Double or Nothing (Daniel Faust Book 7)

by Craig Schaefer

  I pushed myself to my feet and took a long look up the concourse.

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  22.

  Home was three hours away. I held my breath as we walked through the boarding tunnel. A rush of cool outside air seeped through the rubber seal between the tunnel and the plane, engines thrumming. I took a window seat in first class, and a preflight glass of wine. I wanted something harder than that.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Caitlin said, giving me a suspicious side-eye.

  “I’ll be all right when we’re in the air.”

  That wasn’t true either, but once we hit our cruising altitude, another couple glasses of merlot mostly got the job done. I did my thinking between sips.

  I wasn’t afraid Caitlin was going to stab me in the back, literally or metaphorically. I’d trusted her with my life before and I’d do it again, without hesitation. Then again, I supposed that’s what the Thief thought each time around too. From what I was gathering, if the pawns in this little game didn’t feel like playing, the universe would bend over backward to make them follow the story.

  No. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t let myself get suspicious of a woman who had brought nothing but good into my life. That was a long and bumpy trip down Paranoia Lane, and it wouldn’t take me anywhere I wanted to go.

  She put her hand over mine. Warm. Reassuring. From the uncertain tension in her eyes, though, I figured she was the one who needed a little reassurance. Couldn’t blame her. I’d been locked down like a submarine hatch since I’d gotten off the phone with Carolyn.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. “Just…figuring out how I’m gonna deal with Naavarasi. I thought about telling her we couldn’t get the dagger, but…”

  “But she’ll keep insisting you go back and try again,” she said, “and eventually she’ll start spying on you—because it’s Naavarasi—and realize you aren’t. She’ll figure it out.”

  “Bingo. I figure the truth is the best policy.” I shook my head and drank my wine. “Wow, those words do not feel right coming out of my mouth. So, once I tell her she’s not getting her hands on Circe, in dagger form or otherwise, what are her options?”

  Caitlin eased back in her seat. She gazed upward for a moment, mentally running through a checklist, and sighed.

  “Your status—as my consort, but not formally attached to my court—is both a hindrance and a help. There are obligations which don’t apply to you, as well as protections you don’t enjoy. There are gray areas in the law.”

  “Loopholes? That’s good, right?”

  She gave me half of a smile and sipped from a glass of chardonnay.

  “The laws of hell were not designed to be fair or just, pet. Quite the opposite. Don’t expect anything to work in your favor. And don’t expect you’ll be better at twisting it to your advantage than people who have spent centuries doing nothing but. As far as her options, what will most likely happen is Naavarasi will make a formal petition to Prince Malphas, complaining that you’ve refused to pay your debt to her.”

  “And then he’ll gripe to Prince Sitri, I assume.”

  “You assume correctly. At which point, well, it’s up to him. You aren’t a member of our court, so my father can’t compel you to hand Circe over.”

  She pursed her lips. The jet rumbled, hitting a patch of turbulence, as gray clouds drifted past the porthole windows.

  “I’m sensing an unspoken follow-up to that.”

  “He can’t compel you directly. But I am his hound. His left hand and enforcer of his will. He can compel me to take Circe from you, by force if necessary, and make you fulfill your obligation.”

  Another rumble. I stared out the window. Not wanting to ask the question, not wanting to go down this road, but I was the one who had opened this door in the first place.

  “Would he do that?”

  Caitlin shrugged. “Who can say what my father will do in any circumstance? He sparks coup attempts against himself when he gets bored just so he has a challenge to occupy his mind. When you chose to sacrifice the Ring of Solomon, back when we were battling the Redemption Choir, you earned his respect. But respect, in his eyes, generally just means you’re a more attractive plaything.”

  “And if he goes that route? What if he tells you to take Circe from me and hand her over to Naavarasi?”

  Caitlin set her glass down.

  She didn’t answer, not right away. Her gaze fell to her lap.

  “A man is holding Bentley and Corman at gunpoint,” she said. “You can only save one of them. The other will be shot and killed.”

  “Wait, what?”

