“Aren’t they supposed to bring you supporting or exculpatory evidence?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I want to know who’s playing hide the football. LeBlanc is definitely playing games, and Jeff certainly reacted.”
“Good point,” and he turned to his computer.
I squeezed past him to sit at my desk and started typing. I checked my watch: 9:23. Four and a half hours to take this beyond the superficiality of a Google search. If LeBlanc’s assertions were true it was going to call into question Jeff’s reasons for forcing the case into arbitration. If it went back to court I would get to go home to New York, but I wanted to find out what was going on. The next few hours would determine if that happened or not.
In the intervening months since John had been trapped in Fey I had made it a point to learn everything I could about the Álfar. In terms of being closemouthed the Álfar made the vampires look like let-it-all-hang-out guests on a Jerry Springer show. The practical result of that secrecy meant that I had read a lot of bat-shit crazy stuff about Álfar powers. Their secret goal to rule the world. The nature of Fey—depending on who you read, it was either an alternate reality, the past, or another planet. Which meant they were really aliens. There were essays about their government structure—libertarian, communist, green, utopian. (Since I’d met Qwendar I now knew they had a council.) There were the people who believed the Álfar were the real humans and we were evil Morlock conquerors. Others postulated they were the gnomes of Zurich and they manipulated world finance. That they had no gods. That they worshiped many gods. No, actually they were gods. In short nobody knew nothin’. Serious, credible information was hard to come by, and what there was could fill a thimble.
What I’d been able to glean was that the basis of Álfar religion was mutability. The idea of something being unchanging was anathema to them, so they had one god, but he/she/it changed form, name, and function constantly. It made the Trinity look simple.
Naturally humans had tried to join this bandwagon. In my reading I discovered that the Álfar did not proselytize, and they were horrified that humans were adopting their practices. Since the Álfar were so tight-lipped we didn’t actually know what they called their faith. Nellie Winston, the first convert and founder of the first center, took a page from science, awkwardly bolted it onto the concept of change and transformation, and called it Phase Change. Water is an example of things that go through Phase Change. Water can be a solid—ice. It can be a liquid—water. And it can be a gas—steam. But at its core it’s all the same substance—H2O. I guess what was worshiped in a Phase Change Center was God2O.
Point was that, fairly or unfairly, when I ever bothered to think about Phase Change, I’d filed it under “loony cult” or “elfology,” which probably wasn’t fair since it was practiced by an entire race who had as much right to their respective looniness as the rest of us.
There weren’t a lot of phase centers because it was at heart an alien religion and it was confusing. The centers also seemed to be more prevalent where there was a lot of interaction between humans and Álfar. Which mean they tended to cluster in big cosmopolitan areas and in countries where religion wasn’t taken too seriously.
Naturally the first and by far the largest center was located in Los Angeles. Which made sense because this was a place where Álfar and humans had been living in fairly close proximity since the late 1960s. It was also a place that was in a constant state of flux. Don’t like your boobs, your lips, your hair, your name, your character? Change ’em! The Álfar worship of mutability made complete sense in Hollywood.
So the issue wasn’t understanding Phase Change. The issue was whether Kate Billingham’s embrace of this faith had influenced her husband. Merlin was a whiz. I was always links and pages behind him as we tore through everything we could find about Billingham, Montolbano, and Phase Change.
This temple to the Álfar gods resided in an old mansion just off Hollywood Boulevard. Kate Billingham, Jeff’s wife, was on the board of directors and had helped purchase the building. She wasn’t just a casual convert. She was deeply involved. Which would have made LeBlanc’s objection credible if the articles about Kate’s conversion hadn’t gone back seven years. The whole idea that this had just come to their attention was crap, and LeBlanc knew it.
I made them wait. Because I was really annoyed. Actually pissed was closer to how I felt, but pissed didn’t sound very professional. I knew how I was going to rule, and I had a feeling I was going to be hearing about it on Entertainment Tonight or reading about it on a blog somewhere.
I walked back into the conference room and surveyed the terrain. Everyone was keeping to their individual tribes. It wasn’t surprising that the human and Álfar actors weren’t mingling, but even the agents and the studios and networks who should have had common cause were keeping to themselves. It disturbed me because for the first time I was getting an inkling of how most humans viewed the Powers. I had an admittedly skewed view. My father had business interests with them. I had been fostered by them. I worked for them.
Most humans never really interacted with them. They just knew the Powers were richer and far more powerful than themselves. Of course this was nothing new. Before they’d gone public the Powers had still wielded enormous power, both financial and political, but from behind the scenes. They had pulled the strings. The difference now was that humans could see the strings being pulled. Groups like Human First were manipulating people, convincing them that they were being denied rights, wealth, power. Right now they were just going after the Álfar, but how long before they broadened the attack to the entire triad of inhuman powers? And a steady diet of resentment and hatred could only have one result—violence.
I feared this case was the first salvo.
But the broader societal implications weren’t my problem right now. This arbitration was my problem. I walked back up to the head of the conference room table. There was a rattling of china as coffee cups and plates were set aside, the chattering as chair wheels rolled across bamboo flooring, the whisper of shuffled paper, a few coughs, then silence. Everyone was now seated and regarding me. I met LeBlanc’s lizard stare and wondered if she would have raised this if David had been present? I decided she wouldn’t have, and the fact that she obviously viewed me with disdain got me mad all over again and stiffened my spine.
Gabaldon got to her feet. “Ms. Ellery, if I might have the opportunity to rebut Ms. LeBlanc’s assertions.”
For an instant I considered allowing her to take point. It lowered my visibility, defused any accusation of bias, but I could read the other woman’s expression. She wasn’t as overtly dismissive as LeBlanc, but it was there. Some of it was age. I was a baby lawyer, not even a year out of law school, but some of it was also because women still have a tendency to give greater credence to men. I suspected that if David had been present Gabaldon wouldn’t have been so quick to rise to her feet. I understood the impulse, I did it too, but I wasn’t going to let it stand. And it was time I tested myself. Maybe past time.
“Thank you, Ms. Gabaldon, but I will address this myself.” I shifted to look at LeBlanc. “Ms. LeBlanc. I’ve researched your claim.” I picked up the three-inch-thick stack of papers I’d carried in with me and dropped them with a dull thwack back onto the table. “And I find it unpersuasive. In the words of the late Senator Moynihan, you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts. There was nothing covert about Ms. Billingham’s involvement in Phase Change. It’s been widely known for years. Which then begs the question, why did you bring it up now? Unless you think your client’s position and assertions are unsupported and unpersuasive, and you’re grasping at straws. The statistics you provided indicate support for your position. Why undermine that with a, frankly, personal attack against Mr. Montolbano? Your objection is overruled.”