The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(90)

I’m the bad guy, I had told Tony Vance right before he took the high dive. I should have paid better attention.

“I’m sorry,” I told Caitlin. “I just thought…never mind.”

I looked at the pouch. At Stacy’s hovering form, trapped between worlds.

“I can’t open this. I can’t damn her.”

“It’s your choice,” Caitlin said, “but think on this. Life goes on. She may not be…happy where she goes, but situations change. There’s a spark of hope even in the blackest darkness, the hope that someday, somehow, things can get better. If you leave her like this, that hope is gone. She will spend her eternity frozen. Stagnant. Hopeless.”

I had thought I was Stacy’s savior. Turned out I was her executioner. Opening the pouch and sending her to hell, that’d be on my head. That was the kind of blood you couldn’t scrub clean. Leaving her like this, though…I didn’t have the right to do that to her. More than anything, I knew the value of a spark of hope.

“She deserves a fighting chance,” I said, staring down at the pouch in my hands, “same as anybody.”

Caitlin moved close, touching my shoulder. “Then set her free.”

I opened the pouch.

“Goodbye,” I whispered as motes of light flew toward Stacy’s wraith, joining with her, her body restored in a soft white glow. For a brief moment I saw her there, perfected, whole once more. She opened her mouth as if to say something, starting to smile.

Then she vanished in a blast of acrid air, leaving nothing behind but the faint stench of sulfur.

The empty pouch slipped from my numb fingertips. Caitlin pulled me close, holding me in silence.

After a moment, she said, “I think we should go celebrate.”

“I’m not sure what there is to celebrate.”

She pulled back, smiling at me, and blinked away a bit of moisture in her eyes.

“Us,” she said simply. “Us, and today, and tonight, and tomorrow.”

She was right.

I’d won some; I’d lost some. More important, I’d survived. I had choices to make, a life to live. And I had Caitlin.

“You know what?” I said. “Those sound like some pretty good reasons.”

I offered her my arm. She slipped hers around mine, walking beside me as we turned back up the winding storm tunnel, back to the waiting light of day.

“How do you feel about sushi?” she asked.

“After a week of hospital food, I’d eat my own shoe and like it. Sushi sounds great.”

“I know just the place. I’ll call ahead when we get to the car. You’re going to love it, trust me…”

This was crazy, Caitlin and me, and I knew our troubles were just getting started. We had a long hard road ahead of us and no maps to guide the way. Still, I wouldn’t have given it up for the world.

Trust her? Yeah, I did.

Heaven help me, I did.





Epilogue




The first thing Artie Kaufman felt was cold. Wet, clammy cold like a New England rain, the kind that sinks into your bones and stays there.

The second thing he felt, when he moved his hand, was the leather cuff.

He blinked, head groggy and pounding like the hangover after a three-day bender. He tried to rub his eyes, only to feel his wrist jerk taut against the buckled leather strap that bound it. The rusted metal chair felt like a block of ice against his naked back and legs.

“Hey,” he said, voice edged with a note of fear, “what the f*ck? Is this some kind of joke?”

Why couldn’t he remember how he’d gotten here? Last night was a blur. He’d been rooking that dipshit fanboy at his weekly poker game, then…what? Okay, Artie, no more tequila before bed. You’re getting too old to party like a college kid.

He tugged against the straps that bound his wrists and ankles. Ahead of him was darkness—no, not darkness. A wall of black glass. He craned his neck to try to figure out where he was. The grimy tile floor looked weirdly familiar, like that truck stop bathroom where he shot most of his movies, but the rest of the room was different. Like a doctor’s office at a hospital or a clinic, but everything rusted and falling apart.

“Guys?” he called out. “C’mon, this isn’t funny. You’re starting to freak me out. Hello?”

“Hello, Artie,” Stacy said, walking out where he could see her.

He didn’t know where she’d gotten the dress, some kind of renaissance fair thing in crimson and faded white. A bracelet of twined daffodils draped from her wrist, but the once bright flowers were just dried husks. A withered rose, its petals curled and rotten, adorned her blond hair.

Oh thank God, Artie thought. “Hey, baby girl, a little help here? I think the guys are playing a prank on me.”

“You’re confused. I was confused at first, too. Then I met a pretty lady who explained everything to me. She gave me two messages to deliver to you.”

“Stacy,” Artie snapped, “I don’t have time for this shit, okay—”

“The first message, which she said you’d understand, is that she’s one of Caitlin’s sisters. She’s going to make sure you stay properly entertained until Caitlin comes back to deal with you personally.”

Caitlin.