A Plain-Dealing Villain Page 14

  “That remains to be decided,” I told him. “Combination.”

  “Thirty-five, twenty-two, thirty-five.”

  Marilyn Monroe’s measurements. Nice. The wheel spun like silk under my fingertips, and the door swung wide. The Aztec dagger rested inside, along with a thumb-thick stack of bills bound with a rubber band. Tens and twenties mostly, but nothing to sneeze at. I helped myself.

  “You said you could give me Stanwyck,” I said as I stood back up. “Now would be a good time to do that.”

  “I can’t—I can’t give him to you—” I reached for the lighter and he squirmed. “I know where he’ll be! I know exactly where he’ll be!”

  “You better be right.”

  “I am,” he said. “Remember when I said he was hard up for cash? Stanwyck’s got a gambling problem. He’s in deep with this south-side bookie who he used to deal with, back when he lived here. Heavy action. This guy’s all mobbed up, and he’s getting ready to tap-dance on Stanwyck’s kneecaps if he doesn’t get paid soon.”

  “So you know where this bookie is?”

  Trevor shook his head. “No. The fifteen I paid for the dagger won’t make a dent in what he owes. So I told him—I told him about the poker tournament at the Bast Club. Convinced him he could sweep the tourney and quadruple his money in one night.”

  “Stanwyck’s barely clued-in. He’s not one of us.”

  “Don’t have to be for this gig,” Trevor said. “Just need a sponsor who is. So I said I’d sponsor him. He’d just have to put up the five-grand entry fee to play…and another five as a sponsorship fee.”

  I cracked a smile. “In other words, you end up with the dagger and a good chunk of the money you paid him for it.”

  “Hey, a guy’s desperate enough, even a sucker bet looks like a life preserver. So yeah, he’ll be there, but only if I can get him into the club. You kill me, he disappears. You need me.”

  I shook my head. “Nah, Trevor, I don’t need you. But if you can play it cool and help me get what I want, I might manage to forget that you tried to kill me tonight.”

  I strolled over to a rack of “ritual knives” with dull blades and pentacle-inlaid hilts. I picked one out, set it on the floor, and slid it over to him.

  “Cut yourself loose,” I told him. “And in case you feel like taking another shot at me? Just remember: next time, you won’t have anything left to trade for your life.”

  * * *

  Dawn, and the streets filled up with bright yellow cabs ready for the tidal wave of commuters. I flagged one down, fell into the backseat, and struggled to stay awake. I’d been running too hard, too long, and the night was a blur of fear and fire.

  I felt like treating myself with Trevor’s money, so I had the cabbie take me to the Four Seasons on East Delaware Place. They gave me a room on the thirty-third floor, facing lakeside. I could look out the window and stare down at a white-sand beach and an endless expanse of crystal water, but I barely gave the view a second glance. Instead, I dead-bolted the door, stripping off my clothes as I walked and leaving them in a trail on the pristine slate-colored carpet. I staggered into the bathroom.

  My hands were pulpy red, scabbed up from the scrapes and splinters I’d taken, and an ugly purple-black bruise blossomed across my left shoulder like a patch of mold. Everything hurt. I turned the shower on full blast, drinking in the white-hot steam, letting the water pound my skin like a masseuse.

  I almost fell asleep standing up. I killed the shower, pulled the curtains tight across the windows, and set the alarm for a four-hour nap. I slid naked into the soft, warm, king-sized bed, and I was gone before my head hit the pillow.

  I woke to the sound of a local radio station, some morning DJ talking about a traffic jam on Lake Shore Drive and a four-car pileup. I just lay there, drifting, letting my mind work the problem.

  The dagger was mine. Halfway there, halfway to paying Damien Ecko’s blood price for Coop’s soul. I couldn’t pat myself on the back. Getting the knife had been the easy part.

  Now, somehow, I had to get my hands on the Judas Coin. A prize belonging to a demon prince’s right-hand man and secured in a building nobody had ever been able to rob. A prize Ecko obviously expected I’d die trying to get my hands on.

