The Long Way Down (32 page)

“Of course,” I said, playing the good cop, “anybody who helps take Carmichael and her buddies down, well, I gotta think Sitri’s gonna remember that in a favorable light.”

“You think so?” he asked, and I looked to Caitlin.

“Your name will be mentioned in my final report. Favorably,” she said.

Nicky folded his hands behind his head, obviously liking the sound of that. He thought it over for a moment. “I got good news and bad news. Good news is, I can tell you exactly where Lauren and the Box are. Bad news is, they’re opening it tonight, so you’ve only got a few hours. You know the Silverlode, over on Fremont?”

I nodded. “Sure. It’s been closed for what, three years now?”

“Closed, but not abandoned,” Nicky said. “Carmichael-Sterling Nevada bought it up as soon as they hit town, thanks to a little help from yours truly. Officially, they’re renovating it for a summer opening. That’s just a smoke screen for the press, though. The only renovations going on in there are courtesy of that creepy chick Meadow.”

“Puppets?” I remembered her attack on Spengler’s house.

Nicky snorted and tossed back a swig of whiskey. “Try buzz saws and booby traps. She’s like that guy from the
Saw
movies, but without the sense of humor. They fortified the place just for tonight’s main event. You aren’t getting in there without a small army.”

“Fortunately,” I said, “I’ve got one. Any idea where in the building they’ll be?”

“Top floor. The old Klondike Room. The hotel elevator or the emergency stairs will take you straight to it, but it’s a suicide run.”

“We can manage it,” Caitlin said.

“
I
can manage it,” I told her. “As long as Lauren has that ring, I don’t want you getting within a mile of her.”

She frowned. “You’re not going in there alone.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be. I’ll have the best backup in the business.”

“What else do you want from me?” Nicky asked.

“You’ve got friends on the force,” I said. “Things could get loud. It’d be nice if the police kinda forgot the Silverlode existed for a few hours tonight.”

“Done and done. And hey, one other thing. Lauren couldn’t use this. She tossed it my way like some sorta tip for good service. I figure you might want it.”

Nicky dug around in his desk drawer and dropped his find on the blotter between us. A leather pouch fringed with turquoise beads. Its dulled pewter clasp seemed to absorb the light. I could feel the raw enchantment from here, a hungry, sucking void, only half-satisfied with the partial meal it had already devoured.

Stacy Pankow’s soul.

I took the pouch. Tiny psychic needles bristled against my palm.

“I’ve been looking for this,” I said, then turned to Caitlin. “Shall we?”

She rose and walked with me. I was halfway out the door when Nicky called out.

“Hey, Dan?”

I looked back at him.

“We good?” he asked, wringing his hands and giving me puppy-dog eyes. I had to think about that.

“I don’t know, Nicky, are we? You told those feral cambion where to find me.”

He shrugged, biting his bottom lip. “You pissed me off. I mean, you know me—I get irrational sometimes. Besides, I knew you could handle those punks. I figured they’d just scare you a little. And I was right. Right?” He sighed. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have done that, and I won’t do it again. We’ve known each other since old times, Danny. It bothers me, us being at odds like this.”

Nicky and I would never be friends again—we had too much bad blood for that, too much wreckage between us, but I didn’t need any more enemies.

“Yeah,” I said, not feeling the words. “Yeah, Nicky. We’re good.”

I pined for air-conditioning the second we left the club. Taking out my phone as we crossed the parking lot, I squinted against the sudden return of the sun.

“I’m texting everyone, calling for an emergency meet-up. We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

“Go,” Caitlin said. “Call me when you’re done and let me know what the plan is.”

“Huh? You aren’t coming?”

She stopped next to the car, turning to look at me, her gaze unreadable.

“Daniel, introducing me to your friends, your community, would raise some very uncomfortable questions for you. I don’t need to put you in that position.”

I had thought about that. Yeah, it wasn’t going to make me very popular, and Bentley would hit the roof. I might have a hard time feeling welcome at the Tiger’s Garden for a while. Maybe ever again.

