25. Jules #3
Camille doesn’t answer immediately. Her attention moves across the files again. The contracts. The performance windows. The altered wards. Three groups that generated more and more resonance until there was nothing left of them except carefully managed explanations.
“No,” she says finally. “We’re exchanging it.”
Kaia stops pacing. “Exchanging it for what?”
“I don’t know the original terms.” Camille’s voice is quieter now. “Perhaps Eon’s reach. Perhaps the Council’s ability to direct demonic activity into systems they can control. Most likely both.”
Remy looks at the engagement graph. “And the Patron gets the resonance.”
“Attention, devotion, fear. Emotional output at scale,” Camille says. “Everything the performances generate.”
Mina murmurs, “That can’t just be something it’s stealing.”
“No,” Camille agrees. Her expression goes still in a way that makes my stomach turn. “A system this deliberate requires cooperation. Someone gave the Patron access because they expected something in return.”
Remy’s gaze lifts to hers. “Someone made a pact with it.”
“With the Patron,” I say.
The word lands differently than contract. Contracts are paperwork, signatures, and pages no one reads closely enough. A pact sounds older.
Hungrier.
Camille nods once. “And every contract Eon signs keeps fulfilling it.”
I stare at the names of the vanished groups. “So the Patron gets fed, Eon gets whatever power or control it bargained for, and when a group can’t produce any more…”
“The system replaces them,” Remy says.
Velour Sky. Neon Saints. Glass Anthem.
Midnight Halo.
Camille turns the tablet towards us. The graph climbs sharply towards the final tour date.
“And the final show is designed to collect more than any event before it.”
Mina’s face goes pale. Kaia starts pacing, which would be more reassuring if Kaia ever paced.
“We have to tell Blaire,” Kaia says.
“No,” Camille answers.
Kaia turns sharply. “You just told us Eon has been sacrificing groups for decades.”
“I told you someone within Eon and the Council has constructed a system capable of doing so. I do not yet know who is involved.”
“Blaire isn’t.”
“You cannot establish that with certainty.”
“She loves us,” Mina says.
“I believe she does.”
“Then why are we keeping this from her?” Kaia demands.
“Because affection does not prevent someone’s communications from being monitored, nor does it mean they understand the system they are serving.
” Camille’s voice remains level. “If Blaire confronts the Council or attempts to cancel the tour without an explanation they accept, we will lose the advantage of knowing what they intend.”
Remy folds her arms. “And what do they intend?”
Camille turns the tablet back on and pulls up a graph of our tour engagement. Every city climbs higher than the last, the line rising towards the final date.
“The pattern suggests the Patron will attempt to complete the cycle at the final stop,” she says. “Every prior group’s disappearance coincided with its highest-output event. Eon has engineered the final show to exceed every previous performance.”
“So we cancel it,” Kaia says.
“If cancellation closed the channel, yes. It does not.”
The room falls quiet again.
“The contracts classify cancellation without Council approval as an interruption,” Camille continues. “They can retain access to the resonance already generated, and they may be able to force the channel open remotely. I need time to determine how to override it safely.”
“You want us to continue the tour,” Mina says.
“The master channel is inaccessible while dormant,” Camille says.
“The override protocol only becomes available once the contracted performance window activates. If we cancel before then, the Council retains remote control and can open it without us having access to the internal structure. At the final stop, the entire network will be active through one central routing point. It may be the only moment when I can sever the Patron’s access rather than merely interrupting one performance. ”
“That is a terrible plan,” I say.
“It is currently the least dangerous available option.”
“Comforting.”
Kaia’s expression remains hard. “And we’re supposed to trust you with this?”
Camille goes still.
The question hangs between us.
She could give us data. Credentials. A list of every risk she has calculated and every contingency already prepared.
Instead, she looks at me.
The bond tightens, and I feel the answer before she speaks. Fear, controlled so tightly it hurts. Determination beneath it. Something warmer that she has spent days insisting does not exist.
“You do not have to trust me,” she says. “But I will not allow them to take any of you, nor will I allow them to keep using Jules.”
My breath catches. Camille keeps her eyes on mine.
“I have already made the mistake of treating her as an operation,” she continues. “I will not make it again. If preventing this requires me to dismantle every system I have spent my career protecting, I will.”
No one says anything.
Neither do I.
For once, I cannot find the joke.