Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(66)

“No, I don’t think that you are,” Gilles said.

“Yeah? How do you figure?”

“Because I will be coming upstairs with my new patron. Regrettably, none of his friends survived the battle, but he has others. When I do come up, you will greet me as Lars Jakobsen, and allow me and my ‘prisoner’ to leave unmolested.”

“Guess again,” Harmony said. “It’s not just cops and guns you’re going to have to walk past. There are two magicians waiting for you, and we’ve had time to prepare.”

Gilles chuckled genially. “What will you do? Reveal your magic to the world, for all to see? No. Even if you could defeat us, you’d be hunted by every sorcerer alive.”

I hated it, but he was right. Unless we could get them somewhere away from the cops and the crowds and the cameras, we couldn’t do a damn thing to them. And they knew it, too, which is why they’d make sure we never got the chance.

“I will take my ‘prisoner,’” Gilles said, “and vanish. No fuss, no worry, none of your noble colleagues coming to a grisly end. Not unless you force our hands.”

Harmony shut off the radio. She pinched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes.

“We need to—” I said, and she waved a hand to cut me off.

“Shut the f*ck up. I’m thinking.”

She took two deep breaths and turned the radio back on.

“Okay,” was all she said.

She strode to the police cordon. I followed her.

“Hold fire!” she shouted. “Agent coming up with a prisoner in custody!”

The garage went silent. Footsteps echoed below. Soon enough, Lars’s hulking form loomed around the corner, the possessed man leading Sullivan in handcuffs.

“The others are dead,” Gilles-in-Lars announced. “This one’s the ringleader. Found him trying to hide, but he didn’t escape us.”

A few of the cops broke out in applause. One wolf-whistled as Gilles perp-walked his glaring “prisoner” through the cordon. They approached Harmony and me. My fists curled at my sides.

“And to think,” Sullivan deadpanned, looking directly at me, “I almost got away with it. All of my plans, ruined, just like that.”

He couldn’t help but smile, the smug son of a bitch.

Gilles looked expectantly at Harmony. She had her own role to play in this farce. She knew what was at stake and the consequences if she flashed her spellcraft in front of an audience. Now it was time for her to decide: let them walk, or roll the dice?

Her eyes dropped. She stared at the ground as she mumbled her lines.

“Take him into custody, Agent Jakobsen. I’ll finish up at the crime scene here and meet you later.”

“Very good,” Gilles said. “This one’s a handful, but I’m sure I’ll have no problems.”

He kept a hand clamped on Sullivan’s shoulder, walking him away. Behind their backs, Harmony looked upward again, her eyes burning with fresh ferocity.

“Agent,” she said, her voice sharp enough to stop them in their tracks. Gilles looked back at her.

“I will,” she said, “be seeing you again. Soon.”

He smiled. “I won’t be far, mon chaton. So much to do and see. So many fond memories to relive.”

Then Gilles pitched his voice low, soft enough so only Harmony and I could hear.

“After all,” he said, “there are no children in hell.”





Thirty-Three

That was it, then. My entire plan, my secret deal with Prince Sitri, hinged on keeping that bottle safe. Everything I’d done, everything I’d risked, crashed and burned for nothing.

Just when you think you’ve hit bottom, you can always find more room to fall.

“I’ll tell you how this is going to go down,” I said to Harmony, but I had a hunch she already knew it. “Right now, Sullivan’s calling up more of his Choirboys and arranging a ride. You’re going to find Lars’s car a couple of miles from here, abandoned. They’ll make it look like a struggle, like Sullivan got loose and overpowered him, took him hostage. Then they’ll disappear.”

Harmony didn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the parking garage ramp, watching Sullivan vanish with her possessed partner. Maybe she couldn’t look at me. Maybe she just didn’t want to.

“Then what?” she said.

“Then Sullivan’s going to get on the phone with Lauren Carmichael and offer a trade. She’s got something he needs.”

“What?”

“That’s my business,” I said. “Bottom line is, your partner’s safe. Nobody’s going to hurt one hair on his head.”

“What about the thing inside him?”

I took a deep breath.

When I was a stupid kid, on the run between a bad past and a rough future, I fell in with a cult of neo-hippie angel worshippers. It wasn’t angels they were conjuring, though.

I’d been possessed over thirty times. Caitlin told me that was a record; most people would be dead or a vegetable after twelve. It left me with a soul made of gristle and scar tissue and a fear that didn’t fade with time.

“If he’s lucky,” I said, trying to be gentle, “Lars is sound asleep inside his own head. Once we get him free, this whole thing will be nothing but a bad dream to him.”