’t live like the rated—or unrated—entities under the corporate dominion, she’d convinced herself that the system was for everyone’s good, that it benefited the entire world, and that it was necessary.

But after George died, after life slowed too far down, she saw how wrong she’d been. Instead of the impersonal systems she’d been responsible for instituting, everyone should have the experience of creative freedom and of the deep love that she and George shared and that she continued to share with him even though he was dead.

Yet the corporate culture didn’t just discourage freedom and love, it prevented them. How had she not seen this when they were all in the thick of it? When she and George were together, loving each other, while the entities they ruled over were forced into their assignments, having to carry out their corporate roles just to stay alive.

And now so much had changed since Trial Day. So much.

Isn’t anybody in this goddamned mausoleum? said the voice that Ysmay was imagining.

Funny that the voice she imagined used that term—mausoleum—because she herself thought she was living in a sanctuary and that the rest of the world was one huge crypt, a crypt she had no desire to get anywhere near, even if it meant rarely seeing her son, Xan, or her grandson, Daniel, or her extraordinary great-grandson, Davis.

The sound of footsteps now gave extra solidity to her imaginings. She was quite a good imaginer, so it didn’t surprise her. Sorceress. Wasn’t that what her long-dead father-in-law, the cruel Lord Terrance, had called her?

I was told you’d be here! said the voice, demanding now and maybe a bit angry.

Oh, I’m here, said Ysmay.

She’d play along. After all, this was her invention. Maybe this was how she was going to entertain herself in this part of her life—talking with images she summoned up. She’d been talking to George for years since his death although he’d never appeared or made any sounds.

But maybe this was George, she thought. Maybe she’d finally broken through to the other side or he’d come back and was here to be with her.

Ysmay got up from the huge elegant sofa where she’d been sitting. The remains of breakfast were still on the tray on the table in front of her. Lately that had been the only meal she’d eat all day, and some days she’d skip even that.

There you are, said the voice of the still-unseen man as Ysmay walked toward the front door of her house.

Yes, she said. Be patient.

Ysmay herself was very patient, but that was only because she had nothing to wait for. Everything had already happened and she knew most of what would still happen. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered to live, yet she did, and she’d been rewarded with meeting Davis, with talking with Daniel. With seeing Sky’s birth.

With helping Garrick. Although . . .

Ysmay pushed her cascade of glistening white hair off her shoulder and stepped onto the cool, slick tile floor in the foyer. A shiver shot up through her body as her feet absorbed the transition from the frayed antique carpets and warm wood floor of the living room, where she’d been.

Ysmay Devin? the man said.

Yes, she said, surprised that anyone knew her last name, which she never used.

Ned Ransom, the man said.

As Ysmay looked at the ruined, disheveled man standing on the threshold, she touched her hair in a way she hadn’t done since George had died.

Ned had platinum eyes and he was tall and well proportioned. Perhaps he could be good-looking underneath the several-days’ growth of gray beard and streak of something dark across his broad brow, but he was a wreck, his clothes in shredding tatters, worn-through moccasins on his feet, and his posture steady yet not quite upright.

Surely she could’ve imagined someone more well-groomed, someone with a better presentation, she thought. Yet the energies entwining themselves in her bloodstream and rushing in a hundred directions throughout her disagreed. To them, this man was perfect.

To them, she was already so deeply in love that there was no need for decision or choice.

The decisions and choices were already made.

Chapter 2

As she did every day, Verna prepared Garrick’s breakfast. The same breakfast he’d always liked, the one that she was sure he’d still like. Scorched rice, thin-sliced smoked fish, two pieces of fresh fruit, aromatic tea. Today’s tea was jasmine. Even Verna, who didn’t care for tea, enjoyed the aroma.

She carried the black lacquer tray out to the terrace.

They’d been staying at the house by the canal, the one across the road from High Prince Daniel’s ancestor’s house, for over a year now but it never quite felt like home to Verna. The Dunning building was still Verna’s home, and she’d go back there sometimes even when there wasn’t a ceremony or a service. She just liked to sit in the shrine room and go over her memories.

