The Castle Doctrine (Daniel Faust Book 6)

by Schaefer,Craig

  And, I didn’t bother adding, get Detective Kemper off my back and buy a little room to maneuver.

  “Excellent,” Emma said. “One of you, get me a phone. I’m calling in some private security to see me through the night. Tomorrow morning, I’m checking out, regardless of what the doctor says. I don’t know if this Ecko person can actually harm me, but I don’t like the sound of being ‘permanently dealt with.’ Daniel, I’m giving you the address of a safe house, operated by Southern Tropics. Take Melanie there, if you would, please.”

  “Mom,” Melanie said, “I should be here with you. I don’t need to go to a safe house.”

  “Yes, you do.” Emma looked my way. “I hate to admit it, but you were right earlier. I want her packed away someplace safe until this situation is properly managed.”

  I took the address down, idly wondering just how much real estate Prince Sitri’s corporate front actually owned. Melanie gave her mother a gentle, careful hug and followed me outside. It was full dark now, hospital lights cutting through the shadows, while a medevac helicopter thrummed over our heads and slowly settled onto a rooftop landing pad. Melanie walked fast, keeping her jaw clenched, her arms tight against her sides.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” I told her.

  She spun and punched me in the shoulder. “You asshole,” she snapped.

  “What? Hey, news flash, I just saved your lives back there.”

  Melanie hit me again, punching me in the chest, driving me back a step.

  “You fucking irresponsible asshole. This is your fault.”

  “The Outfit targeted your mom because she joined the New Commission. I warned her—”

  “If Damien Ecko wasn’t in town looking for you, he wouldn’t have joined forces with those guys. And he wouldn’t have come to our house, and my mom wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed right now. You picked a fight with him back in Chicago. You robbed his store, and then you framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. Neither of which I really care about, except for one little problem: you let him go. I mean, are you fucking surprised he’s obsessed with you? You picked a fight, you didn’t finish it, and my mom got hurt because of it. Because of you and your half-assed bullshit.”

  I thought back to my encounter with the Mourner of the Red Rocks. “You’ve skipped along from moment to moment, crisis to crisis,” she’d told me, “never cleaning up the damage you’ve left behind you.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d left dangerous men in my wake. I thought back to the Lauren Carmichael business. There was Angus Caine and the remnants of his Xerxes mercenary team. The mad scientists, Nedry and Clark. Hell, one of the smoke-faced men was still out there somewhere. I’d crossed swords with all of them, given them good reasons to want me dead, and skipped along on my merry way. Practically daring them to come after me and mine.

  Damien Ecko was just the first person to take me up on it.

  The Mourner warned me that my free ride was over. I understood what she meant now, but I didn’t get the message fast enough to save Emma from a trip to the hospital. She’d gotten lucky. At best, Ecko would have trapped her in a soul bottle and buried it in a shallow grave. At worst…I didn’t want to think about it. At the root of it all, one inescapable truth: I was the one who brought him here.

  “You’re right,” I told Melanie. I shook my head. “You’re right. It’s my fault. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry your mom got hurt. I’m sorry your house got trashed. I can’t…I can’t undo any of this, but I’ll do whatever I can to make things right. I promise.”

  Her head sagged low. She turned her back and trudged through the parking lot. I followed, just not too close.

  “I felt so helpless,” she said. “Squeezed in that closet, Mom bleeding out, that…thing pounding on the door. I mean, my blood makes me a little stronger than a normal human, a little faster. That doesn’t amount to a whole lot, does it?”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. He doesn’t look it, but Ecko’s kind of a heavyweight. Anyway, muscle and speed are just tools. What matters isn’t what you’ve got, it’s how you use it.” I tapped the side of my head. “You were quick up here, where it counted, both times: saving your mom, then helping me take that zombie down. A lot of people would have frozen up, been too scared to move. You kept your cool.”

  She let out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t feel cool.”

  “Trust me. You were pretty cool.”

  The Spark squawked, locks clicking as we approached. We got in the car and I double-checked the address Emma had given me.

