"I don't know about Ramon, but Nectar? I've heard of Nectar."

"What do you know about it?"

"It's great stuff," she says. "Makes you feel great. Like uppers but better. Doesn't make you twitchy, doesn't drive you loco. You can take one dose and work for hours. I use it when I'm translating."

"How do you get it? Who's dealing, where do they get it from? I know what it's like, I need to find these other guys."

"I don't know the details, but I can introduce you to my guy," she says.

And then they talk until it is time to see Samson Trammel.

Lacie's foster father has lunch with her in the small dining room on the second floor, where he normally takes his more intimate meals. One of his large Mexican guards escorts her to the dining room.

"Sit! Sit, my dear girl. What brings you to LA? I thought you were in New York doing magic tricks."

"A eccentric old woman is paying me a lot of money to look into her late father's affairs. I think she was more impressed by the seances than was warranted."

"Well," he says. "Perhaps your seances are more impressive than I thought. Mastered your table-rapping technique, have you?"

"It's gotten some practice. Would you like a demonstration?"

"I'm sure I'll do fine without it."

A maid brings them a light lunch: a salade niçoise (mixed greens tossed with potatoes, green beans, tuna, boiled egg, and olives, and topped with anchovies); steamed mussels with white wine, shallots, and butter; and a plate of expensive cheeses.

"And I expect you don't want your palms read or your tarot spread done, either," she says, smirking. "Unfortunately I left my crystal ball at home. What have you been up to? Not magic tricks, I suppose. Sometimes I beg updates from Oswald but he only talks about the financial side of things, you know he's very boring that way."

He smiles paternally. "Business is going quite well. I've had to transition into... alternate revenue streams... with the end of Prohibition. Not that I am opposed to the end of Prohibition, of course. I may be a bootlegger but I have no interest in allying with the Baptists."

The maid pours both Lacie and Samson a cup of excellent wine.

"Oh don't you be boring too. Business this, numbers that, if I didn't know any better I'd think you boys did nothing but stare at bottom lines." It's a bit of a risk but she's teasing him, right, she's paying him a compliment really, and she knows he likes talking about his shadowy intellectual forays.

"You women have no head for numbers," he says indulgently. "But money is one of the most important things in life. It might seem like boring numbers to you, but money is what gives you strength. Power. With my bank account I command my dozen servants, yes. But what is more, I can command that the fruits of the Indies be flown to my table, that thousands of men work night and day to make machines that bring me pleasure, that my will be worked in the world." He smiles at her. "But I suppose men get power through their work and women get power through seducing those in power."

She smiles. "Now there's something I know I have the head for."

"Indeed," and his smile is less paternal, more predatory.

"I've got to be somewhere this afternoon," she says absently, turning back to her food. "I was wondering if you could tell me more about some of those matters that I haven't mastered yet. I may have my tricks, but you're the true occultist here; and I've missed sitting with you in the library most dearly."

(This is a change of subject, but it's also not; the library is private, and has a lock.)

"What questions do you have, my love?"

"Lately I've been getting interested about those off foreign mysteries. Primitive rites to old gods and exotic blood rituals. Have you ever heard of Nyarlathotep, or Gol-Goroth, or Ahtu? They're wonderfully strange."

"Those are dark things to get into, my dear," Samson says. "Dark, dark things. They will rend the sanity of the unprepared mind." 'Like yours' goes unstated. "Wouldn't you prefer to stick to your ghosts?"

"Should I take bliss in my ignorance, then?" She's still smiling. "Run from the dark secrets of the world and curl up safe under the covers? Perhaps I am wrong about the world, perhaps I am ignorant and naive, perhaps I have only seen but a small percent of what this world has to offer, but at least by remaining stupid I have not had to be overwhelmed." This is essentially a condemnation of cowardice which she's dressed up in intellectual clothing, but he is an intellectual and she is not a coward.

Not, at least, when it comes to her own mind.

"Well, I can protect you from anything truly dangerous," he says. "What do you know of Nyarlathotep?"

"This and that. The ramblings about him were quite incoherent." She says it with the kind of mild contempt one might use for a bad writer.

"I am curious how you stumbled across the name at all. It is not the sort of name you'll find in the books of the Theosophists and other claptrap."

"A digression in a series of unrelated writings. It soon became obvious that a god was being discussed, or something some naive peoples believed to be a god, perhaps some Egyptian cult, but the whole thing was very disjointed and vague. I was hoping for a writer that actually knew how to describe."

"Unfortunately, this is common in the ancient writings. Understanding the gods leads to madness, and madness is not conducive to being a terribly clear writer. Nyarlathotep was the Black Pharaoh, a ruler in the very early days of the old kingdom, skilled in dark magic. He was later deified, and many secret cults arose around him that continued well into the Christian era. He was conceived of as a sort of trickster figure, a granter of wishes who would always twist them for ill. And some say he was chosen as the Herald of a power even darker and greater than himself."

"An Egyptian djinni," she jokes. "I wonder if some of those mummy curses were his doing." More serious: "He must have been quite powerful."

"Assuming he was not a legend."

"Of course."

"--Who did you say had hired you?"

