Finding no one in the house, Moses frantically searched outside. He spotted the recording studio’s lights and headed down the path. While walking, he sent his response e-mail to everyone else. He heard Mindswallow cursing to no one outside Salome’s studio. He kept walking and typing.
Must somehow stall SpeedFeed for 48 hours. Get best lawyers. Dispelling lies postpub could prove fatal. Brazen act of pubbing w/o asking for reaction indicates suicide bomber job. Meeting Alchemy now. Call ASAP.
Orange-yellow lights streamed out of the open studio door. Voices crackled like sparking electric wires. Their fury quieted as he passed over the threshold and into the studio.
Laluna spoke first. “Mose, I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me, too. Mose, tell her. Tell her Persephone’s mine.”
Moses was ready to do battle with political enemies over the SpeedFeed smears, not with Alchemy over Persephone’s paternity, Jay’s betrayal of his confidence, or the fact that Alchemy had broken his word again. Certainly not his own role in the whole mess.
“Go ahead, Mose, tell me. First, take a good look at your brother, the god of cool.” Her voice punched out with contempt. “America’s savior. The big man reduced to groveling so his brother covers for him.”
Moses, wobbly and uncertain how to answer, moved deeper inside, sidestepping strewn instruments. He halted between them. He sighed and bowed his head for a second, and regained enough composure to speak. “I can’t. Alchemy, I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“Laluna knows the truth.”
“Mose, how could you?”
Laluna answered for him. “He didn’t. Jay confirmed what I didn’t want to believe.”
Moses felt obligated to defend Jay. “She didn’t mean to, it just—”
“What? Mose? You told Jay? You lied to me?”
“You lied to me first. You swore you’d told Laluna.”
“Boys, it doesn’t matter who lied first. Or last. I’m taking my daughter away from all of you. Tonight. For good.” Through the skylight, a moonlit silhouette of Laluna’s face glistening from her silent tears.
Suddenly, the invulnerable edifice that was Alchemy began to topple. Not from the calumnies of his enemies; those he could repel and master. No, the dream-deniers of time and truth arose, leaving the invented past in ruins and annihilating Alchemy’s imagined future. Moses reached his right hand toward his brother, a sign he loved him, that they’d work it out somehow. Alchemy’s eyes—drained of their luminous energy, now dulled and static—closed.