Cold Spectrum

by Craig Schaefer

  “I said ‘reasonable risk,’” April replied. “I didn’t say ‘no risk.’ But there are times when politics makes for strange bedfellows, and this may be one of them. Ben Crohn is as much her enemy as he is ours.”

  Aselia threw her hands up. “Do what you want. I’ll be working on the plane.”

  “Good,” Jessie said. “Get her ready—we may have to leave in a hurry. Kevin and April, I want you monitoring Internet traffic and prowling media feeds. If you see anything that remotely looks like Crohn or Mikki poking their heads out of hiding, flag it.”

  “The one nice thing about Mikki,” Kevin muttered, “is that she isn’t exactly subtle. Sounds like the two of them deserve each other.”

  “Sure do,” Jessie said. “We’ll buy ’em side-by-side cemetery plots.”

  Fontaine gave us the destination: an address in the 18b, Las Vegas’s arts district. This patch of town was a rough little bohemian enclave, set apart from the slick, polished sheen of the Strip and trying to wriggle out from under its neon shadow. Vintage clothes stores and remainder shops shared space with tiny theaters, dive bars, and corner bistros, every other wall adorned with swirling murals and street art.

  Just off Coolidge Avenue, a squat two-story office building in white stucco basked in the desert sun beside a postage stamp–size parking lot. Going by the sign in the lobby, business wasn’t great: beyond a resident dental office and a couple of accounting practices, three-quarters of the building was vacant.

  “Office 2C,” I said, trailing my finger along the sign. “According to this, nobody’s there.”

  Jessie tapped her earpiece. “Kevin, check the building’s tenant records. I’ve got a hunch we’re gonna find out 2C was rented out just for today, with untraceable money, but it’s still worth a look.”

  A man in mirrored glasses stood at the foot of a curling staircase, a dusty gold runner stretching up to the second floor. As we approached, he gave us a once-over and spoke into his sleeve.

  “Ma’am. They’re on their way up.”

  “You gonna search us for weapons?” Jessie asked.

  His lips curled into a reptilian smile. “Would it matter?”

  We climbed the stairs. The entrance to 2C didn’t have a label, just a blank holder for a nameplate beside the windowless door. Another man snapped to attention, pulling the door wide and holding it for us.

  “You sure about this?” Jessie murmured.

  “Nope,” I said. “Let’s do it anyway.”

  She nudged me with her elbow. “That’s my line.”

  I wasn’t sure what to expect beyond the door. The only hound we’d ever encountered up close and personal was Prospero, a giggly, twitching train wreck. Half accountant, half serial killer. He’d been capable of playing at being human, short term, but the sheer sense of wrongness around him was overwhelming, and I wasn’t sure if it was just his personal nature or part of the territory when it came to being a demon prince’s right-hand man.

  At the end of the hall, 2C was a conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows. The polished glass stretched along one wall, flooding the office with warm desert light. An oval table in soft, pale wood shared space alongside a credenza stocked with polished glasses, a carafe, a French press, and packets of sugar. The air smelled faintly of cinnamon.

  Caitlin rose from her seat at the head of the table and greeted us with a pomegranate-lipped smile. She wore a black pin-striped pantsuit, raw silk tailored perfectly to her frame, and her Louboutin heels clicked softly on the checkerboard-tile floor as she stepped toward us.

  “Good morning, and thank you for coming. Can I interest you in refreshments? We have Voss water, Seattle coffee, an assortment of herbal tea blends.” She looked my way as she spoke, her voice tinged with a faint Scottish burr. “I asked that the minifridge be stocked with Diet Coke—I understand that’s your preferred brand. Also, ginger ale, in case either of you has an unsettled stomach. Did you have a good flight?”

  “I’m . . . good, thanks,” Jessie said, sounding as off balance as I felt. “The flight was fine.”

  Caitlin held out her hand. I wavered for a moment, unsure, then decided diplomacy was my best move. She shook with a firm, professional grip. After she shook hands with Jessie, she strode over to the credenza.

