Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(6)
“Better for us if she was corrupt.” Jennifer slouched sullenly in the backseat. “I can deal with corrupt. All right, so how much trouble do you think we’re in?”
“They can’t prove a thing,” I said. “If they could, they’d have charged us and then offered a life preserver. If Nicky goes down, though, and he rolls on everybody to get a better deal for himself, which you know he will…”
“Maybe it’s time,” Jennifer said slowly, choosing each word with caution, “we did something about our Nicky problem.”
The three of us rode in silence. Bentley tried to pretend he hadn’t just heard Jennifer call for the head of the most powerful man in Las Vegas. I tried to figure out a way to talk her down from that ledge.
“We don’t have a Nicky problem,” I said. “We have a Carmichael-Sterling problem. Lauren Carmichael and Meadow Brand are all that’s left of their little cult. It’s why they’re playing games like this, sending the law after us, instead of risking a head-on fight. We need to shut them down. Permanently.”
“I would like to be involved in that,” Bentley said softly, staring at the road.
“I hate to raise the issue,” I said, “but Sophia’s house—”
Bentley nodded. “Corman and I will arrange it.”
A death in our community means making sure nothing remains to betray our secrets. No grimoires or journals, no cursed relics or magic wands, everything has to vanish. It’s the equivalent of erasing the porn on a dead friend’s computer before his mom sees it, but the stakes are a little higher. Unofficially, it’s a chance for friends to come together, reminisce, and swap stories about the old times while stealing off with the lingering secret remnants of your life.
We call it a locust job.
? ? ?
Bentley dropped me off at the Taipei Tower’s valet driveway. I stood in the glittering skyscraper’s shadow, checking my watch and taking a deep breath. I was beyond late. Past the automatic glass doors polished to a glossy sheen, I strode across a carpet decorated with crimson chrysanthemums on my way to the elevators.
Kensho Bistro is on the third floor. Kensho means “an enlightening experience,” and the food arguably qualifies. The restaurant is a span of warm pale browns and sienna, lit by round chandeliers sheathed in white paneling. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Caitlin at a window-table, along with another couple. It looked like they’d barely started eating. Good sign.
She rose as I scurried over, her scarlet hair in a twist at one pale shoulder, wearing a silk jersey dress that could have come straight from a Paris runway.
“I am so sorry—” I started to say, but she took my hand and shook her head, moving close.
“Jennifer called me while she was waiting for them to release you,” she murmured, her voice tinged with a Scottish burr. “We’ll discuss that later. Company now.”
The woman on the other side of the table looked like a Hollywood actress trying to play the role of a suburban soccer mom. Just a little too perfect, too precise and controlled, to be real. She also glowed like a black diamond in my mind’s eye, the same way Caitlin did. When she took my hand to shake it, her skin was smooth as glass.
“Emma Loomis,” she said with a smile. “So. The mysterious Daniel Faust. Everyone’s been talking about you at the office.”
“Hopefully nothing too terrible,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know, you look like you could be a dangerous distraction.”
She held my hand a little too long, until Caitlin discreetly cleared her throat. The man next to her looked as awkward as I felt. He was a stocky guy, maybe in his early forties, with a goatee going silver at the edges.
“Ben,” he said, offering his hand. If Caitlin and Emma’s auras drenched the room in power like a pair of magical hurricanes, Ben was mild humidity. Still, he had a friendly smile and a firm grip that had me liking him already.
“Oh,” Caitlin said, “and you also haven’t met Melanie, Emma and Ben’s daughter.”
I didn’t need a codebook to unravel that message. I had most definitely crossed paths with the blue-haired teenage punk seated across from me. When a pack of feral cambion kidnapped me a few weeks back, she was the voice of reason in the gang and kept me alive long enough for Caitlin to come to the rescue. I gathered that Caitlin had given her a pass, and Melanie’s folks didn’t know about her little walk on the wild side. We gave each other a nod in mutual silent understanding.
There was a modern family for you. Demon mom, human dad, cambion kid. Just like Caitlin and me, minus the kid and the wedding rings. Wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“So, you work with Caitlin?” I asked Emma, after taking a quick glance around to make sure there weren’t any other diners seated within earshot.
“She’s the muscle, I’m the money,” Emma said, drawing a sniff of derision from Caitlin. Emma slid a possessive arm around Ben’s shoulder. “With the help of the world’s greatest accountant, of course.”
Ben chuckled and sipped from his glass of water. “You keep making it, I’ll keep counting it. How about you, Dan? What do you do for a living?”
Well, Ben, until recently I was a hired wand for the biggest gang boss in Las Vegas, but we had a falling-out, so mostly I just run short cons and sometimes busk on Fremont Street doing sleight-of-hand tricks for spare change. I guess you could say I’m sort of a criminal bum.