Chapter 61: The Summoning
The air in Susan’s private office didn’t just feel cool; it felt surgically scrubbed of all warmth and life. Lillith, who owned rooms with her presence, who commanded attention with a smirk and a sway of her hips, felt herself shrinking. Her black leather pants creaked as she shifted her weight, the sound obscenely loud in the silence.
Susan didn’t look up.
She turned a page in the plain manila folder with a slow, precise snick. A polished nail, unadorned and sharp, tapped once against a grainy black-and-white photograph. Lillith could just make it out from her angle: herself, exiting a nondescript warehouse in the industrial district, her arm linked with a figure whose face was blurred but whose stature screamed ‘enforcer’.
“You run a charming boutique, Ms. Devlin,” Susan said, her voice as neutral as the grey walls. She finally lifted her eyes. They weren’t angry. That would have been easier. They were appraising, like a scientist observing a potentially useful, but dangerously volatile, chemical compound. “‘Lilith’s Lair.’ Very catchy. Sex-positive, body-accepting. A pillar of the alternative community.”
Lillith said nothing. Her mouth, usually so quick with a cutting retort or a seductive purr, was dry. The black lipstick felt like a costume.
“Your tax filings are meticulous,” Susan continued, closing the folder and lacing her fingers over it. “Your business license is in perfect order. You’ve even won a ‘Best Local Business’ award from the arts council. A model citizen.” She paused, letting the words hang. “This other portfolio, however, is less… civic-minded. Procurement of certain pharmaceuticals. Mediation of disputes within the modification underground. The discreet transportation of individuals who no longer wish to be found.” Susan tilted her head. “A regular renaissance woman.”
“What do you want?” Lillith’s voice emerged, weaker than she intended. She cleared her throat, forcing steel into it. “If this is a shakedown, you picked the wrong goth. I don’t get shaken.”
“This isn’t a shake-down,” Susan replied, a faint, humorless smile touching her lips. “It’s an assessment. My daughter, Tiffany, frequents your establishment. She speaks highly of you. She considers you a… mentor, of sorts.”
Lillith’s spine straightened a fraction. “Tiff’s a good kid. A bit impulsive, but her heart’s in the right place. She’s exploring her body on her terms.”
“On her terms?” Susan’s eyebrow arched, millimetrically. “She was manipulated onto a national television program and surgically altered under a contract she couldn’t possibly comprehend. She was a child playing with live ammunition. Now she has a five-year legal chain around her neck, holding that modification in place.” Susan’s gaze hardened, the scientist’s detachment finally giving way to something glacial. “She was preyed upon. By powerful people who see her autonomy as a ratings point.”
Lillith understood now. The dossier wasn’t leverage against her; it was a calibration. Susan was measuring her tools. “And you want to prey on them back.”
“I want the contract nullified,” Susan stated. “I want the legal architecture that binds my daughter to be dismantled, brick by brick. And I want the people who designed it to understand, in the language they truly speak—which is fear and financial ruin—that they made a catastrophic error.”
She pushed the folder slowly across the desk towards Lillith.
“You have networks I do not. You have access to conversations that happen in the dark, in after-hours clubs, in the back rooms of places like yours. The modification community is small. People talk. I need names. Not of the on-camera hosts, but the off-camera lawyers. The producers who drafted the clauses. The network’s head of legal. The private medical adjudicator who signed off on the ‘random’ procedure.” Susan’s eyes locked onto Lillith’s. “I need to know where the bodies are buried before I start digging.”
Lillith looked at the folder. It represented a life she kept meticulously separate. Letting this woman, this formidable ghost in a pantsuit, into that world was a risk that tasted like cold metal.
“Why would I do that?” Lillith asked, her confidence flickering back, fueled by a spark of defiance. “I’m not a snitch. That community trusts me.”
“Because you care for Tiffany,” Susan said, simply. “And because what they did to her, they will do to others. It’s a production line. Tiffany’s season was a hit. There will be a next one, and a next. They’ll keep refining the coercion, tightening the contracts. They’ll come for more of your ‘kids.’” She leaned forward, just an inch. “And because I am not asking. I am offering you a choice: be a resource, or become an obstacle.”