  “Change your mind later if you like. I’m having coffee. Been on the move for something like forty-seven hours straight at this point, and I have six more meetings scheduled for later today.” Caitlin glanced over her shoulder, tossing her scarlet hair, and waved a hand at us. “Please, sit—sit anywhere, the room’s ours. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  I pulled back a seat at the far end of the table, the plush tan leather chair rolling on freshly oiled casters.

  “You . . . aren’t what I expected,” I said.

  Caitlin chuckled, favoring me with an impish smile. “Not surprising, given what I know about your previous encounters with my kind. You will find that I’m considerably easier to negotiate with than the late and unlamented Prospero. And much more pleasant than Nadine. I’ll let you in on a little secret: nobody likes Nadine.”

  “You helped us out,” Jessie said, “back in Portland.”

  “And she was deliciously furious.” Caitlin walked back to her seat at the head of the table, cradling a steaming mug of coffee. “Wasn’t the reason I did it, but any time I get a chance to tweak her nose, I’m hardly going to pass it up. And . . . really?”

  I shook my head at her, not following.

  Caitlin waved her arm across the table, drawing the space between us. “You’re going to sit all the way over there?” She arched a sculpted eyebrow and wriggled her fingers. “Come on. Closer.”

  I felt like I was being invited deeper into a lion’s den. I shared an uncertain glance with Jessie. Then I rose from my chair and moved up a couple of seats. Not within arm’s reach, but closer. She did the same.

  “If I brought you here to kill you,” Caitlin said, “I wouldn’t have paid for catering. Honestly. I’d bring my own coffee, and that would be it. Also, there’d be plastic tarps on the floor, because the cleaning deposit for this building is absurd.”

  “Pragmatic,” I said.

  “I am. There’s something else you should understand about me: I like this city. I like the earth. I like humans! I even own one.”

  Jessie yanked her glasses off, curling her fist around them as she glared across the table. “Excuse me?”

  “My point is, I’m not some cackling comic-book villain looking to destroy the planet. I am charged with maintaining my prince’s territory, keeping the wheels of politics and finance spinning, and paving the eventual path to his triumph. It’s not a part-time job.”

  “That territory belongs to humanity,” Jessie told her. “You can understand why we’ve got a problem with that.”

  “Do you like Howard Jones?” Caitlin asked.

  I blinked. “The . . . the musician?”

  “I adore Howard Jones.” Caitlin clasped her hands, all earnestness. “Duran Duran, the Pet Shop Boys, Spandau Ballet. I could never destroy a world that had Howard Jones in it. Something you may not be aware of: I’m loath to admit it, but my people are . . . not good at art. We can appreciate it, cherish it, but we lack some primal spark required to make it for ourselves. Humanity has that spark. We can inspire you, though. All throughout history, wearing countless names and masks, we have been your muses.”

  “Sounds like you’re trying to sell us on a kinder, gentler hell,” I said.

  She chuckled into her coffee mug.

  “I am neither gentle nor kind,” Caitlin replied. “I’m a businesswoman. And I see no need for fire and bluster when cooler heads can prevail. So, yes, I provided a distraction in Portland for you. Why do you think I did that?”

  I laid my hands on the table, feeling the warm wood grain under my fingertips.

  “Cold Spectrum,” I said.

  She inclined her head. “Proceed.”

  “I think you knew the truth. T
hat Vigilant Lock—and Cold Spectrum before it—was a con game. The eastern infernal courts created it as a deniable weapon to target you and your allies. But knowing it and proving it aren’t the same thing. You needed us alive so we could get to the truth in a way you couldn’t: from the inside. If we give you absolute proof, that’s justification to go to war against them. The Cold Peace is over.”

  “Close,” Caitlin said. “Very close. Except for one thing: a justification for war is the absolute last thing I want. And while I’m sure you’re quite enthused at the prospect of my people taking tooth and claw to one another, it’s the last thing you want, too . . . at least, if you enjoy this planet as much as I do.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  I felt like a rookie detective wrestling with an unsolvable crime. I had locked down the means and the opportunity, but the motive unraveled under Caitlin’s patient, sly smile.

