Chapter 267 Magic.

Chapter 267: 267 Magic.

"Nice venue," I said, looking out over the warped hardwood floor of Longdale High’s abandoned gymnasium. The space was currently a chaotic, highly hazardous blend of heavy industrial machinery and bleeding-edge sorcery. "Are you absolutely sure we have clearance to trash this place?" I asked, turning to Lacey.

Lacey offered a blinding, perfectly practiced corporate smile. "Of course! The structure was scheduled for demolition anyway. The recent plunge in inner-city test scores opened up a massive block of zoning properties for potential redevelopment, and Firefly Industries recently acquired the deed to construct more profitable ventures."

"Brothels?" I guessed.

"Low-income housing, actually," Lacey corrected smoothly.

"You guys are building low-income housing?"

"Miles, please!" Lacey laughed lightly, hooking her arm through mine as we navigated around a pile of heavy cables. "Firefly is deeply committed to maintaining the authentic character of local neighborhoods. We make massive investments in affordable community initiatives through the Firefly Cares program."

"I bet you do," I muttered. "And what exactly does Firefly define as ’affordable housing’?"

"Highly tasteful, modern condos with tiered pricing structures," Lacey said without missing a single beat.

"Do those pricing tiers start at a million dollars?"

"The cost of raw construction materials has spiked recently," Lacey admitted seamlessly.

I rolled my eyes, hooking a finger in my collar to loosen my tie a fraction.

Armor was strictly for professional, live-fire jobs. For venue prep like this, I was dressed down in my standard mob attire—a simple black suit, crisp white undershirt, and a dark tie.

But even without the helmet’s sensors on, I could smell the corporate bullshit from a mile away.

It looked like the board had finally gotten sick of gentrifying the suburbs and decided to bleed the city limits directly.

But honestly, that wasn’t my problem. If their tax write-off gave me a massive, reinforced concrete box to trap a demon in, I wasn’t going to complain.

"Fantastic," I said, shifting my attention to the massive, ringed Tesla coils bolted into the bleachers.

Thick, heavy black power lines twisted across the laminated gym floor like mechanical vines, feeding directly into a massive, humming generator currently being tweaked by Rhea. "How is the grid holding up?"

"Flawless, boss man!" Rhea giggled, her mechanical spider-arms whirring as her autonomous drones welded a heavy capacitor into place. "These bad boys are gonna give this freak a seriously shocking surprise!"

"Good," I said. The entire setup felt like the climax of a terrible B-movie, but if strapping a ghost-trap to a high-voltage coil got Legion off my back forever, I was fully on board.

The only remaining issue was broadcasting the execution to the public, but I had already outsourced that department.

"Psyren? How are the livestream metrics looking?"

"All dialed in, boss!" Psyren cheered with manic, unfiltered glee. Her thumbs flew across the screen of her heavily modified smartphone. "I’ve been hyping this drop on the encrypted boards for days! The viewer count is going to be absolutely astronomical."

That was the absolute truth. I really loved modern technology. It used to be that you had to actively kidnap a hostage and hijack a news chopper just to get this kind of global broadcast reach.

Nowadays, you just needed a decent WiFi router, three HD webcams, and an audience hungry for live violence. And I was definitely ready for my close-up.

I left Psyren to her algorithms and walked over to Lilith. The succubus was crouched on the floor, enthusiastically scratching massive, intricate runic designs into the hardwood with a piece of glowing chalk.

"Are you completely sure this specific location will work?" I asked, shoving my hands into my suit pockets.

"Oh, one hundred percent, Milesy!" Lilith popped up from the floor, inhaling deeply through her nose. Her eyelids fluttered in absolute, bubbly ecstasy. "Mmm! This place is going to perform marvelously! Gosh, you can practically taste the raw, unadulterated despair in the air!"

She wasn’t entirely wrong. Even standing near the bleachers, I could feel the heavy, oppressive scars of the building.

My own high school experience hadn’t been a total nightmare, but I certainly didn’t look back on those four years with any fond nostalgia.

At least I went to a highschool in this life, let’s just say a Casper thought the only thing a mobster needed to know was how to negotiate.

The squeak of rubber soles against the warped wood and the lingering, stale reek of old gym uniforms were actively resurrecting ghosts I preferred to leave buried.

I inspected the massive ritual circle. The names we had extracted from Behemoth’s scroll spiraled aggressively around the edges in a frantic, intricate script.

As much as I fundamentally despised magic, I had to admit the demons absolutely nailed their brand aesthetic.

It made perfect sense. Hellspawn had been sitting on the bleeding edge of the evil industry for the last three thousand years.

They knew exactly how to market their product. They would gladly wait in the shadows for four decades just to secure a single corrupted soul.

If a grudge required haunting three generations of a bloodline and surviving two world wars just to ruin a marriage, they put in the overtime. You had to respect that kind of relentless, psychotic dedication to the bit.

But that definitely didn’t mean I had to tolerate them in my city.

I was going to permanently erase Legion. Demons were notoriously good at waiting in the dark to stab you in the spine. The only effective countermeasure to that kind of infinite patience was to stab them first, hollow them out, decapitate the host, and burn the remains to fine ash. I wasn’t leaving a single variable to chance.

Still, I deeply hated relying on Vanessa and Lilith for the heavy lifting. I tried to reframe the situation in my head, treating the magic like one of Rhea’s unstable science projects.

I knew how to manage a crew, and eventually, you just had to step back and let the specialists do their jobs.

That didn’t mean I had to like it. But sometimes you just have to play the hand you are dealt.

And fortunately, as every seasoned villain knows, if your cards are garbage, you can always just pull a gun and shoot the dealer under the table.

It wasn’t a flawless solution, but it was the one I had loaded.

Thankfully, we had plenty of time to lock down the perimeter before the main event kicked off. And visually? The set looked spectacular.

Demons absolutely thrived on the pageantry. I honestly didn’t know if they actually needed all the chalk and chanting to make the physics work, or if they just craved the attention.

Demons were basically overgrown toddlers refusing to attend their own birthday party unless you bought the exact right color of balloons and the cake had a cowboy riding a dinosaur on it.

And much like a toddler’s birthday party, the event always ended with the house in ruins, someone screaming in terror, and massive, unidentifiable stains on the floor that would never wash out.

Like I said. I really hate magic.