I put my phone away and rested my hands on her hips. Holding her close.

“We both knew,” I said, “this wasn’t going to be easy, you and me being together. This isn’t the first challenge we’ve faced, and it sure as hell won’t be the last. But I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. My friends will stand by me, and if they don’t, then fuck ’em because they weren’t really my friends to start with.”

She leaned in. Our lips brushed, soft as petals. She smelled like the ocean.

“All right,” she said, “let’s go meet the family then.”

• • •

I decided to skip our usual haunt. While its entrances move on a regular basis, the Tiger’s Garden usually hovers somewhere about a block away from the Silverlode. Lauren’s people would be watching the street like hawks, and I didn’t want to give them any sign that the Vegas occult underground was mobilizing for war.

“leave it 2 me,” Jennifer’s text read, and fifteen minutes later she sent over an address. We found parking in a garage off Las Vegas Boulevard and went a couple of blocks on foot, blending in with the tourist crowds.

“Really? Margaritaville?” Caitlin said, staring up at the sign. Calypso music bubbled out of an open doorway. Caribbean-style seating spread out under the wings of a dangling seaplane.

“Well, it is five o’clock somewhere,” I said, leading her inside. “And Lauren won’t be looking for us here.”

“Indeed. No one would ever look for magicians in a place that serves copious amounts of alcohol.”

Touché. I worried about the number of solid citizens milling around the place, considering what we had to discuss, but Jennifer had thought of everything. We found the whole crew up on the open terrace, where she’d evidently booked tables for a group three times our size. The tropical music, the noise from the street below, and a few empty tables for a buffer all worked together to give us a bit of much-needed privacy.

A rainbow of drinks decorated the table, garnished with springs of mint and wedges of pineapple carved to look like shark fins. The one holdout was Mama Margaux, sipping a layered milkshake topped with a volcano of whipped cream. Jennifer sat next to her, with a long flower box wrapped in gold ribbon taking up the chair on her other side. Bentley and Corman, each halfway through a frosted margarita, leaned against one another and watched the traffic go by. The gang was all here.

Except for Spengler
, I thought, swallowing a momentary stab of guilt. Caitlin stood behind me as we approached, and I caught a glimpse of her wringing her hands. I didn’t think anything could make her nervous.

They all fell silent as we walked up to the table. Their eyes had weight, questioning, roving. I reached behind Caitlin, resting a reassuring hand on the small of her back.

“Everybody,” I said, “I want you to meet someone. This is Caitlin.”

If any of the tourists a few tables away had looked in our direction, they wouldn’t have seen a thing. Just a pack of people sitting in sudden silence, waiting for someone to talk. If they could see like we did, though, attuned to the currents of magic, it would have been a totally different story. Psychic tendrils took to the wind like a sea anemone’s tentacles, rippling in the air, testing, probing. Some jerked back in sudden shock while others curved around, sniffing at Caitlin’s spirit-body with dark curiosity.

I could feel Bentley and Corman’s minds, their presence a warm pressure on my sinuses, and I realized what they were doing. They wanted to know if I’d been corrupted. Poisoned, addicted, like Caitlin had done to Detective Holt.

“No,” I said firmly, and the pressure receded.

“Is that what I—” Jennifer started to say, then leaned over to Margaux and whispered, “Is that what I think it is?”

“Mm-hmm,” she murmured, her face a blank slate.

Bentley’s hands dropped under the table, and I knew him well enough to know what that meant. My own hand drifted toward my pocket, the weight of my cards reassuring against my hip. Mama pushed back her chair, just half an inch. Corman’s eyes narrowed. I felt the situation slipping out of control, like a ball of yarn tumbling down a flight of stairs, one useless end clutched in my fingertips.

“You’re my family,” I said, and the movement stopped dead. I looked at them and shook my head. “Growing up, I didn’t really have one worth a damn. You all know where I came from, where I’ve been. Your stories are a lot like mine. We aren’t just friends. What we have is deeper than that. The lengths we’ve gone for each other are farther than that. We chose each other, as family. Because we needed each other.”

