Preaching Sacred Blasphemy

Phantom announced shotgun before they even left the lounge.

So: Phantom in the front seat, then. The rest of the logic reorganizes around its single point of deviation. Dew, last in, takes the only remaining space in row two. Bell notices this with the professional detachment of someone who has been paid, for a very long time, not to react to the things he notices.

He pulls from the curb at exactly the speed limit.

Phantom has the aux.

The first song is in a language Bell doesn't speak, with a bass line that makes the door panel vibrate. Phantom is mouthing the words at Bell like maybe that will get their meaning across. Bell adjusts the rearview mirror.

"Phantom."

"What."

"Volume."

"This is on volume five, Bell."

"Volume four."

"Volume four is for cowards."

"Volume four, Phantom."

Phantom brings it to four with a sigh that implies genuine personal sacrifice. Bell notes this and says nothing, because that would constitute engagement, and engagement is the thing Phantom has been trying to produce since they first laid eyes on him, appearing with those shots that they took so easily, their throat bobbing —

He moves his eyes back to the road.

Swiss says, quietly, from the far back: "Phantom. If you play that song you played in the dressing room last Saturday I will walk to Helion."

"It's not on this playlist."

"It better not be."

"…I'll skip it."

"Mhm."

Bell's mouth doesn't move.

The van makes a gentle left. Bell has his eyes on the road and is watching traffic. From row two there is a sound. Small. Barely there. The kind of sound a ghoul makes when ambushed by their own nervous system. Bell is making no record of this.

He adjusts the rearview mirror again.

In row two, Mister Delmere is experiencing what Bell has categorized, conservatively, as an ongoing… situation. It has the quality of something that intends to become a scheduling problem and is simply waiting on the relevant parties to cooperate with it.

Bell has been managing Dew's situations long enough to recognize the posture: the careful stillness, the folio on the lap, the scrupulously neutral expression of a ghoul who is having no reactions.

Rain isn't doing anything. This is the consistent feature of the situation. He doesn't have to try, since all the trying is on the other end. Bell watches Mister Delmere sit at attention and feels the long-suffering fondness of a ghoul who has watched his boss systematically avoid and deny every good thing to fall into his lap, for the simple fact that he thinks he doesn't deserve it.

Well.

Bell tilts his head. Less lap, more leg pressed to leg. Interesting.

"You drive like a demon, Bell," Phantom says, recovering.

"I drive at the speed limit."

"You are a latent menace, Bell."

The corner of Bell's mouth moves. The very corner — a twitch, involuntary, the kind of thing that years of professional composure should have eliminated and apparently has not —

"Cowbell Bell Ghoul," Phantom says, delighted. "Was that a smile?"

"That is not my name."

"But that was a smile."

"It was not."

Bell keeps his eyes forward and his expression neutral, Phantom's quick movements small flashes in his peripherals.

Laughter rolls through the shuttle, Phantom leaning closer now, voice low enough that no one else can hear. Bell can smell their ozone, the clean cut of mint.

"That was absolutely a smile and I want it acknowledged —"

"Helion's on the next block," Bell says, after a beat. "Coming up on the right."

He signals. He checks his mirrors. He does all of this with perfect composure and does not examine the fact that his composure has a crack in it that is Phantom-shaped and has been there for longer than he is prepared to acknowledge.

"Helion."

Bell puts the van in park. The doors open. Cold air comes in, the van empties — Phantom first, everyone filing out, Cumulus and Cirrus already talking, Aurora in the middle of both conversations. Bell stays at the wheel a moment, as he always does. Long enough to confirm the hazards. Long enough to check the mirrors one final time.

He sees Rain, holding the door into Helion. The look back over his shoulder at Dew.

Dew on the sidewalk with his folio, looking like a ghoul who has forgotten what hands are for.

Bell gets out.

"Mister Delmere."

"Bell."

"After you."

𖥸

The tour takes exactly as long as planned.

Bell spends most of that time in the margins. This is his preferred position on excursions. Present, available, unobtrusive. He has a clipboard with the feedback forms and a mental accounting of everyone's position at all times, which is useful when what he is observing is Mister Delmere conducting a soft-open for a group of ghouls who cannot, collectively, maintain a straight line through a corridor.

They are not bad guests. They are simply a lot of them.

Phantom is a lot of them by themself.

Bell tracks Phantom through the building the way he tracks all variables. It's not fixation, more… asset management.

The ground floor is a loss — Phantom finds the moss wall immediately and Bell isn't close enough to hear the exchange but can reconstruct it from context: Dew's shoulders going incrementally rigid, Phantom's hands going up in a gesture that is technically compliance. The second floor, however, does something to Phantom that Bell doesn't have a ready category for.

The light changes, the sound falls differently, and something about it stops Phantom mid-step at the landing in a way that Bell would, in a different register, call struck. They stand there for a moment, not performing anything, just standing with their face doing something private in the direction of the float tank corridor.

Bell finds something on his clipboard that requires attention.

He gives them the moment.