  “From what we’re told,” I said, “the eastern courts of hell are tiny. They’re shrimp compared to the West Coast and the Midwest. That’s the whole reason they created Vigilant Lock: so they could attack you through a proxy. Why wouldn’t you want a reason to take them out?”

  “Because stability is good for business. Good for everyone, really, and that includes humanity. Come now, Harmony: if open hostilities erupted, do you think we’d fight that war in our world? No. The battle lines would be drawn here, on Earth. Once our agents and our human servants mobilize, no one will be able to stop the dominoes from tumbling. Assassinations, bombings, mass atrocities disguised as terrorist attacks. The death toll will be breathtaking. And if I may be so bold as to remind you . . . my people don’t age. Yes, my court would win the war, eventually—that is a foregone conclusion. The time it would take, however, would be measured in human generations. Not long at all, from my perspective, but you and your children and your children’s children would endure a world of unrelenting violence and horror.”

  “What about Nadine?” Jessie said. “She was after the truth behind Cold Spectrum, too. What’s her angle?”

  Caitlin rose from her chair. She stood at the window, basking in sunlight as she sipped her coffee.

  “Beyond being an incessant irritation? She wants a promotion. You see, one variant or another of your little monster-hunting team has existed since the 1960s. We only recently became aware of it, and even more recently ferreted out the real backers behind it. Some would consider that an embarrassing lapse of duty. I’m fine—I’ve already confessed to my prince and done my penance for failure, but my ally in the Midwest wouldn’t be quite so fortunate. If the truth about Vigilant Lock emerged, my colleague Royce would likely be shamed and stripped of his position, and Nadine, next in line for it, would become Prince Malphas’s new hound.”

  Jessie stared at her. “She’d start a war . . . for a job?”

  Caitlin glanced back over her shoulder, her lips curled in distaste. “Not a mere job. Houndship is the highest honor a demon can earn. One heartbeat removed from a prince’s throne. And I suspect she wouldn’t be satisfied there. Believe me, if you think a hundred-year war sounds unpleasant, just wait and see what Princess Nadine would do to this planet.”

  I shuddered. “I can imagine.”

  “Trust me,” Caitlin said. “You can’t. I’ve known her for centuries. However horrid you think she is, she’s worse than that. And given that you two have made yourselves enemies of her family, it’s in your best interests to keep her far away from the reins of power.”

  I eased my chair back. My mouth felt like it was packed with cotton. “Think I will have something to drink now.”

  “Try the chocolate-raspberry coffee blend. I brought it for Jessie, but you’ll enjoy it.”

  “How do you know what kind of coffee I—” Jessie paused, shaking her head. “Never mind. Okay, so you don’t want the truth exposed. I can follow that. But if that’s the case, what do you want from us?”

  Caitlin turned her back to the window. She gave a tiny shrug and a satisfied chuckle, her voice like prickly velvet.

  “What I want is exactly what you’re in the process of doing. A coup. If Vigilant Lock is successfully freed from the influence of the eastern courts and becomes exactly what it pretended to be all along—an organization run by and for humans—there’s no scandal to conceal and nothing to go to war over.”

  “But we’ll still be out there,” I said. “We’re still a threat.”

  Caitlin put her hand to her mouth, covering a sudden smirk.

  “I’m sorry.” She fluttered her hand, her cheeks turning pink. “I’m sorry, but you are adorable. I’m not trying to denigrate your talents—I’m really not. But let’s consider the odds. By the law of averages, the majority of your operations will either target people I don’t care about, people who annoy me, or my actual enemies in the other courts. That’s a win for me, across the board.”

  “And if we come after you?” I asked.

  Her smile vanished. Caitlin’s face became an expressionless mask. Watching me—studying me, like a virus under a microscope. The temperature in the room dropped. The sunlight at the windows became cold and barren, a stray cloud drifting in front of the sun and draining the color from the room.

  “Then I would destroy you,” she replied, “without hesitation and without mercy.”

  Caitlin set down her mug. She clapped her hands once, sharp and strident. Her pleasant smile returned, and the warmth came back with it, as if the sunlight had been waiting for her permission to enter the room.