  “Do you really have to take me there?” Melanie asked.

  “You’ll be safe with Emma’s people. It’s just for a night. What’s wrong?”

  Melanie sighed. “I just…I mean, Caitlin’s great, I love Caitlin, but the other people my mom works with…I just don’t like most of them. And they don’t like me. Mom always says there should be this natural bond, because they’re ‘my people’ and we ‘share a common blood,’ but I don’t feel it, you know? Most of them are creeps.”

  I clicked on the headlights, backed out of the parking spot, and slowly rolled toward the exit.

  “How old are you now?” I asked her.

  “I turn eighteen next month. Why?”

  I was about to give Emma a brand-new reason to be pissed at me, but that was all right.

  “I think that’s plenty old enough to decide who you want to hang out with,” I said. “And when it comes to who ‘your people’ are, blood doesn’t even come into the picture. Family runs deeper than that.”

  The safe house was left. I turned right instead.

  We got to the Scrivener’s Nook just as Bentley was closing up. He puttered to the bookshop door, unlocking it and waving us inside.

  “Hey,” I said, “you remember Melanie, right?”

  “But of course. A delight to see you again, young lady.” He offered her a gentlemanly bow, then glanced back over his shoulder. “Cormie! Cormie, we have a guest.”

  “Melanie’s house got hit by the Outfit; looks like Damien Ecko’s working for Angelo now. We need to stash her someplace for the night. I was thinking, well, you’re not on the Outfit’s hit list, and Ecko doesn’t know you exist. That makes your apartment the safest place in Vegas right now. Would that be okay?”

  Corman lumbered from the back room, tipping an invisible hat. “Of course she’s welcome to stay with us. Any time. But, uh, we only got the one couch, kiddo.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. Probably gonna be an all-nighter.” I looked to Melanie. “So is this cool with you? Better than the safe house?”

  For the first time all night, Melanie flashed a smile, equal parts happiness and relief.

  “Better than all right,” she said.

  20.

  While Corman tidied up and Melanie prowled the shelves, looking for something to read, I took Bentley aside. I showed him the glazed amulet, Emma’s trophy from her fight.

  “Straight from Damien Ecko’s body,” I told him. “Think this is a good enough anchor for a tracking spell?”

  “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one. Going to use the back room?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Lock up when you’re done,” he said. “We’ll be upstairs.”

  “Thanks. And hey, thanks for looking after Melanie tonight. The kid’s had a rough few months.”

  Bentley waved my concerns away. “Think nothing of it. She’s a delightful young woman.”

  “I just think she could use some positive role models in her life right now.”

  He chuckled. “Cormie and I? Positive role models? I think you’re stretching the definition a bit, son.”

  “Hey, I turned out all right. Mostly. Everything’s relative.”

  Once the shop was locked up, the lights were doused, and the three of them had decamped for the apartment on the second floor, I was left alone with my thoughts. A pervasive quiet filled the store, no sound but the murmur o
f occasional traffic outside and a distant, nearly inaudible hum from the television upstairs.

  The back room had everything I needed. The private shelves where Bentley and Corman kept their personal books of magic, leather-bound grimoires stretching from the 1750s to the 1950s; an old, battered sea chest filled with candles, chalk, and all the tools of the magician’s trade; and a nice, wide stretch of bare concrete floor to work on. I knew exactly what I was looking for, a ritual from Morgenstern’s Book of the Salamander’s Egg. I lit a tall, white beeswax candle and worked by its warm glow, flipping through gilt-edged pages until I found the right chapter.

  Etching the seal of art took time. Two concentric circles, six feet across, drawn in luminous orange on the cool concrete. I taped a long piece of string to the middle of the floor and wrapped the other around my stick of chalk, a makeshift compass to guide my hand. Inside the larger circle, an inscription in Hebrew, every letter perfectly spaced. Outside the outer ring I drew planetary seals symbolizing Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter. And between them, runes of calling, of finding, of coveting and claiming.

  I had a piece of Damien Ecko in my hip pocket. I wanted the rest of him.

