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Chapter Text

Alfred, April 2002.
An average yet dignified office tower at a sufficient remove from Maroni territory. Upper East Side, Midtown.

. . . . .

    Leo Russo Design had a strong presence in Gotham, for those who knew how to look. They were discreet, as architectural firms went, but they kept busy. Despite this, as Alfred made his way to the small meeting room indicated by Ms. Clarke, he noticed staff outright loitering nearby, giving him furtive glances and even a smirk. Had they somehow traced him to Master Bruce? Alfred would have to drop this inquiry, if they had. There must be no connection between this “secret lair” foolishness and the good name of the Waynes.

    Alfred’s misgivings about this meeting intensified as he strode into the room and made eye contact with Mr. Russo himself. The Principal-in-Charge sat flanked by two men. The tall man was clearly experienced security, right-handed, left foot slightly forward. The other man was stocky, but nonthreatening. He was a white fellow who had a lurid fresh sunburn, and his posture was awkward as he tried not to aggravate it. He had the slightly leathery look of someone who had frequently forgotten that the sun could shine in Gotham. He had also forgotten his employee badge.

    They were all waiting for Alfred’s arrival at what ought to be a preliminary proposal meeting with Ms. Clarke alone. Alfred allowed his eyebrows to rise slightly in surprise. His easygoing cover persona, however, held steady as he offered a handshake.

    Mr. Russo started to rise to meet him, but the sunburned man said: “He’s armed, sir.”

   Alfred’s eyebrows were a lost cause. “What was that?”

   The man eyed Alfred with a furrowed forehead reminiscent of sliced ham. “You brought three melee weapons past the front desk. Hand them over.”

   Alfred’s holdouts were perfectly hidden, of course. The average Gothamite would assume this man was a keen-eyed guard, and be cowed by his supposed expertise. Alfred, who actually had expertise, was even more wary. Such immediate detection could only be achieved with magic. Unlikely to have been worked with an artifact, either. Any artifact that could identify hidden weapons would be dangerously coveted and immediately swallowed into Gotham’s underbelly.

   Alfred did another surreptitious scan of the room, in case he had somehow missed an ancient urn or an unsubtle statuette. Nothing jumped out except the smell of whiteboard markers. This disarmingly pink man must be a true magic-user, and a cunning one at that, for his spells to pass muster with the cursed genius loci of Gotham. The real threat. But why?

   Alfred raised his hands slowly, expertly fielding his document case with three fingers as he splayed his pointer and thumb. He tilted his head to regard Ms. Clarke. She was rather unruffled for a civilian project manager. Alfred reconsidered her frumpy suit and the metal hair sticks twisted in her frizzy bun, and decided that she had at least half a decade of practice disarming her clients. She held the barest tension in her lean muscles as she took his briefcase and gestured for him to turn around. He took care to move slowly despite the adrenaline.

   Nobody moved to divest Alfred of his weapons. Just as well. They would not be able to locate them without risk of exposing the magic-user. Instead, Ms. Clarke nodded for Alfred to remove his weapons himself. Alfred took a moment to admire her impeccable bluff. A move backed by experience and an unknown arsenal of spells, but a bluff nonetheless. No overt hostility to it, which was encouraging. Their precautions were disconcerting, but this had not gone pear-shaped just yet.

   “One can never be too careful in Gotham,” Alfred said, picking a soothingly pragmatic tone. “I had better kneel to retrieve the knife in my boot, Ms. Clarke,” he added, as neatly as he would offer to pick up a dropped pen. “And I will require the blue folder in the briefcase, if you are still interested in my project.”

   It was the right move. Ms. Clarke neatly deposited his items in a cabinet drawer, checked the lock, and handed him his folder before taking a seat halfway down the table. The tall security guard motioned for Alfred to take the chair closest to the door.

   “We might be interested in your project,” Mr. Russo said, “but first we are interested in your thoughts on Shoreline Lofts.” The glint in his eyes reminded Alfred of Master Bruce.

   “I did mention Shoreline Lofts in my request,” Alfred said, with careful neutrality. “The building was among the examples of similar projects, representing a standard of quality across the city regardless of… political affiliation.” It was public knowledge that Shoreline Lofts included the offices of Carmine Falcone; or at least, everyone in the immediate neighborhood knew why the old façade had been shot to smithereens. Did they think that Alfred was a representative of the mob? They must not have made the connection to Master Bruce after all.

