It wasn’t a courtroom. That was their first mistake. The blond woman under interrogation inside the university chambers looked more like a bust on a pedestal than a criminal on trial. Obviously nobody had asked Callum his opinion, but even he could have warned them she’d arrive radiant, pristine—not too smug, not too guilty. Surely they had expected someone different and were realizing their error now—the way the woman glowing angelically beneath warm, academically softened light had conjured up some innate, sacrosanct goodness that only she could project while a row of balding men faced her down, unsmiling. She looked like she was being bullied and Callum already knew it, that no caption from the coverage of this trial could remove the impression that Selene Nova was the victim of a weaponless, self-indulgent witch hunt. It didn’t matter her actual sins, nor the sins of the father.
Or, more aptly, the son.
Callum crossed one leg over the other from his vantage point in the audience, realizing that his presence hadn’t been necessary to do a damn thing. His sister was fully capable of handling this, and the moment her eyes fell on his, blankly, and with pointedly withheld recognition, he felt a familiar wave of the exhaustion she had always felt for him. Ownership, a responsibility of care, the way some people fostered sick pets. Well, the poor thing needs a home, so on and so forth, but that didn’t necessarily halt all repulsion. It didn’t necessarily equate to love.
The trouble was that Selene was not a bad person, or not a bad enough person. Presumably the Forum thought they’d be dealing with Callum’s father, who would have appeared guilty—racist, classist, bigoted, a product of a foregone era—even before opening his mouth. Selene was different; she was careful enough as managing partner to defend as necessary the various business practices the Nova conglomerate had been brought under fire for. Nobody could prove something as unquantifiable as influence. That was the nature of it, was it not? Nobody could prove that government officials had been persuaded or that audits had been altered or that any of the Novas actually disliked Callum aside from a slight niggling in the corner of their minds; a sense that surely no logic could defend an outcome of this nature.
Some things you simply had to take at face value. I can’t speak to the nature of my brother’s political involvement except to say it is of no relation to any corporate dealings. The best arguments were the simplest, especially when they weren’t even lies.
Where is my brother now? An incredible feat for Selene not to let her gaze stray into the audience, though it was one of many performances in which Selene Nova had been trained from birth. I wish I knew. But as to the matter of our business practices, I assure you we have always maintained the most rigorous standards.
Only ten minutes in and Callum could not be more aware that his presence was wholly unnecessary. Now that he thought about it, Selene probably had more to do with the errors the Forum had made than the Forum itself. Who had chosen this venue, who had determined the members of the adjudication committee, who had made sure to invite the press?
On second thought, magical influence was only one way to go about things. Money was more than enough. Or, as Selene put it: Our success speaks for itself.
Which, in its way, was true. So the Novas were more successful than any other conglomerate of their ilk. Did wealth always necessitate corruption? Yes, obviously—obviously, Callum thought with an inward scoff, profit was made off the backs of someone else’s labor, that was the part widely considered genius—and thus, inevitably, some viewers would walk away from this sham of a trial radicalized by the obvious; by the uncompromisable paradox of an ethical billionaire, no matter how sweetly she spoke or how prettily she made false promises.
But as Callum had told Reina countless times, this wasn’t a world where knowing that something was wrong did anything at all to prevent the ongoing nature of its wrongness. This was a world where stolen knowledge could stay stolen, because plenty of knowledge that came freely remained unscrutinized every day.
He rose to his feet with his usual feline elegance and nodded invisibly to his sister before leaving the room, choosing not to acknowledge the weight in his chest that might have been a reckoning. Probably Selene would take over now as CEO. Clearly the Novas would let Callum take the fall in some way, perhaps by mentioning that he’d been ousted from the company on account of oh, who could say, perhaps his history of routine tardiness or his unexplained two-year absconsion.
He was already out of sight, so the best he could do was stay there. Every oligarchy masquerading as a family had some generational black sheep. Look at any one of the sitting royals.
