The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(46)

“You do have an amusing talent for causing chaos,” she said. “It’s more amusing when it’s not directed at me. All right. Perhaps one year is an excessive demand. I’m not helping you for free, though. I need a favor to balance the scales.”

“That’s reasonable. What do you have in mind?”

She smiled, and I didn’t like it. “The use of your talents. It’s true, I do have certain wheels in motion. At some point—not now, but soon—I’ll need a particular item. An item which does not belong to me.”

“You want me to steal something,” I said. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the score?”

“You’ll have to allow me a bit of mystery, Daniel. If you knew my target before I was ready to strike, it could be…problematic for me. I assure you, this object is well within your ability to acquire. Do you fear that I’m deceiving you?”

I didn’t fear it so much as know it with rock-solid certainty. Naavarasi had a fondness for trickery that bordered on the fetishistic. That said, I’d never known her to blatantly lie. She just chose her words with razor-sharp precision and spoke around the truth. A nasty suspicion occurred to me.

“And this item,” I said, “does it belong to Prince Sitri? Or Caitlin?”

She chuckled. “Clever boy. That would land you in hot water, wouldn’t it? But no. And if it helps to clarify, the item does not belong to any member of the Court of Jade Tears.”

That was one potential snare eliminated. Only a few hundred possibilities to go. It was probably still a trap. Of course it was a trap. Even so, I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of alternatives.

“All right,” I said. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”





24.




Naavarasi opened the attaché case, sliding out a blank piece of parchment and a green marbled fountain pen. As her palm slowly passed over the empty page, elegant calligraphy appeared in its wake. The jet-black ink blossomed like flowering vines, the rakshasi’s thoughts made manifest.

“Cute trick,” I said, pulling the parchment toward me and giving it a read. It was a contract, simple and to the point—and that bothered me. Nothing Naavarasi ever did was simple and to the point. It didn’t take long to read between the lines.

“‘Should the object not be delivered to Naavarasi by the deadline of her choosing,’” I read aloud, “‘Daniel Faust’s soul shall be forfeit’—oh, come on. You’ll just say the deadline is five seconds after you give me the job.”

Watching Naavarasi pout with J.T. Perkins’s face was unsettling.

“I’m hurt that you think I’d be so obvious.”

“You weren’t. That clause was to distract me from the better-hidden one two lines down.” I rapped my finger on the page. “The one that lets you redefine the definition of ‘success’ at will.”

“Language…is a fluid thing.”

I slid the parchment across the table, back toward her.

“How about this,” I said. “We shake on it instead. You give me what I need, here and now, and when the time comes I’ll return the favor. I give you my word.”

She eyed me dubiously. “And what is your word worth?”

I had to think about that.

“Depends on who I’m talking to. For you? More than for a lot of other people. Remember, I’ve got a built-in incentive to help you out: you’ve got it in for Prince Malphas. So does Caitlin’s boss. What makes you happy is probably going to make Prince Sitri happy, which makes Caitlin happy, and so on down the line.”

As she reached across the table, her hand—just her hand—rippled like a mirage. The skin turned the color of burnt honey, fingers lengthened, nails grew and flourished with jade-green paint. As we shook hands, a jolt of static electricity bit into my palm.

“Deal,” she said.

Her hand rippled again as she pulled away, the Perkins disguise firmly back in place.

She stashed the contract in her case and pulled out a short stack of papers. They looked like a recipe for eyestrain, covered in dense blocks of minuscule type and festooned with date stamps in faded blue ink.

“Um,” I said, reading, “I think this is the incorporation paperwork for your restaurant.”

“They said to bring ‘legal paperwork’ to conceal the ritual. That’s the only legal paperwork I had. If someone’s vexing me, I don’t sue them. I just…invite them over for dinner.”

I held the papers at arm’s length and squinted. They’d pass for legit at a casual glance. Under the first page was a sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper and Bentley’s familiar, cramped handwriting. His transcription of the ritual I needed. I had to smile. Just like Bentley to spend an hour copying lines by longhand rather than risk cracking a book’s precious spine on a photocopier.

“Is it what you required?” Naavarasi asked me.

“It’s perfect.”

When she spoke again, rising from her chair, she did it in Perkins’s used-car-salesman patter. “A pleasure doing business, then! I’m looking forward to seeing you again, very soon.”

She knocked on the glass door, and a guard came to let us out. He eyed the papers in my hand and I folded them protectively.