Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(56)
That name was a new one. “Razors? What’s their story?”
“Small court, but they control New York,” Emma said.
“Wall Street,” Ben added. “They make so much money they might as well have a printing press.”
“Makes me sick to my stomach,” Emma said. “But enough of that. Let’s talk about you, and how we’re going to fix things for my dear Caitlin. Before she kills us all.”
Twenty-Eight
The story I spun for Emma and Ben was a custom-tailored version of the truth. Just factual enough to stand up under scrutiny, just enough of a lie to protect the secrets that needed protecting.
“…So Lauren and Sullivan both want Gilles de Rais’s soul, and so does Prince Sitri. After all, Lauren did try to drag him to Earth and enslave him a few weeks ago. He likes the idea of throwing a wrench in her plans.”
“That sounds like him,” Emma said. “So he’ll accept that as your service, in lieu of the priest’s death?”
“It looks like it, but I’m covering all my bases—”
“Do you have the soul? Where is it now?” she asked, a little too urgently for my liking.
“Stashed someplace safe,” I told her. That someplace was the trunk of my car parked out in the driveway, but I didn’t feel like sharing that much.
To pull them off the subject, I told them about my road trip to Denver, starting with my run-in with Mack and Zeke at the diner.
“Satanists?” Ben said while he chopped onions on a white plastic cutting board. “Really? Wow. That’s so eighties.”
Emma smiled, shaking her head. “The sad thing is, while we’ve sponsored certain musicians over the years, I don’t think we’ve ever dipped our toes into heavy metal. Too obvious. Country and western, on the other hand…”
“Prince Sitri in a ten-gallon hat. There’s a mental image I didn’t need,” I said.
“On the plus side,” Ben said, “have to give those kids credit for knowing which way the wind’s blowing, even if they’re a little misguided. The planet’s already lost. There’s no shame in joining the winning team.”
Nice as Ben was, I couldn’t help but imagine him happily informing on his neighbors in Nazi-occupied France instead of taking up arms with the resistance. I couldn’t say a damn thing, though. It wasn’t like I had a moral leg to stand on.
“So a source tipped me off as to where I could find de Rais’s owner,” I said. “A rakshasi out in Denver named Naavarasi.”
I gave them a quick rundown of the deal, but I left out the part where I blew the cover of one of Sitri’s agents. I’d have to explain where I’d gotten the agent’s name in the first place, and that would have been awkward. Instead, I told them Naavarasi had been willing to hand over the soul in exchange for a favor to be named later.
“She’s itching to make a move against Prince Malphas,” I explained. “I figure she’s lining up as much magical firepower as she can get. Saving favors for a rainy day.”
“Still,” Emma said, gently chiding, “you know it’s never a wise deal, trading a certainty now for a mystery later. I suppose you did what you had to do. I’m just worried about the eventual consequences, and Caitlin will be too. I’ve heard of Naavarasi. All of her species are natural illusionists and tricksters, but she’s a breed apart. Mind games are her specialty.”
“I got that impression, yeah.”
“That hall and back room that was too big to fit in the building? I wouldn’t be surprised if you were ushered into a broom closet and hallucinated the entire thing. She can do that.”
“The food,” I said with a faint shudder of mingled craving and revulsion, “was real. I’m sure of it.”
Emma shook her head. “She probably fed you perfectly ordinary lamb, just to mess with you. Really, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.”
Easy for her to say.
“Speaking of perfectly ordinary food,” Ben said, carrying over a steaming ceramic serving bowl. “Pasta fagioli!”
Emma clapped her hands and cleared away the scattered papers, bundling them into a neat stack. “Perfectly delicious, you mean. I’ll open a bottle of wine.”
Ben dished out the food, and I noticed he gave Emma a slightly bigger serving. Living with an envy demon, moves like that would come automatically over time, I figured. The pasta was good. The company was better. We got off the shoptalk and acted like three regular people for a night. We talked about television shows I hadn’t seen and the latest government scandal, and once we were done eating Emma broke out another bottle of wine while Ben rummaged in the hall closet for a Scrabble board.
“BETRAY,” Emma said twenty minutes later, laying tiles onto a maze of snaking words. “Triple word score!”
I was pretty sure Ben was letting her win. Me, I was just lousy at Scrabble. I looked at the alphabet soup in front of me and tried to come up with a better word than “CAT.” Maybe I was distracted. My gaze kept drifting to the empty fourth seat beside me.
The front door rattled, very softly. Emma gave a knowing glance at Ben, and they both turned in their chairs to watch. Melanie crept inside, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could, making like a thief in the night until she noticed her parents were staring at her from across the room. She froze.