   Alfred felt miffed, actually. “Are these precautions on account of the Falcones? I am not affiliated with any such organization. I’m sure it’s my fault that this wasn’t clear in the description. If you would sign the NDA I mentioned in my inquiry, we can discuss any concerns in detail.”

   “That’s part of it,” Mr. Russo said, still watching closely. “The other part is, you implied that we are involved in their business. You grouped Shoreline Lofts with the LRD projects. Next to an earlier project widely attributed to the Maronis. Neither job had our name on it. The Falcones and Maronis are bitter enemies, you must know that.”

   They thought this was a blackmail attempt. An incompetent blackmail attempt, since he came here alone. Alfred had a brief thought about how he might appear with a trustworthy partner at his side. No matter.

   “I am not making a threat,” Alfred replied. “If your firm was indeed involved in both projects, I would count it as an endorsement. I believe your company is one of very few that is truly neutral, and could well have built both projects with complete detachment from any power struggles. For various reasons, my own project requires that type of dedication to impartiality.”

   Master Bruce had actually requested a company that had no criminal connections whatsoever, but seeing as Alfred was not a genie, he would get what he got.

   “Regardless of whether we work together, I have no intention of disrupting the balance,” Alfred promised. “The layout I used, grouping the projects, was mainly intended for comparison. Some small elements of the work are reminiscent of your contractors’ methods, and the designs would not be out of place in your own portfolio. So I had a conjecture that LRD was involved, but there is no real evidence.”

   “And nobody… suggested that conjecture to you,” the magic-user said, uncertainly. “You just came up with it.”

   Alfred gave him a small, wry smile. “The Falcones hardly posted a notice, you know. In fact, I could not find a single name attached to the re-securing of Shoreline Lofts, not even a cement service. The baristas down the street had no gossip about the builders. It was remarkable.”

   “Might’ve been paid off,” the security guard snorted. “Rich people like to pretend we don’t exist.” He was still shifting slightly on his feet.

   “And powerful people have secrets,” Alfred agreed, with a concerned frown to show fellow-feeling. “A dangerous combination.”

   An idea was starting to form, now that Alfred knew that Leo Russo was friendly with a magic-user. The baristas had not even griped about the rush, which really should have tipped him off earlier. It would be nearly impossible without magical reinforcement, but…. “That’s actually a clever strategy, to remain anonymous as an assist to remaining neutral,” he mused aloud.

   “I’m reminded of that apocryphal story of the emperor who killed everyone involved in a project to keep it secret. It’s entirely fictitous,” Alfred reaffirmed. “But now imagine that paranoid Roman in Gotham, if you will.” Mr. Russo stifled a snort at the unsubtle euphemism. “Here people are silenced all the time, by the would-be usurpers as much as the emperor. Anyone percieved to have information is at risk. So the key is to not be percieved.”

   “Wait, are you saying someone got got by the Mar—uh, the usurpers? Did a barista go missing or something?” Now the guard looked alarmed.

   “No, the staff hasn’t changed,” Alfred assured him. “Everyone seems to be quite safe. The entire project is a united front of anonymity. Nobody knows who did the work; nobody knows who to threaten. This would be easier to ensure with a full-service firm like your own, but still, the infosec—”

   Alfred stopped short. He had been about to allude to the files Master Bruce had searched via less-than-legal means. This was a shocking lapse in compartmentalization.

   “Excuse me,” he said, eyeing the magic-user balefully. “Am I subject to a truth spell right now?”

   “What the fuck,” the man said. His sunburn was incapable of turning pale, but it made a go at turning blotchy.

   “What, like magic? You think that’s real?” Ms. Clarke snorted, valliantly attempting to redirect while the other men froze. It would have been more convincing if the guard had not flinched when she kicked him under the table.

   “You all know?” Alfred demanded, gobsmacked. “Bloody hell, I was expecting to have to play that off with at least one of you.” Ah, that would be the truth spell again.

   “Did you tag me with something, or is the locus my chair?” he asked, craning his neck to examine his jacket as much as he could while keeping his hands in view. There, on the back of the right shoulder pad: a burdock burr, probably placed by Ms. Clarke when she was holding the door. Not the worst disguise, especially since retrieving the burr would pass as a polite favor. He let out a sigh. “Well, this is disappointing, but it does make some things simpler.”