  I didn’t want to drag any of my friends into the trouble I’d earned. Still, no matter how I sliced it, I came to one inescapable conclusion: I couldn’t do this alone.

  I forced myself out of bed, crouched beside my fallen slacks, and fished out my phone. There were a few calls to be made.

  22.

  Six hours later, I waited in the baggage claim at O’Hare in a stiff blue vinyl chair, idly watching a bank of monitors. Flights came and flights went, white block numbers flickering and shuffling by the minute. Every now and then, one of the conveyor belts in the vast room would kick to life, sending suitcase after battered suitcase to the clustered waiting crowds.

  I was surprised when I saw Mack and Zeke steaming my way. Not that they found me, but that it had taken them so long. I didn’t bother getting up. They loomed over me, triumphant.

  “We’ve got you now,” Zeke said with a sneer.

  “Curses,” I deadpanned, rolling my eyes. “Foiled again. I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you kids and your meddling dog.”

  “Hound,” said the man who casually strolled up behind them, speaking with a breezy English accent. “The proper title is hound.”

  Mack and Zeke parted to make room.

  “We spotted you twenty minutes ago,” Mack said. “We called the big boss.”

  The “big boss” glowed like a black diamond and felt like a barbed-wire whip on the edge of my psychic senses. He could have been a retired supermodel, with cheekbones carved from marble, an aquiline nose, and eyes the color of fresh-cut grass on a summer morning. A jet-black tattoo poked out from underneath his tight V-neck sweater, caressing his neck and left wrist with the curling tips of a thorny rose vine.

  Him, I stood up for.

  “Daniel Faust,” he said, squinting just a bit. “You have a penchant for dangerous living.”

  “We haven’t been properly introduced,” I said.

  “I won’t tell you my full use-name, because you wouldn’t be able to appreciate its history. Or pronounce it. You may, like most, call me Royce. A simple name for simple minds”—his gaze flicked left and right, toward Mack and Zeke—“but I’ll admit to growing fond of it over the years. You’re in the wrong place, sport.”

  “Still a free country, last I checked.”

  He chuckled and shook his head, giving me a condescending smile.

  “Freedom. You humans do love to prattle on about freedom, and you barely understand the word. How much agency do you think you actually have? From the cradle to the grave, you’re bombarded with media, advertising, cultural and social pressure to conform…it’s amazing you can think at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “what choir did you say you belong to?”

  He inclined his head and held up an open hand. “Touché. Yes, like my prince, I am a child of Greed, and my bloodline has shaped me well. But I posit that I’m more aware of the outside influences in my life than you are. And I can prove it. Right here, right now.”

  “Go for it.” I wished I felt as confident as he looked.

  “I’ve been following your exploits,” Royce said, “and there’s a question I’ve been dying to ask you. One simple question.”

  He inched closer to me. His voice was a low, intimate purr.

  “Wasn’t it easy?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “If I understand what happened—this is largely secondhand, so please correct me if I’m wrong—you rescued Caitlin, my counterpart in the Court of Jade Tears, from enslavement.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Knowing she could, and likely would, reward your kindness with a horrible death.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “I didn’t care who or what she was. I
wasn’t going to stand by and watch any woman be treated like that.”

  “And I believe you,” he said. “But…she did kill two men in front of you. Slowly. Made you watch, right?”

  “I was in a protective circle at the time. I didn’t have a whole lot of travel options.”

  Royce shook his head. “No, that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is…how quickly you fell in love with her. You dreamed about her that very night, didn’t you? Kept thinking about her scent, the fall of her hair?”

  I didn’t know how he knew any of this, but I didn’t like where he was headed. “Get to the point.”

  “It’s so convenient, love at first sight, isn’t it? Especially when the Ring of Solomon was still in play, and Caitlin needed a willing human to do what she could not. She couldn’t get near the ring without risking her freedom again. But you could. And then…ah, the pièce de résistance. There you were, with the ring in your hand. Power. Glory. You could have been the savior of Earth. Then Caitlin just batted those beautiful eyes of hers, and what did you do? You threw it away. You even thought it was your idea.”

