Redemption Song (Daniel Faust)

by Craig Schaefer

  “The metaphorical kind,” Caitlin said, “but brilliant nonetheless.”

  “Thank you, dear heart,” Emma turned back to me. “I’m sure you know that our prince has a more liberal policy on the cambion than some of our closest neighbors. Well, things have escalated. The Court of Night-Blooming Flowers issued an…order.”

  She cast a hesitant glance at Melanie. The teenager sighed.

  “I know what a pogrom is, Mom. You can say it. They’re killing everybody who’s a halfblood. Like me.”

  Emma’s smile faded. I wondered how many miles away marked the line where her daughter would be murdered on sight. I wondered what I’d do, if I were in her shoes and saw that line creeping closer by the day.

  “Prince Sitri,” Caitlin said, “in his eternal benevolence, has opened his arms. Any cambion who can reach our declared borders under their own power has a promise of haven. We won’t help them escape the Flowers’ territory—that would be an act of war—but we won’t turn anyone away.”

  “We received fifteen new arrivals last week,” Emma said. “Half of them hadn’t eaten or slept in days. I expect another fifteen or twenty before this is all over. We needed a solution, especially for the…borderline ferals. Someplace they could work, be rehabilitated, and serve the court’s interests in peace.”

  She tapped her iPhone and showed me the screen. An aerial photograph looked down over a sprawling, dusty desert ranch. I half expected to see a tumbleweed rolling down the main thoroughfare, or maybe a couple of cowboys out for a high noon showdown.

  “The Silk Ranch. Four hundred miles into the desert. No neighbors until you hit Carson City.”

  I squinted at the photograph. “Wait, isn’t that a brothel?”

  Emma nodded. “An extremely profitable one. The current owner’s absolutely desperate to sell, though, and he’s giving it to us for a song.”

  “Oh?” I said. “How’d you manage that?”

  She favored me with a sly, indulgent smile, like a cat who’d stumbled upon a saucer of cream. “We of the Choir of Envy are consummate negotiators, Daniel. When we see something we want, we take it.”

  Her hand tightened on Ben’s shoulder.

  “We’ll find work for suitable candidates on the grounds,” she said. “It’s not all sex work, of course. Any business of that size needs support and grounds staff—”

  “Gee, Mom.” Melanie’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Can I get a summer job there? I’ll be the best jizz-mopper ever!”

  “Melanie!” Emma snapped. I quickly shoved a forkful of prawn in my mouth, trying to keep myself from laughing, but I couldn’t hold a straight face. Melanie grinned at me, sensing a kindred spirit at the table.

  “Language,” Caitlin told Melanie, then looked sidelong at me and muttered, “Don’t encourage her.”

  “The end result,” Emma said, still glaring at her daughter, “will be a sleek, efficient machine: dependable cash flow for our regional operations, a safe haven for our new refugees, and extra space on the grounds for special projects. The current staff will be replaced or made use of, depending on their potential.”

  “Made use of?” I asked.

  “Made use of,” she said.

  • • •

  We ate and we lingered until the small talk ran out, and Ben said he had to get back to the office. I noted, as Emma ushered her family out the door, that she left us to pay the entire check.

  “Happens every time,” Caitlin said. “Can you come upstairs for a bit? Do you have to leave?”

  There was something in her eyes, a tiredness that made me worry. I took her hand and we walked though the hotel together, on our way to the elevators.

  “Out of curiosity,” I said, “was she hitting on me?”

  “Of course she was. You’re mine. Choir of Envy, Daniel. The only thing she likes more than having new things is taking them away from other people.”

  “Ben must be a very patient man.”

  She gave me a faint smile as she pushed the call button.

  “Ben’s a devoted father. It doesn’t matter what Emma does. He stays for Melanie. Thanks for not mentioning her little adventure, by the way. I think she already learned her lesson.”

  “Eh, she’s a good kid,” I said with a shrug. We got onto the elevator, and as soon as the doors closed, leaving us alone in the cage, she slumped against the mahogany walls and closed her eyes.

  “Hey.” I touched her arm. “You okay?”