Were her memories superior to her realities? she wondered. Maybe, she thought. Maybe. In her memories, Garrick Simeon, the most magnificent, most outstanding, most brilliant, most unbearably beautiful human being ever to exist, was still his vital, active, ambitious, sexual self.

Sometimes her memories were of the time before she met him. The anticipation then was exquisite and easy to summon up into her consciousness. She’d always known she’d meet Simeon, although she’d never dreamed of or could have guessed the extent of their eventual relationship. Of their connection. Of their love.

Back then she’d just been Verna, the Dunning undersecretary, going to her assignment, doing her duty, reciting the corporate liturgy at meetingtime once a week—her favorite part was I bow to the corporate unity that sustains us—taking care of the business of the Dunning corporation when she was home.

But after Trial Day, everything was different. She and Catrina and Fred had immediately understood that the fate of the world, maybe of the entire universe, maybe of the entirety of all the universes, depended on Garrick Simeon. There was simply no one else who could match his brains, his ability, his energy, his focus, his determination, his power.

She and Catrina had thrown out their useless gvidi, Ray, who could never hope to understand the greater truths, and they’d worked ever harder on the shrine. Even so, the shrine back then was but a poor thing, yet she and Catrina and Fred had prayed at it and had worshipped their savior, Garrick Simeon, every day. Often several times a day.

After Trial Day everything fell apart almost instantly, the corporate structure disintegrating into complete disarray, ministers, gurus, and high princes escaping into hiding or offing themselves in despair.

Then, only two weeks after the trial, Fred was killed in the stampede at headquarters. One of many victims of the stampede.

Verna preferred not to think about that. She hadn’t seen Fred’s body afterward and was glad she hadn’t. In her mind she pictured a sack of clothing—Fred’s containment uniform, which was what he’d been wearing that day—with a mashed-to-a-pulp Fred oozing out of the clothing’s various holes and slits, bits of bone and blood and sinew sticking to his clothes and to each other.

And Fred’s face gone, as Verna’s now was.

Since the accident. The accident that had been the luckiest, the most astounding, most glorious, most beautiful, wonderful, miraculous day of Verna’s life. Yet each day after the accident was even more beautiful, more miraculous.

Because Garrick Simeon, Our Savior, had not just saved Verna, had not just taken care of Verna, had not just gotten the best care for her, had not just stayed at the hospital with her to make sure she was better. And had not just hired her to work for him—she would have done anything at all for him and told him so.

But all of that paled after Garrick had declared his love for her. It couldn’t be true, yet it was true.

Verna liked being here at the house by the canal because here she didn’t have to pretend. Didn’t have to be in the wheelchair. No one came here who didn’t know that Verna had been able to walk for a long time now, and she didn’t have to hide anything.

Garrick, though . . .

But it didn’t matter. His followers, led by Verna, were a determined group. A loyal group. A devoted group.

Besides Verna herself, whose loyalty and devotion to Garrick Simeon were near legendary now, Catrina and Declan were the most devoted of Simeon’s followers.

Verna had been somewhat surprised by Declan’s response after Garrick had contracted the rush flu when they’d been at Ysmay’s. She’d never thought Declan was particularly interested in her glorious, magnificent god Garrick Simeon and had thought Declan was with Simeon only because he was too weak to figure out anything else to do.

But Declan hadn’t run away when Garrick had fallen ill. He’d stood by him and had been instrumental in helping set up the cult whose members were now expanding every day.

Even Deidre, who Verna had had doubts about, had turned out to be a loyal, steadfast, true supporter. Deidre had come through when it mattered and continued to come through, every day, all the time. Unfailingly. Brilliantly at times.

Things were changing. No one in the corridor wanted to put up with Bettis any longer. Everything he did seemed to take forever, and hatred for the former chief guru was starting to build again. Just as Verna had planned.

Just as Garrick himself would want.

If only he’d wake up.

Verna went out onto the terrace and put the tray down on the glass-topped table that was a permanent fixture by Simeon’s chair. Also permanent was the frozen grimace on the face of the most gorgeous man who ever lived. Yet even with that stiff expression he was still radiantly beautiful.