   Mr. Russo made quick eye contact with each of his employees in turn before fixing Alfred with a half-apologetic smile. “We have a well-established security protocol. I cannot discuss specifics.” That was a rehearsed line. “If it helps, you were speaking rather freely. You didn’t even hesitate to say the misunderstanding was all your fault, remember?”

   The magic-user shrugged. “Most people don’t bother with that kinda polite minor hyperbole.”

   “No, that one was a full oxymoron,” Mr. Russo smirked. “He’s British. He meant that he’s blameless and it’s entirely our fault.”

   “I took great pains to set accurate expectations, I’ll have you know,” Alfred sniffed. “Still, your caution could be quite a benefit, if our interests are aligned.”

   Mr. Russo sighed. “I think both of us still need convincing on that last point, unfortunately.”

   “Here,” Alfred offered. He delicately plucked the burr off his jacket, taking care to keep it in full view. The barbs were unpleasant. “We can take turns asking questions. A truth for a truth. What do you say?”

   “Your call, Mike,” Mr. Russo murmured to the magic-user. Mike agreed easily enough, but spent the next several minutes fussing about until everyone was rearranged to his own satisfaction. They ended up wrapping the burr in a kerchief to make it easier to hold. Alfred held the packaged locus with his fingertips and waited for the first question.

   “How much do you know about magic?” Mr. Russo asked. Alfred privately approved of his priorities. Magic, while it was persnickety, was much more powerful than the Falcones. And there were far more people in the world who recognized the crime family than people who recognized real magic.

   “I only know the basics,” Alfred demurred. “I learned to spot some kinds of magical interference as part of advanced security training. I’ve never used magic myself. Here, now.” He delicately passed the kerchief over. “Are you or your employees directly bound to any criminal organizations or protection rackets? Or do they owe specific allegiance? To the best of your knowledge.”

   “That could describe half of Gotham,” Mr. Russo said, dryly. “I can’t say we’re unbound because we’re obliged to honor a few work contracts. The city would crumble if nobody did the work, you know. But we hold no allegiances. We are independent and neutral, like you said, and we would very much would like to stay that way. We keep all work strictly limited to architectural design and construction. We also prioritize employee safety, and run audits to ensure workers are well-compensated and not pressured into side jobs.”

   “Your turn.” He waited for Alfred’s nod. “Are you or your employer government agents, Mr. Hall? If that is indeed your name.”

   Alfred ignored the magic-driven whim to say that he was retired. “No,” he said. He paused, considered. “I am using a pseudonym at the moment, but intend to be quite transparent with whoever agrees to a contract.” They had earned that respect.

   It only took a few more questions to establish that neither party was a threat to the other’s safety. Leo Russo Designs and their partners were quite serious about confidentiality. They would not sell Master Bruce out. Alfred would not set LRD up. And they would all keep mum about the existence of magic, of course.

   Mike busily prepared a quick spell of mutual non-aggression to make sure of that promise, with Mr. Russo representing the firm. The spell only restricted intentional malicious acts, and was widely used among those in the know. Alfred had done the same thing at MI6, and had never been particularly constrained. It did take some rules-lawyering to quit MI6 in favor of Thomas and Martha (of blessed memory), but self-defense went a long way. Safe to say that this new agreement cost Alfred nothing. Or rather, nothing aside from three minutes of intense memorization and a dram of energy. Alfred would treat himself to pudding later.

   After all that fuss, they were on the same side after all. Alfred found himself feeling strangely relieved. He tried to shake the feeling. It would hardly be wise to relax without his own contract in hand. It seemed that LRD was a good match for the project, though. Certainly Ms. Clarke seemed eager to get her hands on a new challenge, from how quickly she retrieved the blue folder.

   “You said you could not give specifics,” Alfred said, teasing out a thought while Ms. Clarke made a first pass on the Wayne NDA. He turned to address Mike. “Since I suspect the anonymity of the Shoreline Lofts job involved magic, you and I should have a chat about my investigation. It might help improve future deals of that nature. We can speak separately if the firm declines this project.”