  “It was my idea,” I said. “That ring would have put a bull’s-eye over everybody I care about. It wasn’t a gift. It was a time bomb that would have started a war. Taking it off the table was the best choice I could have made.”

  “But you did it for her,” Royce said. “You actually think you’re in love.”

  “We are in love.”

  Royce kept smiling, but there was something wistful in his eyes.

  “She got inside your head, sport. That’s what she does. That’s what she is. I’ve known Caitlin a long time, a very long time, and let me tell you, she’s one of the best. You’re nothing special to her. You’re just another useful human, in a very long line of useful humans, and they were all the apples of her eye…until she wrung them dry and tossed them aside.”

  “And you,” I said, jabbing my finger into his chest, “are full of shit. I don’t know what your deal is, Royce. I don’t know if you’re too broken to get the concept of love, or maybe you’re just jealous. Maybe this is how you get your rocks off, trying to drive wedges between people. You’re forgetting something. I’ve seen Caitlin use her powers on people. I saw what she did to Carl Holt. If she snared me like that, even if she hid it from me somehow, it’d be obvious to everyone around me, just like it was with him.”

  Holt had been a junkie with an insatiable craving for Caitlin’s heroin kiss. The addiction had destroyed him from the inside out, turning him into Lauren Carmichael’s pliable puppet. There wasn’t any love there, not even kindness. Holt took what he needed from Caitlin’s body and left her bleeding.

  That wasn’t me. That wasn’t me.

  “You’re starting to see the light,” Royce said, looking deep in my eyes, “but you’re not a true believer, yet. I can fix that. I have a houseguest who I’d like you to meet. She’ll open your eyes. I’d appreciate it if you’d come along peacefully, so I don’t have to force you.”

  “We’ll force him,” Zeke said, eyes narrowed to slits. Mack gave him an uncertain nod.

  Royce arched one thin eyebrow. “Zeke? If you touch this gentleman without my say-so, I’ll tear your fingers off. We’re trying to help him.”

  “You can understand,” I said, “why I find that hard to believe.”

  Royce chuckled politely. “My motives are entirely self-serving. Which is why, though I mean you no harm, making you come with me is still an option. I’ll hurt you only as much as I have to. So are you going to raise a fuss, or can we do this the easy way?”

  “Don’t let him have any coffee,” Mack warned. Royce slowly turned his head and blinked at him.

  My eyes flicked to the flight display. Then I glanced to my left, toward the nearest bank of escalators, and smiled.

  “Sorry, Royce. Going to have to take a rain check. I’ve got five good reasons you aren’t taking me anywhere.”

  Royce sighed, glancing down at my hands.

  “Please,” he said, “tell me you aren’t about to punch me. I’m the hound of Prince Malphas, Daniel. I won’t even feel it, and you’ll probably break your fingers.”

  “Huh?” I looked at my hand. “Oh. No. Reasonable assumption, but no. I mean them.”

  Caitlin strode toward us, wrapped in her white leather trench coat and wearing high camel-tone boots. On her left, Bentley and Corman kept up the pace, pulling a pair of Burberry rolling suitcases. Corman wore his old Dodgers cap, slung low over his eyes. On Caitlin’s right, Margaux lugged a bulky woven tote over one shoulder, head craned to look at something on Pixie’s phone as the two women walked close together.

  “My crew just got here,” I told Royce. “So can we do this the easy way?”

  Royce’s smile vanished. “Mack, Zeke, disappear.”

  They didn’t need any more prompting, rushing to fade into the crowd. As Caitlin approached, Royce extended his hand.

  “Ah,” he said, “Caitlleanabruaudi, my old lover.”

  She reached for my hand instead. Her skin was velvet soft and chased away the chill. Or maybe the warmth came from the faces of my family, the people who had dropped everything to fly into danger at my side.

  I couldn’t go home until the job was done, so home came to me instead.

  Caitlin gave him a bitter laugh. “We were never lovers, Royce. We fucked. For recreational purposes. It was fun, but you ruined all that when you turned traitor.”

