The Living End (21 page)

“I-I might have something there,” Pixie stammered. She was still reeling. “I was digging into his finances and…it’s weird. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but maybe it’s something you guys…you know, something that you’d understand.”

“What’ve you got?” I said.

She pulled up a spreadsheet on her laptop. Margaux leaned in to see, and Bentley walked around behind the sofa. He slipped his reading glasses on.

“Okay,” Pixie said. “Alton Roth comes from oil money. Big Texas family, oilmen for three generations. He’s the first of the family to go into politics. He’s never met a lobbyist he didn’t like. Pretty much takes money by the wheelbarrow to sell his influence. A lot of it off the books, if you know what I mean.
Business Insider
named him one of the wealthiest people in the Senate last year. So here’s where it gets weird. That’s all on paper. In terms of real cash? He’s
broke
. Not only broke, but mortgaged up to the eyeballs on every piece of property he owns.”

I frowned. “Where’s the money going? Footing Clark and Nedry’s research bills?”

“Only recently. About seven years ago, he was as rich as he looks on paper. Then all of a sudden he started spending money like it was going out of style. First, there was a longevity clinic in Tucson. Turned out the owner was a quack, and the feds shut it down. Then he was pouring cash into a cryogenic research think tank. Then he cut them off and started throwing money at this guru who claimed he could teach his followers how to live forever through meditation. For a smart guy, Roth isn’t too smart, you know?”

Bentley rubbed his chin. “Desperation sometimes leads people down foolish roads.”

“That’s a guy who’s afraid of the reaper,” Corman said. “Is he sick?”

Pixie shook her head. “No sign of it that I can see. He’s in his early fifties, gets regular checkups, big exercise-and-healthy-eating guy. He ran in the Tristate Marathon last year and finished, so he’s not faking being fit.”

“Then it’s not death he’s afraid of,” Caitlin said. “It’s what’s waiting for him on the other side. This is a man who knows where he’s going when he dies, and he doesn’t like it. Doesn’t suspect, or fear, or believe—he
knows
, as sure as he knows the sun will set. Suffice to say, I’ve seen this kind of behavior before.”

“What’s your take?” I said.

She paced the carpet, thinking. “I need a closer look at our dear senator. In person. I have my suspicions, but once I look in his eyes I’ll know for sure.”

“Where’s he at?” I said. “D.C.?”

Pixie typed out a quick search and shook her head. “He’s home this week, doing a round of fundraising. Looks like he’s in Carson City. Only the third time he’s visited his home office in the last five years.”

“Carson City’s a seven-hour drive,” I said. “Road trip?”

“Road trip,” Caitlin said.

“What can we do in the meantime?” Corman asked.

“I think our best lead is figuring out where Meadow Brand buys those mannequins she uses,” Caitlin said. “I’ve been doing a bit of research, checking out woodworkers in Nevada and Seattle, but if someone could take the list and pick up where I left off—”

“Research?” Bentley said. “My forte. Done. Everyone can pitch in.”

Pixie shut her laptop. “I’ll keep following the money. Maybe they slipped up somewhere and left us something we can use.”

“I could help with that,” Jennifer offered, a little too eager.

Pixie blinked at her. “You’ve…done forensic accounting before?”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“Okay,” I said, “everybody stay in contact, and spread the word if you find anything. We’re working on borrowed time. Let’s act like it.”

• • •

We took my car.

There were 420 miles of lonely Nevada desert between Vegas and Carson City, a long and winding drive along US-95 that never seemed to end. Occasionally we’d roll through the main street of a town so small you’d blink and miss it, or ride past a rusting gas station frozen in time since the 1950s. Mostly it was just me, Caitlin, a roaring engine, and a cloudless blue sky.

We listened to the radio for a while, until our favorite stations crackled out and died one by one, replaced by static or silence. Eventually, the only thing left was a show broadcasting from the middle of nowhere, a preacher with a Georgia twang spitting into the microphone about the end of days and the time of repentance. He ranted on for a couple minutes, and then Caitlin leaned in to click the radio off.

“That’s quite enough of that,” she said.

We rode in silence for a while.

Caitlin shifted in her seat, turning her gaze from the empty landscape.