He was still her savior, her Garrick. Even if he never woke up. Even if he never spoke again. Even if he never recovered—although he would wake up, he would speak, he would recover. But even if he didn’t, she would stay with him always.

She rearranged the breakfast items on the tray, thinking it might stimulate something inside the destroyed shell of Garrick Simeon. But he just sat there as he always did, seeming to stare at something in the far-distant horizon, the same expression forever on his beautiful face.

Verna checked his arm, checked the drip on the IV, injected his morning medications into the bag, and then sat down next to him.

As she did every morning, she would talk to him, tell him everything that was happening. Love him. Wait for him to become himself again.

Chapter 3

Dad! Davis said. He was running full bore down a row in the cornfield, a cornfield that the Outposters, as they’d started calling themselves after the move, had planted and nurtured. It was nearly time for the harvest.

Whoa! Wait! Slow down! Daniel said as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was too hot out for this time of year.

Davis didn’t slow down. He ran straight into Daniel’s arms, and even though Davis was now much taller and heavier than he’d been even last week, maybe even than yesterday, Daniel picked him up and spun him around a few times.

More! Davis said, and Daniel obliged.

He’d do anything for Davis and for Louise. His treasures.

Daniel had had supposed treasures all his life. As the son and legitimate heir of High Prince Alvaro, he’d inherited a titled position and vast amounts of property and possessions—property and possessions he hadn’t seen or touched since Trial Day—but none of those things had given him anywhere near the pleasure and fulfillment that merely talking to Davis about anything, even the most trivial, least important, thing, did.

Or that holding Louise’s hand did. Or that being here with his Outposter friends did.

I have a new project! Davis said.

Show me, Daniel said.

Davis’s projects were always fascinating and innovative, beautiful and useful. And Davis had a way of getting everyone to help him realize his dreams. Daniel was sure this one would be no different.

Davis jumped down out of Daniel’s arms, grabbed his hand, and pulled him along a row in the cornfield.

Something with the corn? Daniel said.

Wait, Davis said. You’ll see.

Davis led Daniel through the cornfield and over to the settlement, which was perpetually under construction. Daniel, Davis, and Louise were still living in a tent, but Leo, Addyson, and Sky now had a cabin, not unlike the cabin Leo had had on the outskirts of West Hills.

Even though Leo and Addyson had protested, all the Outposters had insisted that they have the first house because they had a baby and the cold weather would soon arrive. As for Daniel, he’d be happy to spend the rest of his life, even if it were a thousand years long, in the tent with Louise and Davis. It was their home. More of a home than anywhere else he’d ever lived.

Wait here, Davis said, holding up his hand to stop Daniel’s progress and leaving him standing outside the tent as Davis ducked under the flap, going inside.

Daniel wouldn’t’ve been surprised if Davis emerged holding the model of a spaceship—one that would actually work when it was built in full scale. Davis was easily the most innovative, creative person Daniel had ever encountered.

L-l-l-ookkkkk! Davis said as he emerged. His stammer would disappear sometimes now, since they’d relocated, but it would reemerge unpredictably. Daniel didn’t care—no one who knew Davis cared—but he worried that Davis did care.

Davis was holding something so unusual-looking that Daniel wasn’t sure what it was.

Some kind of spinning toy? Daniel said as Davis handed him the model and he turned it over in his hands.

It’s a windmill! Davis said. We’re going to b-b-b-uildd itttt!

Let’s get started, Daniel said. If he didn’t say it, Davis certainly would. When Davis had a plan, he got to work immediately.

This . . . th-th-thisss is just the f-f-irstt one, Davis said.

Of course, Daniel said.

Davis would never do anything in half measures. If he’d designed one windmill, it meant that he expected to build enough of them to power the entire settlement.

Hey, what’s this? said Emile, who was striding by on his way out into the fields. He stopped to look at the model that Daniel was holding.

Windmill! Davis said. We’re g-g-going to build-ddd them.

