“Okay,” I said, “everybody stay in contact, and spread the word if you find anything. We’re working on borrowed time. Let’s act like it.”
• • •
We took my car.
There were 420 miles of lonely Nevada desert between Vegas and Carson City, a long and winding drive along US-95 that never seemed to end. Occasionally we’d roll through the main street of a town so small you’d blink and miss it, or ride past a rusting gas station frozen in time since the 1950s. Mostly it was just me, Caitlin, a roaring engine, and a cloudless blue sky.
We listened to the radio for a while, until our favorite stations crackled out and died one by one, replaced by static or silence. Eventually, the only thing left was a show broadcasting from the middle of nowhere, a preacher with a Georgia twang spitting into the microphone about the end of days and the time of repentance. He ranted on for a couple minutes, and then Caitlin leaned in to click the radio off.
“That’s quite enough of that,” she said.
We rode in silence for a while.
Caitlin shifted in her seat, turning her gaze from the empty landscape.
“Has it been nine months yet?” she said.
“Huh?”
“You’ve been carrying a pregnant pause since we got in the car. I’m just wondering if you’re due to give birth to the question you obviously want to ask me.”
I smiled. “Am I that transparent?”
“To me, you are. What are you afraid to say?”
It wasn’t fear as much as awkwardness, and it wasn’t awkwardness as much as not being sure why I cared. But I did.
“That abandoned world Payton and his buddies found,” I said. “Is it really the Garden of Eden?”
She blinked at me. “Daniel? Just how old do you think I am?”
“I know you weren’t around then,” I said. “I just…”
“Is it the Garden itself that troubles you? Or is it the confirmation of what you already believed: that this ship of worlds is sailing through maelstrom and blackest night, with no captain at the wheel?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I just drove. She reached across and rested her hand on my thigh.
“You know,” she said, “I do understand what it feels like. Our creator left us too, though I have faith that he had a good reason.”
“The worst-case scenario isn’t finding out that what I already believe is true. Most people would call that reassuring. What’s eating me is…the cavalry isn’t coming to the rescue, Cait. There’s no flight of angels—or anything else—waiting in the wings to pull us out of trouble if Lauren gets her way. We fight, and we win, or the world dies. That’s a hell of a lot of responsibility.”
She shook her head. I glanced over and realized she was smiling.
“What?”
“You humans. Always so eager to spite a gift. Daniel, do you have free will?”
“Of course.”
“Then you are responsible—for this world and everything in it. That weight was put on your shoulders the moment you were born. People complain that the world is filled with misery, but how many of them lift a finger to do anything about it? Or better yet, they point their fingers at us. ‘The devil made me do it.’ Oh, please. We take advantage and have our fun where we can, but believe me, all the great atrocities in history? You people did that.”
“This is an odd pep talk,” I said.
“Not a pep talk. It’s a dash of cold water I like to call reality. No. No one is coming to the rescue, and no one ever was. You should see that for what it is: a gift. What would your life be worth, if you didn’t have to fight for it? How happy would you really be in a universe with no struggle, where all the edges were rounded off and some cosmic power stood ready to swoop in and save you from your own mistakes? You are responsible. So put your chin up, your shoulders back, keep your head, and get ready for a brawl. Nothing else to be done for it.”
I chewed that over, driving in silence.
“Of course,” she added, “I’m a demoness, not a theologian. Take everything I say with a pillar of salt.”
“No. You’re right. This is our fight. This is our problem to solve. So we’ll solve it.”
Caitlin leaned back in her seat and stretched, purring out a yawn.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Responsibility is sexy.”
We couldn’t chase the sun fast enough, and nightfall beat us to the edge of Carson City. Down on Fifth Street, lights still burned behind half the windows of the Legislative Building, a block away from Roth’s personal office, but we were well past visiting hours.
“Well,” I said, “Roth’s in town somewhere. I don’t want to wait until morning to get this done. Any ideas?”