  “I’m just tired, Daniel. That lunch is the first real meal I’ve had since our dinner two nights ago. I’ve been working around the clock. As it turns out, Emma’s wonderful plan is neither as smooth nor as carefree as she’d like to spin it. Of course, she doesn’t have to do the hard work either. The refugees are…a problem.”

  “What, are they ferals, like the ones that jumped me?”

  The elevator chimed and the doors rumbled open on the fifty-sixth floor.

  “Worse,” she said, leading me to her door. “Potentially, they’re zealots.”

  Caitlin’s penthouse could have been featured in a music video from the eighties. In fact, I think it might have been. In her living room, an original Nagel painting looked out over an expanse of polished hardwood, black leather, and chrome, all cast in the glow of track lights. I sat Caitlin down on the plush sofa and stepped into the kitchen, picking out a light chardonnay from a stainless steel wine rack. I came back with a pair of glasses, pausing by the stereo to put on her favorite Howard Jones album.

  “You’re not working now,” I told her, pouring out a glass of the pale white wine and handing it to her. “You need to relax, and I’m not leaving until you do.”

  She gave me a half smile, clinking her glass against mine and taking a sip. “What’d I do to deserve you, hmm?”

  “Something terrible, probably. Here, turn around.”

  “Why?”

  I motioned for her to turn and knelt up on the sofa. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly as I kneaded her shoulders. Her muscles felt like steel cables under my fingers, gradually yielding to the massage.

  “I shouldn’t let you distract me like this,” she murmured. “I’ve got too much work to do.”

  “Consider it a briefing. Tell me about these zealots.”

  “The pogrom in the Midwest wasn’t a random act of cruelty. There’s a subculture among the cambion, a cancer calling itself the Redemption Choir. Even their name is a calculated mockery of our traditions. Instead of seeing themselves as halfway to perfection, they believe themselves to be humans with a horrible curse. They actually want to be freed of their demonic heritage. Self-loathing and miserable, the lot of them.”

  I let the “perfection” comment slide. I slid my hands down to her upper back, kneading in slow, circular motions. She leaned forward and groaned with pleasure.

  “You’re good at that,” she said.

  “So they want to be human. Is that even possible?”

  “No. So they take out their frustration on any ‘spawn of evil’ they can find. And they like explosions.”

  “Cambion terrorists,” I said.

  “Cambion terrorists who tried setting up their headquarters in Saint Louis, square in the heart of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers’ territory. Hence the purge. Only a tiny minority of cambion belong to the Redemption Choir, but slaughtering them all is an easy way to root out the problem. Now we’ve got a steady stream of refugees making their way west, and there will be Choir members hidden in their ranks.”

  “So why doesn’t Sitri close the borders? Say ‘thanks but no thanks’?”

  “My prince has his plans. He always does.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Just a couple of weeks ago, Sitri had gotten caught with his pants down and would have been taken out in a coup—not to mention triggering the end of the world—if Caitlin, me, and my friends hadn’t been there to stop it. Now he was sponsoring an amnesty program guaranteed to bring bomb-throwing trouble into his own backyard. For a player who was always su
pposed to be ten moves ahead, he didn’t seem to be on top of his game lately.

  I didn’t say any of this out loud, though. Caitlin would get twitchy when people badmouthed the guy.

  “Every one of the refugees has to be vetted, investigated, and documented,” she said. “Tracked and monitored. Every one of them. Worse, there’s a spoiler in the mix. The Flowers have a favored agent, a spy and saboteur of legendary skill. All we know is the agent’s pseudonym: Pinfeather. Could be a man or a woman, or both with the right magic. According to our mole inside the Flowers, he, or she, is here.”

  “Let me guess. He’s backing the Redemption Choir. Force them to move into enemy territory, then slip them the support they need to give Sitri a big black eye. Slick move.”

  “Exactly. That’s my theory, anyway. So I’m hunting a spy notorious for being un-huntable. Now tell me about this morning. Jennifer gave me the broad sketches over the phone. How much trouble are you in?”