  She locked eyes with me. “Which one do you save? Who do you love more?”

  “That’s…that’s kind of a fucked-up question, Cait.”

  “It’s an unfair question, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said.

  “If I refuse a direct order from my prince, it means I lose everything. My career, my home. I will be disowned. My houndship—the highest honor a demon can earn save for princehood, and an honor I have spent centuries clawing and fighting for—will be stripped from me. What do I love more, all of that, or you? An impossible and cruel choice. That is what you are asking me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think of it that way.”

  She picked up her glass again. Turning it slowly in her fingertips, rolling the golden wine around.

  “If it comes to that—if—we’ll work something out. Together.”

  * * *

  After the Redemption Choir pitched a Molotov into my former apartment, I’d spent a while couch-surfing. Too long. Thanks to some working capital from the New Commission and apartment-hunting help from Caitlin, I’d finally remedied that.

  My new place was on the east side, a second-floor walkup over a pool hall called Della’s. Lousy neighborhood and Della’s was a genuine dive; it looked like a great place to get your throat cut over a five-dollar bar bet, mostly because it was. That said, residency had its privileges. For one thing, Winslow’s boys hung out here when they weren’t at their clubhouse. The Blood Eagles might snicker when I pulled up to their line of bikes in whatever I was driving—this week, a rented Santa Fe—but they always saved a spot at the end of the lot for me. For another, Della was behind the bar most nights. She poured with a heavy hand and comped half my drinks.

  The apartment itself, a one-bedroom, had been freshly renovated. It wasn’t much on the outside, crumbling brick and sagging eaves, but just past my front door was a span of polished hardwood flooring and warm walls the color of oatmeal. Stained oak cabinets, granite countertops, lots of light—beyond the muffled noise from the pool hall below, a constant companion from sunset to sunrise, it could have been one of the nicer apartments just off the Strip.

  “Yeah, I was gonna move in there myself,” Della told me. “Then after I did all the renovations I asked myself, ‘Who the hell wants to live where they work?’ I spend too much damn time here as it is. Besides, I figure you’re good luck to have around.”

  She also satisfied my main requirements as a landlord: she took rent payments in cash and kept the apartment listing officially vacant. I’d taken pains with the old place to stay off the grid and make sure nobody knew where I rested my head. I slipped up once, bringing a stranger under my roof to try to protect him from trouble, and lost everything.

  And here I was, doing it again.

  I double dead-bolted the door behind me, left my rolling suitcase next to it, and set the Cutting Knife on the kitchen counter. Then I rummaged through the cabinets, mixed myself a gin and tonic, and trudged over to collapse onto the storm-gray sofa. I was bone tired, and all the exhaustion I’d been staving off suddenly hit me with the force of a boxer’s knockout punch. Home, safe and alone, I could let my guard down just far enough to crash in peace.

  I turned on the television. Wasn’t even sure what I was watching, some kind of cooking show, but I just wanted the background
noise. I sipped my gin and sank deeper into the sofa cushions.

  “Your picture moves,” Circe said, standing wide-eyed behind the sofa. Her gown was almost pure ivory now, the bloodstains shrinking to spatters like spilled wine.

  “That’s a television,” I told her.

  She pointed. “It talks.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve been a knife for a long time.”

  “Stuck,” she said. “First part of ritual—freed me. Second part would have bound me again. But worse.”

  “Like Ms. Fleiss.”

  Circe frowned. “Sister. Who she is now…not who she was once.”

  She circled the sofa and approached the television set. A Hollywood chef with a bogus southern drawl was cooking up hot wings, the camera swooping in to take a close look as he tossed the raw meat in a spice mix. Circe’s fingernails plinked against the screen.

  I sat up. “Are you trying to…no, you can’t—you can’t actually take things from inside the TV. It’s just a picture.”

  She frowned at me again.

  “My god,” I muttered, “I think I just adopted a cat. Are you hungry?”

  She nodded. I set my drink down—after tossing back a swig—and ambled back to the kitchen nook.