   “That… would be really great,” Mike said, running a hand down his face. “Pete’s sake. Hey, Leo? I’m gonna get him the special R&D contract. He’s so close, I gotta.”

   “No, you’re right. Go for it,” Mr. Russo said, switching chairs so he and Ms. Clarke could read the NDA together. She pointed to Master Bruce’s name on the page and his eyes went wide. Alfred privately felt smug.

   “Here, this one’s for you,” Mike said, appearing at Alfred’s side with a legal form on LRD letterhead.

   Alfred’s eyes caught on the logo in the corner. Something was off. Simple canting, he thought. A lion’s head caboshed gules issuant from the mouth goutes d’eau. He peered closer. That wasn’t just the shimmer of metallic ink. The slender water droplets were moving on the page, continuously pouring from the lion’s mouth like a gargoyle. The lion’s eyes seemed to stare into him. He wrenched his eyes away to find Mike grinning right up in his face.

   “Pretty, yeah? That’s how you know it’s a real magic contract. Don’t mind the name, the fellas are nerds. Uh, and let me know if you want to make amendments, I gotta be the one to do it, okay.”

   Alfred looked back at the first line. Welcome, it said, to the Secret Lair Safety Association.

Chapter Text

Selina, November 2003.

A low-rise office in the Reinforced Brick Gothic style. Coventry, Midtown.
. . . . .

      Selina snarled at her reflection in the small mirror on her desk. The mirror was carefully angled to give her a view of anyone coming around the back corner of her cubicle. Today it was moonlighting as a visual reference, alongside photos of one of the Guardian Lions from the Summer palace in Beijing. Selina had chosen photos of the female lion, who guards the inhabitants. It seemed only appropriate. Selina sketched the bridge of her own nose next to the round eye of the lioness.

      She was working on the decorative housing for an outdoor CCTV camera. They made those now. Selina had seen one surveilling the street in front of the police station, boxy and white and begging to be snapped off its thin base. Just a little kick would do. Selina’s client had noticed the same weakness. The client was an authorized camera seller that charged extra by bundling together DIY security kits. They wanted a hollow plastic sculpture to “beautify” the setup. Such a tame word they chose.

      Selina was not sketching any new details today. The client had signed off on the concept design drawings. This was more of a warmup, a tangible walkthrough of her plans before she started modeling the prototype in virtual space. She glanced at her work, and then turned her head to draw a side view. Eyes were a delicate task. The eyes were what sold the expression.

      The other challenge was the mane, which had to be flexible enough to install around the camera no matter how the base was angled. She had already proved the concept with the first option they had designed, the dragon. Its neck could bend and coil like a vacuum hose. The mane of the lioness worked the same way. Selina was going to put together another motion simulation in any case.

      The motion simulator was an advantage of 3D-modelling in SolidWorks. However, the software was very much a design tool, not an architectural one. Everyone else in the office was busily training on the new upgrade of Autodesk Revit, and Selina would have to catch up later. For now, she wasn’t above using fancy renders to make her work stand out to her boss, especially since this particular design was meant to hide in plain sight. The façade should be appealing, but unremarkable—by Gotham standards, at least.

      Grotesques were everywhere in Gotham. The sheer… ubiquity of grotesques was often surprising to tourists, even those who came for the aesthetic. They would stop short to stare at every corner. Selina had just spent part of her lunch break dodging around the Curse of Gotham Daylight Ghost Tour. She sometimes whiled away her commute imagining better routes the tour could take; or, if she was feeling catty, correcting their script.

      It was lazy writing. They were still repeating the trope that Gotham was cursed because it was “built on top of an Indian burial ground.” That one line was so many kinds of bullshit that anyone who believed it would never be convinced otherwise. The next line said the city was built on iron and sail, which was not false, but it didn’t say much beyond the subtext about civilization. Lots of cities were built on mines and ports, and they were nothing like the City of Shadows.

      Gotham might have been founded on iron and sail, but her character was built on swamp and clay.

      The Curse of Gotham came from the swamp. These days people thought of Slaughter Swamp (and any scrap of marsh left in Gotham, really). But the original swamp was on Todt Island—Uptown—just east of the Iron Hills. Something about the barren rock of the Hills meant that iron would slowly wash down into the swamp, where it was easy to gather. No mystery why people were drawn in. The first colonizers would rip up the swamp with their bare hands for a pittance of pitted iron.

