Redemption Song (31 page)

I pulled the door shut, slapped the side of the van twice, and Nicky took off. I pulled my mask off. Sweat plastered my hair to my scalp, and I was grateful for the hint of a breeze in the air. Emma opened her bag and passed out white aprons and hats, giving everyone the semblance of an organized crew.

“Dan,” Ben started to say. “I’m sorry, I—”

I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “Nicky’s going to sit on the caterers until we’re done, then let them go. Nobody will be reporting the van stolen, so just drive the speed limit and watch for stop signs. There will already be a legit truck and caterers on-site when you get to Lauren’s place, waiting for the rest of the hired help. Just tell them it was a last-minute replacement and you’re filling in from the downtown office. Saguaro Catering is a big company and they hire a lot of seasonal employees, which is exactly why I picked them. The story should hold up. Mama, you got everything you need to make your special gumbo?”

Margaux crossed her arms and smiled. “They’ll never know what hit ’em.”

“Good. Emma, Ben, stay near Mama and follow her lead. Jennifer will be on the outside, arranging your exit. You all know what you have to do?”

Everyone nodded, even Ben.

“I’m going to get back to the Value Lodge and wait for Sullivan,” I said. “If all goes well, I’ll see you at the banquet. If I don’t show, scrub the job and get out any way you can.”

“Why wouldn’t you show?” Ben asked, nervous again.

“Because,” I told him, “that means I’m dead.”

• • •

Back at the motel I tried to take a light nap, but I was too keyed up. The television was twenty channels of nothing, so I left it on as background noise and played solitaire until sundown.

A pounding on the door jolted me away from my fifth losing game in a row. I held my breath and went to face my future. Sullivan stood outside, flanked by a pair of his Choir heavies.

He knew. The way he wrinkled his nose when he looked at me, the barely constrained hatred in his eyes—he’d been warned, all right. He knew he’d been played, and he wanted to kill me for it.

“Gilles,” he said. “Come along. It’s time.”

I bit back a sigh of relief. After all, he knew everything I’d said and done at that planning meeting, but I wasn’t supposed to know he knew it. I needed to play blissfully ignorant and go along with whatever doom he was planning for me.

The cambion bundled me into one car, and Sullivan got into the backseat of another. A small caravan of black SUVs rolled out into the night.

Lauren’s mansion crouched in the shadow of a red rock mountain, far enough into the desert that the lights of Las Vegas were nothing but a shimmering diamond at our backs. Along the curve of a rolling horseshoe driveway, discreet lights glowed against elaborate gardens of cactus and stone. Her house looked like something out of a British costume drama, old and expensive and prim.

I counted eight Choirboys in all as we got out of the SUVs, plus me and Sullivan. No sign of Father Alvarez. That didn’t surprise me, considering the traitor had leaked the plan to free him. I didn’t care much one way or the other. Sullivan wouldn’t hurt Alvarez, and another few hours as a pampered hostage wouldn’t kill him.

A butler, tailed black jacket and all, met us at the door and ushered us into a foyer lined with yellowed Italian marble and deep mahogany walls. I sensed more than a stiff upper lip as I walked past him. Or something less. His movements were a little too formal, his eyes a little too vacant. The scent of magic around him was a familiar odor: one of Meadow Brand’s mannequins, wearing an illusion.

Just what I was banking on.

A pair of maids guided us into a grand hall fashioned after an old hunting lodge. The dining table was a good fifteen feet long, with high-backed chairs and china plates whiter than a politician’s teeth. A couple of Rembrandts graced the walls, probably fakes. The maids were fake, too. As Sullivan’s crew filled the room, I realized the entire household staff was nothing but mannequins wearing human faces. I only knew because I had experience with Brand’s tricks. If Sullivan had sniffed them out on his own, his poker face didn’t betray him.

“So it’s true,” Lauren Carmichael said, gliding over to greet us in a Christian Dior gown the color of a winter storm. “You’re bringing me Gilles de Rais
and
Daniel Faust.”

“Mademoiselle,” I said, offering a deep bow with a flourish. Turning my face away, if only for a moment, let me hide the glare in my eyes as Meadow Brand loomed into sight at Lauren’s shoulder.

“We need to get him a new body to live in,” Meadow growled, the jagged scar along her face twisting. “I want to kill the one he’s wearing.”

“All in good time,” Lauren said and leaned in as Sullivan took her hand like a gentleman.