The threat was absolute, and utterly believable. Lillith saw it then—the sheer, quiet power in Susan’s stillness. This was not a bluff. This was a woman who could make a person like Lillith disappear into that grey, sterile nothingness and have the world believe she’d simply decided to move shop.
Lillith let out a long, slow breath. She reached for the folder, her black-painted nails a stark contrast against the manila. “I’ll ask around,” she said, her voice flat. “Discreetly.”
“See that you do.” Susan stood, the meeting evidently concluded. “We’ll be in touch.”
The bell over the door of Lilith’s Lair jingled, a sound that usually felt like coming home. Tonight, it felt like an alarm. Lillith threw the deadbolt, leaning her back against the glass door for a moment. The vibrant, plush interior of the shop—the racks of latex, the gleaming glass cases of toys, the suggestive artwork—seemed suddenly frivolous, a child’s fort built in the shadow of a bulldozer.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She fished it out, expecting a message from one of her girls, or maybe a client.
It was Tiffany. A selfie, taken in what looked like a messy, sunlit bedroom. Tiff was grinning, her head shaved on one side, the other a cascade of pink hair. She was topless, her modified chest on full display, and giving a thumbs-up. The text below read: Just gave Claire the mind-melter. She’s currently a puddle on my floor. Mission accomplished. 😉 Thanks for the tips on the vibrating ring!
Lillith stared at the image. At the genuine, uncomplicated joy on Tiffany’s face. At the body she was learning to own, piece by complicated piece. She thought of the cold, predatory language of contracts, of lawyers in distant towers deciding the fate of that joy.
Her fingers tightened on the phone. Then she scrolled through her contacts, past the listings for suppliers and friends, to a number labelled only with a black heart emoji. She typed a message, her thumbs moving with a new, grim purpose.
We need to talk. That TV thing is worse than we thought. They’ve got a kid in a five-year lock. The mother is a fucking thunderstorm. She’s digging. Can you get me a name? The network’s head lawyer. The one who actually writes the traps.
She hit send. The message whooshed away into the digital night.
Walking to the back room, she poured herself two fingers of cheap whiskey, not her usual style, but she needed the burn. She downed it, hissing as it warmed her throat. She looked at her reflection in the dark window—pale face, black lips, grey eyes that had seen too much of the underworld’s casual cruelty. She thought of Susan’s icy promise, and of Tiffany’s bright, trusting smile.
“Alright, you suits,” Lillith whispered to her reflection, a familiar, dangerous smirk finally returning to her lips. “Let’s see how you like it when you piss off the real monsters. ”
The whiskey’s heat was a fleeting comfort, immediately swallowed by the chill of what came next. For two days, Lillith moved through her world like a ghost, the vibrant colors of her shop and the loud music of the clubs feeling flat and distant. Conversations were no longer about pleasure or aesthetics; they were careful excavations, each question a calculated probe into the foundations of a glittering, poisonous industry.
She met a source in a vinyl booth at a 24-hour diner, the coffee between them growing a greasy skin. “The lawyer’s name is Aris Thorne,” the man muttered, not looking up from his pie. “He’s not on the network’s public payroll. He’s a contractor they keep in a black box for their ‘special projects.’ He wrote the boilerplate for their reality talent shows, too. The ones with the insane non-disparagement clauses.” Lillith slid an envelope across the sticky table. “Find me the adjudicator.”
Another visit was to a modified friend who worked in medical billing, their conversation hidden under the roar of a fetish club’s sound system. “The doctor who approved Tiff’s ‘random’ procedure?” her friend shouted into her ear. “He’s on retainer. He doesn’t work at a hospital. He has a private suite in a building owned by a shell company. The same shell company that holds the insurance policy for the show. It’s a closed loop, Lill. They’re not just predators. They’re architects.”