Corman’s eyes widened. Margaux nodded almost imperceptibly.

“When times are hard,” I said, “we have each other’s backs. We trust each other. I know it goes against everything in your gut, but right now, I want you—I need you—to trust me. Trust me when I tell you that Caitlin…Caitlin’s okay. This woman saved my life. I hope you can respect that. I hope you can respect me.”

Now the pensive silence was palpable. I looked across the table, my heart pounding. If they turned me away, cast me out…

Caitlin put her arm around my waist. Now it was her turn to give a reassuring touch. Bentley’s gaze flitted to her hand, to the way she looked at me. His expression softened and he took a deep breath, nodding to himself.

“I think we’ve been terribly rude,” he said softly. “We need two more chairs at this table.”

Jennifer moved the flower box, patting the empty chair. “C’mere, Cait, you can sit next to me. Y’know, I dated Daniel for a coupla months once—”

“Too soon,” I groaned, pulling over a chair and looking for the drink menu.

“Oh, no,” Caitlin said. “I want to hear all about it.”

Corman just smiled, patting Bentley on the back and whispering in his ear. I felt tears in my eyes and a kind of relief I hadn’t known existed.

There was no guarantee any of us would live to see the morning, but whatever Lauren had in store for us, we’d face it together.

Thirty-Nine

W
ith a frozen margarita in hand and the waitress out of earshot, I got down to business.

“Tonight, Lauren Carmichael and her followers are going to open the Etruscan Box. If she succeeds, it’s pretty much game over for the entire planet. Not that we’ll be around to worry about it, because Las Vegas will be a smoking crater.”

Caitlin and I ran them through the high points of the story. We skirted around the parts about Solomon’s ring. I meant what I had said to Caitlin back on the plane: the fewer people who knew it existed, the safer we all were. I felt bad, holding out on everybody right after they’d gone out on a limb for me, but then I imagined the consequences if word got out. I knew I was making the right call.

“These smoke-faced men,” Corman grumbled, “I’ve never heard of anything like ’em. You sure this professor had all his marbles in one bag, kiddo? I mean, he
has
spent the last twenty years in a rubber room.”

Mama Margaux mused over her drink. She had swapped her shake for a rum hurricane once we started talking. The apocalypse always goes better with booze.

“I’ve seen some of the Loa pictured a little like that, but the deed doesn’t fit. The spirits get up to grim mischief sometimes, but not that grim.”

“Mama’s right,” Jennifer drawled. “Whoever these boys are, they’re into delivering doom on an epic scale. Patient critters, too.”

I looked around the table and said, “Whoever they are, we’ll settle up with them soon enough. Priority one, tonight, is to get the Box and take down Lauren and her crew.”

“Got any ideas?” Corman asked.

“Well, etiquette and tradition dictate that I challenge them to a formal duel of sorcery refereed by an elder scholar of the art. All things considered, though, I’m leaning toward just shooting them. Everyone in favor of the just-shoot-them plan?”

Everyone held up their hands.

“Getting in, that’s the hard part,” I said. “The entrance is on Fremont, in the pedestrian mall. Big crowds, lots of attention. We can’t just kick in the front door without being noticed.”

Jennifer rubbed her chin. “They gotta have a cargo entrance, don’t they? I mean, when the place was open for business, they weren’t bringin’ delivery trucks up that street.”

Bentley slid a fountain pen from his shirt pocket and reached for a spare napkin. He sketched as he spoke, outlining the building.

“There is indeed. The Silverlode’s quite the historical artifact. The casino, here, and the hotel tower were originally separate, adjoining buildings. Benny Binion bought them both in the early fifties and remodeled them as a single venue, Binion’s Silverlode. The old girl had a good run. Finally closed its doors about ten years ago. An investment firm tried their hand at reopening for a couple of years after that, but they never got the magic back.”