“Do I?” I arched an eyebrow. “Clue me in.”
“Because he thought it would be funny, and he wanted to screw with you. Duh. Come on, even I know that. You can mostly still do whatever you want. I mean, you’re Daniel Faust. Nobody really expects you to toe the line. Any line. For me, it’s…it’s different. I’m supposed to be all on board.” She shook invisible pom-poms. “Yay, hell. I’m supposed to be all excited about spending the rest of my life working for my mom’s shitty company, surrounded by jerks, which will put me on an amazing fast track to spending all of eternity being surrounded by even bigger jerks. I know, I’m a cambion, that’s supposed to be my thing—”
“Your thing is whatever you want your thing to be,” I said. “Your blood doesn’t get a say in the matter.”
“See? See, that’s what I’m talking about. You don’t try to put me in a box like that. When I’m talking to you I never feel like I’m…I don’t know. Wrong inside.”
I decided to shift gears. Melanie was a pressure cooker about to burst, and there was more going on than a sudden desire to expand her studies.
“You know,” I said, “knowing magic doesn’t make anything easier. Life is tough, especially at your age. There aren’t any cheat codes.”
“I don’t care about easier. It would make me safer. Hello? I could have gotten killed last night. And it’s not the first time. Remember the Redemption Choir? Or when Damien Ecko set a zombie loose in my house?”
“You got through it okay.”
“I was lucky. I can’t count on luck.”
“You can’t count on magic,” I told her. “Why do you think I carry a gun?”
She pushed her head back against the seat and balled her hands into fists. Out of words, out of oxygen.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s going on with you? Talk to me.”
She forced a breath, but her muscles stayed taut, like she had steel cables under her skin.
“You know where I want to go to college? Emerson. Their journalism school is the best, okay? God tier.”
“Okay.”
“And Emerson,” she said, “is in Boston. About two thousand miles outside Prince Sitri’s borders. And my mother is a dignitary in his court. Which means I can’t go to Emerson, because I’d probably be kidnapped or killed the second I got off the plane. I can’t go anywhere.”
“You’ve got options—”
“No,” she said. “I…I don’t. I don’t. My entire world is Jade Tears territory, because I can’t leave. Because I’m a cambion, because I’m Emma Loomis’s daughter—I was born with a target on my back and I can never, ever take it off. And all my friends? They’re leaving. They’re going to Chicago, and New York, and Boston, and Florida. They’re going to all these places I can never go, will never go, and I’m never going to—”
The dam broke and the tears flowed at the end of a ragged, strangled word. I pulled her close and she let me, and she shook for a while. I held her shoulders and felt my shirt grow damp.
“Once we graduate, I’m never going to see any of my friends again,” she whispered into my chest. “And my mom is like, it’s fine, you’ll make new friends at Southern Tropics, and I hate those people. I need…I need to be able to make my own choices. I need something that’s mine.”
I understood. Just like I knew I couldn’t give her what she needed. I let her finish, holding her until there was nothing but a few wet sniffles left. I wiped her eyes with my sleeve. A stray, salty drop splashed across my fingers.
“I’m here for you,” I told her. “I will always be here for you. Know that. But…I can’t teach you, Melanie. It’s not you. It’s me. I can’t do that again.”
The hope in her eyes sputtered out and died. Her smudged tears felt like fresh blood on my hand.
“Fine,” she said. “Thanks for nothing.”
“Melanie—”
She shoved open the door and turned her face away.
“I’m late for class.”
She was gone before I could think of a way to make her stay. I understood better than she thought. I wasn’t far from her age when Bentley and Corman took me under their wing. They did more than teach me: they gave me confidence, an anchor in the world, a source of strength.
Something that was mine.
I could have said yes, could have passed the torch along, but I’d tried that once before. When I looked into Melanie’s eyes, all I could see was Desi. I cared too much about Melanie to ever let her get that close to me.
6.
The sunset bled tangerine in long streaks across the desert sky. The Vegas Strip came to life and fired up the neon, unleashing its clarion call to the gamblers, the pleasure-hunters, the hungry of all appetites. I looked at the ghost of my reflection in a floor-length window. Suited up, Italian loafers, paisley silk handkerchief with a razor-sharp crease.
We’d rented a conference room at the Flamenco. Pixie came early, swept for bugs, and jetted before the meeting started. I did my part at the same time, hunting for witch-eyes and scrying spells. The room was clean. The attendees weren’t, and most of them were wearing a small stolen fortune on their backs or their wrists. We’d turned the place into a den of thieves, the head honchos of the city’s biggest crews coming together for our regular sit-down.
“You look upset. I get nervous when you look upset.”
Chou Yong, the recently promoted Red Pole of the 14K Triad, stood on my right. He’d earned his stripes in the field after his boss got eaten by a shape-shifting assassin, so I could understand where he was coming from. His double chin bobbed as he looked me up and down.
“Had to disappoint somebody today,” I told him.
“I do that every day.” Yong rolled his eyes to the darkening sky outside the window. “My mother. And she makes sure to remind me.”
“Think we’re about ready to get rollin’,” Jennifer called out. She took her seat at the head of the long, oval conference table, mahogany inlaid with black leather and an alligator-hide sheen.
I sat at her left hand and took a long, slow look around the room as everyone got settled. In the wake of Nicky Agnelli’s downfall, the self-proclaimed King of Las Vegas escaping just ahead of a federal dragnet, Jennifer had taken the feuding factions of the city and forged them into a more or less united front. We had the top men in the Cinco Calles and the Fine Upstanding Crew sitting side by side, after five years of scrapping. The 14K and the Inagawa-kai were being civil to each other. Even the Blood Eagles had come to the table, taking time out from their busy schedule of roaring down the desert highways and stomping anyone who looked at them sideways. Our feud with the Chicago Outfit had cost us, but we came out on top and tighter than before.
“We’re starting to look like a serious threat,” I murmured.
Jennifer cracked a bottle of Perrier and gave me the side-eye. “Sure thing, sugar. Thanks to…the guy.”
I struggled not to bury my face in my palm. On the far side of the table, Emma Loomis was getting settled in; we’d exchanged a brief hello when she arrived and not much else, while I tried to decide how much to tell her about Melanie’s little adventure last night. I was still deciding. Emma looked like a wealthy, coiffed suburban soccer mom, but the demon that lived under her stolen skin didn’t take prisoners.
Jennifer waited until everyone simmered down, pushed her chair back, and took command of the room.
“Let’s tackle the elephant, first things first,” she said. “Did my damned best to stop it, but Nevada made pot legal and that’s just how it is. Good news is, saw this comin’ way back when, and made nice with a couple of our congress critters. My people were first, second, and twentieth in line for dispensary licenses.”
Eddie Stone, war chief of the Bishops, smoothed the lapels of his peacock-blue suit. His upper lip curled back and flashed a golden tooth.
“How many we talking?” he asked.