Cécile Beaumont came to write about labor, not magic. Thirty-one, french-algerian heritage, with successful bylines in reputable magazines and newspapers. Perennially single, she says it’s because of the job, and that could be true, but self-sabotage is the more likely story. Her nights out aren’t hunts. The company is platonic, work friends and old sources. So she pretends it isn’t important, while she fantasizes about the man who is always in her favorite coffee shop, reading a newspaper over a single espresso. Two recent exposés, one on sex workers, one on corruption at the top of city government, left her chasing criss-crossing leads that keep circling back to the same place: a private club no one will say out loud, and no one seems to know more about. It is called Netherlust.
She walks into Netherlust expecting a story about money, power and exploitation and finds one about portals and magic, and money and power and exploitation. She is the reader’s way in: sharp, principled, and, for all her sharpness, the last person in the building to understand the size of the game she has walked into.