Daniel handed Emile the model and, not for the first time in the last few weeks, marveled at how much the ex-guru had changed since they’d moved. For one thing, he no longer projected that excruciating discomfort when looking right at you, a discomfort he’d been unable to disguise in the past, even after he’d loosened up and started working with everyone at the old outpost.

For another thing, Emile’s tall frame had filled out, and he was no longer the reedy, ascetic guru he’d seemingly always been. Now he was a muscular worker, a sturdy, solid presence. A man, Daniel thought, and not a corporate lackey, not a manipulative, above-it-all guru.

Daniel started laughing.

What’s so funny? Emile said.

Oh hell, Daniel said. I was just thinking that you’ve changed so much.

I have, at that, Emile said. Davis, this windmill is amazing. How many do you suppose we’ll need to power the settlement?

Seventeen, Davis said without hesitation.

We’d better start today, Emile said.

Davis nodded, and Emile handed him back the model.

And I was thinking you used to be an above-it-all guru, Daniel said, and broke out into gales of laughter.

"Well, it’s not that funny, Emile said. Although it is true."

Wait, Daniel said, trying to contain himself. Wait. But he couldn’t stop laughing, and Emile patted Davis on the back and went on his way, out toward the fields.

Have to t-t-t-talk to Xan, Davis said.

You understand, don’t you, Davis? Daniel said.

Davis shook his head.

It’s because I used to be an above-it-all high prince, Daniel said. Above even the highfalutin gurus. He started laughing again, then stopped. How utterly ridiculous.

Dad, Davis said, you’re n-n-not l-l-l-like that anyyyy more.

Daniel, still laughing at himself, reached down, grabbed Davis’s hand, and said, Let’s go find Xan. These windmills aren’t going to build themselves.

Chapter 4

Jillean couldn’t stand being away from Bettis, but it was impossible for him to leave his duties in West Hills and stay with her in Farmdale while she was doing her research. And there was no way she was going to stop her research until she found what she was looking for: her parents.

Yet now, at night, away from the records archives, Jillean was so lonely that she didn’t recognize herself, the self she’d become the moment that Bettis had found her out in the forest by his summerhouse that night over a year ago. The night he’d said they were going to set the world on fire.

He’d set her on fire, she thought as she moved onto her side, then onto her back.

Bettis had told Jillean to stay at the Heights, the most exclusive hotel in Farmdale, but she hadn’t wanted to be so conspicuous, calling attention to herself while she was there. She wanted to do her research in as much privacy as possible.

So she was lying on a not too uncomfortable sleep mat on the floor of what had once been the Lindsey building. She hoped Louise wouldn’t mind, and she thought Louise and Gladys were probably the two people at the outpost who were most understanding of Jillean’s situation, of Jillean’s actions, of her unintended cruelties.

She hadn’t meant them. She hadn’t meant to hurt Xan the way she had. She hadn’t even realized what was happening while it was happening.

Xan was an attractive, intriguing person and she’d been fascinated by him. But, if she were truthful with herself—which was something she was learning to do, no matter how painful that was, and it was often more painful than she could stand—she’d never loved him. Not that way. Not the way that Xan had loved her and, she feared, probably still loved her.

She hadn’t meant to hurt Logan. She’d thought she was in love with the naïve redhead. She’d thought they’d spend their lives together. She’d thought she knew what, and who, she wanted.

But she hadn’t.

And there was no comparison between Bettis and Logan. For one thing, Logan was a boy . . . and Bettis was a man. The worst of it was that Logan knew Jillean so well he probably knew that those were her exact thoughts, and that had no doubt hurt him further.

But Logan, unlike Xan, would find someone else. He had to. She prayed that he would. He deserved someone who loved him the way she loved Bettis. A love that grew every day, a love that had both every reason and no reason.

Well, maybe Xan would find someone too. He should, Jillean thought as the image of his translucent olive green eyes pierced through her psyche with blame, fury, and bitter disappointment.

She turned over twice more, then got up.

The Lindsey building was falling apart. Jillean thought that her old corporate housing on Poplar, the Severn building, which looked very like the Lindsey building, only a bit smaller, probably was as well.