      The dramatic tour guides would claim the Curse started with the first (white) man to vanish into the swamp. In fact, the settlers were quite certain that he died of ordinary pigheadedness. The man was important to the Dutch West India Trading Company, so there were records, and the records included a nice long list of every warning the local Lenape had generously provided about the dangerous terrain. The fool assumed they were hiding something, and he went straight in to find it. No loss there.

      It wasn’t until the fifth disappearance that the records began alluding to a curse, and how to ward against it. In fairness, this still happened at an impressively early date. The history museum had some old, old talismans. Eye-shaped pendants, reconstructed rosaries of black-eyed peas. And the antebellum tiger’s-eye gems, lustrous and alluring. Stones as brown as Selina’s eyes, glinting with gold.

      … Selina was not going to find anything else in her reflection. She sighed and surveyed her sketchbook. The fifth sketch was fairly good. Perhaps her portraiture was improving. The third sketch was a better match for her design. She circled it.

      The nice thing about gargoyles and grotesques was that they didn’t have to look fully alive, or even have realistic proportions. Selina might struggle with people, but she could manage stony characters. And she was good at modelling complex curves in 3D space. She was fast. Especially since she could usually reuse her process on the sly, which was magic by AutoCAD standards.

      For the camera cases, the leonine model could reuse most of the draconic one. They were the same thing under the façade. An enlongated head with an open mouth that could snap onto the camera, and a neck that alternated wide decorative bands with flexible accordion segments. Selina started the new file for the lion design by simply duplicating the finished dragon file. Here’s the dragon, he’s chilling, her brain supplied. Damn, that is a sweet dragon, you might say. WRONG! She renamed the file. Her coworkers had shared that video too many times, if she was still quoting it. She got to work adjusting the face and her internal monologue.

…

      The talismans themselves were usually glossed over. People were familiar with the idea of warding off the evil eye. Selina suspected that when the colonists trekked through the swamp, they were thinking less about protection from evil eyes, and more about help watching where to put their feet. Charms against the evil eye made more sense when the swamp was personified with malevolence. Some people did believe that the swamp directed the course of the Curse, but most people talked about it as a general ooze of misfortune.

      In any case, superstition held that vigilance kept the Curse at bay. And gargoyles are watchful. It was natural for them to be cast as guardians against the Curse.

      Clay brought the gargoyles to Gotham—clay and fire, the Great Fire of New York. There was an incredible demand for brickworks after the fire. The old Waynes turned the clay pits of southern Gotham into an entire industry. The asbestos mine opened around the same time, so the whole archipelago had an economic boom. The rapid expansion of Gotham coincided with the Gothic Revival, and it catapaulted Cyrus Pinkney into his role as celebrity architect.

      Pinkney was the first artist to get that good Wayne money. In return, he gave Gotham her gargoyles and the striking aesthetic that became Old Gotham Style.

      He also gave Gotham shadows. Pinkney’s buildings loomed. The tallest ones had step-backs meant to convey sunlight to street level (and to evoke the ziggurat.) But Pinkney’s angles were too steep, and the streets were far too narrow. Hugh Ferriss demonstrated the problem very neatly with his studies of Gotham Cathedral. His work was gorgeous, especially the study of the bell tower side-by-side with its imagined Deco redesign. Selina’s boss kept a framed print in his office.

      The people on the Curse of Gotham Daylight Ghost Tour described Pinkney as if he blotted out the skies on purpose. They pointed to particularly diabolical gargoyles as evidence. Clearly the man was twisted if he had made grotesques that were grotesque.

      Pinkney’s actual artistic muse was the spiritual elevation of humankind, but the theme did not carry through after his early death. Gotham was not a good site for such a… rarefied concept. The people were too dazzled by the impression of superior height. The towers, the flying buttresses, the bridged buildings they could move between without ever touching the street. They craved the idea of rising above the morass in a very literal sense as well as the classist one.

      So Gothamites took up the high pointed arches and ornamentation as symbols of progress, and they felt very secure with the glares of their gargoyles keeping the swamp in its place.

      Then Gotham had its own fires.

      Selina was particularly testy about how the Curse of Gotham Daylight Ghost Tour covered those.