"A Mrs. Rogers. I don't think she has anything to do with dread Egyptian pharoahs, though."

"The dread Egyptian pharaohs are merely an unprofessional interest?"

"I dabble in many fields of the occult. Most of my interests are unprofessional."

"What sort of affairs are you looking into?" Smile. "You know I always like to take an interest in your activities, my love. To protect you. Keep you safe. Keep you mine."

"Her father was apparently a dabbler in the occult himself. All I'm doing is finding out where his interests lay. Digging up a man's personal affairs so long after the fact that the man himself can't take umbrage anymore. I'm getting most of my fun so far from the traveling, I do like to go exploring." Sip of wine. Eye contact. "I like other things better. It's been very nice, getting to visit."

Eye contact, and his eyes flick down to her chest. "Indeed. Other things are nicer."

"I'm not sure how much more I can eat," she says, putting down her fork and mussing with her dress. "But we still have some time to talk more before I have to leave. If there's anything you'd like to talk about."

"Indeed there is," he says.

"Well?" And she grins and bats her eyes in a very innocent way. "Are you going to make me guess?"

He takes her into the bedroom and does not, in fact, make her guess.

And once she's done everything goes black.

When she wakes up she's in a small room she doesn't recognize, handcuffed to the wall, and Samson is smiling at her. Paternally. Indulgently.

Dammit.

"My darling, my love, my pet," he says. "I think you're forgotten that you're mine. You're my daughter, my lover. My possession. My property. My thing, for me to do as I like with. And I am a good owner, am I not? A custodian. I take care of the things that belong to me."

"I shouldn't be gone too long," she says softly, weakly, as though even to her the words don't mean much. Then, stronger, more certain: "I'm so sorry, Father. What can I do to make things right?"

(She is definitely afraid. But if she can still make the words come out right, then-- then something--)

"You have a choice, my dear girl. You wanted secrets? Very well. You shall have them. I am the Beloved of the Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos, the Herald of the demon sultan Azathoth. I am the only one in thousands of years he has chosen to be his equal. You may join my service and through it His. If you prove yourself loyal... worthy... well." He chuckles and reaches out to stroke her hair. "We shall say nothing more of it."

"What will I have to do? I-- my life, before this, is any of it--" Now is not the time to think about petty personal concerns like if she will be trapped in this house forever but she is nervous.

"You will do what you are called to do in my name. If your obedience is perfect, you have nothing to fear."

The actual things he's saying suddenly hit and it no longer is of any concern whether she is let out of this house because fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck there is a difference between being lord of this household and beloved of an ancient pharaoh who is worshiped as a god--

Lacie is not with this conversation anymore! She is busy catastrophizing in a deeply confused and terrified mental spiral!

Samson waits for her to calm down. Women are flighty, after all. And it is important she understand this next bit.

"I came here looking for a Gol-Goroth cult," she says weakly, after some time. She is maybe giggling slightly. "I thought -- I thought you might have a book on it."

"Gol-Goroth is the outer mystery," he says. "For the lesser cultists. To conceal His true glory from those unworthy to behold it. You-- you shall know the secrets, my love. Obey me, and you shall be my queen. Every head shall bow before you when we rule. You will be clothed in gold and jewels, and slaves will die at your whim. And you will have dark knowledge of things you have never dreamed of. My library is only the beginning. The things you will see before Him, in his glorious beatific vision--! My daughter, my lover, my queen."

"Oh."

And then: "--If I don't go back to the hotel my friends will come looking," she whispers, still distracted, somehow still hung up on this one tiny legible part. "I don't -- I don't want my first act in your service to be causing you trouble -- I don't know what to--"

"Do not worry. We will take care of your friends."

She nods. Her eyes are wide. "What is-- what do you want-- me to do?"

He pats Lacie's hand. "For now, you will serve in the cellar. It is an important part of your education. We will study each day, and of course you will take the Nectar of the God." He unlocks her handcuffs.

She smiles at him, filled with relief and delight and overwhelm. "Thank you, Father. Thank you so much."

"It is important that you know what will happen if you fail me, my queen."

"Yes, Father."

"Come with me."

She stands and follows.

He takes her to a room that once was a cellar.

A slow stream of yellowish Nectar oozes, channeled away through channels carved into the stone floor, stained darkish-red, and collected through apparatuses of glass. Tables store an array of items you do not recognize, but their purpose is obvious from their sharp sinister glint and the occasional dark-red stain that they didn't quite manage to clean off. And on the wall...

It's a mouth. It would be a human mouth, were it not ten times the size. There is a tongue, and teeth, and all the things that one typically associates with a mouth. The mouth is part of the wall, stone blending to flesh so smoothly that Lacie can't see where it changes.

The Nectar oozes from a corner of its lips.

It says something in the tongue she heard back in Savannah.

She cannot understand it, but she knows it is welcoming her to its service.

"Nyarlathotep is the God with a Thousand Faces," Samson says. "Each of those Faces has a Mouth. And the Mouths... are hungry."

"Yes, sir," she says with feeling, her mouth moving almost by instinct. The words in that black tongue are reverberating in her mind. She cannot stop staring at it. There are tears streaming down her face.