The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  “If my nose doesn’t betray me,” she said, “some of it is human food.”

  She split off to investigate. Caitlin and I descended into the social whirl, moving between knots of conversation as she introduced me around. At one point she needed to catch up with Emma, so she left me to my own devices. Never a good idea.

  “Oh,” she said in parting, “Emma doesn’t know about Melanie’s little field trip this afternoon. And she doesn’t need to, agreed? Let’s not add any extra friction, considering recent events.”

  I locked my lips and threw away the key. I was checking out the spread at the black-draped table—and trying to ignore the spicy, inviting smells drifting over from its red-draped twin—when a couple of familiar faces came by to say hello. Nadine, poured into a tiny black dress, with Royce serving as her arm candy. The aristocrats from Prince Malphas’s court both carried ring boxes wrapped in golden foil and tied with bows.

  “Welcome to the big leagues,” Nadine told me. “How long do you think you’ll last?”

  I took the box from her outstretched hand and gave her a casual smile in return. “Time me. Let’s find out.”

  Royce shook his head. “Poor choice, signing up with the Jade Tears. We could have made you a better offer.”

  “Hey, you were there when Sitri knighted me. Did it look like I had a choice in the matter?”

  “No, fair enough.” He leaned in, conspiratorial as he clapped me on the shoulder. “Just remember, old sport, defection is always an option.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And if you sign up willingly,” Nadine said, her attention on the milling crowd, “Royce and I can protect you from whatever horrible scheme of vengeance Naavarasi is undoubtedly cooking up at this very moment. Now where is…Nyx! Come here.”

  Nadine’s daughter—thankfully in her Nordic-goddess human disguise, not the monster I knew was lurking under her porcelain skin—trudged across the room. She had a box in her hands, wrapped in black, and her fingers squeezed it hard enough to crush the edges.

  “Be appropriate,” Nadine told her.

  Nyx thrust the box at me and stared at the floor.

  “This one,” she grumbled, “offers you congratulations on the auspicious victory of your knighthood.”

  She was sore, and it wasn’t hard to see why. She’d been one of the hunters on my tail when Naavarasi slapped me with a bounty, and I slipped out from under her claws just before the contract was revoked. Then I’d bluffed her, in this very room, and embarrassed her in front of her rivals. I would have felt raw about it too. I figured it wouldn’t cost me anything to play nice.

  “Hey,” I said as I took the box, slowly building a pile in my arms, “Thanks, Nyx. You didn’t have to say that, and I really appreciate it.”

  “This one did have to say it,” she snapped, then stomped away. Okay, we weren’t going to be friends. At least I tried.

  I was looking for a table to set my growing collection of cursed presents down, when another familiar face dropped by. Well, a familiar voice. I didn’t recognize the guy—a surfer type in his twenties, fish-belly pale, with the Y-shaped stitch of an autopsy incision showing at the collar of his over-starched dress shirt—but I knew him the second he opened his mouth.

  “Have to tell you, friend, this is not the future I saw in the ol’ crystal ball.”

  “Hey. Fontaine, right?”

  “In the borrowed flesh,” he drawled. “Congrats on the big promotion. You’re a smart cookie, though. You know your new prince just slapped a juicy target on your back.”

  “I hope you’re not here to take a shot,” I said.

  He cracked a smile. “Not unless it’s a legal contract and I’m getting paid to do it. Nah, I came by to make sure there weren’t any hard feelings. I mean, I did almost bleed you out like a prize hog.”

  “Forget about it,” I said. “You were just doing your job.”

  “And thankfully,” Caitlin said, returning with Emma in tow, “now we’re all one big, happy family. Hello, Fontaine.”

  “Ah! Ma chère, enchanté.” He kissed her hand, bowing low, then turned my way. He held out a business card: pale cream, with a single monogram F in black. “And now that you’re an esteemed member of the courts, hang on to this. You can always call upon me for your bounty-hunting needs, be it a formal challenge through the Order or a bit of freelance work.”

  Emma folded her arms and glared at him. “Really? You came by to drum up business?”