  When it comes to magic, distraction is the devil. You have to work with absolute concentration, absolute focus. Sometimes it felt like half of my apprenticeship with Bentley and Corman was learning how to turn my mind into a steel trap, to stay locked on target through any kind of disturbance.

  Tonight, though, I couldn’t hold my focus. One little thought poked at the back of my mind, jabbing with every step I took like a pebble in my shoe. I kept circling back to my talk with Carolyn Saunders and learning about the Enemy’s weird fixation on some forties-era stage magician. Ms. Fleiss had missed her shot at Canton the Magnificent’s top hat, beaten by my old “pal” David at the auction, but she didn’t strike me as a graceful loser. And the Thief—the real Thief, a man who climbed the side of a Dubai skyscraper for a heist—was on her payroll. I figured it was a matter of days before he paid a visit to David’s private museum and snared that hat. Maybe a matter of hours.

  I didn’t even know what they wanted the damn thing for. I just knew that they wanted it. Which meant I wanted them not to have it.

  I pushed the thought out of my mind. It came right back, bobbing in front of me like a carrot on a stick. I focused on my breathing as I sat in the heart of the ritual circle, spreading out a rumpled map of Clark County. I’d tied a length of twine around the falcon amulet, turning the glossy blue stone into a makeshift pendulum. It dangled from my fingertips, inches above the middle of the map, swaying like a cobra’s head as I spoke the ritual words. A chant in tangled, bastard Latin, spilling from my lips in a whispered and serpentine rhythm.

  The pendulum should have moved. It should have tugged at my fingers, pointing the way on the map, showing me where Ecko was hiding. Instead, it just rocked back and forth, useless. I tried again, taking a few deep breaths to center myself. Nothing.

  I knew finding Ecko and ending him had to be my top priority. All the same, I couldn’t get that damn magician’s top hat out of my mind. The Enemy’s target was fifteen minutes from where I was sitting, and I was in the perfect position to deny it to him.

  So I’d scratch the itch. One quick heist, a little smash and grab, and that would be that. Then I could focus on my Ecko problem and make another go at tracking him down.

  David Gosselin had built his private museum in an old factory building on the edge of town. I’d never been inside, but I knew what to expect: hardcore security, probably a Polymath alarm system, and some magical wards for good measure. A short con would be the easiest way in. Get him to voluntarily open the place up, and sneak past while he was distracted. Bentley and Corman were always my go-to accomplices for that kind of job…but after my kitchen-table talk with Bentley, and his worries about my obsession, asking them for help wasn’t an option.

  I called Caitlin. When she picked up, her voice was muffled by the throb of electronic dance music.

  “Daniel,” she shouted over the bass, “Emma called me from the hospital. Is Melanie still with you? Are you taking her to the safe house?”

  “Um, in a manner of speaking. Hey, I was wondering if you were busy tonight. I’ve got a thing, and I could use another pair of hands.”

  “What? Hold on, I can’t hear you.”

  I heard a door swinging shut. The music dropped to a low roar.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Jennifer and I are having an evening out on the town. Or doing a good job pretending to, while she checks on her people.”

  So those were the “plans” I wasn’t invited in on. “She still pissed at me?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that strongly. She’s just…disappointed.”

  I winced. I’d rather she was angry.

  “She’ll be fine. Just make sure she knows you’re here for her, hmm? It’s been a stressful week for everyone.” Caitlin paused. “So what did you need help with?”

  I couldn’t ask. I’d already let Jennifer down once, blowing off her meeting so I could chase a lead on the Enemy. I could just imagine how well “I need to break up your evening so Caitlin can help me with another lead” would go over.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “You two have a great night out, and be safe. I’ll catch you tomorrow, okay?”

  Who else could I reach out to? Mama Margaux was a strong hand when it came to magic, but pulling cons wasn’t really her thing. Pixie had some fierce social-engineering skills, but she worked best with a phone or a computer screen, and this was a purely physical job. Naavarasi could do it, but she was out in Denver, and besides, I didn’t need to owe her any more favors. I didn’t have anybody left to call.

  Wait. I did. I didn’t want to, but I did.

