18. Killing a Unicorn #3
“Huh.” Elias’s expression shifted. “Influence, you say?”
“Like, for example,” Scarlett said, “if we wanted to convince someone to make a very quick and rash decision about a major investment.”
“Exactly. If I could get them to help us—”
“We’d actually have a fighting chance,” Scarlett finished. “That’s actually brilliant, Luna.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Luna said, but she was pleased. “This whole plan is still probably doomed, but we’ve gone from impossible to merely very difficult. I’ll take those odds.”
Listen to me, she thought, ‘take those odds . . .’ I’ve been spending too much time with Shaw; I’m starting to sound like him.
“Uh, I’m sorry to interrupt . . .” Jasper put up his hand.
“But speaking as someone who’s had his mind scrambled by you ladies over and over again, do we want to talk about consent here?
Like, at all? I feel qualified to say that messing with people’s heads rarely ends neatly.
And remember, I’ve chosen to live this way. These investors haven’t.”
The table went quiet. Luna saw her mother wince slightly, and Delilah reached over to squeeze Jasper’s hand.
“That’s a fair point,” Kelly said slowly.
“A very fair point,” Delilah added. “We can’t just go around manipulating people’s decisions. That’s—”
“Exactly what we need to do to win,” Scarlett finished. But her voice lacked conviction. “Right?”
“Not if it makes us as bad as the people we’re fighting,” Luna said.
Jerusha snorted into her cocktail. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. They’re venture capitalists. They make their money by exploiting other people’s labor and calling it ‘disruption.’ You don’t owe those cretins anything.”
“Yes, but you’re a communist, Jerusha,” Kelly noted.
“And damn proud of it! All this hand-wringing about the ethics of mind-fucking the bourgeoisie? Just a waste of perfectly good drinking time.”
“Wait . . .” Luna said thoughtfully. “What if we set guardrails? Like the ones Mama just mentioned for the sabotage spells? We make sure nothing goes too far.”
“What kind of guardrails?” Nate asked.
“Um, like . . . like, we only approach investors who are already invested in CastR. People who’ve already reached out to Vex, who are already on board.
We don’t drag any innocents into this. We don’t influence anyone about whether to invest, we just influence how much.
” Luna looked around the table, trying to gauge reactions.
“You know,” Elias offered in support, “in my business, we say that you can’t cheat an honest man. If these investors are already salivating over CastR? We’re just helping them commit to their own bad judgment.”
“Make sense to me,” Scarlett said. “After all, people who’ve already invested in CastR are already helping Vex destroy all of us. So, really, how bad should I feel?”
Jerusha raised her cocktail in agreement. “Witches of the world, unite!”
Glasses met with a satisfying clink, and for a brief, reckless moment, the plan felt entirely justifiable.
“Eh, I still don’t love it,” Jasper said, because someone had to.
“No,” Luna admitted. “Neither do I. But when I studied with the New York coven, they spent a lot of time on the ethics of mind control. They have rules, protocols . . . they take consent seriously. I can raise all of this with them. If they’re not comfortable with the approach, we don’t do it.”
Kelly nodded. “Fair enough. Luna, you’ll explain what we’re trying to do, and let them draw their own ethical lines. If they say no, we respect that.”
Jasper looked somewhat mollified, if not entirely convinced. “Okay. As long as we’re being thoughtful about it.”
“Too thoughtful.” Jerusha rolled her eyes. “So thoughtful, we may all die of moral virtue before we actually do anything. Now, can we please get back to the part where we humiliate some billionaires?”
Scarlett picked up her phone to study the press release again. But this time, she zoomed in on the photo at the top of the page. “Wow, check this out . . .” She held up the phone to show everyone. “Look at the relic standing next to Vex. Which one is he, Statler or Waldorf?”
Jasper peered across the table. “He looks like Cornelius Vanderbilt. Straight out of the Whaling-Company Gentleman Starter Kit.”
“The contrast with Vex is pretty wild,” offered Nate. “Like Steve Jobs meets Ebenezer Scrooge.”
Luna snickered. “One invented an app; the other invented the horseless carriage.”
Delilah squinted at the caption and read it aloud in a faux-aristocratic voice: “Ahem! Pictured above, Ashton Vex poses with his primary investor: Upson Burke, III.”
The shatter of glass cut through the pub like a rifle shot. Elias’s pint glass had exploded on the floor, beer and glass shards spreading across the old wood in a glittering pool.
But that wasn’t what made Luna’s heart stop. It was his face. He’d gone white. Not pale, not wan—white. His fingers were still curved around the ghost of the glass he’d been holding.
“You okay?” she asked, but Elias didn’t seem to hear her.
“How,” he said slowly, “is that motherfucker still alive?”