  “It’s a hard life out there for a working man, darlin’. Always gotta be hustling. And who better to solicit than a person who knows the quality of your work firsthand?”

  “True,” I said. “You did capture me when nobody else could. So where’s your little friend?”

  Fontaine curled his lips, irritated. “My partner? She murdered somebody she wasn’t supposed to. Had to put her in time-out.”

  Emma brushed past him with a small box cupped in her palm, like the evil queen with a poisoned apple. She offered it to me.

  “Congratulations, Daniel. We’ve had our differences, but you’ve been a good friend to our court, and more importantly—to me, anyway—a good friend to Caitlin. I’m glad you’re one of us now.”

  I wasn’t on board with the “one of us” thing, but I thanked her as I took the present.

  “Go on,” she said, “unwrap it.”

  We parked by a spot of empty table so I could set down the rest of the gifts. I tore into Emma’s, peeling the paper back, and lifted the gray velvety lid of a jewelry box. Inside, a platinum tie clip, studded with diamonds, glimmered on a bed of white satin.

  Caitlin’s jaw dropped and she pulled her friend into a hug. “Oh. Emma. You’re the sweetest.”

  I glanced between them, looking for an explanation.

  “That clip was given to Emma by her mentor, when she was just finding her feet,” Caitlin told me.

  “And it was given to my mentor by…” Emma said with a grin.

  “Me,” Caitlin said. “And now it’s home again, full circle. Deliberate full circle. Oh, Emma. Seriously. You’re wonderful.”

  I felt the cultural divide shift beneath my feet like tectonic plates. Across worlds, across species. I understood enough to grasp that Emma had just honored me, big-time, but without the social cues I would have been lost. This was the world Sitri’s knighthood had hauled me into, with customs and rules and expectations I was barely beginning to understand.

  If those plates kept shifting underneath me, they could tear me in half. I needed to find my footing fast. I was looking for something to say, to show my thanks, when I saw another familiar face on the far side of the party.

  My blood ran cold. Then burning hot.

  “Pet?” Caitlin asked, catching the expression on my face. “What is it?”

  “Naavarasi,” I said.

  24.

  Naavarasi hadn’t come as herself. That would have been enough of an insult, after what she’d just done—tried to do—to me and Caitlin. No, her guise was for my eyes only. She flitted through the party in Gothic black lace and leather, her auburn hair in tight ringlets, antique rings dripping from her fingers. The shape-shifter had worn that face once before to trick me—the face of my ex-girlfriend Roxy, a reminder of the relationship I’d managed to send crashing down in flames before I met Caitlin.

  I cut through the crowd, steaming toward her, and she had the nerve to smile when she saw me. I stopped dead in front of her, with Caitlin, Emma, and Fontaine in tow.

  “The last time you took on that form,” Caitlin told her, “I backhanded you across the room. Are you eager for a second taste?”

  Naavarasi sipped her cocktail and chuckled. “Try me. Here and now.”

  I took another step toward her, and Emma’s hand clamped down on my wrist. She yanked me back.

  “Uh-uh,” Emma said. “You know the rules. No fighting between members of the courts.”

  “After what she pulled—”

  “The th
ings we can prove she did were all perfectly legal,” Emma said. “What we can’t prove, we can’t prove, so they don’t count. As far as the laws of the Cold Peace are concerned, she’s in the clear. And so are you, as long as you keep your hands to yourself.”

  Fontaine rubbed his chin, glancing between us. “Afraid Emma’s got the right of it. I’d like to be workin’ with you next time we cross paths. You take one swing and you’re right back on the Chainmen’s target list.”

  Which was why she wore Roxy’s face. Naavarasi was baiting me. Trying to push me into making a dumb mistake before I found my footing as a newly minted knight. Cheap trick, but I knew from firsthand experience that cheap tricks were usually the most effective ones in the book.

  “And to think,” she said, turning her attention to Caitlin, “that I promised to walk you through this very room on a leash. It’s going to happen eventually. You could save yourself so much pain by just surrendering here and now.”

  Caitlin’s stony silence was her only reply. I took a deep breath to steady myself, to find my cool.

