I’d never been in the presence of so many extremely rich people all at once.
Sometimes individual rich people who came into wealth at a later age might retain some trace genetic memory of what life was like before they became saturated with money, might still possess basic human empathy despite regularly bathing in a serene golden pool of pure economic freedom.
But the scene at this fundraiser was something else entirely, like a room full of James Bond villains, each on a rare foray from their private islands or their gold-plated fortresses on the moon, hoping to gain the chance to personally press donations into Violet Parker’s hands in exchange for diabolical favors to be determined when the time was right.
Olivia had set me up with my own stylist, but despite my fancy cocktail dress, I still looked young to be mingling with this crowd. That was my role early in the night: while Devin checked off invitations at the door, I circulated through the crowd, gently eavesdropping to make sure the guests were content with the appetizers the kitchen was sending out, offering to refill drinks when I could, then steering people toward their seats as the cocktail hour neared its conclusion.
During dinner, Devin and I stood at the back of the banquet hall and traded stories about the famous people we’d brushed up against so far tonight. All the invited guests had arrived, so Devin’s post was now occupied by security. We didn’t have our own seats at any of the dinner tables, because even Jenning & Reece’s finest weren’t sufficiently influential to participate in actual conversation with this elite crowd. That was fine with me.
Violet’s speech started off with some obvious wisecracks at her opponent’s expense, and then segued into a bland list of her accomplishments and priorities that she delivered with more passion than I expected. Violet truly cared about winning, no doubt about it, but didn’t necessarily care about having consistent positions that could pin her down in any ideological way. Maybe that’s why she was popular with this crowd—they could easily project their points of view onto her and imagine that she shared them.
After dinner, we helped shepherd the high rollers out of the ballroom, up a flight of stairs to a balcony that opened into a wide-open lounge setting. The room looked like it had been decorated by a team of big-game hunters and disgruntled librarians, oppressively masculine in its choice of knickknackery (antique pistols! taxidermied falcons!) and portraits on the wall (old white guy! old white guy!), while the books on the shelves were glued into place, which, fuck whoever did that right in the frontal lobe. The furniture was an anachronistic set of pieces that looked like they’d been cobbled together from a dozen disparate estate sales dating back to the original thirteen colonies and then thematically reupholstered to look like they belonged in a community theater production of an Agatha Christie play.
There was a gorgeous full bar in one corner of the room, staffed by a pair of bartenders in slick matching blazers, and several members of the waitstaff from dinner now circulated offering digestifs to guests. Devin and I were almost through with our official duties for the night. We hugged the periphery of the room and watched the unfolding scene as Violet finally arrived, escorted by her core campaign staff, and immediately began working the room. She was in her element now, among the true, loyal supporters of her entire career as a politician.
As she slowly maneuvered past me, however, getting close enough for me to hear some of her conversations, I got a shiver up my spine, a sympathetic vibration as my body recognized what I’d just heard a few beats ahead of my conscious mind: she was actually using power morphemes as she spoke. In fact, she was masking her use of power morphemes by disguising them within ordinary speech, burying the strident aspects of power morphemes in subtext or in slight, unpredictable variations in pronunciation.
Violet was amazingly fluent at this, surreptitiously expressing signals from a sequence of power morphemes by using swiftly mutating vocal cadence, a stutter here or a breath there, subtle vocal fry to alter the effect of a phrase, and so on. These were all actual things people did with language to get their point across, but she was effortlessly weaving these techniques together to ensure that the average discerning ear would only consciously notice the overt conversation she was making in good old-fashioned English, while cleverly masking the steady delivery of power morphemes underneath the surface.
I hadn’t learned any “proper” sequences yet, so although I could sometimes detect which individual power morphemes she was using if she happened to drift close enough for me to hear her, I didn’t know what the desired effect of her sequences was. The people she was talking to betrayed no overt reaction to the power morphemes. Violet seemed to be delivering these sequences subliminally. That’s the only explanation I could imagine. It was absolutely eerie to watch. Her campaign staff was on point to make sure she had meaningful interactions with every single donor here—they would all be getting this subliminal sequence, whatever it was.
I was quite taken aback. But Olivia had been clear that this was part of the repertoire of skills we were developing. This was weaponized persuasion, really—the pinnacle of person-to-person marketing and sales. Jenning & Reece could own the world if they could get in front of the right people. Violet had been rigorously touring the entire state of California for the last year—how many people in tremendous positions of power had she reached?
What was the actual end goal, though? I suspected Bradford had deliberately kept that part of the story to himself during our recent chat. With Violet as a front person, you could imagine they weren’t aiming at some kind of charitable or humanitarian outcome. Of course, this was all conspiracy thinking—when did I become that person?
“Are you okay?” Devin asked, nudging me to get my attention.
“Mostly,” I said.
Their eyes followed mine as I carefully tracked Violet’s movement through the lounge.
“Oh,” they said, “gotcha. Yeah, she’s got epic shmooze skills, doesn’t she? I might even vote for her. That guy she’s running against—he holds half a dozen patents for bitcoin-operated sex toys. I’m pretty sure that should disqualify you from managing the government of a state.”
