When the Dark Wins

The perfect servant.

There was no going home.

Not ever.

Epilogue

Cyrus climbed the stairs to Maggie’s office. The east-facing room on the private side of The Rose stood with its windows open to the red of sunset. The woman his heart bled for sat at her desk, focus deep in her ledger, penning something into the columns. He cleared his throat.

The smile that lit up her face nearly broke him every time.

“Mags,” he said. “You ‘bout done?”

“Close enough.” She shut the book. “Why? Need something?”

“Heard some news.”

“Yeah?” The woman leaned back in her chair. Gripped one wrist in the other hand on top of her head. She nodded at the chair on his side of the desk, but he shook his head.

“They found a dead man outside of Tulsa-Gibbs.”

Maggie shrugged. “Welcome to The Vice.”

“Remember there was this fella Skinner was pitchin’ a fit about?” he said. “Few years back? Said he bust his lip?”

The owner of The Rose cocked her head. “Maybe?”

Cyrus nodded. “Scylla says he’s fulla shit. Says that postie, Wheeler, bloodied him up. She saw it out the window.”

“Wheeler?” Maggie said. “Bucks? Ain’t she one of the ones that disappeared?”

“Yeah.”

His boss reached into her top desk drawer for a cigarette. A silver lighter was already in her hand. “What’s that got to do with this dead guy?”

“Enforcers found the body in a truck,” he said. “Couldn’t tell what kilt ‘im. No wounds. It wasn’t a crash. Maybe he had a heart attack.”

A lid snapped shut on the tiny flame, and Maggie took a long drag. “Cyrus.” She aimed those green eyes at him. “The fuckin’ point.”

“Harland says they found some box under his seat. Box fulla notes. Every last one of ‘em from a missing Vicer. All rentbodies except Wheeler.”

Maggie leaned on an elbow, cigarette making a thin line of smoke as she chewed the inside of her lip. “What’d all these notes say?”

“All sorts of things. Crazy stuff.” Cyrus leaned on the doorframe, arms folded over his chest, watching the sun sink. “People sayin’ they’d been stolen. Shit about priests.”

“You ask about Wheeler?”

He frowned. “She wanted her daddy to think she’d gone off to work on debt. At a house o’ Greed. Told him not to worry.”

“Bullshit,” Maggie said.

“Probably.” And after a pause, where he watched her tap her ash into a little brass tray: “They found a bunch of Covvie things in his truck.”

“What things?”

“Drugs. Good water. Not like our kinda drugs, like The Poppy, or anything like that. Clean shit. Medical shit.”

Maggie squinted. Nested her cigarette in a notch in the tray. “So our people start disappearing,” she said, “and this—did Harland say his name?”