“Where are we going?” Kent asked as he followed Everly down the corridor.

“We’re just going to make life a little easier on ourselves,” Everly replied.

“How are we going to do that?” Kent asked.

“Kent, is this who you are?” Everly asked him mildly. “Are you Mister Questions, the asker of questions? That could get so old. Listen buddy, all you need to know is that I’m doing you a solid! Just take it on faith, Everly is going to do you right!”

“Okay, okay, sorry,” Kent said quickly, not wishing to displease her. “Uh, thank you, though. I really do appreciate you doing this for me. Uh, whatever it is you’re about to do.”

“What can I say? De nada!” Everly replied. “Honestly, Kenny—”

“Kent,” he said.

“Hmmm,” she said while giving him a hard look.

“But whatever, I get called Kenny all the time, it’s no bother,” he said quickly.

“Oh, cool then,” Everly said with a pleased expression. “Like I was saying, you’ve put me in a good mood. If you’ve really been hanging around me all this time, but now I can finally see and hear you, that means my spiritual perception has become even stronger, so good for me! That’s what we call growth!”

She paused and waited expectantly for Kent to say something. Once he caught on, he immediately began clapping for her. “Hey, congratulations, Everly! It’s like there’s nothing you can’t do!”

“I know, right?” she happily preened. “That’s what happens when you have unlimited potential; not that you would know, but hey, life is what it is, right?”

“Uh, yeah, I know,” said Kent with slightly less enthusiasm.

“You know what I’m sayin’,” she continued.

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it, boss,” Kent frowned.

“You know what I’m shaaaayin’,” Everly drawled.

“Okay, Everly, I get it! I really get it!” Kent repeated once more, now with a scowl.

“Oh, cheer up, sad-sack, I’m just messing with ya,” Everly said with a playful grin. “Just so you know, I’ve already got plenty of yes men on the payroll, and although each and every one of those adorable spineless sycophants is near and dear to my heart, I’m not looking to add to the collection, understand?”

“I do,” Kent nodded. He’d been a member of more than one thieves’ guild during his career as, well, a thief, and had run quite a gamut of bosses back in those days. Some demanded unquestioning submission from their underlings and ruthlessly led with an iron fist. Others liked to be challenged by their followers because they claimed it kept them sharp. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown and all that.

Everly seemed to be an uneven mixture of those two traits, but the time Kent had spent observing her had also taught him that she could be absurdly irrational. As though she hadn’t set an image in her mind of who exactly she wanted to be. Which, frankly, was terrifying when one considered the immense power she wielded.

Okay, so I’ve caught the attention of a needy psycho, he thought to himself. Whatever, that’s a just a day ending in Y back in Cali.

No point in getting worked up about it. If Everly wanted a pet that occasionally barked at her, Kent could be that lapdog. Any indignity would be worth it if it brought him a chance, just a chance, to see Laurel again.

Laurel was worth it.

Laurel was worth everything.

“I think I’m going to like you, Kent,” Everly continued. “But at the same time, conversing with someone I can barely see is something I can see growing old quickly. So, let’s get you some fleshy-flesh.”

“Holy shit, you’re going to make me a body?” he asked her excitedly.

“Yeah. Absolutely. But, uh, not quite,” Everly replied. “I’m not going to make you a body so much as I’m going to make a body yours, you feel me?”

“I really don’t,” Kent said in confusion.

“It’s cool, we’ll get you sorted. Won’t be a thing,” Everly assured him. “Like I told said earlier, just think of it as recycling.”

__

In the darkened space of the room in which he was confined, Alec, the former squire of Lady Sylvain, continued to sleep dreamlessly, locked into slumber by a spell Everly had placed on him days earlier.

She had a vague idea that he could be of some use to her, but she hadn’t yet decided how. Until she could reach a decision, she had him rest in a state unclouded by memory or regret. It was probably the kindest thing she’d ever done for him.

An unwitting consideration, of course.

But now, someone entered the room quietly, carrying with him a long dagger, the edge of which he placed against Alec’s neck.

“I never thought it would be you who’d turn against us,” the would-be killer said gruffly as he prepared to slit his victim’s throat. “I never thought you would be the one to betray all we stood for. Damn you, kid. I always thought you were one of the good ones.”

With that said, the intruder prepared to deliver a fatal wound, only for the dagger to suddenly fly upwards, tearing itself from his grip before he could react. Then it launched itself through the air into the waiting hand of the room’s third occupant. The one who’d been waiting for the intruder to arrive.

“Would you mind keeping your hands to yourself?” called out Everly’s voice. “The guy you just tried to assassinate is a rare collectable.”

Light flooded the room in blinding quality and revealed Everly sitting legs crossed in a beach chair, sipping daintily from a glass of juice through a straw.

“You?” the intruder asked in surprise.

“Meeeeee,” she replied with an insolent grin. “And can I just say, GOD DAMN! I’m two for two, tonight! I just had this feeling you were going to make your move, right? You were doing a great job of concealing your emotions, but there was just this little smidgeon of anxiety you couldn’t quite hide. It felt like…oh, how can I put this? It felt like the fear of getting caught.”

“So, you know,” the masked figure said resignedly. “When did you figure it out?”

“It’s not like it was difficult, sweetie. The new guy is always the culprit in the detective stories,” Everly replied. “It really didn’t help that you laid the charm on so thick.”