  He looked genuinely pained. “Me? It’s not treason to want to better yourself. I needed upward mobility. I couldn’t exactly become Sitri’s hound without killing you first, now could I? So I went where I had better job prospects.”

  “You swore an oath to our prince.”

  “Malphas has a better benefit plan. What are you doing here, Caitlin? This is our territory. You weren’t invited. A less generous man might see this as a hostile act.”

  “Of course I was invited,” she said. “I heard about your little poker tournament. It’s open to everyone.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can just—”

  Caitlin cut him off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It does, in fact. Proviso four-four-point-three of the Terms of the Cold Peace, article seven. This qualifies as a ‘tournament, revel or moot,’ one which you have specifically designated as open to all comers. If any demon from a foreign court is allowed to attend, we all are. It’s an anti-collusion measure.”

  “Collusion,” Royce echoed. “Really?”

  “It’s my job to know the law. That’s what a hound is supposed to do, anyway.”

  “Well.” Royce wrinkled his nose. “Hell prevails.”

  “It certainly does.”

  “You don’t even play cards.”

  Caitlin brandished a sealed envelope of glossy, brass-colored paper. She slapped it into Royce’s hand.

  “I’m not going to. Daniel is. I’m just putting up his entry fee. The Court of Jade Tears is officially sponsoring him as our champion.”

  Royce cast his gaze across the rest of my crew, assessing them as he weighed the envelope in his palm.

  “And these people are…?”

  “Cheering section,” I said.

  Royce looked like a man who knew something was deeply, terribly wrong, but he didn’t have the first clue about how to identify the problem, let alone fix it. He stood there for a moment, eyeing the envelope in his hand, running his fingertips over the shiny paper.

  “Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll even note who he’s playing for, so we can all have a good laugh at your court’s expense when we send you home penniless.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I told him. “I’m not bad at poker.”

  “Perhaps, but you can’t bluff against me.”

  “Oh?” I tilted my head. “Why’s that?”

  Royce’s smile was a malicious thing, almost a leer as he looked from me to Caitlin and back again.

  “Because if I want to know what you’re thinking,” he
said slowly, “all I have to do is look in her eyes.”

  I clenched my jaw and tried not to make a fist. Caitlin reached up, her fingertips caressing the back of my neck with long feathery strokes.

  “See you at the tournament,” she told him.

  23.

  “What did he say to you?” Caitlin wanted to know as soon as Royce was out of earshot.

  I shrugged. “Just a bunch of bullshit.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “He hasn’t changed at all, then.”

  I tried to take the doubts Royce had planted in my head and shove them in a closet. I didn’t have time for that now. Or ever. If the memories of Carl Holt weren’t enough to prove Caitlin hadn’t tampered with my mind—and they were—the way her hand felt in mine did the job just fine.

  I looked to the others. “Thanks, everybody. I know this was short notice, and I’m asking a lot—”

  “Kiddo,” Corman said, “you apologize and I will smack you upside the head. Don’t think I won’t.”

  Bentley rubbed Corman’s shoulder. “It was a turbulent flight, drink service was canceled, and someone didn’t get his vodka and orange juice.”

  “Jenny sends her best,” Margaux said. “With Nicky being Nicky and Agent Black being, well, everywhere, it’s not safe for her to leave Vegas right now.”

  “Thanks, Mama. I’m not sure it’s safe for her to be in Vegas either, but she’s a little headstrong.”

  Margaux snorted. “Granite’s easier to crack. Left some of my spirits watching over her. Anything goes wrong, I’ll know before she does.”

  Pixie had been fidgeting this whole time. “What about Coop?” she blurted out.

  Pixie had worked with Coop before, the night we hit Lauren Carmichael’s mansion and made off with the Ring of Solomon. If it hadn’t been for them, cracking Lauren’s safe and planting a fake while I kept Lauren’s dinner party distracted down in the dining room…well, I didn’t like to contemplate what-ifs too much.

  “Not a conversation for a crowded airport,” I told her. “C’mon, let’s all head back to my hotel room.”

  Corman grumbled. “Just glad to be back on terra firma. I hate flying. Your room got a minibar?”