grandparents homeless and destitute. By the time it al came to light, he had withdrawn from his company and arrayed such formidable legal defenses to his freedom and his fortune that your courts focused instead on his corporate dupes. Their involvement was comparatively minor and largely unwitting. Other accomplices escaped notice.” Her voice was calm, collected, and even a bit distant. She didn’t seem emotionally invested in her story. “Innocent workers lost their jobs to cover the cost of the company’s legal concerns. I could tel you of three people who lost their lives and many others who linger on in pain and misery because of the disruption to their medical treatment caused by this man’s greed.” With that, she was gone. Alex didn’t hear or feel her step away, but he knew he stood alone staring at Raymond’s wasting face. It was the sort of story that enraged him. He figured it would enrage any feeling person. But when Lorelei had spoken of her purpose and her victims, he had somehow imagined worse things. Murderers. Mobsters. Tyrants. Child molesters. Rapists. Not something like this. Alex looked at the drawn, still face, and finally asked himself how stealing with lies and a smile and a contract was any better than doing it with a gun in an al eyway. A mugger might kil , but he might not…and either way, he wasn’t likely to get away with the family home or anyone’s college tuition. “It would be a simple thing to transfer the bulk of his liquid assets to someplace accessible to you. He entrusted me with limited access, but I am certain that I could get the rest. Concealing it would not be too difficult,” Lorelei added from within the closet. Alex blanched. Did she seriously want him to take this dead guy’s dirty money? Was that what they came for? Then the dead man coughed. Alex jumped back in shock. “Lori?” Raymond rasped. His eyes fluttered open, not really tracking but clearly showing signs of life.
“Holy shit!” Raymond gasped, winced, and looked around weakly. “Who…who are you? Oh, God, you have to help me. I can’t get up. That bitch…” Alex just looked at him in amazement. “You’ve been lying here like this since Monday?” “What?” the other man croaked. “Look…I can’t walk. You gotta cal an ambulance for me.” Again, Lorelei stepped out of the walk-in closet. She was now dressed in designer jeans that looked painted onto her and a shimmering silver top under a matching blazer. Alex would have noticed how great she looked under almost any other circumstance. At the moment, though, he was simply too stunned. Raymond’s face twisted in an immediate rush of conflicting emotions. “Oh, God, Lori,” he babbled. “Why did you… what…?” Raymond babbled, then winced in pain. “Fuck, it hurts so bad. You hurt me so bad.” “I apologize, master,” Lorelei said coolly to Alex. “I had thought this would be done by now.” “Master? What?” Raymond blinked. “Who the hell is this kid, Lori?” “He is more of a man than you have ever been at any point in your misspent life.” “Have you been lying here since Monday night?” Alex said more firmly. “Yes! Yeah, God,” Raymond spat. “Something’s wrong with my hips. Stuff feels broken. Grinding. Al I could reach was this water. Can’t get to my phone. I cal ed off the maid so Lori and I could… oh God. You gotta cal me an ambulance.” His voice was barely over a whisper. Desperation was the only thing giving him lucidity. “I thought I was going to die.” Lorelei turned to Alex and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Master, this is something I should finish,” she told him gently. Alex and Raymond both realized that she already had a pil ow in her other hand. Neither of them had any
il usions about what she meant to do with it. “No,” Raymond pleaded. “Wait, wait,” Alex said. “It was his fate.” “Stop. Stop for just a minute.” He looked at Raymond, then at Lorelei and back again, trying to think. The shock of Raymond’s sudden awakening and the seriousness in Lorelei’s eyes had Alex unsettled, to say the least. “Man, don’t let her—” “Shut up!” Alex snapped. He ran his hands through his hair, turning away with his eyes wide. Then he turned around to face them both. “Lorelei, what happens when he dies?” She just shrugged. “His soul descends into hell .” “No, I mean the money. Al that money.” “As I said, we can claim it if you wish. I was uncertain how you would feel about it, given your personal standards.” “Huh, you’re damn right I’ve got standards,” Alex huffed. “No, I don’t want it. That’s fucked up. It’s not mine. I mean what’s gonna happen to it when he’s found dead?” Alex shifted his attention to Raymond. “How much do you have in the bank?” “I can get twenty mil ion easily,” Raymond said. “You can have al of it, just cal an ambulance and don’t—” “Shut the fuck up! Just answer the questions, alright?” Alex was agitated, more afraid than intimidating, but Raymond wasn’t in any condition to sort that out. “You’re a finance guy. You’ve got a will , right? Something? What happens to your money when you die?”