“Of course,” Caitlin said, looking almost offended that I asked. She took out her phone, snug in a slim white case, and cut her way through three layers of bureaucracy like a hot knife through butter.
“Oh hi!” she said, putting on a Valley Girl accent and spinning up her voice on every other word. “It’s Mandy, with Senator Zito’s office? Yeah, I’ve got those papers on Amendment 77873-B that Senator Roth needs for—no, no, he needs them tonight. Please? You’d be so helping us all out. Oh thank you, you’re such a sweetheart!”
She hung up the phone and shrugged, back to her normal voice. “He’s dining at Adele’s on North Carson. If we move fast, we might catch him.”
“That was scary,” I said.
She just winked.
If you look up “charming” in the dictionary, there’s probably a picture of Adele’s. The owners converted a Victorian house from the late 1800s into a restaurant and kept as much of the cozy charm as time and progress allowed. The air inside was rich and laden with mouthwatering aromas, but Caitlin and I were more interested in the guests. We spotted Alton Roth at a corner table, holding court with a couple of his State House cronies. Broad shoulders filled out his tailored suit, and his hooknose made me think of a well-fed raptor. His movements were big and expansive, equal parts charisma and muscle. Pixie was right. In his fifties or not, I could see him running marathons. And winning.
We finagled a seat a couple of tables away, and Caitlin took the chair facing Roth. She dipped into her handbag and took out her big dark glasses.
“Give me a moment,” she said, slipping them on. Her face turned toward Roth slowly, and her breathing stilled. She looked like a diva from the golden age of Hollywood.
After a moment, she nodded to herself. “Oh, you little scamp,” she murmured.
“What is it?”
She lowered her glasses, just enough to show me the burning molten-copper swirls of her eyes. Her real eyes.
“He’s marked by one of my kind,” she said. “That’s why he’s so afraid to die. He literally sold his soul.”
Twenty-Seven
She slid her glasses back up and took a few steadying breaths. When she removed them and slipped them back into her bag, her irises were back to sharp emerald green. The change came just in time, as our waitress walked up behind her chair.
“We’ll start with the sweet Thai chili prawns,” Caitlin said after a cursory glance at the menu. “He will have the medallions of filet Diane, and I’ll have the chicken marsala scaloppine. Wedge salads for both of us, please, and…a bottle of the Covey Run merlot, I think. Thank you.”
The waitress looked at me and blinked. I just shrugged at her. Caitlin’s Rules for Restaurants meant she ordered, you ate. I’d learned to live with it.
The waitress went off to put our order in, and I leaned closer to Caitlin.
“Literally sold his soul? Like, ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ Robert Johnson at the crossroads—”
“Like Mephistopheles and your namesake, or the violinist Niccolò Paganini, or the Rolling Stones, yes, exactly.” She paused. “Forget I said that last one.”
“I didn’t think that was a thing people actually did.”
“Tell that to Robert Johnson. I’ve heard the man play—he’s really good.
But you’re half-right. It’s extraordinarily uncommon for two reasons. Firstly, if someone is, let’s say, of a mindset where they’d be willing to buy their earthly desires with eternal damnation, they’re probably already in our pocket. So why bother? Secondly, that’s an awful lot of hard work. We’re not genies. Promise someone wealth and power, and we either have to come through, or the contract’s null and void. That sort of thing can keep a demon on the hook for decades.”
I craned my neck to watch Roth dig into his lamb, nodding to his buddies and chewing a big forkful of tender meat like it was his last meal on Earth.
“But Roth managed it,” I said.
“There is a sect, the Venerable Order of Bargainers. They’re very, very old school, Daniel. They predate our civil war, the formation of the courts, all of it, and there aren’t many of them still around. What they do is…it’s not about results or efficiency. It’s an art form, part of our cultural traditions. Everything they do—from the first approach, to weaving the deal, to following through on the hardest and most demanding conditions in order to keep a pact from unraveling—is measured in grace and style. I suppose they’re the closest thing we have to rock stars. Well…except for the actual rock stars.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “He’s got seller’s remorse, and he knows he’s headed for the express elevator downstairs when he dies. He hooks up with the boys from Ausar, hoping they can use their Garden research to make sure he doesn’t die, ever. Somewhere along the way Lauren comes to him, paying him off to set the federal task force on Nicky’s heels, and they start talking about common interests. Introductions happen all around, and it’s a match made in hell.”