“This will be a momentous night for both of us,” Sullivan said.

“It certainly will,” Lauren said, looking around the room. “But where’s the priest? I wanted to meet him.”

“Alas, he’s taken a bit ill. Didn’t think it wise to spread germs around. Since you were so interested in his work, though…”

One of the cambion stepped up and offered Lauren a slender folio with red leather covers, its spine clasped in brass leaf.

“I did bring the book itself,” Sullivan said. “It would be my pleasure to walk you through what we’ve translated thus far, and show you the scope of our ambitions. After dinner, perhaps.”

“Yeah,” Meadow Brand said, her unwavering glare burning a hole in my neck. “Soup’s on.”

Forty

W
e all sat at one end of the table. Lauren at the head, Sullivan to her left, and Meadow to her right. I sat beside Sullivan, a little close for my liking. The Choirboys filled out the rest of the table, conversing in hushed voices as Lauren’s fake servants flitted in and out of the room in patterns too precise to be random.

The first course was a Cajun-style gumbo, rich and savory and hot from the kitchen. Mama had made it a little less spicy than usual, but if I concentrated I could taste the more special, exotic ingredients she’d added to the mix.

Sullivan didn’t take a bite until he saw me dig in first. He knew I’d put ringers on the catering staff. Probably thought my plan was to poison everyone. What I had in mind was a little more interesting.

The next course offered heaping mounds of pasta Florentine. I’d made the right choice bringing Ben along to help with the charade. His Italian cooking was good enough to pass for professional. At least if I died here, I wouldn’t go hungry.

“I’m curious,” Sullivan said. “You know of my crusade, but what of yours? Why would you need…a man like this to help you?”

Lauren’s gaze drifted toward me. “I’m perfecting a machine that the Lord Marshal had a hand in prototyping. Something to make the world a better place.”

“Something to make the world a better place, from the hands of a child-killer?”

“You are impugning my reputation,” I told Sullivan. He slapped a sheaf of papers on the table. De Rais’s contract.

“As long as I own you,” he snapped, “you will speak only when spoken to!”

It was a clever move. He needed this trade to go off without a hitch. Shutting me up meant one less thing that could go wrong. He was making it that much easier for me, too. I shrugged and ate my pasta.

“Shining things can bloom in dark places,” Lauren said. “Look at you, after all.”

He waved a hand, drenched in fake modesty. “I’m just walking the path of the pilgrim. Helping the wayward souls who come to me for guidance, that’s the joy of my life.”

“Bullshit,” Meadow muttered, making it the one time I’d ever agreed with her.

“Ms. Brand!” Lauren said, but Sullivan shook his head.

“If the lady objects,” Sullivan said, “I’d like to hear why.”

Meadow stared him down across the table. “You can’t change a fish into a bicycle,” she said. “You can’t change a demon into a saint, and you can’t change a cambion into a human. Things are what they are. People are what they are. Fighting that’s a fucking waste of time.”

Sullivan’s lips tightened, and I could see his hand clench under the table. He took a deep breath and forced a smile.

“The journey of a thousand miles,” he said, “begins with a single step. A human sage said that, and I’ve always found it admirable advice. Can anyone change their nature? Can anyone be redeemed, and put their past behind them? I’m still on that journey, young lady, so I can’t say where it will end. I can only have faith.”

One of the cambion clapped his hands, beaming at Sullivan like he was the Second Coming. The others joined in, and soon the table was a chorus of starry-eyed applause. Even Lauren joined in with a polite golf clap. Meadow and I kept our hands under the table.

“Meadow,” Lauren said quickly, before she could ruin the moment, “we should resolve our business, don’t you think? Run upstairs and get the ring out of the safe.”

My shoulders tensed. The awkward dinner conversation had just become the countdown to a massacre. I noticed more of the serving staff loitering on the edges of the room, blank-eyed and watching the feast. Waiting for their cue.

“Indeed,” Sullivan said, tapping the contract but keeping it close to his hand. “Tonight, everyone gets what they deserve.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Lauren lifted her flute of champagne.

Meadow returned with a small wooden box and passed it to Lauren before taking her seat. Lauren opened the box and showed it to Sullivan. Inside, the Ring of Solomon sat nestled on a bed of black crushed velvet.

“It’s more beautiful than I imagined,” he murmured.