Callum emerged from the university library into a prodigious gasp of unseasonable heat, feeling parched, slightly sore, a bit annoyed by the need to redirect the eyes of every Forum trap that had so obviously been set for him. Disappointing, really, that this was the best they could do. He tried to make a game of it, sending this one off on a craving for biltong they’d clearly struggle to find while distracting that one with a daydream of heaving, pillowy breasts, but it was all starting to feel so monotonous, so undeniably silly. Callum already understood himself to be the threat the Forum had targeted most intensely, a fact that had been hysterical until this morning. Now it was merely infuriating, because he was so obviously useless in the end.
His sister did not want him. What Callum had helped build over the last two decades—ever since his father had come to the sinisterly critical realization that Callum’s nannies were exclusively purchasing the snacks Callum preferred, or possibly that Callum’s mother was more or less a caricature of happiness depending on whether or not Callum was in the room—was no longer necessary. Callum’s contributions could stand on their own now, a billion that generated other billions just by interest alone, just by existing. The world was already dependent on Nova products, the market was already disrupted by Nova corporate practices, so what now? Callum could drop dead and frankly, it would make Selene look lovelier. She would only glow ethereally in black.
So what did that leave, exactly? He could help Reina with her silly little American congressional campaign, her schoolgirl crush on the physical embodiment of optimism. God, that would come crashing down on her head, either because the handsome congressman would inevitably disappoint her or because the adorable pink-cheeked baby would grow up to be a woman who made choices that her government did not like. Still, Callum supposed he should be getting back to Reina, on the off chance that someone had finally noticed she was far more dangerous than Callum, purely because she still cared what happened next.
What next, indeed. Only one person ever came to mind when Callum asked himself that. His hand twitched a moment as if to find his phone, but no, not yet. Not now. Chances were too high that he might say something counterproductive, such as I miss you or forgive me. Or tell me you love me, even once.
Though, it wasn’t not inspiration. Tristan, and therefore Tristan’s impending murder! What a bolstering thought. Callum adjusted his sunglasses, figuring Reina would ask him about his revenge plot regardless. Why not preempt the conversation’s inevitability by tending to it like the nurturer he so obviously was? Besides, the pub was not so far away.
The walk did him good. It was peaceful, even refreshing, though the typically rowdy establishment was unnaturally quiet when he walked in. Unusual. Over the course of his walk he’d heard chanting from the other pubs and shops nearby, the grunts and whoops that usually meant one sportsman annihilating another. He thought he’d seen one of Adrian Caine’s witches at one of the pubs along the way, though Callum had never bothered to commit their faces to memory. They all, for the most part, hulked.
Now, though, the quiet unnerved him. The pub’s dining room was empty, without even a bartender standing by. Callum wandered over to the door separating the pub from Adrian’s office, shoving it open to call into the hull of Gallows Hill.
“Alys?” he called, waiting for a response. Reina, he was sure, would have Words about his insistence on what she called poking the bear, but was it so wrong to check in, say hello? Obviously Callum would continue to return to Adrian Caine’s pub for as long as such things remained interesting. Purposes of vengeance, et cetera, which did not technically require checking on a teenage girl he barely knew, and yet he felt ignoring her would be far less productive. (Not because she belonged in some way to Tristan, of course. Though arguably she did, and if Callum could not be close to Tristan—for, again, purposes of vengeance—then Alys Caine was the next best thing.)
Step one of the revenge plan: infiltrate the family. Step two was a little up in the air, but somewhere down the line Callum felt it would resolve itself neatly, mission accomplished, or something vaguely like that.
In any case, the pub was unusually quiet. Odd. Callum reached around for distress and did not feel it, though there was something else. A little flicker of it: the sulfury mouthfeel of sabotage. It was somewhere nearby, and Callum turned, searching the shadows for motion.
“You really must have a death wish,” remarked the adolescent voice of Tristan Caine’s half sister, and if Callum had been himself in the moment, he probably would have clocked it, the hint of warning that lined the silhouette of her half-concealed face.
But he didn’t feel fear. He didn’t taste danger. It was relief at first—good, she was fine, nothing to worry about here. Bland relief was often flavorless, like a cool glass of water, so at first he didn’t recognize the particular powerlessness of silence. For Callum, everything was tasteless beyond the presence of spilled beer and old wood. Quiet.
All the better to hear the sound of a gun cocking pointedly at his back.