  “And we don’t want that,” Caitlin said, “now do we? But let’s speak to our shared concern: Benjamin Crohn. He’s a link to the truth. He’s also living, breathing evidence. I would like him to stop living and breathing, as soon as possible.”

  “Feeling’s mutual,” Jessie said.

  “Good.” Caitlin sat back down at the head of the table. “I can’t move against Crohn directly—officially, he’s nobody to me, and any overt action would betray my hand to the eastern courts. But you can.”

  “We have to find him first,” I said. “He killed Prospero, stole the contracts for the demons he’s got bound up inside his body, and went on the run. We were wondering if he’d come to you, actually.”

  “No. He’ll find no succor at the gates of hell, not from my court or any other. His offenses and his failures are equally unforgivable.”

  I poured myself a mug of coffee. The steam, scented faintly raspberry, wafted through the warm office air.

  “In my experience,” I said, “when a criminal burns his bridges in the underworld, he usually goes looking to make a deal with the authorities.”

  Caitlin leaned back and stretched her arms over her head. Languid, like a cat.

  “What a pity that they don’t exist,” she said, stifling a yawn. “I hope I’m not the bearer of bad news, Harmony, but if you’re insinuating that he might go looking for the guardians of the pearly gates . . . there aren’t any. There is no heaven, there are no bearers of holy light, there is no primal force of good watching over you. Your species is quite alone in the universe.”

  She sipped her coffee, smiling at me contentedly over the rim of the mug.

  “Well, not entirely alone,” she added. “You have us, to keep you company in the dark.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about it. Bad time for an existential crisis.

  Besides, I was thinking about Crohn. My experience with crooks of all stripes, mundane and supernatural, still held: when their backs were up against the wall and every ally turned enemy, the bad guys generally went looking to make a deal anywhere they could. Crohn wouldn’t survive on his own. He wasn’t stupid—he had to know that.

  “He had a contingency plan,” I said, thinking out loud. “A backup in case Vigilant Lock turned on him. He couldn’t go to you, obviously couldn’t go back to the eastern courts—hell’s not an option, period.”

  “He stole as much data as he could off Vigilant’s servers,” Jessie said. She looked to
Caitlin. “Would he know that exposing the truth would start a war?”

  “Unquestionably, and he could certainly anticipate the chaos that would result. Not that it would save his life. He’d just be giving us more reasons to punish him.”

  “No,” I said, “that might be part of his game, but he still needs allies. A safe harbor.”

  Then it came to me.

  “Excuse me,” I said, taking out my phone. “I need to verify something.”

  Linder’s voice was hard to hear, muffled by the chop of helicopter blades. “Agent Black? What is it? I’m in transit at the moment.”

  “This is important,” I said. “The no-kill order on Bobby Diehl. Was it your idea or Crohn’s?”

  I listened. Then I hung up the phone and slumped in my seat.

  “I know exactly where Crohn is going,” I said. “He’s defecting. He’s joining the Network.”

  Caitlin leaned in, eyes flashing. “Tell me everything.”

  “The eastern courts were leaning hard on Crohn to find a means of attacking the Network,” I said.

  “Right,” Jessie said. “Bobby Diehl’s the way in. We hang back until he gets his full membership, the embedded agents from Beach Cell get the info, and we take the whole outfit down in one fell swoop.”

  “Linder wanted to accelerate the timetable. He felt like the surveillance wasn’t getting anywhere, and he was worried about keeping Beach Cell undercover while we knew Diehl’s suspicions were growing. Only a matter of time before they were exposed. Crohn told him to stay the course.”

  Jessie’s mouth hung open. “Motherfucker was hedging his bets. He knew he could pack up and run to Bobby if things went south—and bring Vigilant’s files as a peace offering. The Network exposes the truth, sparks a war between the courts—”

  “And while we weaken ourselves,” Caitlin said, “bleeding in battle, the Network grows fat and strong. Ready to ambush whoever’s still standing when the dust settles. Unacceptable.”