“Heh. I suppose there are worse things to be guilty of than having too much charm,” said Nathan Devere as he removed the mask from his face. “So, you caught me. What happens next?”

“That also isn’t hard to figure out,” said Everly. “I hate people like you, so I hurt people like you.”

“People like me?” asked Devere.

“Clever little bastards who think they can manipulate me because I’m young. The audacity of it is infuriating. What gives you the right to live with that level of self-confidence?” asked Everly.

“Are you sure I just didn’t hurt your feelings?” asked Devere. “Maybe you were hoping we could get a little closer? Not that I’m much interested in psychotic little shrews like you.”

“Attempting to anger me into killing you quickly,” Everly said. “Slick. I can see you’re an old hand at the classic tropes. Still not going to save you. But I really do appreciate the effort.”

“If you lay a hand on me, Lord Greed will surely strike you down,” Devere said quickly as Everly stood up, which prompted a fair bit of contemptuous laughter from her.

“Nice try, buddy,” she tittered. “But let’s be serious. You aren’t a priest of Greed any more than I’m the hostess of the Price is Right. No one’s going to step in on your behalf if I kill you.”

“What are you talking about? I summoned Lord Greed right before your eyes!” Devere shouted as Everly stepped closer.

“Yeah, you did. And in all honesty, that’s what really gave you away,” Everly said with a nasty smile. “I’ve seen these little demon worshippers perform their summoning magic before, Nate. Every single time, they were empowered by the presence of their masters. They were juiced up! But not you. Summoning Greed made you weak. His presence exhausted you! I’d never seen that before.”

“B-but Lord Greed acknowledged me! He lent me to you—”

“He’s got thousands of servants in this world, if not millions,” Everly cut in. “And I doubt very much he knows more than a handful by name. You call that acknowledgement? I bet you a gold piece he couldn’t pick your face out of a crowd.”

Devere frowned at her words, as he strove to find a way to deny them. Then he breathed deeply and sighed in acceptance.

“Yeah, well. Old Greed definitely isn’t the sharpest among the Seven. If you have to pick which of those bastards’ orders to infiltrate, his is by far the easiest,” he said.

“Yeah, I kind of had a feeling,” Everly said.

They now stood inches apart.

“So, you must be some kind of holy knight, huh?” she asked him casually. “You must be if you have knowledge of the dark rites but still suffer from their use. I take it Nate Devere isn’t your real name?”

“I’m called Tyrnos,” the man in front of her said proudly. “A humble servant of the true temple, sworn to the glory of the light, and the service of Lady Sylvain, now and forever.”

“Tyrnos? The mercenary saint? Wow!” Everly exclaimed. “I’ve heard of you! So, what was a celebrity like you doing dressed like a Priest of Greed? I don’t get that part.”

Tyrnos was genuinely famous throughout the land. The cocky eldest child of a mercenary family, Tyrnos joined the Western Temple after singlehandedly smashing a conspiracy masterminded by a cult of demon worshippers who attempted to poison the water supply of an entire city.

His actions were so impressive that Lady Sylvain herself declared Tyrnos a destined champion of the light and personally knighted him. When word reached the masses of a lowborn man's ascendency to the highest ranks of Sylvain’s order, recruitment for the temple's armed forces allegedly increased threefold.

Everly considered that canny marketing.

“The robe belonged to some bastard I caught unawares once the fighting died down,” Tyrnos said stiffly.

“So, Pride and Greed were working together to take down the Western temple,” Everly said.

“They were,” Tyrnos said angrily. “And this traitor led their forces!”

He gestured towards the sleeping Alec, clutching his fists with white-knuckled intensity as he did so. The murderous fury on his handsome face was a sight to see. Everly found it dazzling. What was it about genuine righteous anger that she found so appealing?

“Eh, he might have had his reasons,” Everly said in what she hoped was a nonchalant manner.

“Selling his soul to Pride? Killing dozens of people who considered him their brother in faith and arms? Driving Sylvain into hiding? What could possibly excuse his actions?” Tyrnos demanded to know. "He's a traitor to our cause, deserving nothing but death!"

Well, in Alec's defense, being reduced a torso and getting buried alive for a year probably didn’t help his sanity, Everly thought but did not say. What also didn’t help is that his victims had likely been members of the temple’s high council that Everly had killed and replaced with duplicates in a bid for a silent coup.

“So, I suppose this means that Sylvain and Kestrel weren’t in cahoots?” she asked, hoping against hope it wasn’t true.

“Of course they aren’t! I have no idea who that woman is, but she’s as dangerous to this world as you are,” Tyrnos said hatefully. “She calls her cause righteous, but she willingly murders the servants of the gods! She and her blackened knight are as damned as any demon worshipper could ever be!”

“Well, okay then,” Everly said. “I'm glad we got all of that out of the way. Now we're going to take a walk down the hall.”

“To where?” asked Tyrnos.

“Well, now I’m going to drag you down to the Rat Room, so my friend Matty can ask you a few pointed questions to determine if you’re hiding anything else from me. For your sake, I hope you aren’t. Afterwards, once we're sure everything's been squeezed out of you, I’m going to introduce you to a new acquaintance of mine.”

“And afterwards?”

In response, Everly clapped a hand on Tyrnos' shoulder and began to gradually squeeze it until the relentless pressure caused him to cry out in pain.

“Well, then, Tyrnos," she said with a humorless smile. "I intend to make a brand-new man out of you.”