  “I should have something. Just keep in mind that I live alone and I’m not a healthy person in general, so that ‘something’ is probably going to be frozen pizza or pizza rolls. Or leftover carryout pizza. On a good day, it’s leftover Chinese. What can you eat, anyway? I’m still not entirely sure what you are.”

  “Circe,” she said.

  “I got that part.” I rummaged through the fridge. “It’s everything past your name that I’m hazy on.”

  “Words.” She pointed at herself, frustrated. “Like…pythia, you know this word? Like, priestess.”

  I grabbed a frozen pizza from the freezer—pepperoni with extra cheese—and set it on the counter.

  “Great, now we’re getting somewhere. A priestess of who?”

  She squinted at me. “You know.”

  “Uh, no. I don’t. Entire volumes have been written about how much I don’t know, trust me.”

  “But…you use the magic. I see it.”

  I sliced open the wrapper on the pizza, then leaned over to preheat the oven. “Yeah, but what’s that got to do with anything? Sorcery isn’t a religion.”

  “But who do you pray to?”

  I shrugged at her. “Nobody in particular. I’m not much of a church-goer.”

  Circe looked crestfallen. “That’s so sad.”

  “I have adopted a religious cat.”

  My phone chimed. I hoped it was Jennifer, Cait, anyone but Naavarasi. I checked the screen.

  Caller: Blue Karma Restaurant.

  “Table this discussion for later,” I told Circe. “There’s a very unfriendly person on the line, and I’m about to make her really, really mad at me. It’s kind of my specialty.”

  23.

  “Daniel.” Naavarasi’s rich voice slithered over the line. “How fared your hunt? Do you have my property? When will you be returning it to me?”

  “Well, little problem there. Do you think there might have been something you forgot to tell me about the knife? Just a tiny detail, maybe?”

  She hesitated, cagey. “Did I?”

  “Yeah. Like, maybe how the knife is a she, not an it?”

  The line went silent. I was about to check the connection, thinking she might have hung up, when Naavarasi spoke again.

  “You woke it up.”

  “Not deliberately, I was just in the right place at the right time to see it happen. You knew, didn’t you? You knew that ‘knife’ was a living thing. And you were gonna let me hand her over like a piece of property, none the wiser.”

  “It makes no difference,” she said. “It is a piece of property. Bring it to me. Now.”

  “I say again, her. Her name is Circe, by the way, and she’s—” I shouldered the phone. Circe was hiding behind the couch while a chainsaw-wielding madman rampaged on the television screen. “It’s just a picture, Circe. It can’t hurt you. And that’s all special effects.”

  “She is my property,” Naavarasi said.

  “Huh, no, I was about to say she just figured out how to change channels—good, Circe, just leave it on the cartoon for now, okay? That’s probably safest.”

  Circe pointed at the screen. “Talking ponies.”

  “Yeah, good choice. Stick with that.” I put the phone back to my ear. “Look, we’re back to my first offer. You want me to pull a heist, steal something pretty for you, something expensive, or something pretty expensive? I can do that. But you’re not getting Circe.”

  “And why not?”

  “Are…are you for real? Are you seriously asking me that question? Because she’s a living, breathing, hu—well, she looks human, jury’s out on that, but the point stands.”

  “I am a baron of hell, Daniel. I have every right to own chattel.”

  “And if we were in hell,” I said, “you could take me to court and win. But this is twenty-first-century America and the law’s on my side here.”

  Naavarasi snorted. “Speaking to me of laws? You are a thief and a murderer.”

  “True. And a decent card player, a fair hand as a cocktail mixologist, and—I like to believe—a considerate lover, but nobody ever brings those things up when they’re trying to push me into doing something shitty. I have to draw a line somewhere, okay? And this is where it stands.”

  “You forget,” she said, “that your precious twenty-first-century America is nothing but a colony of the infernal courts. All are subject to the laws of the Cold Peace. Pay your debt to me.”