Lillith compiled it all, each fact a cold, sharp stone in her gut. She saw the blueprint now, elegant in its cruelty. It wasn’t a game. It was a harvesting system. By the morning of the third day, she had a name, an address, a corporate trail, and a hollow feeling of dread. She dressed with intentional severity: black tailored trousers, a simple grey shirt, her hair in a severe knot. The armor of a business meeting, not a den mother.
The walk to Susan’s office building felt longer than before. The sterile lobby, the silent elevator, the antiseptic hallway—they all seemed to absorb sound and warmth, leaving only the pounding of her own heart. She stood once more before the plain door, took a breath that did nothing to steady her, and knocked.
“Enter.”
Susan’s office was unchanged, a monument to controlled power. Susan herself sat behind the desk, wearing a different but equally precise pantsuit, her gaze already fixed on Lillith. She didn’t offer a seat.
“You have something.”
It wasn’t a question. Lillith stepped forward and placed a single, slim USB drive on the desk. “Aris Thorne. He’s their legal architect. All the contracts flow through him. His firm also represents the medical adjudicator, a Dr. Evan Pryce. Their financials are intertwined through a holding company called Veritas Shield.” Lillith’s voice was steady, a monotone recitation of facts. “The paper trail is there. It’s deliberate. It’s designed to insulate the network and the producers, but it’s there. Pryce has a history. A malpractice suit settled quietly ten years ago, about inappropriate surgical coercion on a transgender patient. The show’s producers knew.”
Susan picked up the drive, turning it over in her fingers as if assessing its weight. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were active, processing, connecting. “This is sufficient,” she said, her voice low. “It gives me a vector.”
This was the moment. Lillith’s mouth went dry again. “There’s one more thing.”
Susan looked up, waiting.
”
“The host from that season,” Lillith said, the words sticking in her throat. “Claire. The one who did the interview segments, who handed Tiffany the ‘prize.’” She forced herself to meet Susan’s gaze, which had turned to sharded glass. “You need to leave her out of it.”
Susan’s expression didn’t change, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. “Explain.”
“She was a prop,” Lillith pushed on, her hands curling into fists at her sides. “A pretty face reading a teleprompter. She didn’t draft the contract. She didn’t know the procedure was pre-selected. The producers fed her lines about empowerment and choice while they had the legal kidnapping papers ready backstage.” She took a sharp breath. “They used her, too. She found out after, and it wrecked her. She left the industry. She’s… she’s trying to make amends. She and Tiff are friends now. Actually friends.”
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the faint hum of the security system. Susan’s eyes were locked on Lillith, dissecting the truth of every syllable. Lillith remembered the dossier, the depth of Susan’s reach. She probably already knew about Claire’s breakdown, her retreat from public life.
“She presented the cage,” Susan stated, her voice devoid of inflection.
“She was handed the cage and told it was a trophy,” Lillith countered, her voice gaining a desperate strength. “She was as much of a victim as your daughter. Just a different type. They exploit everyone, Susan. The contestants for their bodies, the hosts for their credibility. Don’t become them by grinding up someone who’s already been chewed up and spit out.”
Susan didn’t move for a long moment. Her gaze drifted from Lillith to the blank grey wall, her mind clearly working through scenarios, calculating collateral damage. The tap of a single fingernail on the USB drive was the only sound. It felt like a clock ticking down.
Then, a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
“Go,” Susan said, her attention already returning to the drive in her hand, her dismissal immediate and final.
Lillith didn’t need to be told twice. She turned, her legs feeling unsteady, and walked to the door. The click of the latch behind her echoed like a gunshot in the silent hall. She leaned against the wall, the cool plaster pressing through her shirt, and a shudder ran through her. A cold sweat traced a path down her spine, soaking into the waistband of her trousers. It was over. For now.
She had walked into the lion’s den and gotten what she asked for. She wasn’t sure if she felt like a savior or a collaborator. Pushing off the wall, she headed for the elevator, the image of Susan’s calculating nod burned into her mind. The storm was coming, and Lillith had just helped chart its course.