The waitress brought over the bottle of merlot and our Thai chili prawns. The first bite had a perfect tang, leaving my tongue tingling. I took a sip of wine and thought things over.
“What Lauren’s doing is incredibly dangerous,” Caitlin said. “Roth wouldn’t take that kind of risk, not with his soul in the balance. So he’s funding the research and using his influence to grease the wheels in the hope that Lauren, newly minted nature goddess, will reward his loyalty with life eternal.”
I tried not to snort into my wineglass. “That’ll last about five minutes. Lauren’s never been big on rewarding loyalty.”
“We won’t convince him of that,” Caitlin said. She frowned, deep in thought.
I poked a prawn around the dish with my fork.
“What if we buy it back for him?”
Caitlin looked up. “His soul?”
“Sure. Why not? We get his contract annulled, he’s got no reason to fear death anymore and no reason to work with Lauren and company. We can turn him.”
“I doubt it. Remember, the Bargainers do what they do out of a sense of art and tradition. Rembrandt wouldn’t splatter paint on his masterpiece just because you waved a handful of cash at him. Still…I suppose it can’t hurt to ask. Wait here, I need to make a call.”
“Who are you calling?” I said.
“Emma. She can look up who holds Roth’s contract and where they are now. Hopefully not somewhere on the other side of the world.”
The answer, as it turned out, was a bit closer than that. It was half an hour north, in Reno.
It was tempting to think of Reno as a low-rent Vegas, the kind of place where washed-up croupiers went to die. The town had a flavor and a pulse of its own, though, and the San Francisco tourist crowd kept things jumping. We rolled past the cherry neon arch reading “Reno: The Biggest Little City in the World,” cruising for Fourth Street. The street itself—and the blues bar that bore the street’s name up on its red marquee.
All cozy and smoky and dark, 4th Street Scarlet was miles away from a tourist trap, all cozy and smoky and dark. The cool licks of a saxophone wafted from the stage as we made our way inside, wrapping around my heart and giving it a squeeze.
“His use-name is Cth’pollosu,” Caitlin had told me on the drive over, fresh from her call with Emma. “But these days he goes by Calypso. He’s a big deal, Daniel. One of the greats, a legend even, and he’s been around for a long, long time. Some say he walked with the Morning Star.”
“You sound like you’re about to meet George Clooney.”
“I won’t lie, he’s up there. Just watch yourself. He’s not stupid.”
“Not worried,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “I’ve got backup.”
Calypso wasn’t hard to find. He glowed in my second sight like a blood diamond, all hard edges and cold allure. He wore a tan linen suit that stood out against his skin. He was dark, dark like roasted coffee, and a wisp of white smoke curled up from the unfiltered cigarette held between his long, slender fingers.
“Hello, hello,” he said as we walked up to his table. His voice was like burnt honey. “If it isn’t the Wingtaker herself. Pleased to find myself in the presence of greatness.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” she said. “I admire your work.”
His easy gaze slid toward me. His eyes were unnaturally bright.
“And if this is Sitri’s honored hound, the man beside her must be Daniel Faust. You’ve been making waves, son. I’ve heard things.”
“Good things or bad?” I asked.
He chuckled, a low amused rasp. “Things. I’m a ramblin’ man, you see. I hear things all over. Why don’t you both take a load off? Join me for a spell.”
As we pulled out chairs and sat down at his small table, he lifted his half-empty glass and waved toward a passing waitress.
“Grace, baby? Another whiskey on the rocks. Bring a couple for my new friends, too.”
“We’re here about one of your clients,” Caitlin said. “Alton Roth.”