When no one lived in a place, it turned to rot quickly. That plus the looting and vandalism that’d taken place after Trial Day made for a very ugly neighborhood, even here in what had once been a swanky A-rated Farmdale district.

Although of course there were no ratings anymore. They’d disappeared after Trial Day, and Bettis’s first act as the de facto head of government—he’d never taken a title, but had just taken over, taken things in hand—had been to formally abolish the rating system.

Everyone is equal, Bettis had said in his speech that day. Everyone is valuable. All of us.

Jillean had cried with joy and pride that the man she loved so deeply had been able to supersede his training, his former status as chief guru, and had gained so much understanding. That he was saying and doing exactly what needed to be said and done for the future of the post-Collapse, post-corporate world. Yet things were still shaky.

But right now Jillean didn’t want to contemplate any of that. She got herself a glass of water, drank some, and splashed the rest on the back of her neck. It was hot tonight, and Jillean wished Bettis were here with her, making it even hotter, touching her with his huge hands, her arms wrapped around his neck, her legs wrapped around his formidable torso.

Even just to sleep next to him, her head resting on his shoulder, his arms around her. She always felt so safe with him by her side, as though she belonged there and as though nothing in the universe could touch her unless she wanted it to. The touch she wanted the most was Bettis’s. Their bodies belonged together.

She refilled the glass, drank more water, and went back to the sleep mat. She was in the former gvidi chamber, so this is where Louise herself would’ve slept. Sometimes with Garrick Simeon himself. Perhaps this is where Davis had been conceived.

Jillean had already spent two days at the archives, where Addyson had told her she’d be able to find the record of her birth. She’d found Davis’s birth records—his parents were Garrick Simeon and Louise Lindsey—and then she’d been curious and looked up Simeon himself, whose parents were Karma Simeon and, very surprisingly, High Prince Alvaro.

That had stopped Jillean’s search late yesterday afternoon. Because wasn’t High Prince Daniel the son of Alvaro? Ordinary entities might not know who their parents were, but the parentage of the high princes was common knowledge, and she was pretty sure that Alvaro was Daniel’s father. A search of the records confirmed her memory.

But no matter how much searching she’d done, she couldn’t find her own birth record.

Jillean got up, went back to the kitchen, poured more water onto her neck and chest, put the empty glass in the sink, screeched, ran through the building twice, then went back to lie down and get some sleep.

Tomorrow she’d work harder at her task. The archives weren’t well arranged, a lot of the records were in disarray, and she might’ve easily missed something. Also there was always the chance that something was misfiled. Or lost. Or had been moved to the long-term storage facility in Port Jordan.

She turned on her side, put a pillow between her legs, hugged another to her chest, and reached for the sensation of Bettis’s huge and comforting body next to hers as she fell asleep.

Chapter 5

Was it dark here? Maybe. Garrick Simeon had lost the difference between the dark and the light. Between knowing and unknowing, thoughts and imaginings. Between life and death.

He was suspended in a sort of a hell. But it was also a sort of a heaven. He knew Verna was there with him, and he could even see her sometimes and hear her at other times. Or he might’ve imagined that he did.

Garrick had lived a life devoid of love, yet he’d never missed it. He’d been relieved just to be left alone when he was a boy and later, after he’d grown up—although he hadn’t grown up far enough to be the person he still yearned to be—he’d had all the sex he wanted. Wasn’t that better than love? Wasn’t that not just better, but preferable, to love?

That way, when someone betrayed you, when someone threw their loyalties in with someone else, with someone who was your enemy, you didn’t mind. It didn’t bother you. You just killed them and went on to the next thing, to the next lover, to the next sexual interest.

To the next enemy. And there were a multitude of them, all waiting for your downfall, all wanting to destroy you. All of them friends of your brutal father, High Prince Alvaro, who’d supplied them all with enough willow switches to flay the skin off Garrick’s body.

Simeon could feel very little but he imagined that he could still feel his cock, which sometimes Verna would do things with. Or maybe he imagined that she did. He certainly wanted her to even though he couldn’t say that to her. Or say anything to her. Or to anyone. The only conversation he could have was with himself.