He gives them, in fact, several moments — long enough that by the time he looks up, the group has relocated and Phantom is currently doing something Bell would categorize as a professional threat assessment of Omega, who has the particular misfortune of being both objectively attractive and currently within Phantom's sightline.

Bell looks at this for exactly as long as is necessary.

He coughs.

Then he catches Phantom's eye and gives them an expression that says absolutely not without moving a single facial muscle.

Phantom's eyebrow goes up a quarter inch, the specific Phantom expression that means really — and holds there for a beat.

Bell holds their gaze. His clipboard remains level. His expression remains neutral.

Phantom looks back at him for one more moment.

Then they look away from Omega entirely.

Bell returns to his clipboard. He makes a note about the recovery suite lighting that does not need to be made. He's aware, in a peripheral and entirely non-urgent way, that his ears have gone warm — copper, if anyone were positioned to notice. Phantom is no longer looking at Omega and Bell is not examining why that is the outcome he wanted.

He has several reasons it was the appropriate professional call.

He is, if he is being precise about it, still adding to the list.

𖥸

The comment cards are Bell's idea. They are a practical solution to a practical problem — Helion's feedback architecture exists for clinical purposes, and the soft-open represents an early informal data set. They are also, and Bell will own this privately, a way to move a group of performing artists toward a vehicle by framing departure as a transaction.

Everyone fills a card out. That's the price of being driven home.

It works, which Bell considers a success.

He collects them by the front entrance as the group assembles — clipboard in hand, pens provided. Aurora fills all four prompts in handwriting that includes small flowers on the capital letters, and thanks Bell directly when she hands it over. He acknowledges this with a nod and a mental note that she is, unambiguously, a sweetheart of a ghoul.

Mountain's is two words. Good towels. Bell makes a note. Mountain is a ghoul who knows what matters.

Swiss's runs longer: Tell whoever did the salt corridor I'm willing to fight them for the recipe. I have never breathed like that in my life. Mountain says the towels were good. He's right. Bell marks this for the facilities team.

Mist's: Tell Pebble their hands are a gift to the industry. Bell underlines it. He will be telling Dew, who will certainly inform Pebble.

Rain takes the card and pen and writes without hesitating, the behavior of a ghoul who arrived knowing what he wanted to say. He hands it back face-down. Bell turns it over.

Two words. Small, precise handwriting.

Nice hands.

Bell's expression doesn't change. He puts this where he puts everything belonging to Mister Delmere's ongoing situation: the back of his mind, labeled, somewhere he will not be tripping over it in the dark.

He turns to Phantom.

Phantom is still writing.

They've been writing, Bell realizes, for slightly longer than anyone else, bent over the card with focused, deliberate attention, which is not an energy Bell typically associates with Phantom.

He waits. He is, among many other things, very patient.

Phantom finishes and looks up.

They hold the card out directly, fingers on one end, the other end aimed at Bell. Bell takes it because there is nothing else to do, and he reads it because the alternative is standing there holding an unread card, which is not something Bell does.

What we did well: The driver. Both hands on the wheel the entire time. Very professional.

What we could do better: Volume four.

Anything else: [a string of digits] — Ph.

Optional contact information: see above. keep up.

Bell is aware that his ears have gone warm again.

He doesn't look up immediately. This is not because he needs more time with the card — he has read it, in full, twice now. But because there's information on his face he's not prepared to share with anyone yet, and Phantom is still there, watching him the way they watch things they find interesting, directly and without any apparent self-consciousness.

Bell finally looks up.

Phantom winks.

"I'm sitting shotgun again," they announce.

Not a question.

Bell says nothing. He watches Phantom turn and walk toward Helion's front door with the easy confidence of a ghoul who has just made a move and knows exactly where it landed, and then he looks back down at the card.

He opens his inner jacket pocket and places the card inside.

He finds Mister Delmere near the lobby in quiet conversation with one of the Helion staff, folio open, doing what he does best, which is to say: not stopping. He holds out the stack when Dew glances up.

"Overwhelming praise, sir," Bell says, making sure Rain's card is on the bottom of the pile.

Dew takes the stack. "Thank you, Bell."

Bell has found, over a long professional history, that Mister Delmere occasionally benefits from a reminder of what he's built. He has also found that Mister Delmere is considerably more receptive to such reminders when they arrive sideways.

"And how was Delta's new protocol?"

He watches Dew's left eyelid tremor and feels, faintly, a spark of pride.

"Effective."

"Mm." Bell closes his tablet. "I'm heading out to do drop-offs."

"See you tomorrow, Bell."

He leaves before Dew can say anything further, which is, Bell has found, the optimal exit. He does not look back at Mister Delmere standing alone in the lobby of the thing he built.

𖥸

Phantom is already in the front seat when Bell reaches the van.

Of course they are.

Bell gets in and adjusts his mirrors and does not remark on the fact that they have resumed their exact positions as though the intervening excursion was a commercial break.

Phantom has the aux plugged into their phone.

Bell says nothing about the volume.

Phantom turns it to four anyway as he pulls away from the curb.