Raymond’s lower lip quivered. He looked between the shaking youth and the deadly, cold seductress standing over him. “I don’t…I didn’t really give a shit,” he explained. “I’ve got a sister. My mom. I guess they’l get some after the state sorts it out.” Alex’s jaw dropped. “You guess? You do finance for a living and you don’t make out a will ?! Jesus,” he fumed. He looked at Lorelei, whose face was set in stone cold resolve. “And al your investors?” Alex pressed, fighting to calm down. He was not far from screaming, both from rage and from feeling the enormous pressure of the moment. “You live it up ‘til you die and they just stay fucked? ” For a moment, it looked as if Raymond might try to talk his way through this. His lips twisted, eyes glancing around frantically as he tried to come up with something clever to say. “That’s it, right?” Alex asked Lorelei. “He just dies and nothing gets fixed?” “My purpose here was punishment for his crimes, not restitution. That is not in my—” “Nature, right,” Alex said, cutting her off. He tugged nervously at his hair, looking back down at Raymond. “How many investors did you have in your scam?” “It wasn’t a scam, the market just—” Lorelei’s hand shot out at Raymond’s throat. She pul ed him up just far enough to demonstrate that she could do much worse. Even this was agonizingly painful on his hips. “Do not lie to him, worm,” she hissed fiercely. Then she let him go. Raymond col apsed back into the bed, overcome with fear of the raven-haired demon. Alex took a deep breath, held it and released, then did it again. He had to think. “How many investors? You were smart enough to pul this shit off. You had to have been keeping track of the details. How many accounts were there? You’ve got files, right?” Raymond looked only at the intimidating woman towering over him. “I-I didn’t…I was worried about being subpoenaed. Search warrants.”
“So you didn’t keep anything at al ? Not even just in case you had to cut a deal to save your ass later down the line?” “Answer him,” Lorelei ordered. “It’s in a safety deposit box under a false name,” Raymond conceded. “The media played it up to sound worse than it was, but I did…I bilked about fourteen thousand investors out of everything.” “How much are you worth?” Raymond blinked. “That’s not an exact thing.” “I know. You’re a rich fucker, I’m sure most of it’s in stocks and stuff. Give me a conservative bal park figure, and don’t bul shit me. How much are you worth if it means buying your life? Sel ing everything off, whether it came from this scam or legit stuff.” Alex had learned just enough in a couple of economics classes to know that it was al very complicated, and that the rich didn’t operate like ordinary people. “I could… I don’t know…” Raymond thought frantical y. “I could work up between eighty and maybe ninety mil ion depending on how things sold.” “You said you could do twenty easily. Someone with that kind of money could have way more of a house than this. Isn’t that a lot in liquid cash?” “Not for someone who wants to be ready to flee the country and live in comfort on short notice,” Lorelei noted. Alex put his face over his hands, trying to think past Raymond’s whimpering and labored breathing. Eighty mil ion dol ars, fourteen thousand accounts… It didn’t divide out to a whole lot in the end. Better than nothing, for sure, but there had to be more. “That’s from fourteen thousand people? Where’s the rest of it?” “I’m dying here! I can’t put together a PowerPoint right now.” “Fucking humor me, asshole!” Alex spat, still more desperate than angry. The fact that Raymond was the one whose
life was on the line did nothing to assuage Alex’s fear. He’d never felt so much pressure. Raymond made an exasperated noise. “Some of it got put into big bonuses for people who helped me…most of it was corporate profits. I can’t draw it al out here.” “But you could draw it al out for the Feds, right?” “What?” “You’re going to turn yourself in, Ray,” Alex growled, stepping closer to the bed. “When you get to the hospital, you’re going to get on the phone with whoever you’ve got to and start sel ing off every fucking thing you own to give as much back to your investors as you possibly can. Even if that’s only a few grand for each of them, it’s still more than they’ve got now, right? “And while you’re doing that, you’re going to cal up the FBI and confess everything to them. You’re going to connect al the dots and you’re going to do your god damned best to make sure as much money as possible goes back to the people you fucked.” Lorelei watched without betraying emotion, but Alex wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on Raymond, who was breathing heavier in both fear and hope. “You’re going to cal for help for me?” “Yes,” Alex said, “and you aren’t going to say a god damn thing about us being here. Make up whatever shit you’ve got to. I don’t care. But I’m going to read in the papers starting fucking tomorrow about your amazing change of heart. And if I don’t, you’re dead. Got me?” Raymond nodded, weakly, and couldn’t help but glance up nervously at Lorelei. “I have already done this to you,” she said simply. “I can and will find you and end you in any way he wishes.” “Sure as hell won’t be as fun as the way you almost died,” Alex added. “Where’s the phone?” “It’s in my pants,” Raymond winced. The slight al eviation of his panic only left him more sensitive to his actual pain.