As the crowd eventually started to thin out a bit, Violet made her way to me and said, “Is now a good time for that chat I wanted us to have?”
“Of course,” I said. I’d been hoping she’d forget she ever mentioned this, but here she was, cheerfully sipping port wine from a cordial glass, steering us toward a couple of overstuffed chairs in a corner where we could create a bubble of pseudo-privacy for a few minutes.
She was effusive to start, praising Jenning & Reece’s promotional prowess regarding the event, the cleverness of how we grouped the disparate guests at dinner, the choice of venue, all of it.
Then she said, “I saw you watching me on the floor tonight. What did you learn?”
“You’re a very effective communicator,” I said.
“I’m told you’re not far behind me. Have you started learning sequences yet?”
I shook my head.
“Well,” she continued, “the primary sequence I used tonight is one we call Salute the Flag. A loyalty-builder.”
“Aren’t these people already loyal to you?”
“Sure, up to a point, as long as I’m making money for everyone. But I’m going to need a deeper loyalty than that. Something a little more unconditional, let’s say.”
“For what?”
She smiled and said, “Oh, don’t mind me when I go on like that. Anyway, Olivia says you’re quite a prodigy. She says you might even get to a hundred and eight before she does. I’ve been stuck at sixty-two for a while now myself. Olivia won’t let those tapes of Alexander out of her lab, and my schedule doesn’t take me to the lab much anymore. So I wonder if you might be interested in joining me out on the campaign trail and tutoring me on the ones I’m missing? I’m starting to feel a pressing need to get caught up on this front. Olivia said she’s willing to loan you out provided you’re interested. In return, I do have a few very useful sequences that I could teach you. And you’d get a nice view of how my operation actually works. Might answer a few of the questions I know you wish you could ask me right about now.”
She didn’t use a single power morpheme on me, but she was still incredibly persuasive. I did want to know how her operation actually worked, and what she was really planning to do with it. Still, I don’t think she was surprised by my hesitation.
She said, “I’m in town until Sunday night. If you want to hop on the flight back to Sacramento with us, let me know. We can send you back to LA on the weekends so you can get yourself all the way up to a hundred and eight, don’t worry.”
It sounded very convenient. The Sparkle Dungeon 5 release party was tomorrow night, then the very next night I could be traveling in the governor’s plane to the state capital, on my way to being ensconced in the halls of power.
The fact was, after getting over my initial surprise at watching her work the room, I’d also been rather impressed. That was some serious spellcasting she threw down, and I was starting to think I wanted to level up even faster.
“I’m tempted,” I said. “I’d like to chat with Olivia before I commit.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, “makes perfect sense to check in with your mentor before making a big career leap. Just keep me posted either way, Isobel. I see great things in store for you—although I suspect those things are going to happen whether you come to Sacramento or not!” And with that, she popped out of her chair and made herself available to the crowd again.
Violet made a graceful exit around midnight, escaping to her suite on one of the hotel floors above. The crowd thinned out but the bar stayed open; top-level campaign staff remained on hand to interact with donors.
Lonso Drake appeared seemingly out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen him all night, but now he was right next to me at the bar, where I was waiting for a soda.
“Isobel, good to see you again.” He didn’t sound smarmy exactly, but something oozed about his voice for sure. “How are your days in Olivia’s lab?”
“Great,” I said noncommittally.
“I wonder, has she braved telling you about Maddy—your predecessor in her lab?” he continued smoothly.
I nodded.
“Such a shame, that business,” he said. “I’m honestly surprised Olivia took another lab assistant after such a betrayal.”
“Well, there’s a lot of work to do in that lab.”
“Isobel,” he said quietly, “the reason I’m mentioning this is because I believe you have an uninvited guest on your hands.”
He indicated I should turn my attention to the double doors at the far end of the room.
“See that woman?” he said.
I certainly did, and my adrenaline spiked. The person standing in the doorway was not on the guest list. Security was supposedly still working the doors downstairs, but they’d apparently missed someone. Under pressure I agreed with Lonso’s assertion and defaulted to thinking she/her for the time being. She was Black, tall and thin, with long, artificially red hair that was probably a wig, wearing an unusual blend of fashionable and tactical pieces that seemed almost like high-end, designer riot gear, with Kevlar plates in her extremely stylish blazer, worn over a pantsuit with sturdy knee pads. In her right hand, she held a heavy-duty electronic bullhorn, letting it hang at her side. It was huge, burly enough to crack skulls with if necessary.
She was calmly scanning the crowd, absorbing the situation as though she’d just arrived, perhaps taking note of the security personnel we’d stationed inside the lounge. Devin noticed her, too, and immediately approached her; they exchanged a few words, and Devin pointed directly at me, as though they’d been somehow involuntarily forced to give me up.
“That woman is Madison Price,” Lonso said. When I didn’t register the name, he said more urgently, “That’s Maddy.”