      … She was just fidgeting with the lioness’s muzzle at this point. Time to move on. Selina checked her mirror in case anyone was out stretching their legs, and quickly tested her convenient little extra feature. Most of the sightlines still worked. She could move on to repositioning the eyes now, and finesse the rest on her next pass.

      Selina made the eyeball larger and started adjusting the eyelid. That was the best thing about computer-aided design: she never had to worry about making the damn second eye look good. The whole face was mirrored across the centerline. Everything she did on one side, the computer would copy with perfect symmetry. The final piece would be manufactured the same way, in a two-part mold joined down the middle of the face.

      The mold was what made the inner eye tricky. There couldn’t be undercuts, or they wouldn’t be able to pull the plastic out of the mold. So the inner eye couldn’t have a deep socket. The wrinkles in the nose had to be cut from the side, and she had to accomodate the specs of the milling machine.

      Selina was struck, once again, by the thought that they could have just hired a sculptor. Surely they could have found someone in the Upper West Side. If the sculptor got a spare camera to build around, they could probably take a mold without ever taking measurements.

      The camera cover was a bit more complicated than that, to be fair. It would be hard to get a clay neck to move correctly. Clay might be easier to adjust, but data was easier to copy or undo. The computer model was also managing the technical specs the client needed. And perhaps this hypothetical sculptor wouldn’t practice the same care for authenticity.

      It was only that… Selina had earned her degree. She worked twice as hard as anyone should, and came out alive. Selina had a decent job at a firm that gave a shit about preserving the character of each neighborhood. She was bringing buildings up to date, and perhaps even getting them to stay in line with fire code. Her research into local maintenance was promising. And yet Selina’s big claim to fame was, by some standards, the Gotham equivalent of the lawn flamingo.

      It was the hollow plastic composition that reminded people of kitschy merchandise. Gotham’s souvenir shops sold plastic gargoyles on keychains, on bendy straws, as knockoffs of the Disney TV show. Curtained shelves of cheap adult novelties, racks of irreverent T-shirts. Selina had seen one shirt printed with a gargoyle she was sure was from the Sagrada Família alongside the words “Lounge Lizard.”

      Imported gargoyle imagery was particularly… crude. Gotham natives only wore gargoyles on their shirts as a point of local pride. Lots of artists had designed prints of the more famous ones. People from a block with a popular gargoyle might wear it on their shirt, the same way Knights fans wore their favorite jerseys. Gotham Children’s Hospital often put their chimera on fundraisers. And the fire department had some kind of ritual where they all wore gargoyles at the same time. At least, that was her conclusion from watching the station down the street. It was probably commemorative. She had heard that firefighters still nodded to the Old Eagle of the Clocktower when they passed by.

      This was why Selina kept mentally tearing into the Curse of Gotham Daylight Ghost Tour monologue. They hunted for specters instead of soul. Specters and spectacle. Pandering. The tour guides liked to hint that anyone “spiritually attuned” might see a gargoyle move out of the corner of their eye. They spun the stories from the Gotham Fires to suggest the gargoyles were possessed by protective family ghosts. At least there was one tour guide—in a fraying, unhemmed Ye Olde Skirt—who stuck to archival newspaper clippings. That was more honest. But the papers also published fanciful stories back then.

      The truth was that stone might survive a fire even if the mortar crumbled. The whole world had stories of “miraculously unharmed” statues. Gotham’s stories were even more extraordinary because her legend was already primed with malevolent forces and guardian gargoyles. After the fires, several people credited gargoyles with saving their lives. This commanded a certain level of respect. That’s where the real miracle happened: the whole city rallying to help the survivors. They rebuilt the destroyed tenements far better than they had been before, and restocked them, too. And at each building, stoneworkers would carefully restore the original guardians, or inter their remains at the foundation.

      Gargoyles were in high demand for a long time after that.

      Selina estimated that these days roughly half the buildings in Gotham had some sort of grotesque, even if it was just a Green Man over the door. They were a sign that somebody cared, once. And the street-level ones were still a sign of community. The state of a neighborhood could be divined from the way people treated the statues they could reach. Some held community notices taped to wire coathangers; some were draped in gang colors; a few held tiny lost mittens high and dry. A damaged grotesque was a very bad sign. Most people wouldn’t provoke the Curse like that, even if they didn’t believe in it.