  “If they actually go through with the charges from our little car chase, not much. Worst-case scenario, I do maybe a month or two in county—”

  “Absolutely not,” she said, her shoulders tensing under my hands. “I forbid it.”

  “It’s soft time, sweetheart. Least of our problems right now. The FBI stepping in, that’s a different story, and it’s got Lauren Carmichael’s fingerprints all over it. She’s feeding the feds information, probably got the whole ball rolling. I think she’s running scared. She doesn’t dare come after us head-on, not now.”

  “We did,” Caitlin said with a faint murmur of pleasure, “slaughter most of her associates.”

  “This feels like a delaying tactic. Keep us off-balance and dealing with the law while she regroups. We’ve got to take care of her and that psycho Brand before she does. Which is why, if these charges go forward, I’m not asking for a plea bargain.”

  Caitlin jerked away, turning on the sofa to face me directly. Her brow furrowed.

  “What? Why not? You were caught red-handed, Daniel. If it goes to court, you’ll be found guilty. You and Jennifer chased that woman up and down the interstate and waved a gun at her, for mercy’s sake. There were witnesses.”

  I picked up my wine glass and clinked it against hers.

  “Because I have the legal right to face my accuser. If Meadow Brand thinks she can stall us by getting me tossed in jail, she has to come to court and testify.”

  Caitlin slowly smiled, looking impish as she realized where I was going with this.

  “And we’ll have someone waiting for her at every door and window,” she said.

  “That’s a bingo. I’ll happily spend a few weeks behind bars, if it means paving the way for a shot at Brand.”

  “Not bad, not bad, but I have a better idea. How about we kill her before your trial date, and I find you and Jennifer a very good lawyer?”

  “You know any?”

  She arched one eyebrow, incredulous, and tilted her head.

  “Daniel? Did you forget who I work for?”

  In retrospect, it was a dumb question on my part.

  Five

  I got another glass of chardonnay into Caitlin, eased her onto her stomach so I could keep rubbing her back, and slipped out the door when she started snoring. Mission accomplished. Considering Caitlin only needed a couple hours’ rest a night—she’d said it was more like meditation than how a human sleeps—I couldn’t imagine how hard she must have been pushing herself.

  She’d probably be pissed when she woke up and realized I’d tricked her into taking a nap, but I’d face the consequences later. Right now, with the sun slowly setting over the red mountains in the distance and Las Vegas waking up from its hot slumber, I had moves to make.

  Vegas loves a winner and hates a loser. As long as you’re flush with cash, this town will treat you like a king while it milks you for every last cent. Once your pockets are empty, though, the ride jerks to a stop like the yank of a hangman’s noose. Tonight I wasn’t headed for the neon triumph of the Strip or the raw chaos of Fremont Street, but a run-down road about four blocks from the action. Close enough to see the glitz, the electric glow cast against the darkening sky, but too far to touch.

  St. Jude’s had a neon sign of its own, a crimson cross dangling from a rusted sconce over the beaten front doors. The place was a dance hall back in the sixties. Now the parquet floor was lined with cafeteria tables and volunteers serving up food from secondhand pots and plastic trays. I walked into the cavernous room, my eyes adjusting to the dim electric light, and made my way through a crowd of the lost and the destitute.

  I was always surprised by how few of the regulars looked like shaggy bums. Most of them could have been me, could have been anybody. Just ordinary folks, some of them wrestling with demons, some of them fresh off a twelve-hour workday, coming to St. Jude’s for a hot meal because they still couldn’t scrape enough up enough cash to buy groceries and keep a roof over their heads. I stepped to the end of the serving line, but I didn’t pick up a tray.

  Pixie was up ahead, scooping up ladles of instant mashed potatoes from a bottomless pot. She was twentysomething, thin as a razor, and her feathered hair was dyed scarlet with streaks of icy white—I think that was how she got her nickname. That or the fairy wings tattooed across her shoulder blades. When she saw me, one eyebrow twitched behind her clunky black-framed hipster glasses.

  “Faust,” she said, looking like she’d just found something stuck to her shoe.