  “I’m trying to. The way I see it, you’ve got two choices.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Option one,” I said, “you can take my counteroffer. Pick another score, and accept whatever I steal for you as a fair payment for what I owe. We shake hands and everybody walks away happy. Option two, you complain to Prince Malphas, it turns into a big political mess, I find a way to wriggle out of it—and you know me, you know I will find a way to wriggle out of it—and you get nothing. C’mon, Naavarasi, be reasonable. Take the deal.”

  Her voice was a gust of winter wind in my ear.

  “I will take what is rightfully mine, Daniel. And I will not be denied.”

  She hung up on me. The stove beeped, letting me know it was nice and hot. I set the phone down and went looking for my oven mitt.

  * * *

  I was a little worried that Circe couldn’t eat any of my food—I wasn’t sure what constituted an edible diet for a being who could transform into an inanimate object—but she laid that to rest right away. She jammed half a pizza slice into her mouth, chewing fast and sliding the rest in as she swallowed.

  “Might wanna slow down,” I said. “Don’t want to get an upset stomach.”

  She snatched up a second slice. “More singing ponies.”

  “Huh?” I looked at the TV. “Yeah, sure, watch whatever you want.”

  I’d barely touched my slice. Naavarasi wanted to do things the hard way, so we were going to do things the hard way. I’d managed to make an enemy of a woman who could look and sound exactly like anyone in the world, at any time, on a whim. My one advantage was that after the first time she got the drop on me, posing as my ex-girlfriend, I’d trained myself to sniff out her magical signature. But that wouldn’t stop her from fooling other people. Like, for instance, by changing into my shape and going on a public shooting spree. Or something more subtle, like turning my friends against me, or against each other. There weren’t many limits to the damage a creative shape-shifter could do.

  I supposed I did have one other edge: Naavarasi wasn’t a rocket scientist. She wasn’t stupid by any means, far from it, but her ego was bigger than her brains. She couldn’t not show off. She was like a stage magician who performed incredible feats of illusion, then insisted on spoiling the tricks step by step so you could marvel at how cleve
r she was. She starved for praise and the spotlight.

  Which more or less meant she could come at me and do some real damage, but at least I knew she’d brag about it afterward and let me know exactly what she’d done.

  Another call came in. I braced myself, expecting round two. Instead, it was an entirely different pain in my ass on the line.

  “Detective Kemper,” I said. “Always a pleasure.”

  “The hell did you do to that Malone guy? The ink dealer?”

  I pushed my plate aside. My appetite was dead and buried.

  “Me? Nothing, I just got back into town a few hours ago. What happened to him?”

  “He stormed into the Metro substation over on West Sahara and demanded to be locked up. Said he wanted to revoke his own bail.”

  “That’s a new one,” I said. “Any idea why?”

  “He said he was being followed. He figured the guys he worked for, back in New Mexico, sent somebody to shut him up for good.”

  I slapped my palm against my forehead. Jennifer had said she was going to have Malone tailed. Whoever she sent was probably about as subtle as a tuba in a string quartet.

  “What’d they tell him?” I asked.

  “To take a hike. The desk sarge pegged him for a loony, and she didn’t want to deal with it. Lemme guess: those were your guys shadowing him, weren’t they?”

  “Friends of a friend. Don’t worry, I know where Malone is staying. I’ll swing around and tell him to stay cool.”

  “Just make sure he shows up for his court date.”

  Gary hung up. I had another reason to check on our friendly local ink dealer. By now, Dr. Nedry would have reported back to his bosses in the Network—assuming it actually existed and everything he told us hadn’t been a pile of bull—and they knew Vegas was going after their drug pipeline. They also knew we’d gotten a heads-up from a formerly magic-roach-infested flunky. Two plus two equaled “Malone talked.” If I were in their shoes, I’d either want to bring Malone in or permanently take him out.

  I figured my best call was moving him to a safer location, at least until his trial. Not back here, though. I’d already risked opening my home to Circe, and that was more than enough company. Stashing him in a different hotel room under an assumed name would work. I’d just have to put a scare into him, make sure he was too frightened to poke his head outside or use the phone.