  “Danny!” Justine squealed as she picked up the phone. “My sister and I were just talking about you!”

  “No we weren’t,” Juliette said in the background. “We were talking about fudge.”

  “Close enough,” Justine said.

  I cleared my throat. “So, any chance you two are still looking for work?”

  “Payment first. We want a new cherry-red Porsche, a pony named Buttercup, and ten bars of gold bullion. Also, you must henceforth refer to us in public as your immortal, benevolent, and adored queens.”

  “I’ll write you a check for five hundred bucks, you have to wait a week to cash it, and you can keep anything you steal on the job. Also, I will tell people that I find your company not entirely intolerable.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, but you talked us into it. Deal!”

  * * *

  I had a grudging respect for David Gosselin. He’d worked his way up from nothing, starting with a good smile and the old cup-and-ball routine, parlaying it into television shows and sold-out theaters. He had a knack for real magic, too—he used to be a fixture at the Tiger’s Garden back when I was still Bentley and Corman’s apprentice—but as far as I knew he’d earned his millions the honest way with showmanship, innovation, and a hell of a lot of hard work.

  I was still going to rob him blind, but hey, if I didn’t, somebody else would.

  His late show got out a little after eleven. Juliette and Justine were right where I wanted them, hanging out with a small mob of autograph hounds in the alley behind the Crown Theater, poured into little black cocktail dresses and done up to the nines. The perfect bait, assuming they didn’t get distracted and wander off before the job was done. Or forget what the job was in the first place. Or get bored and start murdering people. There were a lot of “ifs” in play here.

  I sat behind the wheel of the Spark, in the shadow of a broken streetlight, and watched from a safe distance. Applause rose up as the backstage door whistled open and David strode out to greet his fans. He wore painted-on black silk trousers and a ruffled white poet’s shirt with billowing lace sleeves. It wasn’t his outfit I hated, it was that he actually, somehow, made it look good. The twins were on him like a pair of magnets. I couldn�
�t hear a word, but they were giving off all the right body language, and David responded in kind. He worked the crowd, signing autographs and shaking hands, but he stayed close to them as the thinning audience trickled away.

  I fired up the engine and took a slow cruise around the corner, the perfect spot to watch David invite Juliette and Justine into the back of his limo. The limousine’s brake lights flared red as it rumbled out of the parking lot, and I followed at a safe distance. Now came the real test: I’d told the twins to ask David for a tour of his private museum. I wove through the night traffic, following the limo onto the highway, aiming for the outskirts of Vegas.

  When we reached our destination, I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. By some miracle, the twins had remembered their lines. The limo stopped short outside an old factory building, red brick with steel crenellations along the roof like an urban castle. The museum was for private showings only; there were no signs out front, nothing to hint at the treasures hidden inside. I parked the Spark out on the street, just up the block, and slid low behind the wheel.

  David walked to the factory door, sandwiched between the twins as they clung to his arms, and led them inside. His limo rolled out, leaving the front unguarded. Time to get to work.

  21.

  David had locked the front door behind him, but I wasn’t concerned about locks. It was the alarm system that worried me, and as long as he was giving his new friends the grand tour, that’d be safely deactivated. I crouched under a sodium light and worked fast, thumbing through my waterproof sleeve of lockpicks, tugging out a tension rake and a pick with a spade-shaped tip. The tumblers fought me, rolling over with little steel mule-kicks, but soon the pins fell into perfect order and let out that satisfying click. The well-oiled door opened without a whisper, and I slipped inside.

  In his private sanctum David had created a museum, a showroom, a love letter to the history of stage magic. Vintage posters in underlit frames hearkened back to the greats of the stage: Thurston, Carter, Blackstone. Painted portraits from the roaring twenties depicted somber-faced magicians in evening attire with cartoonish imps perched on their shoulders, whispering secrets in their ears. David had collected mechanical automatons and ventriloquist’s dummies, posing them in high-backed chairs or clustered around trick tables. Tall dividers broke the open floor up into small galleries, each one dedicated to a particular magician or classic illusion.