Fawkes continued talking as the big man in the toga moved gracefully through the room like a body-building angel. “He showed me the symbols to hide in the words on the page, in the arrangement of the letters, the order of the sentences, of the paragraphs. These mystical symbols not only act upon the readers’ subconscious, convincing them to buy multiple copies of my books, but they also draw forth energy, which then flows into me and keeps me young…”

Fawkes smiled beatifically at the people around him. “Fifteen per cent of which goes to Argento, naturally, with twenty per cent for foreign territories.”

Gordon had gone cold inside his Creature from the Black Lagoon costume. Fawkes was talking here about magic. Real, actual, supposed-to-be-kept-secret-from-mortals magic.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Fawkes said. “I thought it, too. I asked the same questions you’re asking. We all did. Is this right? Is this fair? But don’t we deserve this, after all we sacrifice for them? As writers? We hold a mirror to the face of society, a scalpel to its dark underbelly… Don’t we deserve a little extra for the depths to which we must plunge?”

Gordon spotted Susan in the crowd, looking mystified.

“You have been invited here tonight so that you may become one of us. So that you may become family. We will share with you the secrets, the symbols you need to put in your books. You will learn the different types of pain, the particular strain of anguish that is most effective. You will be shown how to get your readers to care about your characters so much that when those characters die the readers are traumatised far past the point of tears. You will be instructed on the best way to bombard your readers with emotions, with feelings.”

Susan stepped forward. “So you make your readers suffer, and you draw strength from that?”

“Their pain makes me strong,” said Fawkes, smiling. “And your readers’ pain can make you strong.”

“And you actually believe everything you’re saying?”

“You will believe, too, my dear.”

“Uh-huh,” said Susan. “You said something about draining their life energy. Isn’t that, like, bad?”

“No, not necessarily. Is it exploitative? Yes. But fatalities are few.”

“Fatalities? Are you saying you’ve killed your readers?”

“It is regrettable, obviously. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re refining the process even now. Argento is supplying me with new, safer symbols. We want our readers living a long life… so they can keep buying our books!” He chuckled.

Susan looked around. “I don’t get what’s going on here. Are you all this stupid?”

“There’s always one,” Fawkes said, his smile growing sad. “Always one who needs convincing.”

The crowd parted and a gap opened between Susan and Argento.

“I can feel your doubt,” Argento said, his voice soft yet piercing.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Susan replied.