The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(71)
Caitlin met me at her door. I’d seen that hardness in her eyes before. It was the look she got when she was working.
“Come in,” she said. No embrace, no kiss.
Emma sat on Caitlin’s black leather couch with a box of tissues in her lap. Her red, puffy eyes told me a little more of the story. I wasn’t prepared for the anger in her voice when she saw me.
“He shouldn’t be here!” she snapped. “This isn’t about him. He isn’t relevant—”
“He is entirely relevant, and you know it,” Caitlin said. Her voice was calm and cold, layered over unbending steel.
“Look,” I said, “if you want me to come back later—”
Now Emma’s eyes were molten copper, and she shouted at me from a mouth that had too many teeth in it. “I do!”
“Emma!” Caitlin snapped. She strode across the floor, getting between us. “You will calm down, now, and remember that you are a guest in my home. Don’t make me tell you twice.”
Emma lolled her head back on the couch and pressed the heels of her palms to her human-again eyes, rubbing them.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice weak. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I just…I don’t want anyone seeing me like this.”
I held up my open hands. “It’s okay. What’s wrong? Can I help?”
Emma plucked a tissue from the box and blew her nose. She looked over at Caitlin. “Well? Go ahead. You wanted to tell him, tell him.”
Caitlin clasped her hands behind her back and paced the hardwood floor, poised like a general as she considered her words.
“There are agreements in place between our courts,” she said, “treaties of old made in the interest of mutual survival. One of these agreements is called Case Exodus. It’s a plan of last resort, in a situation where the Earth is…compromised beyond recovery by an occupying force. In such a case, our greatest concern is the protection of hell itself.”
She stopped pacing and turned toward me.
“Orders came down tonight from the prince’s council. Lauren’s ascension, and the union of this world and the Garden, would constitute such a threat. If she succeeds, Case Exodus will be executed.”
“Wait,” I said, “what exactly does that mean? What happens?”
“Severance,” Caitlin said. “Every gate and conduit leading off of Earth, either to hell or to any other realm we know of—we seal them. Blow them up. Shut them down. Whatever we have to do to completely sever any escape from the planet. Whatever it takes to stop the contagion from spreading further. Earth will be thrown under eternal quarantine.”
“We salt the soil on our way out,” Emma said. “Spark as many incidents as possible in what little time we have to reap as many damned souls as we can.”
“Incidents?” I asked.
Emma shrugged. “Massacres, power plant accidents, plane crashes, whatever we can manage. Then there’s the…”
She paused and looked questioningly at Caitlin. Caitlin sighed and looked back to me.
“The Court of Tarnished Memories,” she said, “has control of at least one nuclear weapon.”
I shook my head. “What you’re telling me is if Lauren gets the ball, you’re going to break all the toys and go home.”
“To stop her from invading our realm?” Caitlin said. “Yes, without hesitation. You know her. She won’t be satisfied with ruling the Earth. She won’t be satisfied at all. Some hungers can never be fulfilled. Once she ascends, quarantine will be the only way to keep her in check.”
No pressure or anything.
“So how about a little help, then?” I said. “If everybody knows it’s five minutes to doomsday, why aren’t the other courts sending the cavalry? Every prince has a hound, right? So why are you the only one here?”
“Duplicity is in our nature.” Caitlin paced the floor. “It could be doomsday, or it could be my prince playing an elaborate trick, trying to lure the other princes’ elite forces into an ambush. It’s a game of odds. It’s far more likely to be a trick than a genuine crisis, so they’d rather play it safe, keep their distance, and save their own skins.”
“Then I guess that means we’re on our own,” I said. “Now, what aren’t you telling me?”
“What—what do you mean?” Emma said.
I nodded to the box of tissues. “I can understand being pissed off about losing your favorite sandbox, but let’s get real. I know you, Emma. This is a business decision when you get right down to it, and you don’t cry over business. You fight, and you thrive. So what’s wrong?”
She looked over at Caitlin with wet eyes. Caitlin gave the slightest shake of her head. No help there. It had to be something personal, something Emma was worried she’d lose and couldn’t replace…
“Melanie,” I said. “You don’t think Melanie’s damned.”
The kid had demon blood but a human soul. And a good heart. Like she’d made crystal clear when she stood up to Sullivan and told him off, she had just as much power over her fate as anyone else. Maybe the power to find her own road into the afterlife, too.
Truth was, we didn’t know what was out there in the great beyond. Hell was real, but heaven? You tell me. All I knew was that when some people shuffled off, decent people, there was no finding them again.