Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(79)

That got their attention, at least. I took a deep breath and continued.

“Tomorrow evening, they’ll be meeting at Lauren’s house. Lauren is desperate to get her hands on a damned soul named Gilles de Rais. He’s an indispensable part of her master plan, but I couldn’t tell you how. What matters is that she needs him, and we have him.”

“Where, exactly?” Emma said, her brow furrowing.

“Somewhere safe. I’ve managed to convince Sullivan that I’ve been possessed by de Rais’s spirit. I’ll be the guest of honor at the banquet.”

And with that, I’d thrown away the con. As soon as this meeting was over and the traitor got to a private phone connection, Sullivan would know the truth. My one chance for survival was to throw a complication into the mix.

“There’s a pretty good chance that Sullivan will see through the ruse before the banquet begins,” I said, as if I didn’t know it was an absolute certainty.

“He’ll kill you!” Jennifer said.

“I don’t think so. Hear me out. See, there’s no love lost between Sullivan and Carmichael. There’s no way he could possibly find the real de Rais before tomorrow night, and if I could successfully fool him, he’ll know I could fool Lauren just as easily.”

“You think he’ll trade you?” Nicky said. “Even if he knows you’re fugazi?”

I nodded. “He will. Because this is his one shot at getting what he needs, and while he’d like to kill me, he’s smart enough to know the difference between short-term pleasure and long-term profit.”

If I was lucky, everything I’d just said would fly straight from the traitor’s lips to Sullivan’s ears, and he’d see the logic in it. If I wasn’t lucky…well, best not to think about that too hard.

“What exactly does he want?” Bentley asked.

Here was where I had to tread lightly. I hated lying to my friends, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

“A ring in Lauren’s possession. It…supposedly has the power, if you know how to use it, to amplify the power of demonic blood. That’s Sullivan’s endgame, you see. He wants to march an army of his cambion followers down into hell and launch a coup, starting with Prince Sitri’s court.”

Nicky gave me a slow nod. He was the only other person in the room who knew the truth about Solomon’s ring, and he wanted its real power kept under wraps as much as I did.

“Sullivan is holding a priest hostage,” I said. “A man named Maximilian Alvarez. Alvarez is the walking definition of in the wrong place at the wrong time. He started translating an obscure book that purportedly maps a secret road between Earth and hell.”

“Hogwash,” Corman said, swirling his glass of scotch. “No such animal.”

“I agree,” I said. “But Sullivan’s a believer. Lauren’s insisting that he brings Father Alvarez—and his half-translated book—to the banquet.”

“Why would she want that?” Melanie asked.

Jennifer leaned sideways in her chair and answered for me. “To hedge her bets, is why. Lauren’s no dummy, and she always sticks at least two irons into every fire. She wants to see for herself if Alvarez’s book is the real deal. She has to get her hands on this de Rais fella, or her entire plan’s nothin’ but a stalled train on an uphill track. So if she thinks there’s any chance she’s not getting the real thing at this trade—”

“Which she isn’t,” I said, “because she’ll be getting me instead.”

“—then she’s gonna need some other way of diving into hell and finding her guy.”

I didn’t add that Lauren’s emails to Meadow Brand had spelled this out, albeit in more graphic terms. Brand was under strict instructions to keep Alvarez alive while orchestrating the murders of Sullivan’s men. The impending ambush was one tidbit of information I did not want getting back to the Choir.

“And that’s the key to the plan,” I said. “We’re going to get in there, extract the good father, and steal that book.”

“What for?” Corman said. “The thing’s got to be a pile of bunk, I’m telling you.”

“Doesn’t matter. Sullivan believes in it. So we snatch it away from him. Between the book and de Rais’s soul, that leaves us holding the key ingredients to both of their plots.”

“Meaning they’ll dance to our tune,” Nicky mused. “Like maybe if we force ’em to break their little truce and fight each other for it…”

“Las Vegas Thunderdome,” I said. “Two psychos enter, one psycho leaves. If we play our cards right, we can make them do the hard work of killing each other off, leaving one weak and weary survivor for all of us to gang up on. And we’ll be fresh and ready for the fight.”

Bentley rubbed his chin. “Risky. But it could work. What about the ring? Should we steal that too?”

“Not worth the trouble,” I said. “The ring will be under heavy lock and key before the handoff—this is Lauren’s house, remember, she’s got home-team advantage—and it’s useless without the book to go with it.”

I flipped a broad piece of poster board on the easel. Blueprints of Lauren’s house emblazoned the glossy board, with pathways marked out in bright yellow highlighter.