  “Bad time?” I asked. She sighed and shook her head, waving over one of the other volunteers and handing him the ladle. I followed her around to the far end of the serving line, and we grabbed a seat at the edge of an open table.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she said. “I smell wine on your breath.”

  “Good nose. But only one glass, and it was for a good cause. What, should I have brought you a bottle?”

  Pixie held up the back of her hand, showing me an X drawn in black sharpie.

  “Faust, do you even know what ‘straight edge’ means?”

  “Deeply unsatisfied?”

  She got up to leave.

  “Hey, c’mon,” I said. “I’m sorry. Please, sit down. Tell me what you’ve dug up.”

  She dropped back onto the bench with a heavy sigh. “Nothing. Less than nothing. I’d divide nothing by zero, but that could cause the universe to crash. Carmichael-Sterling Nevada doesn’t have a firewall; it has a godwall. Their network is protected by key fobs using forty-bit rolling codes, their ports have password encryption that makes the NSA look like AOL—”

  “Pix?” I said. “Pretend for a second that I’m not a hacker.”

  “I’m a jobber in a tag-team cage match against John Cena and The Rock. My partner just got laid out cold with a folding chair, and the referee is looking the other way.”

  “Still losing me, but closer to my wheelhouse. You’re saying it can’t be done?”

  “It can’t be done with this equipment. My laptop’s a beast. I built it myself, but there’s a limit to what I can brute-force. We have to get in there. Boots on the ground.”

  That was the answer I was afraid of. Pixie was a friend-of-a-friend from years back, through a heister I knew when I worked for Nicky Agnelli. When she wasn’t feeding the hungry and protesting for social justice, she was one of the best mercenary hackers in the business. She already had a beef with Lauren Carmichael, since the Enclave—Lauren’s grand ambition, a resort that would make the rest of the Vegas Strip look like a beggar’s slum in Calcutta—was going to wreak environmental horror on our already-strained ecosystem.

  What I knew that Pixie didn’t, and my own reason for wanting to take the Enclave down, was that it wasn’t really a resort. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, but I’d seen blueprints with deliberate dead ends, stairways to nowhere, and zigzagging hallways that looked like the outlines of magical glyphs.

  Whatever Lauren was planning, it was an occult operation on a massive scale. Her architect, a man named Tony Van
ce, had told me that Lauren and her cabal were the good guys. That they were going to save the world.

  I kicked Tony off the edge of a building the night he drowned his own daughter in a bathtub. Whatever Lauren’s master plan was, it was no definition of “good” I was familiar with.

  Killing Tony hadn’t slowed the construction down any. Now I was exploring other options. I couldn’t worm my way into Lauren’s little fiefdom, but I had a would-be Robin Hood who shared my agenda.

  “By ‘in there,’ you mean…” I dreaded the answer.

  “Inside the Carmichael-Sterling offices. All I need to do is get to a router closet and put a tap on their lines. Crack them open from the inside out. Easy-peasy.”

  “Not happening.”

  “I’m not new at this game,” Pixie said, frowning. “This better not be some protect-the-poor-innocent-girl shit, Faust. I’ve social-engineered my way into way scarier places than a real-estate development company.”

  I shook my head. “They’re bigger than you think. What are our other options? There’s got to be another way.”

  “Not if you want access. I can’t do this from the outside. And if I can’t, you won’t find anybody in the business who can.”

  My phone rang. Cait, the screen read. Probably calling to read me the riot act for letting her sleep. I fished out a couple of rumpled fifties from my pocket and pressed them into Pixie’s hand.

  “Here. For your work today. Give me tonight to think it over, and we’ll decide tomorrow.”

  “Your donation is appreciated,” she said, getting up and walking back to the soup line.

  I cupped my hand over my other ear to drown out the din of the crowded hall as I answered the phone. “Hey hon,” I started to say, “sorry about the—”

  “You need to get down here,” she said. “Now. Ten minutes ago. And wear something nice.”

  “Wait, what? What’s up?”

  Ronald Reagan once said the nine scariest words in the English language were, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” In one fell swoop, Caitlin beat that with six of her own.