The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(89)

I muted the television.

“So what’s next for Daniel Faust?” Bentley asked.

“Funny. Normally I’d say, ‘The same thing I did last month and the month before that.’ You know me, I’ve never been too purpose-driven. Still…”

“Yes?”

“Feels like maybe I should be,” I said. “Don’t know. Just feels like I’m missing out on something. Used to be happy just coasting by. Maybe that’s not enough anymore.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Bentley said. He patted my shoulder. We both turned, feeling the silhouette in the doorway before we saw it.

“Am I interrupting?” Caitlin asked.

“Not at all,” Bentley said, pushing himself up from the chair. “I have to get back to the bookstore. Come by when you can, Daniel. We should have dinner.”

He paused in the doorway, talking to Caitlin in a low whisper. She nodded, lightly touching his arm. He gave me a wave and strolled out of sight.

“My hero,” I said, smiling at her. “What was that about?”

“He thanked me. Wasn’t expecting that. Also wanted to ask about the Box.”

My stomach clenched. “We have to get back in there somehow. If Lauren gets her hands on that thing—”

“Relax,” she said, walking over to stand by my bedside. She rested her hand on my chest. “It’s taken care of. We made a generous campaign donation to a certain public representative. As a result, the city contracted with Blue Valley Waste Management to handle the cleanup and salvage operation at the Silverlode.”

“And?”

“And the management at Blue Valley is on Nicky Agnelli’s payroll. Nicky’s very, very eager to curry favor with my prince and make up for his mischief, as you might imagine. The Box will be retrieved and returned to its proper home.” She stroked my forehead. “We can talk shop later. How are you?”

“Alive, thanks to you.”

She smiled, shaking her head.

“You saved me too. Now then, I understand you’re a free man, so why don’t we get you out of that gown and into something a bit more stylish?”

My papers signed and stamped, an intern rolled me to the hospital doors in a wheelchair. After days in bed, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down one minute longer. Caitlin left us at the curb, and pulled up in her Audi a moment later.

A plastic bag filled with my belongings, plus a stack of papers and a prescription for a low-grade painkiller, rested on my lap as she pulled out of the parking lot.

“Where to?” she asked.

“This alley up on the right. That’ll do.”

She idled the engine, and I got out of the car. It felt good to stretch my legs and breathe the clean desert air. I reached into the plastic bag and set the six soul-traps, one at a time, on the Audi’s hood.

“Seems like I should be doing this in a park or a cemetery or someplace serene,” I said, fiddling with the latch on the first pouch. “Seems like I should have something profound to say, to send you off with. But I don’t. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry some crazy f*cks murdered you for no good reason. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough to save you. Just…go.”

A cloud of faint, glimmering light, like a spray of diamonds, drifted up from the pouch’s open mouth. It rose, taken by a gust of wind, and vanished. The next four pouches went the same way, their prisoners released to the open sky. Only one remained. Stacy.

“Don’t even think,” Caitlin said as I got back in the car, “that I’m not going down there with you.”

? ? ?

Stacy waited for us in the dark. Her misshapen wraith hovered on the far side of the line of enchanted dust, her mouth wide in a perpetual cry of terror. Finally, after all the chaos, all the bloodshed, I’d set things right. Finally, the job was done.

“Okay,” I said to her, holding up the pouch. “This should set you free. It’s okay, Stacy. You’re going to a better place.”

“Um, Daniel?” Caitlin said beside me.

“Yeah?”

She shook her head. “You do know she’s going to hell, right?”

I froze, my fingers tight on the pouch’s ties. “What?”

“Far be it from me to read off the litany of her sins, but the girl was hardly a beacon of virtue.”

“She was a victim,” I said, my jaw clenched.

“That she was.” Caitlin nodded. “I’m not happy about it either, Daniel, and it’s not fair, but neither is it subject to appeal.”

I never had a chance of saving her. It was a sucker’s game all along. I turned on Caitlin, furious.

“This is bullshit. Kaufman abused her—”

“If you don’t like how the universe works, take it up with the architects. I just work here. If it’s any consolation, this has nothing to do with what she did with Kaufman. Her downward spiral took place long, long before she ever met him. You don’t know the girl, Daniel. You don’t know anything about her. You never did.”

She was right. I only knew Stacy through her grandfather’s love, and love is blind. I had never thought to question if the picture he painted, this pristine, innocent girl, was even real. I thought I liked the idea of being the crusading hero out to avenge the fallen damsel. I liked it a little too much.