Garrick Simeon was not quite dead. That’s how he thought of it during the times when he was able to think. At other times he was asleep or incoherent or absent. He preferred the absences. During those absences he didn’t have to wonder if he were insane and, mercifully, he didn’t dream during them.

This morning while Verna must have been putting his breakfast tray on the table next to him, a meal he hadn’t eaten in so long he’d forgotten how to eat, he’d had a dream that he was back at his mother’s house and that Alvaro had come over.

But the scene didn’t play out as it might have in life, with Karma and Alvaro having sex with each other then bringing the willow switch into Garrick’s room while he tried, but failed, to get away from them. His mother in her stage costume, that checked apron crisp and tied around her slim waist with a starched bow at the back.

Instead, Garrick was alone and his bedroom was filling up with water. At first it was fascinating. He’d lived all these years in a swimming pool and had never realized it. He was mesmerized and tried to find out where the water was coming from.

But as the level of water rose, first to his ankles, then his knees, and then worked its way up his chest, he knew he had to get out of there or he’d drown. But all the windows were locked, the shutters outside were bolted closed, and the door was unmovable.

He tried as hard as he could to open the door, to crash through the bolted shutters—and at one point he felt the shutter on the left-hand side move a bit under his weight—but nothing worked, and the water kept rising higher and higher.

Now it was up to his neck. Up to his lower lip.

If he were only a regular-height person and not the midget his bitch fornicating mother had forced him to become he wouldn’t drown so soon. The water would be up to only his waist right now, not his forehead.

Garrick was a good swimmer, and he swam around for a bit in his childhood room. While he was swimming he remembered that he didn’t live here anymore, that his genetically inadequate harlot mother was dead, and that High Prince Alvaro hadn’t been publicly executed as he should have been, although he too was dead.

And maybe so was Garrick Simeon himself. The great Garrick Simeon. Beloved by all. Powerful minister. In control of enough other ministers and gurus and high princes that the world was his to do with as he pleased. And it would be again. As soon as his plan was in place.

If only Kris hadn’t betrayed him and fallen in love with the giant oaf Bettis. If only the day of the trial had gone differently. If only he’d put Davis in the incinerator as he’d planned.

In the periphery of his consciousness, of what remained of his consciousness, he saw Verna doing something with a tube and a clear sack. He loved her destroyed face. She was the ugliest and most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

He loved Verna herself, because she wanted nothing from him. Although now there was nothing he could give either her or anyone else.

Not until he’d recovered. Not until he’d taken control of the government the way he’d been planning to for years. Make everything and everyone the way they should be, the way they must be in order for the world to be absolutely right. In order for his world to be absolutely right.

The world Simeon was currently occupying was both completely wrong and totally right. A world without movement. A world where light and dark were the same thing. A world where he was both emperor and infant.

Damn you, you dwarf bastard, said High Prince Alvaro. He held the switch over his head and grinned that disgusting way he had just before he’d land an especially harsh blow.

Garrick tried to run, but he was helpless.

It’s all right, said Verna just as Alvaro’s first lash cut through Simeon’s back.

Chapter 6

Damn her. Why did she have to leave at a time like this? Bettis said to Ray, who’d just come into the office.

The huge man was sitting at his desk while Ray hovered nearby. Bettis ran his hands back through his thick blond hair, which he’d been keeping shorter since that day in the forest when Jillean had cut it for him. His signature leonine mane was gone along with the saffron robes and never-looking-at-you guru gaze.

Ray said nothing.

Who cares who her parents are? Bettis said, but he couldn’t get a rise out of Ray, who was the most solid and dependable person Bettis knew. Ray was running the office, acting as a sort of chief of staff, but, like Bettis, he had no title.

Bettis had immediately decided, the day he took over—if that’s what he’d done, and he still wasn’t sure that was what he’d done—that he wouldn’t have a title and neither would anyone else. If someone wanted to work with him and they also wanted a title, they could go to hell.

Titles and ratings had been part of the ruination of the corporate culture. He and Jillean had discussed this many times. The populace needed order and structure, yes, but not titles. How could you promote equality while telling someone you were a guru or a minister or a governor or a Caesar or a king or pharaoh and expect them to believe you?