      Usually the reachable grotesques were kept clean, and they might have small pebbles or other offerings. Selina left spare quarters with the imp closest to the working payphone. There was a slice of cake there once. Sometimes there would be colorful lanterns or heaps of flowers. The grotesques and gargoyles got special treatment on holidays, especially in the big immigrant neighborhoods. Gargoyles had been folded into folk traditions from all over the world. People made apotropaic charms of their gargoyles; people put apotropaic charms on their gargoyles. In Gotham, you needed all the luck you could get.

      … A shock jock on the radio once snarked that Martha Wayne should’ve worn a string of nazar beads instead of pearls. One day Selina would stop remembering that. Asshole.

      Selina saved her work twice somewhat viciously and stalked to the water cooler. The water was too cold to toss back, so she sipped from her mug and checked the fridge. The salsa was long gone. There were five cubes of pepperjack cheese in a paper cup, and some tortilla chips left in the bag on the counter. Not bad. She took the loot back to her desk.

....

      The model was clearly a lioness now. Selina chewed a cheese cube while she rotated the piece in virtual space. She had given the lioness powerfully large eyes. Even from the side view, they seemed to be watching. The client would probably appreciate the impression of vigilance, but that was just a nice bonus. The client wasn’t who Selina was doing this for.

      This was for the Gothamites that might find even a plastic grotesque reassuring. Selina imagined that the cameras would be installed at gas stations, and probably some stores if the price went down. A station attendant working late would find more peace of mind if their security came hidden in a small guardian rather than a than a dead white box.

      Her designs would also be spotted by the people who looked for gargoyles. Even someone who didn’t care about the Curse might look when they were stressed. Selina had seen a news item once, in the buzz leading into Y2K, quoting dozens of people who were nervous specifically because their building had no gargoyle to protect them during the turn of the millenium.

      Selina’s growing portfolio of cheap grotesques was a solution for superstitious people with limited options.

      The original idea wasn’t hers, sadly. It came from Dan, an older white man who worked in construction. He had seen a simple warehouse build come to a standstill over an argument about adding a chipped grotesque. Selina still didn’t know exactly what Dan’s role in that project had been. He was just one of the boss’s Salsa Buddies.

      (Selina had been nonplussed to learn that this was a foodie thing. At the time she had been looking for a better way to exercise, and she had fond memories of dancing salsa in college. Her boss had been very awkard in that conversation. But after that, he started bringing in a jar of whatever the salsa of the month was. Sometimes it was homemade. And Selina had her pole-dancing lessons now.)

      Salsa Dan’s idea was clever: Cheap pre-fab gargoyles that could go on standard gutters as a downspout extension. A budget solution that was easy to install and would not crack like cheap terracotta. They were even true gargoyles, for people who cared about the distinction. But did Dan bring his idea to a product designer—or even, again, a regular sculptor? Of course not. He brought the idea to his buddy the architect, because salsa is thicker than water.

      None of the men in the office had wanted to touch the project and risk tainting their Big Serious Careers. Selina privately doubted that any of them would win awards outside of Gotham. Interior architects never got the same name recognition in any case; they were literally not pushing the envelope. But she couldn’t let them see her scoff about it. She did suggest that her boss could give his friend some of the reference images the firm had collected over the years, and point him towards an actual designer. This had backfired. Selina had an idea how to start the project, and she had read about the latest SolidWorks release, so that meant she was the new expert! And she was artistic, right? Oh, a singer? Right, right…

      Joke’s on them, because Selina was getting royalties now.

      She wasn’t a fool. If they were going to put her name on a project, it was going to mean something. She was going to design a quality gargoyle, and she was going to get paid. The rate on that first design was pitiful, since the boss wanted a flat fee up front, but it was all hers.

      When Dan somehow came through with production and distribution and started selling gargoyles, Selina started doing more research. She went to local hardware stores and found out which parts kept running out, and why. She organized and added to her stack of reference photos. She even stumbled across an industrial designer at a kink event and had a very enjoyable mock bargaining session. When Dan’s tiny new company came asking if she could design a grotesque for scupper boxes, she did not tell them to just glue something on. She told them they’d come to the right place. She talked about ice buildup and the local percentage of flat roofs and the neighborhoods that would pay extra for a luxe version. She referred to both gargoyles and grotesques as “characters” for simplicity and emotional appeal.