“Has it been nine months yet?” she said.

“Huh?”

“You’ve been carrying a pregnant pause since we got in the car. I’m just wondering if you’re due to give birth to the question you obviously want to ask me.”

I smiled. “Am I that transparent?”

“To me, you are. What are you afraid to say?”

It wasn’t fear as much as awkwardness, and it wasn’t awkwardness as much as not being sure why I cared. But I did.

“That abandoned world Payton and his buddies found,” I said. “Is it really the Garden of Eden?”

She blinked at me. “Daniel? Just how old do you think I am?”

“I know you weren’t around
then
,” I said. “I just…”

“Is it the Garden itself that troubles you? Or is it the confirmation of what you already believed: that this ship of worlds is sailing through maelstrom and blackest night, with no captain at the wheel?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I just drove. She reached across and rested her hand on my thigh.

“You know,” she said, “I do understand what it feels like. Our creator left us too, though I have faith that he had a good reason.”

“The worst-case scenario isn’t finding out that what I already believe is true. Most people would call that reassuring. What’s eating me is…the cavalry isn’t coming to the rescue, Cait. There’s no flight of angels—or anything else—waiting in the wings to pull us out of trouble if Lauren gets her way. We fight, and we win, or the world dies. That’s a hell of a lot of responsibility.”

She shook her head. I glanced over and realized she was smiling.

“What?”

“You humans. Always so eager to spite a gift. Daniel, do you have free will?”

“Of course.”

“Then you are responsible—for this world and everything in it. That weight was put on your shoulders the moment you were born. People complain that the world is filled with misery, but how many of them lift a finger to do anything about it? Or better yet, they point their fingers at
us
. ‘The devil made me do it.’ Oh, please. We take advantage and have our fun where we can, but believe me, all the great atrocities in history?
You
people did that.”

“This is an odd pep talk,” I said.

“Not a pep talk. It’s a dash of cold water I like to call reality. No. No one is coming to the rescue, and no one ever was. You should see that for what it is: a gift. What would your life be worth, if you didn’t have to fight for it? How happy would you really be in a universe with no struggle, where all the edges were rounded off and some cosmic power stood ready to swoop in and save you from your own mistakes?
You are responsible
. So put your chin up, your shoulders back, keep your head, and get ready for a brawl. Nothing else to be done for it.”

I chewed that over, driving in silence.

“Of course,” she added, “I’m a demoness, not a theologian. Take everything I say with a pillar of salt.”

“No. You’re right. This is our fight. This is our problem to solve. So we’ll solve it.”

Caitlin leaned back in her seat and stretched, purring out a yawn.

“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Responsibility is sexy.”

We couldn’t chase the sun fast enough, and nightfall beat us to the edge of Carson City. Down on Fifth Street, lights still burned behind half the windows of the Legislative Building, a block away from Roth’s personal office, but we were well past visiting hours.

“Well,” I said, “Roth’s in town somewhere. I don’t want to wait until morning to get this done. Any ideas?”

“Of course,” Caitlin said, looking almost offended that I asked. She took out her phone, snug in a slim white case, and cut her way through three layers of bureaucracy like a hot knife through butter.

“Oh
hi
!” she said, putting on a Valley Girl accent and spinning up her voice on every other word. “It’s Mandy, with Senator Zito’s office? Yeah, I’ve got those papers on Amendment 77873-B that Senator Roth needs for—no, no, he needs them tonight.
Please
? You’d be so helping us
all
out. Oh
thank
you, you’re
such
a
sweetheart
!”

She hung up the phone and shrugged, back to her normal voice. “He’s dining at Adele’s on North Carson. If we move fast, we might catch him.”

“That was scary,” I said.

She just winked.

If you look up “charming” in the dictionary, there’s probably a picture of Adele’s. The owners converted a Victorian house from the late 1800s into a restaurant and kept as much of the cozy charm as time and progress allowed. The air inside was rich and laden with mouthwatering aromas, but Caitlin and I were more interested in the guests. We spotted Alton Roth at a corner table, holding court with a couple of his State House cronies. Broad shoulders filled out his tailored suit, and his hooknose made me think of a well-fed raptor. His movements were big and expansive, equal parts charisma and muscle. Pixie was right. In his fifties or not, I could see him running marathons. And winning.