Although that was just the kind of thing that Simeon would’ve excelled at—effortlessly convincing his followers that they were both equal to and light-years beneath him.

Bettis didn’t have time for such shit. It was hard enough to keep the public services up and running and find meaningful work for people, if Bettis even knew what work was meaningful and what was superfluous.

His previous job as the corridor’s chief guru had been both meaningless and superfluous, along with being controlling, demanding, manipulative, and at times cruel. Yet often enjoyable.

He still had a tendency toward all those things, and he needed Jillean there—not searching through some hall of records in Farmdale—to help remind him of what the fuck he was really doing.

And for other things, of course.

Since she’d left three days ago, he’d spent every night working. There was no point in going to bed. It was empty and he couldn’t sleep anyway.

"Ray, do you care who your parents are?" Bettis said.

Ray often had interesting insights. He didn’t just know how to run the office, he’d been with Bettis since the beginning, since that day in the building across from headquarters when the power-mad dwarf was supposed to’ve given a speech, but Simeon had never shown up.

Rumor was that he was dead, but Bettis had heard that rumor before, after Trial Day, and he hadn’t believed it then. As someone who was supposed to have been dead himself, he had little belief in rumors. And even less belief in rumors of deadness.

Show him the corpse and maybe he’d believe it then.

Although even that could be a lie. Because Neil Severn hadn’t been dead that day at meetingtime despite his looking and acting exactly like a dead body.

Bettis’s thoughts drifted over to Jillean stripping off her undersecretary uniform, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he’d been lusting for her even then. Even when he was so obsessed with Kris that nothing else seemed to matter. Yet he’d ordered Jillean to strip without even thinking about it.

I do wonder about them sometimes, Ray said.

What? said Bettis. What the hell was Ray talking about?

My parents, Ray said. Wouldn’t you like to know who yours were?

I’d like to know when the hell Jillean is going to be back, Bettis said. I should never’ve let her go.

Ray took the scrolls he’d been holding and placed them on Bettis’s desk while he choked back a laugh.

Something funny here? Bettis said, glancing down at his desk. If he hated anything, it was looking at the endless details on the scrolls that Ray brought to him. Ray knew more about them than he did.

Maybe he’d turn over this task to him. Bettis preferred the big picture. The little picture bored him.

Ray shook his head and his mouth squirmed, trying to hide a smile.

Bettis pushed away from his desk, tilted the chair back, and looked over at Ray, whose glossy black hair was secured by a cord at the back of his neck.

Spit it out, Bettis said. He could use a laugh. With no sleep, no Jillean, no sex, and no clue as to when she’d return, he could use some entertainment.

It’s just that—Ray composed his face into an almost serious expression—Jillean. She’s not exactly someone you can order around.

Who said I was ordering her around? Bettis said. He wished to hell he could order her around. Is she complaining about me?

You said you never should’ve let her go, Ray said, smiling now. "There’s no letting Jillean do anything."

Damn you for being right, Bettis said. And damn her too. She should be here.

Farmdale’s not all that far away, Ray said. He leaned over the scrolls, looked through them, and reorganized them. You should probably look at this one first, he said.

Bettis stood up. Even though Ray was pretty tall himself, Bettis was practically a giant, and he had to look down to make eye contact, something Bettis had gotten very good at even though he’d spent years never looking at anyone, back when he was a guru, the chief guru.

You can handle this, can’t you? Bettis said, gesturing at the scrolls.

I— Ray said.

Of course you can, Bettis said. I don’t know why you bring this stuff to me anyway. You’ve got it under control.

But you’re the boss, Ray said.

I don’t know what I am, Bettis said, meaning it, but I can’t stay here. I’m going to Farmdale. If Jillean can’t find a simple record, I’ll find it myself. Or hire an army to do it.

When will you be back? Ray said as he picked up the scrolls.

Sometime in the next two centuries, Bettis said, and Ray just smiled.

Chapter 7

Logan usually loved climbing the mountain, but today was different. Something was definitely bothering Afton and she was refusing to say what it was.

"We don’t have to