Lauren set the box on the table, close to Meadow’s hand. There they were, all laid out in a rough triangle amid the half-finished plates: Gilles’s contract, Solomon’s ring, and Father Alvarez’s manuscript.

“There’s only one thing I need to know,” Lauren said.

Sullivan nodded. “Ask anything. I’m an open book.”

I slipped my hand into my pocket and around my phone. Before they picked me up at the hotel, I’d pre-keyed a text message. Two words: “GET READY.” I pressed send.

“Not you,” Lauren said and looked at me. “Him.”

Then she asked me a question in French.

I didn’t understand a word of it, but then she chuckled, spread her hands and said “
Non?
”

Maybe I could fake this a little bit longer. I mirrored her smile and shook my head.

“
Non, non
,” I said, as if I was in on the joke.

Her smile vanished. “What I said was, ‘If this is an elaborate scam and you don’t even speak French, say ‘
non
.’”

“Ooh,” I said. “Gotta admit, that was good.”

One of the cambion, farther down the table, rubbed his eyes like he’d gotten sand blown in his face. Another stared around the room, googly-eyed and confused. The gumbo was kicking in.

“I don’t—” Sullivan said, flustered. “I don’t know anything about this, Lauren—”

“Holy shit!” one of the cambion shouted, jumping up so fast his chair fell back and clattered on the hardwood floor. Another fan of the appetizer. I’d eaten it too. I could feel the enchanted ingredients coursing through my system, and I could see what he saw. Brand’s illusions were good, but not good enough to stand up against a heavy dose of Mama’s magic gumbo. It wasn’t just good for your heart; it was good for your eyes too. The effects would only last a few minutes, but that was all I needed to get this party started.

The servants had been creeping closer, clustering around the table, but now they weren’t servants anymore. A baker’s dozen of Meadow’s human-sized marionettes—faceless wooden armature dolls with rusted metal shivs and razors for hands—stood in a motionless ring around the dining table. A couple of Sullivan’s men yanked small guns from pockets and ankle holsters, clutching their steel close and waiting for orders.

“You were going to betray me!” Sullivan roared, slamming his fist on the table.

Lauren bared her teeth. “
You
were going to betray
me
!”

I jumped up onto my chair and climbed onto the dinner table, standing in the heart of the powder keg.

“Ladies! Gentlemen! You’re both right! You were all about to betray each other. Congratulations and welcome to Las Vegas. If I could have the floor for a moment?”

All eyes were on me.

“The fact is, it just wasn’t meant to be. Crazy rich lady who wants to blow up the world, crazy demon asshole who wants to invade hell…I know, you had high hopes, but this relationship just wasn’t going to work out.”

“I am going,” Sullivan seethed, “to kill you.”

“Not if I get to him first,” Meadow said.

In my pocket, my phone vibrated against my leg. It rang three times and then stopped. The signal I’d been waiting for. I dipped my fingers into my other pocket and took out the poker chip from the Sands.

“For my final performance,” I said, “a golden oldie. Aleister Crowley called it the Harlot’s Curtains—”

“Kill him!” Lauren commanded. The mannequins didn’t move. They only answered to Meadow.

“—but me, I call it Closing Time.”

Lauren bolted up from her chair and shouted, “
Kill them all
!”

I tossed the chip in the air. It spun end over end, glittering like fairy dust, and exploded.

A pulse of white-hot magic blasted through the room like a flash-bang grenade. Every light died at once, the bulbs in the grand chandelier exploding while the candles on the table sputtered and went black.

That was when the shooting started.

I hit the table, landing in a clutter of dishes as a shot winged over my head. The mannequins moved in, crashing in a wave of wood and rusted steel against the cambion. In the shadows, Sullivan grabbed for the ring while Lauren grabbed for the contract, the two of them almost running into each other. I snatched the book, hauling it back by my fingertips and clutching it to my chest as I rolled to one side, thumping to the floor in a puddle of cracked china and soggy pasta. It wasn’t the most dignified exit, but I was still breathing.

Raw screams ripped through the air. I saw a cambion go down under a mannequin’s weight, the kid gurgling his last breath from a punctured lung as it stabbed him again and again. Another mannequin ate a bullet and collapsed with nothing but splintered wood above the neck. I trench-crawled under the table, following its length toward what I hoped was the kitchen door. As soon as I came out of cover, I crouched and broke into a run, staying as low as I could.