Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(58)

I ran into Melanie in the hallway. She looked like a recent inductee into the wonderful world of hangovers, her eyes heavy-lidded and her fuzzy slippers dragging on the carpet. She wore an oversized Bauhaus T-shirt for a nightgown. I wasn’t sure if she was a fan of the band or just being ironic.

“Hey,” she muttered.

“Hey yourself. Somebody had a long night.”

She followed me into the living room, trudged into the kitchen nook, and rummaged through the refrigerator.

“I maybe overdid it.”

“Maybe a little.” I couldn’t help smiling.

She pulled a bottle of Bud Light from the fridge. “Hair of the dog. Want one?”

I snatched the bottle. Reaching around her, I grabbed a bottled water from the next shelf down and pressed it into her hand.

“Uh-uh. Water. You need to rehydrate. Take it from somebody who’s been there. Water and something greasy. Cook yourself some bacon or something.”

“Pfft. Rather have the beer.”

“Not while I’m standing here,” I said. “You’re underage.”

She puffed air up against her fallen bangs, making them flutter. “Aren’t you, like, a thief or something?”

“Or something, sometimes.”

“But you won’t let me have a beer,” she said.

“Nope. A man’s got to have standards.”

Melanie pulled a sealed package of turkey bacon out of the fridge and reached for a frying pan.

“Ooh,” she said sarcastically, “the code of the criminal underworld, just like in the movies. Like you won’t shoot women or kids, right?”

I shrugged. “I try not to shoot anybody if I can help it. If I’m put in a position where I have to, though, their gender or their age doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it.”

“And let me guess, you never steal from your boss?”

“Depends.”

“Depends?” she said.

“On how much of an * he is.”

“That happen a lot?”

“Working for *s?” I said. “You have no idea.”

She laughed. The pan slowly warmed over the stove’s burner, bacon starting to sizzle.

“I know why Caitlin likes you. I know something else, too.”

“Yeah?” I said. “What’s that?”

“That you’re lying to my parents.”





Twenty-Nine

I gave Melanie an appraising look. Smart kid, no two ways about it. Good eyes, good ears, good heart too. Could be trouble.

“How do you figure?” I asked her.

She turned her back to me, focused on the bacon.

“I heard them talking after they went to bed. They said you and Caitlin broke up.”

“What of it?”

“You wouldn’t do what Prince Sitri told you, so he made you guys split up. Except suddenly, out of nowhere, you find something else the prince wants. And that’s going to make everything okay, but instead of rushing over to give it to him, you’re, what, weighing your options? If you’re telling the truth, you could fix all of this and you and Caitlin could already be back together.”

I leaned against the kitchen island.

“Gotta be careful,” I said, “dealing with guys like Sitri. They have a way of twisting your expectations.”

“How’d you find the soul you were looking for? And that rakshasi in Denver?”

“Like I told your folks. I had a source.”

Melanie turned, cocking a hand on her hip. No pupils nestled in her fish-belly white eyes, and a spray of blue veins adorned her face. It resembled the pattern on a butterfly’s wings, beautiful and grotesque.

“Hellooo,” she said. “I’m not stupid, Faust. There’s only one person out west who has ‘a source’ that good in the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. Prince Sitri. And you bought the soul in exchange for ‘an unnamed favor,’ to be paid out to a Flowers noblewoman? A favor that could be anything from a suicide mission to putting a knife against Caitlin’s throat? You would never do that.”

“Maybe it seemed necessary at the time.”

“And maybe your whole story’s a pile of crap.” Melanie turned back to the bacon. When she glanced the other way, reaching for a roll of paper towels, her face was back to normal.

“What do you think happened?” I asked her.

Melanie laid out a handful of folded paper towels on a bright orange ceramic plate. She didn’t bother with tongs. She plucked a bacon strip from the sizzling grease with her bare fingers, setting it on the towels to dry.

“I think,” she said, then suddenly winced and sucked on her grease-spattered fingertips. “Shit! Goddamn that hurts! Mom doesn’t even flinch when she does that trick!”

“You hurt?”

“No,” she sighed. “I just thought that’d be really badass, and now I look like a total dork.”

“Your mom has a little more experience,” I said and handed her a pair of rubber-coated tongs from a jar of utensils. “Try these. And no, you don’t look like a dork.”

“Know what I think? I think you’re on a top secret mission for Prince Sitri. A spy, on his infernal majesty’s secret service.”