29. Chuck the Investor #2
“Oh, ladies! Yoo hoo! Excuse me, ladies!”
The voice came from across the green—bright, cheerful, deeply inappropriate given the circumstances.
Chuck hadn’t moved from his front-row seat, but he was waving one hand like a too-eager student answering an easy question. “Oh, ladies? Ladies?”
Mama’s head snapped up. “Not now!”
“Mind your own business,” Delilah said sharply, her arms tightening around Luna.
“My darlings, don’t you know? Everything that ever was and will be is quite literally my business.”
Kelly stood slowly and took three deliberate steps toward the green. Her voice was perfectly level, perfectly controlled, and absolutely done with nonsense.
“I can’t help but notice you’ve just suffered a greater financial loss than anyone else involved. Possibly greater than all the others combined. And yet you don’t seem troubled at all. Which makes me wonder: who are you, exactly?”
Her question hung in the air unanswered while Vex’s world continued unraveling. Phone calls, shouting, the death rattle of a tech empire. But the witches weren’t watching Vex anymore. Their gimlet eyes were all locked on Chuck the Investor.
He leaned back in his folding chair, that pleasant smile never wavering. “Come now, Kelly Melrose,” he said softly. “You must know by now.”
She stared, her jaw tightening.
Scarlett had gone very pale. “Mama, what’s going on?”
“I think I do.” Kelly’s gaze didn’t shift from the mysterious stranger. “You’re a friend of Louise Demain.”
“Precisely. And as you well know, time witches don’t tend to have a surfeit of friends. Which means, I must be . . .”
Delilah looked between them, confused. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“He’s not human,” Belinda whispered. “Oh dear, what is he?”
Even in the infinite depths of her grief, Luna couldn’t help but understand. She’d met Chuck the Investor too many times before. He was a cranky old woman at a Christmas house. He was a butter cow. He was Dr. Frank-N-Furter. “He’s Myrna.”
Chuck spread his hands in a gesture of both welcome and mockery. “Nice to see you again. Well. This has been absolutely delightful, but I’m afraid consequences must be paid.”
Luna barely registered his words through her grief, but she saw movement in her peripheral vision. Chuck was walking toward the gazebo where Vex stood, still shorter, still devastated, surrounded by his panicking assistants.
“What?” Vex’s voice cracked. “No, I’m already ruined! Do you know what’s going to happen to me? Lawsuits, criminal charges—they crucified Elizabeth Holmes for less than this—”
“Yes, yes. Earthly punishments.” Chuck waved a dismissive hand. “So tedious. So temporary. What you need is something more permanent.”
“What are you talking about?” Vex looked to his assistants for support. They were already backing away, hands raised, wanting no part of whatever was happening.
“You wanted attention,” Chuck said, arriving at the gazebo steps. “You craved it. Built your whole empire on shifting sands called attention.”
“I never—”
“Not to worry, you’ll have eternity to reflect.
And you won’t be lonely. As it happens, I’ve assembled quite the collection of humans who confused attention with oxygen.
Nero, obviously. Louis XIV. I have a rotating exhibit of military leaders who thought they could invade Russia in winter. The inventor of reality television.”
Vex was shaking his head, backing up against the gazebo railing. “You’re insane. You’re—”
“The word you’re looking for is ‘divine,’” Chuck said pleasantly. Then he snapped his fingers.
Vex began to shimmer. It started at his edges—his outline going fuzzy, indistinct, like he was being slowly erased. He looked down at his hands and screamed.
“No! NO! Help me! HELP!” Desperate, he turned toward his pack of assistants. But his minions just ran. Just turned and sprinted away, from the green, from Oak Haven, from New England entirely. They didn’t look back.
The witches watched in silence, respectful and wary. Whatever Chuck was, whatever he was doing, they weren’t about to interfere. Even Mama, protective as she was, stayed where she was, one hand on Luna’s shoulder.
Vex was fading faster now. But as he faded, something became visible through him. Like looking through a window into another place. The cameras caught it. Of course they did.
Through Vex’s translucent body, the livestream briefly showed an endless white space.
Too bright to look at for long. Floating in that space were human heads, smooth and unfinished, with giant eyes.
No mouths or noses. Nothing but eyes. They were enormous, glossy, and unblinking, all of them staring straight ahead.
A sound crackled through the speakers, sharp and stuttering. The rapid, percussive clatter of camera shutters firing in bursts, over and over, like polite gunfire.
“No,” Vex whispered. Then louder, frantic. “No—wait—listen to me—”
The eyes registered no reaction at all. Didn’t narrow or widen or flicker with interest. They simply stared as the camera clattering intensified.