After a short while Aurora tips sideways against Cirrus's shoulder. Swiss and Mountain are arranged in the back row with the stillness of two ghouls who have reached maximum relaxation. Cumulus, Rain and Mist all look about thirty seconds from sleep, which the city potholes do their duty to prevent.

Phantom changes the song. Something in a language Bell doesn't speak, which is, at this point, a theme.

"What's this one about," Bell says.

Phantom turns to look at him. Slowly.

"Bell," they say, cautiously.

"It's a reasonable question."

"It's a… love song," Phantom says, in the tone of someone who is not, technically, lying.

Bell drives. The bass does something through the door panels.

"Mm," he says.

Phantom faces front again, and Bell can hear the smile in it without looking.

The route home is longer than the route out. Individual drop-offs — Bell has everyone's addresses already mapped in his tablet in the most efficient order, because of course he does — and the van empties by degrees. Mist first, a quiet thank you at her door. Then Swiss and Mountain, Mountain unfolding from the back row while Swiss's hand trails down his arm as he follows. Aurora, Cirrus, and Cumulus in a cluster, Cirrus and Cumulus already drifting toward each other on the walk to the door, Cumulus saying something that makes Cirrus tip her head and laugh. Rain last of the group, lifting two fingers in a brief half-wave from the sidewalk before turning down the block.

Then it's just Phantom in the front seat, a few miles left, and the music still at four.

"You're quieter," Phantom says.

"I'm always quiet."

"You're quieter than your quiet." A beat. "The card okay?"

Bell doesn't look at them.

"The cards were a useful data collection mechanism," he says. "I expect Mister Delmere will find them informative."

They settle back in the seat, feet off the dash for once, quiet in a way that does not feel like running out of things to say.

"I meant mine," Phantom says.

Bell takes the turn. Regulation speed. Both hands on the wheel.

"It was noted," he says.

A small sound from Phantom. Bell is fairly certain it's a smile. He doesn't look. He doesn't need to. He has sufficient data.

"This is you," Bell says, pulling to the curb.

Phantom collects their things unhurriedly, in the specific way of someone who has nowhere else to be and is choosing not to be there yet. They pause with their hand on the door.

"The rental return is three blocks away," Bell says.

Phantom waits.

"Next time I'll just pick you up."

A beat.

Bell is aware, approximately one second after saying this, of precisely what he has said.

Phantom turns back. Their mouth has done something just shy of terrible.

"Next time, huh?" they say.

"For… the shuttle," Bell says.

"Right," Phantom says, in the tone of someone who is not, by any measure, agreeing with him.

They get out. Bell watches the door close. Watches Phantom reach the steps of their building and glance back once, just once, and then he puts the van in drive.

He returns the shuttle, signs the paperwork, and gets in his car. Sits for a moment with his hands in his lap before he drives home at exactly the speed limit.

He decides, as the engine goes quiet in the garage and the building settles around him, that he will not be looking at it tonight.

His hand finds his jacket pocket without being asked. He will not take the card out.

This is, he notes, probably not true.

· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·

The teal, Phantom has decided, is better for the shoulders, but the gold does something to their eyes, and both of these things are true simultaneously, which is the fundamental problem with having taste.

"You're not helping," they tell Rain.

Rain's face, small in the corner of the phone screen, tilts slightly. "I said the gold."

"You said it like someone who wants to stop talking about it."

"I do want to stop talking about it."

"That's not help, that's surrender." Phantom spins once — the gold catches the light, which is a point in its favor — then back the other way to check the difference. Rain watches.

This is the arrangement: Phantom performs, Rain observes, and both of them get something out of it that neither would name on a quiet Monday night.

Their phone buzzes.

Phantom doesn't look immediately, could be anything, usually is anything, the group chat runs at a volume that would concern a less seasoned person. But the notification is from an unknown number, and Phantom's heart skips.

They pick up the phone.

This is Bell. Thank you for the feedback.

Phantom's face, caught before they can do anything useful with it, goes quiet. The softness around their eyes, their chin tipping down just slightly, like something landing rather than being taken. It's quick. It's real.

Rain doesn't miss it. Rain never misses it.

"Phantom," he says.

"It's Bell." Their voice comes out genuine, which was not the plan, and then they laugh, good-natured, a little helpless, full of something warm.

They pick the phone up from the dresser and hold it too close to their face. "'Thank you for the feedback,' Rain. He —" Another laugh. "That is so —"

"Yeah," Rain says.

"He texted."

"I see that."

Phantom looks back at their own face in the mirror. The teal, the gold, none of it especially load-bearing anymore. They didn't know until just now how much they were waiting.

"Should I send him my tits in this? Maybe he'll have more of an opinion than you."

"Lucifer's left nut, Phantom."

They both laugh, and Phantom goes quiet again.

"...what do I actually say to him."

Rain looks at them for a moment through the screen. At Phantom's face in the mirror, unguarded, the gold top still catching the light.

"Something true," he says.

Phantom puts the teal back on the rack.