“Never heard of him.”
“That’s the point,” Nicky said. “This Ozymandias guy, he was hot shit in his day, right? King of kings. Then the desert blew in, and the sandstorms raged, and…pfft. Nothing left but a pedestal with some broken legs and a name that the world forgot.”
He rapped his glass against the window. Dark liquor sloshed like dirty water, leaving an oily sheen in its wake. He swept his hand along the shining neon, slow, taking it all in.
“There was a time, all of this was mine. Every door in town was open to me. Every restaurant had a prime table with my name on it, seven nights a week. Everybody had an envelope stuffed with green, and everybody smiled when they handed it over. I was the king of kings.”
He tore his gaze from the window and looked my way.
“Then one day I woke up and everything was gone. Everything. Then I realized the truth. This city is a boneyard, Dan. And the vultures are always circling. There’s always someone, someone younger, hungrier, ready to swoop in and eat you for dinner. Vegas is yours now, you and your pals. And that’s fair. That’s fair and square. But you’d better keep one eye over your shoulder and never ever sleep, because the second you do, what happened to me is gonna happen to you.”
“Cheerful thought,” I said.
“What do you want, I should blow sunshine up your ass? I respect you too much to lie.”
I caught sight of Emma across the room, saying her goodbyes and easing her way to the door.
“Speaking of,” I told him, “need to show some respect of my own. Call me, okay?”
“I got your number.”
I crossed the conference room on an intercept course, bracing myself for a discussion I didn’t want to have.
8.
I caught up with Emma. Two minutes later, she was tugging me out the door by my sleeve. We caught the elevator and shared the ride down with a couple of tourists who smelled like suntan lotion and cheap cologne.
“I wasn’t—” I started to say.
She waved her hand, sharp, like she was thinking of chopping it across my throat. I stopped talking.
We made our way down to the hotel lounge. Speakers, hidden high behind dangling plastic ferns in brass buckets, played a stream of canned piano music. Not much to see at this hour: a couple of weary travelers bellied up to the bar, one with a carry-on at his feet, and on the far end a plump businessman was trying to make time with a woman five brackets out of his league. Emma guided me over to a high-top table in the corner and pointed to a stool.
“Sit. I’m calling Caitlin.”
“I really wasn’t—”
She made a zzt sound, drew her finger across her lips like a zipper, and got her phone out.
Caitlin showed up to save the day. I hoped. She cut across the lobby like a shark, dressed for business; her spill of curly scarlet hair fell across one shoulder of her jacket, charcoal black over an ivory silk blouse. A floppy black ribbon dangled at her throat, tying her ensemble up with a bow. She leaned in for a perfunctory kiss—cheek, not lips, which told me I was really in trouble this time.
“Tell her.” Emma yanked back a stool and sat down. “Tell her what you told me.”
“You promised not to overreact.”
Emma tensed her cheeks until her face bent in a ghoulish facsimile of a smile.
“Daniel, are your intestines where they should be?”
I patted my belly, just to be sure. “I think so?”
“Then clearly, I’m not overreacting. You’ll know when I do.”
Caitlin sat in contemplative silence, a judge on her barstool bench, as I walked her through it: the house party gone wrong and my encounter with the King of Worms, spotting Melanie in the party photos, and hearing her confession at school.
“My daughter,” Emma added, “was nearly killed last night, and he just now decided to tell me about it.”
“Maybe because I knew how you’d react.”
The second I said it, I wished I could claw those words from the air and shove them back into my mouth. Now I had two women giving me the death eye, from both sides of the table. Emma took a slow, deep breath.
“Caitlin,” she said, “give me five minutes alone with him. Just five minutes.”
“I dispense the discipline around here.” Caitlin looked my way. “You should have called Emma right away.”
Know what the worst thing about a two-on-one argument is? When you’re wrong and you know it. I laid my hands on the table and bowed my head in defeat.
“I know,” I said. “I screwed up, okay? I’m sorry.”
“Keeping this from me?” Emma snapped. “Talking to Melanie without me, at her school, no less? What were you thinking?”
“Honestly? I was thinking I needed answers. C’mon, Emma. She’s your kid.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly,” I echoed. “And if you confronted her with that photograph—which, I remind you, just showed a blur with hair like hers, not exactly a smoking gun—she would have denied everything. You know this.”
Her gaze flicked to one side. “I would have gotten it out of her eventually.”
“Or I would have,” Caitlin said.
“Sure, but not as fast as I did, and not without a headache. Look, you’re both authority figures. I’m cool Uncle Dan.” I paused. “I think I’m cool. Point is, I’m not her mom, or the enforcer for a prince of hell for that matter. It’s easy for her to talk to me. And in the process, I did you a favor.”
Emma gave me a suspicious look. “How do you figure that?”
“If you had confronted her, what do you think the status quo at your house would look like right now?”
“Based on our last few spats,” she said, “after loudly informing me that she hates me, Melanie would stomp off to her room, slam the door, and refuse to speak to me until…next Tuesday, most likely.”
“Yeah, well, now you don’t have to have that conversation. Tell her that I ratted her out. She’ll be so mad at me, she won’t even think of being mad at you. Meanwhile, you can sit her down, tell her how much you care about her and how worried you are—”
“Or I can ground her for a month,” Emma said.
“Also an option,” I said. “Or do both. But I just spared you the entire shouting match. I’m the bad guy for betraying her trust, and you get to be the good guy. You’re welcome.”
The winter front behind Emma’s eyes defrosted a little. She stuck out her bottom lip and drummed her manicured nails on the table.
“You…may have a point,” she said.
“Every once in a while, I’ve been known to stumble onto one.”
“I’m still miffed. Daniel, you’re a knight of our court now. There are rules. A hierarchy.”
I was still waiting for somebody to send me a copy of the rulebook. Prince Sitri had knighted me on a whim—that, and to force the rakshasi queen Naavarasi into a bind, torn between losing face or accepting my challenge to duel. Caitlin and I beat the trap she had set for us and got away clean…but a knighthood was forever. Literally. So far I’d sussed out the basics. Namely, that my gun hand was chained to my hip now. As a knight of hell, moving against another court’s minions was an act of war, which meant I had to cancel my plan to punch Naavarasi’s ticket for good.
Canceled for the moment, anyway. She wrote her own death sentence when she went after Caitlin. Sooner or later, I’d find a way to carry it out.
“I’m a lousy team player,” I said. “To be fair, Sitri knew this when he knighted me.”
“Five minutes,” Emma said to Caitlin. “Me and him alone.”
Caitlin found something interesting to stare at on the ceiling. “If it will make you happy and let us all move on, I’ll punish him myself. Five lashes.”
“Twenty.”
“Wait,” I said, “what?”
“Ten,” Caitlin said.
“Ten,” Emma fired back, “and I get to do it.”
“Wait,” I said again, feeling distinctly left out of the negotiation. “Lashes with what?”
“With my whip, obviously. What else would I use?” Caitlin turned to Emma. “You are not doing it yourself. Twelve lashes.”
“Fifteen and I get to watch.”