We finagled a seat a couple of tables away, and Caitlin took the chair facing Roth. She dipped into her handbag and took out her big dark glasses.

“Give me a moment,” she said, slipping them on. Her face turned toward Roth slowly, and her breathing stilled. She looked like a diva from the golden age of Hollywood.

After a moment, she nodded to herself. “Oh, you little scamp,” she murmured.

“What is it?”

She lowered her glasses, just enough to show me the burning molten-copper swirls of her eyes. Her real eyes.

“He’s marked by one of my kind,” she said. “That’s why he’s so afraid to die. He literally sold his soul.”

S
he slid her glasses back up and took a few steadying breaths. When she removed them and slipped them back into her bag, her irises were back to sharp emerald green. The change came just in time, as our waitress walked up behind her chair.

“We’ll start with the sweet Thai chili prawns,” Caitlin said after a cursory glance at the menu. “He will have the medallions of filet Diane, and I’ll have the chicken marsala scaloppine. Wedge salads for both of us, please, and…a bottle of the Covey Run merlot, I think. Thank you.”

The waitress looked at me and blinked. I just shrugged at her. Caitlin’s Rules for Restaurants meant she ordered, you ate. I’d learned to live with it.

The waitress went off to put our order in, and I leaned closer to Caitlin.

“Literally sold his soul? Like, ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ Robert Johnson at the crossroads—”

“Like Mephistopheles and your namesake, or the violinist Niccolò Paganini, or the Rolling Stones, yes, exactly.” She paused. “Forget I said that last one.”

“I didn’t think that was a thing people actually did.”

“Tell that to Robert Johnson. I’ve heard the man play—he’s
really
good. But you’re half-right. It’s extraordinarily uncommon for two reasons. Firstly, if someone is, let’s say, of a mindset where they’d be willing to buy their earthly desires with eternal damnation, they’re probably already in our pocket. So why bother? Secondly, that’s an
awful
lot of hard work. We’re not genies. Promise someone wealth and power, and we either have to come through, or the contract’s null and void. That sort of thing can keep a demon on the hook for decades.”

I craned my neck to watch Roth dig into his lamb, nodding to his buddies and chewing a big forkful of tender meat like it was his last meal on Earth.

“But Roth managed it,” I said.

“There is a sect, the Venerable Order of Bargainers. They’re very, very old school, Daniel. They predate our civil war, the formation of the courts, all of it, and there aren’t many of them still around. What they do is…it’s not about results or efficiency. It’s an art form, part of our cultural traditions. Everything they do—from the first approach, to weaving the deal, to following through on the hardest and most demanding conditions in order to keep a pact from unraveling—is measured in grace and style. I suppose they’re the closest thing we have to rock stars. Well…except for the actual rock stars.”

“It makes sense,” I said. “He’s got seller’s remorse, and he knows he’s headed for the express elevator downstairs when he dies. He hooks up with the boys from Ausar, hoping they can use their Garden research to make sure he
doesn’t
die, ever. Somewhere along the way Lauren comes to him, paying him off to set the federal task force on Nicky’s heels, and they start talking about common interests. Introductions happen all around, and it’s a match made in hell.”

The waitress brought over the bottle of merlot and our Thai chili prawns. The first bite had a perfect tang, leaving my tongue tingling. I took a sip of wine and thought things over.

“What Lauren’s doing is incredibly dangerous,” Caitlin said. “Roth wouldn’t take that kind of risk, not with his soul in the balance. So he’s funding the research and using his influence to grease the wheels in the hope that Lauren, newly minted nature goddess, will reward his loyalty with life eternal.”

I tried not to snort into my wineglass. “That’ll last about five minutes. Lauren’s never been big on rewarding loyalty.”

“We won’t convince him of that,” Caitlin said. She frowned, deep in thought.

I poked a prawn around the dish with my fork.

“What if we buy it back for him?”

Caitlin looked up. “His soul?”

“Sure. Why not? We get his contract annulled, he’s got no reason to fear death anymore and no reason to work with Lauren and company. We can turn him.”