  “I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work,” I told her. “Now, this is officially my party, and I don’t think your name was on the invite list. So turn around and walk away. The stairs are right behind you.”

  Naavarasi smirked. She looked to Caitlin. “He doesn’t know anything, does he? Tell him.”

  “Terms of the Cold Peace,” Caitlin said, her teeth clenched. “A feast or revel open to members of multiple courts is open to all members of all recognized courts, as a means of preventing collusion. Remember how we crashed Prince Malphas’s poker tournament in Chicago and they weren’t allowed to throw us out? Naavarasi is allowed to be here, under the same rule. So long as she minds herself.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of disturbing the peace,” she said.

  I was thinking about the recording Jennifer had dug up. The proof that Kirmira was one of Naavarasi’s children, and how she’d orchestrated his murder just to get her hooks into me. Mostly I wanted to throw it at her to see how she’d react. I was dying to wipe that smug look off her borrowed face.

  Then I counted to five under my breath. The Kirmira tape was a hole card, and hole cards were meant to be played facedown, to keep your opponent guessing. For once we knew something Naavarasi didn’t. I aimed to keep it that way until I figured out how to take advantage.

  I didn’t know how long Freddie had been hovering and listening. I only knew that she swooped in, like a superheroine on her third martini, and put her icy hand on my shoulder.

  “Some of my favorite people, all in one place,” she said. “But the picture isn’t quite right. Is it the lighting? The decor? No…no, it’s definitely the two-dollar skank.”

  Naavarasi’s lids went heavy as she stared at Freddie. “What did you just call me?”

  “I’m sorry, I just understand there’s this little legal thing where my BFF Caitlin and her ever-wonderful boyfriend can’t actually give you the vicious beatdown you so richly deserve.” Freddie broke into a hungry grin. “But I’m not a demon. And I can kick your ass until my legs get tired.”

  “I would peel your skin,” Naavarasi told her, “cook your entrails, and pick my teeth with the splinters of your bones.”

  The temperature dropped. Plummeting, until my breath formed curlicues of white mist in the air. In the corner of my eye, Freddie’s skin turned ashen gray, touched by black splotches of frostbite.

  “Want to find out for sure?” Freddie asked her.

  Naavarasi wrinkled her nose, turned, and stormed across the room. She disappeared into the crowd.

  The warmth flooded back in, and Freddie’s hand—normal now, if unnaturally cold to the touch—patted my shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

  “I appreciate the assist,” I told her, “but look, be careful, okay? I’ve seen Naavarasi in action. She’s really dangerous.”

  “As if I was actually going to fight her. Please, darling, it’s called a bluff, look it up. Do you know how much this gown costs? I do, because it’s from my signature collection. I’m hardly going to get in a brawl and risk popping a seam.”

  “Still, appreciated.”

  “Also,” Freddie added, “I’m drunk.”

  “I assumed.”

  “I should have anticipated this,” Caitlin muttered, staring in the direction of Naavarasi’s retreat. “A sad little last-ditch attempt to goad us into a foolish error.”

  I wished I could be that sure. The problem was, showing up and trying to egg us into throwing a punch, breaking the Cold Peace in front of a crowd, was the definition of a “sad little last-ditch attempt.” And now I knew that Naavarasi was all about the bigger picture. No way she would have come all the way from her lair in Denver just to be a jerk at a party.

  No. She had another reason to be here tonight. We just couldn’t see it yet.

  “I think we need a bit of merriment,” Caitlin said. She strode to the heart of the room and held her wineglass high. “Kind gentles, loyal and true, may I have your attention? Your attention, please.”

  The din of the party fell to a low murmur. The waves parted, as people pressed to the edges of the gallery and gave her space.

  “We are united tonight for an auspicious occasion. The elevation of Daniel Faust, my consort, as a knight of the Court of Jade Tears.”

  She paused for a smattering of polite applause, pinging through the room like popcorn.

  “When I claimed this man for my own,” she said, “I was met with…some skepticism. For a prince’s hound to choose a human for a companion was, some felt, undignified. Unacceptable, even.”

  She flashed a wicked smile, daring anyone to say a word. Over to the left, I watched Nadine open her mouth. Royce jerked on her wrist, hard, and she closed it.