Calypso took a long, slow drag of his cigarette. He exhaled a plume of smoke that drifted up toward the rafters, swirling in time with the music.
“Mm, Alton. Alton’s a keeper. My most ambitious project in four hundred years. See, that boy’s bound for greater things than the Senate.”
“You know he’s looking to wriggle out of the deal?” I said.
“They always do,” he said with a lazy smile. “Oh, they always do. I understand Alton’s looking to live forever. Had a few clients try that game over the years. Not one’s ever pulled it off. Nah, immortality’s a losing proposition. Only fame lasts forever.”
“He might prove you wrong,” I said.
Caitlin rested her hands on the table.
“This is a matter of infernal security,” she said. “You’re a Bargainer, and the terms of the Cold Peace give me no authority over you or your order. I am asking you to release Alton Roth’s contract as a favor to me and to Prince Sitri. Your generosity will be repaid.”
Calypso ashed his cigarette and took a sip of whiskey, shaking his head.
“I appreciate the tone of respect,” he said, “and I appreciate the offer of recompense. But come on, Wingtaker. You aren’t one of those come-lately upstarts with no love for your elders, our traditions, and our ways. You honor your history. So you know, well as anyone, that I can’t let Roth off the hook. Every soul is a song, and I’m still writing his lyrics.”
“There’s no offer you’ll consider?” I said.
He let out a long, slow chuckle and took another sip of whiskey. “I do so enjoy a man named Faust asking me about a deal. Makes me feel at one with history. Shame we can’t talk business, son, but you’re already damned. Spoiled product.”
“He’s also mine,” Caitlin said with a hint of warning in her voice.
Calypso took a foil pack of smokes from his inside jacket pocket, some European brand I didn’t recognize, and shook out a single cigarette.
“Point is, I’ve got big plans for that man, and I just can’t go parting with him. Genuinely sorry if that steps on your toes.”
I thought fast. Roth’s contract was the one piece of leverage we had, the one wrench we could throw into Lauren’s machine, but only if I could figure out how to use it.
I got an idea. A sketchy one—my best ideas
usually were.
“What’s your interest in Roth,” I said, “outside the scope of his contract?”
“All I have to do is deliver what I promised him,” Calypso said, “and all he has to do is die. In his proper hour, that is. I won’t brook you interfering with my work.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Caitlin said.
“Oh, I know you wouldn’t. Your boy here, though, he’s on a hair trigger. You’d best school him before he does something foolish.”
I held up my hand. “Let me rephrase. We need Roth to lean in a certain direction. It shouldn’t interfere with whatever you’ve promised him. In fact, it might help. Is that a problem? If we just talk to the guy? Maybe play with his head a little bit?”
“Long as you mind your boundaries, I’m copacetic,” Calypso said.
The waitress brought over a round of drinks. They sat before us, untouched.
“Let’s talk a different kind of business, then,” I said. “What would you want in exchange for a copy of his contract? Not the original, nothing binding, just a copy.”
“Now you’ve got me curious,” Calypso said, “but such things aren’t for sale. Tell me something, sorcerer: are you a gambling man?”
“Now and then.”
I didn’t see where the cup came from. Calypso just waved his hand and there it was on the table, an old cup of battered and stitched leather. Beside it, five little dice carved from yellowed bone bathed in the smoky electric light.
“I can always spot a gambling man. No, I won’t sell you the copy,” Calypso said. “If you’re willing to put a little something on the table, though, let’s play for it instead.”
Twenty-Eight
“Absolutely not.” Caitlin bristled. “I forbid it.”
Calypso looked pained. “Wingtaker, please. You’re charged with upholding the law, and you know the law. The mortal has every right to bargain with me. No one can interfere with that.”
“I can. He’s mine.”
He shook his head. “Not in the eyes of hell’s law. No mark, no brand, no tokens? You can’t speak for him.”
“What’s the game?” I said, wanting to get between them before things escalated.
Daniel Faust 03 - The Living End Page 17
