Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(76)

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I woke up to a blaring alarm and seven voicemails from Pixie, each one pretending to be a wrong number. Apparently she was still worried about the NSA. I called her back and she picked up on the first ring.

“OMG, Faust, where have you been?”

“Did you just actually say the letters OMG out loud? Because that’s not a real word.”

“Lauren’s on the move. Her email chatter’s off the needle.”

I sat bolt upright in bed.

“What have you got?”

“I’d rather show you. Can we meet?”

“Value Lodge, room four,” I said. “Come alone, don’t be followed.”

“Gee, I was gonna lead a parade and a twenty-piece band right to your doorstep, but now that you’ve told me not to be followed I guess I know better.”

I hung up on her and jumped in the shower. I’d just gotten dressed, still sleep-hungry but more clearheaded than I’d been in a while, when Pixie pounded on the motel room door. I opened the door and she came in full steam with a laptop clutched in her hands, setting up camp on a small table by the corner TV.

“It’s mostly back-and-forth with Meadow Brand. Something big is going down tomorrow night. A banquet, at Lauren’s house in Red Rock. It sounds like Lauren’s trading with those Redemption Choir people to get her hands on a human soul. They dropped a name, Gilles de Rais, and I looked it up. Check this out: he was a Marshal of France who—”

“Fought alongside Joan of Arc and murdered about five hundred kids for Satan,” I said.

She arched an eyebrow. “You already know?”

“I stole his soul, lost his soul, exorcised his soul from another person’s body, stuffed him in a bottle, pulled a short con, and now the Choir thinks I’m Gilles de Rais.”

Pixie just stared at me. She rested her palms on the tabletop. “You have got,” she said, “to do a better job of keeping me in the loop.”

“It’s been a really busy couple of days.”

“Not a good excuse. Anyway, here’s the part I guarantee you don’t know about.”

She swiveled the laptop and pointed halfway down the screen. It was a note from Lauren to Meadow.

“Of course I’m not giving up the ring. Sullivan’s a madman, and with that much power he could pose a serious threat to our plans.”

Meadow’s reply was straight to the point: “So I get to kill them?”

“Yes,” Lauren had responded. “Once we have what we need. I’ll use the ring to enslave Sullivan, while you eliminate his followers. Do what you do best.”

“That little double-crosser,” I said. “I’d feel bad for Sullivan—that’s the Choir’s head honcho—but I’m pretty sure he’s going to do the same thing to them.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Something he said to me. That I—meaning Gilles—wouldn’t be a problem for anyone after tomorrow night. Sullivan’s got no reason to want to help Lauren out. He also despises Gilles. I’ve got a hunch that as soon as he gets that ring he’s planning to put two bullets in Gilles’s head and banish his spirit back to hell.”

“Wait,” Pixie said. “What’s this ring they’re talking about?”

I hesitated. She was too good at sniffing out lies, so I shrugged and came as clean as I could.

“It’s a relic. A damn powerful one. Nobody knows where it came from, but it’s not even supposed to exist. Look, Pix, here’s the thing: if word got out about what it was capable of…you know those Black Friday sales where people trample each other to death for a cheap television set?”

She nodded.

“Well,” I said, “imagine that happening all over the world. Except there’s only one TV.”

“You know, there’s a problem with your plan.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re going to be there, posing as Gilles,” she said.

“Yep.”

“Sitting next to Sullivan.”

“Yep.”

“And you have a hunch that Sullivan is going to shoot Gilles in the head. Meaning you.”

“Ah,” I said, “but not until he gets the ring. So it comes down to which side pulls their double-cross first.”

“So you’re betting your life on a coin flip,” she said.

I shrugged. “So you think I need a better plan, is what you’re saying?”

“Maybe just a little?”

“Fortunately,” I said, “I’ve got one.”

I grabbed a motel notepad and jotted down a name and address with a dying ballpoint pen.

“Remember how you sent an email to Gary, pretending to be Lauren?” I asked. “Can you do that the other way around? Gary’s been taken out of play, and she won’t know it for a while yet.”

“Taken out, like…?” Pixie pointed her thumb and forefinger at her head like a gun.

“No, no, he’s in LA.”

She shivered. “That’s even worse. Yeah, I can spoof his IP. Easysauce.”

“Good. Pretend to be Gary, and tell Lauren that Sullivan is super-paranoid about catered food. Tell her that this company is the only one he trusts, so she should hire them for the banquet.”