  “But Daniel has proved himself time and time again. Not just to me, but to Prince Sitri and to our august court. He has shown himself to be capable, strong, loyal, unafraid. Despite his mortal blood, he embodies the qualities we should all expect from a knight of hell. And now, at long last, he is granted his rightful due. Come, Daniel. Stand beside me.”

  The applause washed over me from both sides of the room, a curtain of sound, raucous now. I walked to stand at Caitlin’s side and she took my hand in hers. A tear glistened in her eye as she mouthed, “I love you.”

  I didn’t want this. Didn’t want to be associated with Prince Sitri’s court or any of them, didn’t want to be sucked into the endless machinations of hell…but in that moment, I understood how much it meant to Caitlin.

  So I’d make it work.

  She raised my hand high, like the winner of a boxing match. “I give you Daniel Faust, knight of the Court of Jade Tears! Mark his name, and laud his victories!”

  More waves of applause crashed in, thundering through the gallery and slowly fading away. All but one pair of hands.

  Long after it ended, a single person was still clapping. Slow. Rhythmic. Sarcastic. The crowd parted, and he swaggered on through.

  Whoever he was, he dressed like a rock star. Painted-on black leather pants and a vest with no shirt, and a purple cashmere scarf rounded out his ensemble. He wore his bleach-blond hair in a puffed-out pompadour. His left arm was sheathed in blue tattoos, the ink laid in dizzying swirls and loops like some Viking warrior’s battle-woad. Energy radiated off him—dirty, erratic, electric. He stood in the middle of the room like he owned it.

  “So you’re the great Daniel Faust,” he said.

  “I’m a Daniel Faust,” I told him. “Not sure if I’m the great one. I’ll have to take a poll.”

  “Heard a lot about you. Underboss of the Vegas mob, making moves in the courts of hell. You get around, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of this guy, but I didn’t think he was here to give me a present. Caitlin watched him with her lips pursed, pensive, but she didn’t make a move. From the looks on the faces of our audience, I understood why.

  Like I’d said, this was my part
y. As Caitlin had warned me when Sitri gave me the nod, a lot of demons weren’t so hot on the idea of a human getting a knighthood. She’d said they’d be looking to test me.

  And here was my test. Everybody at the party was watching to see how I’d take care of business. Whatever I did, however I played it, tomorrow it’d be all over the demonic grapevine. Caitlin wasn’t stepping in because that’d be the worst move possible, her fighting my battles for me. A knight should be able to carry his own weight.

  I kept my hands easy at my sides, my voice pleasant, like this was no big deal. “I’ve gone some places. Seen some things.”

  “So modest,” he said. “But I hear you’re a real big shot. Everybody calls you the guy.”

  “Yeah, but I really wish they wouldn’t. I’ve been trying to get people to stop.”

  He took a step closer. Close enough to land a punch, if he felt like swinging. I didn’t let myself brace for it. The last thing I wanted to do right now was show any hint of being nervous. He pitched his voice softer, but still loud enough for the entire room to hear him.

  “After all that talk, I was expecting more,” he said. “But as far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing but a little bitch.”

  That got the reaction he was looking for. From the crowd, at least, as a chorus of oohs simmered through the gallery. All eyes on me now.

  Clearly, I was going to have to deal with this. My way.

  25.

  I waited for the crowd to fall silent. I kept my eyes on the rock star, my stance loose, my expression calculatedly bland. He wanted payment in fear or anger—either would make him the top dog in the room. I gave him my apathy instead.

  It was like prison all over again. Your first day on the yard defined who you were for the rest of your time behind bars. Inside Eisenberg I was tested just like this, by a guy who had a foot of height and a hundred pounds of muscle on me. I remembered facing that moment of uncertainty and fear, deciding my fate, and jumping in with both fists flying.

  Getting my ass kicked, but showing I wasn’t afraid and I was willing to scrap, earned me as much respect as it did pain. I’d do it again tonight, if I had to. I still didn’t like the idea. Bottom line, whatever I did here would spread through the courts; this was my chance to make a name for myself and show them how I handled my problems.