“Please hurry. I’ve probably got an infection.” Alex grabbed the trousers at his feet and threw them onto the foot of the bed without thinking about it. There was a dried stain of…something along the front. He blinked. “Master,” Lorelei said, her voice showing her first visible emotion besides anger since she came into the room. Her expression had softened somewhat, altered by some mixture of guilt, sympathy and perhaps embarrassment. “Let me do this.” “It’s fine,” Alex said, shaking his head. He checked the pockets and found the cel phone. “Do we have everything you need here? I don’t want to flip out, but this shouldn’t wait and I don’t want anything from this piece of shit. Not his money, not his toys. Nothing.” “I came primarily for what is in my purse. There is also a car in the garage that belongs to me. It was not purchased with his money. I believe you would approve if I explained,” she added slowly. “It’s fine. Nothing else? Lots of incriminating clothes.” “They will never be traced to me, master.” Alex paused, nodded, and then stopped himself from touching the cel phone. He tossed the pants at Raymond. “Cal for help yourself,” he frowned. “I don’t want to worry about fingerprints.” He waited until Raymond dug out the phone on his own. “Let’s get out of here,” he told Lorelei. Raymond dialed frantical y. He watched as the hottest thing he’d ever scored in his charmed, ruthless life picked up a beat-up leather jacket and old sweats from off the floor. She obediently fol owed this holier-than-thou kid she cal ed “master,” of al things, out of his room and out of his life. Everything below his navel radiated in five kinds of awful pain. He fearfully hoped she was out of his life forever. Five minutes later, Alex and Lorelei were up the street standing next to her parked car and his motorcycle. They
watched as a fire truck and an ambulance arrived, firefighters rushing up the steps to get inside. Neither had said much to the other while they waited. “Lorelei,” Alex finally said, as the firefighters looked for a way into the house, “are you okay? I should’ve…I should’ve asked before now. I’m so sorry.” “You have nothing to apologize for, Alex,” Lorelei said. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She seemed lonely and cold. “Remind me of that when the hammer finally comes down,” he mumbled quietly. She looked at him, her face guilty and worried. “No,” she protested, “if anyone should apologize, it is me. I should have told you what to expect. I regret that you were put through this. I should have…” He waved it off. “I pushed you, and I didn’t ask for an explanation. It’s not your fault.” Her gaze fell to the pavement. “I might have volunteered an explanation.” “Why didn’t you?” he asked, venturing to put a hand on her shoulder. She clutched at it without looking at him. “Affection is not an emotion I am accustomed to. Compassion is even more alien. I am not sure I recognize it in myself, or know how to fol ow it.” “You were made to punish people,” Alex said. “I was. What you did in there, I…I would not have thought of that. I have never seriously considered such things. The victims of my prey were not my concern. They have never been before now. I do not know if I feel appeased for this, or merely that I am satisfied that you are satisfied.” She looked to him and shrugged. “You are a good person, Alex. I am not.” “Do you want to be?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I have never found cruelty or malice especially thril ing, but I cannot remember experiencing angst over it, either. I feel as if I…” Her voice trailed off until she shook her head. “It is difficult to know what I truly want for myself when I feel such a strong desire to please you.” “What I want is to make you happy. As much as I can.” “I know, Alex,” she nodded softly. They both heard the paramedic crew break out their gurney and start hustling it up the steps, which drew their attention for a moment. “You have done a very good thing here. Al that I was interested in out of Raymond Cordingly was another soul bound for hell .” He couldn’t tel if that was a confession or simply an observation, but he squeezed her shoulder comfortingly anyway. Then his eyes widened. “Oh my God,” he blinked. “Lorelei, is that–is that going to be a problem? I mean did I just cheat some demon?” “That would depend on your definitions of cheating and fairness,” Lorelei said, her voice stronger with the shift in topic. “Hel would see it that way, but only because that would work to its advantage. The Hosts would think very differently.” “Yeah, but is someone going to come after us?” Lorelei just shrugged, eliciting a groan from Alex in response. She turned to look at him. “Would that knowledge have changed your actions?” “What do you mean?” “Cordingly’s victims will likely get some measure of their life’s savings back. Other thieves who escaped scrutiny may now face punishment. Cordingly may even make good on his life with this second chance and find redemption. It is unlikely, but possible. Nothing in my experience with you leads me to believe that you would have turned from the chance for al that because you might incur someone’s displeasure, regardless of who or what they may be.” Alex considered this, staring at the house without really looking at it. “I guess maybe you’re right.”