      Selina walked away from that meeting with a partnership for their two companies, and a sweet percent of the profits for herself.

      That was… about three years ago, now. She had completed two more projects since then, the splash block and the whole drop-outlet set. The set was based on the Four Holy Beasts, for the feng shui. Dan had someone else sketch the concept art, but Selina had been the one to suggest stylizing each character after a neighborhood on the appropriate side of the city. It was very satisfying to immediately produce references from her files.

      The final products were still mostly cheap by design. Selina was getting a tiny sliver of a tiny profit per sale, but there were lots of sales. Dan must have hired someone decent at marketing this year. Sales were up, and Lowes had started stocking four-packs of the drop outlets. The small hardware stores would usually only stock one or two characters, whatever was popular. It was good to see the whole set together. Another change: The labels now gave each character their own quirky—but thankfully inoffensive—character name.

      She would know they had made it big if her characters started showing up outside Gotham. In Salem, maybe.

….

      It was getting late. Selina decided to give herself a preview of what she would be working on next week before she stopped for the day. She had only sculpted one curl of hair, but it was a single operation to replicate it in a semicircle pattern around the back of the head. She switched views to get a better look. This… was not going to work as well as it did for the dragon. The middle ten curls were fine, or they should be if she nudged the axis lower. But the hair on the edges would have to be done differently to keep things smooth.

      The mane had to stay on the smooth side to shed water and snow. And to discourage spiders. She imagined a spider crawling across the camera and smirked. But she’d have to prevent that kind of thing if she wanted the camera housing to sell.

      She did want it to sell. She wanted it to be the gold standard. If every camera had one of her shells around it, she would never have to wonder if they could see her.

      The client had been very helpful. They were keen on ensuring that the decorative housing would not block any part of the field of view. They had run their own test to confirm the view angle. They had also provided manuals. Selina knew a lot about this particular camera now.

      The resolution was 480 lines, like a regular TV, but the cameras would automatically be more sensitive in the dark. That made for a grainy image, easy to blow out with a bright light. The cameras could sense motion, but they might be triggered by natural shadows or snow. The specs also gave a minimum operating temperature that converted to 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing would break unless it fell below negative 40—dry ice would do it—but the camera would be unreliable in January.

      She had copied it all down in an unassuming day planner, just in case. The manuals stayed at the office, but the planner was on a bookcase at her apartment, pushed toward the back as if she’d forgotten about it. Just in case.

      Selina probably wouldn’t need that information again, but it had helped her add her secret extra feature. She had given herself a visual indication of the camera’s blind spots. All she had to do was look for the character’s teeth.

      The dragon and the lioness had identical bared teeth that would hold the camera firmly in place. In part of Selina’s final presentation for the customer, she would display a cone representing the camera’s field of view, and use a Boolean operation to prove that no part of the model would obstruct the camera. It was simple to use a similar, larger cone based on the size of her head to figure out how close she could get before the camera would pick up the edge of her face. Then she very carefully shaped the rest of the face so the teeth were only visible from inside that range. From any other angle, there would be a bit of snout or scale or curled lip in the way.

      This was tricky, but she had gotten it working with the dragon model, and she had plenty of time left before they expected the lioness to be done. One of the advantages of being faster than her coworkers. She was sure she could give the lioness the same tell.

      In short: If she could see the character’s teeth from wherever she was, that meant her face was on camera. If she could not see teeth, the camera could not see her.

      Selina hated the idea that she was being filmed just for walking down the street. Unfortunately, it was likely that the surveillance would continue, especially in Gotham. So this was a little present to herself. If she saw her lioness or her dragon, she would know how to avoid the camoflauged camera. Especially useful if she was meeting a man. She hardly did sex work these days, but it was still nice to have a few spankable regulars. And by god did it pay to look like a MILF.

      Selina finished shutting everything down for the day. She strolled around a little while she pulled on her coat. Nobody was around for small talk. The guys had probably all gone out to happy hour together as soon as they got out of training. Happy Friday to you too, she thought. But her workday had been tolerable. She couldn’t really complain.

      And if she ever got tired of having I.T. and a retirement account, she could always go back to black leather.