"Yes."

"So you're going to go away soon. And not come back."

"That's the plan."

She shakes her head. "Too risky," she says, half to herself.

What would he actually say if he had no idea what was going on and didn't know what the risk was -- oh, when he thinks of it like that it's obvious.

"Too... risky?"

"I am... a businesswoman in a rather cutthroat industry. If you were working for a competitor of mine..."

"Well. Industrial espionage is an issue."

That's a way to put 'I run an evil cult full of horrific backstabbing'.

She says, so quietly that Mordred almost can't hear it, "it would be nice to have someone to talk to."

"...I don't have an easy way to prove I'm not working for a competitor of yours," he says carefully.

"But it kind of sounds like you need to talk about it."

"This is true."

She shakes her head. "Tell me about yourself."

Jesse Evans is an academic from New York, studying linguistics. He lives with his brother and reads a lot and likes math but isn't great at it. His job is something about Early Modern English that Mordred can talk about very confidently if asked to. He's in Malta on vacation because it's warm here and he thinks Maltese is interesting as a language. He knows absolutely nothing about cults, or mouths, or rifts of the new moon.

She listens! She asks questions.

Mordred can answer them! He borrows heavily from his real actual life, being mostly-himself is easier than inventing elaborate personae.

Finally she nods sharply and decisively.

"Out," she says to her guards. "Watch from outside."

Holy shit that actually worked.

He lets himself relax, just a little bit, now that there are no longer half a dozen people with guns in the room.

"I am going to show you something," she says.

"....okay?"

Montgomery says something in the hissing language full of too many vowel sounds.

Then she snaps her fingers.

And Mordred is, very suddenly, drowning.

aaaaaaaaaa

She snaps her fingers again and he can breathe.

"Apologies. Magic is not very kind, especially of the sort one can do on short notice."

"And if you do turn out to be working for one of my competitors, I would like you to remember that I can fill your lungs with water and drown you whenever I like, and they do not have this ability. They have to kill you with guns."

He has no idea what a normal person who didn't previously know magic existed would say to that, and so he just says what his actual self would say, which is "I will definitely remember that."

"Excellent."

"You are doing me a favor and I shall remember this. Call me if there's a girl you'd like to love you or a man you would like to kill." She considers. "Or gambling success, I can do gambling success. Made my first ten thousand dollars on the roulette wheel here in Malta."

It probably says something about Mordred's life that 'tell me if you want me to kill someone for you' feels like a petty use of a favor. Probably the thing it says is not anything good.

"......okay," he says, instead of that.

"So, magic is real, gods are real and not very nice, I am a sorcerer."

By any chance the same sorcerer who set Anemone on fire, he doesn't say, because that would be a wild and bizarre reaction for Jesse Evans to have.

Instead he nods. Fortunately, 'terrified and processing a lot of things all at once' is a very reasonable reaction for someone who did not previously know magic existed.

(Unfortunately, multiple people Montgomery talks to believe he is working for Captain Walker in LA. Fortunately, they know him by a different name than she does. Unfortunately they know his face and he might someday have to be in the same room as both categories of people. Fortunately, he does not die when drowned.)

"That... expands the possibilities of 'not okay' by a lot. I'm sorry?"