The day the payment for the case came in, Roger gave me a bonus as well as a bit of something for everyone else in the office who had helped out. The gang took me to the local tapas bar that evening for a celebratory drink.
“One of us!” they toasted. “One of us!”
My colleagues were the most cheerful sociopaths I’d ever met—and I used to teach secondary school.
“It just hit me,” I said. “We’re fucking dangerous.”
“Wa-hey!” Benjamin said. “He finally gets it!”
“Respect!” David said.
“Ravi mate,” Mark said. “We’re all of us dangerous. Some people are just in denial about it.”
“Too right,” Clive said. “And some of us choose how to use that part of us when there’s a call for it.”
“Just don’t lose your compass, old son,” Ken said. “That’s what sets us apart.”
“Darling,” Olivia said. “You’re not a proper Golden Sentinels investigator until you leave one client’s life a smoldering ruin.”
“So I’ve been blooded now,” I muttered. “Brilliant.”
“What’s that?” Benjamin asked over the din.
“I’m a bringer of chaos. A bloody bringer of chaos.”
“To chaos!” the gang toasted.
Julia was waiting outside.
I went out to her. The gang knew, of course, and they weren’t going to judge her, but it would take time before she could hang out with us.
She put her arms around me as we walked.
“Are you all right?”
“My mother was right all along,” I said. “I’m a child of Kali.”
“I suppose.” She kissed me. “That makes me a bride of Kali.”
“I’ll say it again. We’re probably really bad for each other.”
“Well, cosmic jokes are usually ironic.”
That night, we celebrated said cosmic joke with a long night of lovemaking. It was the most appropriate move, after all.
And unlike her last partner, I was wide awake.