“I don’t—” I stumbled over my own words. “I don’t think this is a thing you can actually bargain over.”
They ignored me. Caitlin shook her head. “Twelve. Final offer.”
“I suppose,” Emma said, “I can accept that as a fair recompense for the insult.”
“Good. Matter resolved, then. Now shake hands.”
I blinked, taking Emma’s outstretched hand and feeling like I’d just been sideswiped by a truck.
“What…what just happened here?” I asked.
“A learning experience,” Caitlin told me. “Actions have consequences, and infernal society is highly centered around caste and reciprocity. As your senior in the court, Emma is entitled to petition me for redress when she feels slighted. I offered to punish you for it and she accepted my terms, which means she has no reason or excuse to carry a grudge against you going forward. Thus societal balance is restored.”
“Yeah, but that—that’s an example, right? I mean, this was a hypothetical exercise. You’re not actually going to do it.”
She looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “Daniel, darling, have you ever known me to make an empty threat? You know better. But we can discuss that later; for the moment we should focus on this…what was his name? Todd?”
The ink dealer. I nodded, suddenly eager for a change of subject.
“The Network’s gone silent since our last run-in,” I said. “This guy’s the best and only lead we’ve got. And he can tell us why they put a batch of toxic product on the street.”
“You think it was deliberate,” Emma said.
“I’d bet money on it. The dealer’s a burnout who shows up at high school parties uninvited—except for this particular party, where he made sure his ink would be passed out like candy. He stayed clear because he knew what was going to happen. The Network wanted those kids dead.”
Emma’s lips tightened. “Including my daughter. Still, it doesn’t make sense. They’re sabotaging their own business.”
“It almost feels like an act of terrorism,” Caitlin mused, “but what’s terrorism without an ideology behind it?”
“We’ve got a name and we know where he works,” I said. “Let’s scoop him up and ask him ourselves. And I don’t mean ‘ask nicely.’”
“If he’s able to speak,” Caitlin said.
A shiver of revulsion ran down my spine. The last time we got our hands on a bottom-rung Network dealer, we discovered their anti-squealing policy. They used a kind of curse called a geas, basically a taboo enforced by magic. Their people would literally kill themselves, or chew their own tongues off, before giving up the goods.
They didn’t use the garden-variety version of that spell, either. A Network geas came in the form of a six-inch cockroach, wriggling deep inside their agents’ bodies. If you were lucky, pulling it out would only leave you with the mother of all sore throats. If you weren’t, it’d chew a tunnel through your guts on its way to freedom. And maybe leave eggs behind.
“I’d say he’s got a fifty-fifty shot at surviving the extraction,” I told them. “I’m good with those odds if you are.”
Nobody objected. Nothing we could do until the morning, so we called it. Caitlin walked me out, slipping her arm around mine as we crossed the casino lobby. The swath of flamingo-pink and lime carpet was our personal runway, flanked by walls of flashing, trilling slot machines.
“But just to be sure,” I said, with a glance over my shoulder to make sure Emma was out of earshot, “you’re not going to really do it.”
“What?” She furrowed her brow. “Oh, your whipping? Of course I am. The law is all that keeps us from savagery, Daniel. I’d never lie about something like that. Breaking the rules carries a cost.”
“C’mon. Every rule has a loophole.”
“No, no, quite iron-clad, I’m afraid.” She paused, flashing the tiniest hint of a smile. “Of course, I didn’t say when I was going to carry out your punishment, did I? I suppose I’m obligated to do it sometime between right now and…oh, the heat death of the universe. Sometime in between there.”
I leaned into her and savored the flood of relief.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it.”
She put on an almost-believable face of grave concern. “Well of course I will. Eventually. Probably in the middle of the night, with no warning. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe years from now. When you least expect it…expect it.”
“You’re clearly taking ‘how to screw with people’s heads’ lessons from your father.”
“Goodness,” she said, “it’s almost like fear and pain are two of my most essential management tools.”
I gave an amiable shrug. “Well, you’ve got to go with what you’re good at, that’s what I always say. Any news on the Naavarasi front?”
We passed through a revolving door and out into the night. A clean, dry chill hung in the air. Tourists queued up in a serpentine line at the taxi stand, one yellow van after another trundling off to join the molasses-sludge traffic on the Strip.
“She retreated to lick her wounds,” Caitlin said, “quite literally, I expect.”
“You did stomp the hell out of her.”
A pleased glimmer shone in her eyes. “That I did. Not nearly as much as I wanted to, but…rules. Now, remember: technically, your knighthood means she can’t come after you—”
“But technically, she couldn’t go after you either. She just had to bait a trap that left her hands clean.”
“Precisely,” Caitlin said, “and she’ll likely try to do it again.”
“At least we know her real stripes now. She tricked us by playing dumb; that won’t work twice. Meanwhile, I’m digging up all the info I can. Jennifer’s pulling the audio from when Naavarasi killed Kirmira at her stash house.”
“Chicago’s shape-shifter?” Caitlin glanced sidelong at me as we followed the curling ribbon of sidewalk. “She insisted he wasn’t one of her kind.”
“So she said. According to Naavarasi, she’s the last rakshasi on earth. But Kirmira said something to her, just before she snapped his neck. And I saw the look on his face. The guy knew her, Cait. I’ll admit, it’s a hunch, but…”
“But your hunches are generally worth following up on.”
“Maybe she already played her last hand. Maybe her scheme was all about snaring you.” We rounded a pillar ringed with a band of pink and ducked into the clammy gloom of the parking garage. “I don’t buy it, though. Naavarasi’s got bigger plans than that. And I want to know what she’s chasing before she takes her next shot.”
“Follow your instincts. Just be careful. You’re playing for higher stakes now. You know, I have a hunch of my own.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “What’s that?”
Her fingertips played like silken petals along the back of my neck, leaving an electric tingle in their wake.
“I have a hunch you’re coming home with me tonight.”
As it turned out, we were both right.
9.
The next morning I called the Burger Barn on Lake Mead Boulevard, posing as a human-resources flunky doing an employment verification. Had to make sure I was casting my bait into the right pond.
“His name is Todd…sorry,” I said, “the application got smeared in the photocopier. I always tell them to make sure the ink is dry. Looks like a C or a K maybe—”
“Could it be an L?” asked the tired voice on the other end of the line.
“Yes! You’re right, it’s definitely an L.”
“Todd Long. Yep, he works for us.”
She didn’t sound too enthused about that fact. She was quick to offer up all the information she could legally provide, with thinly veiled pleasure that some other company was poised to take a slacker off her hands. I relayed the info to Pixie and told her to cross-check it with the Palo Verde High School rolls for the last couple of years. Dig up enough bits and pieces of a person’s life, sooner or later you have enough to draw a complete picture.