But whatever Caz thought, there was no way Eligor could manage to end the summit in the middle of the night as far as I could see. It was past eleven. What was he going to do, call up Karael and suggest sending everybody home and postponing the rest of the joint powers’ little circle jerk? The higher angels hate putting on human form in the first place, hate leaving Heaven; I could just imagine how that proposal would go over with Karael.
When I reached the elevators I could see that the one Caz must be in had already reached the second floor. I jumped into one of the others, gambling that she was going all the way down, figuring that if she didn’t I could come back up from the lobby and search the lower floors. When the door pinged open, I pushed out past a group of snickering, drunken demons and hurried across the lobby but saw no sign of her anywhere, so I headed for the main entrance. I almost smashed through the nearest glass door when it didn’t open fast enough because I’d spotted her long legs walking away from valet parking along the front of the hotel, toward the parking lot. None of the valets or visitors seemed to be paying much attention, so I sprinted after her.
I caught her just at the edge of the building where she had stopped as if to wait for someone. I was pretty sure that someone wasn’t me. The smell of the bay was strong, and I could hear seagulls keening. I hadn’t been outside since I’d checked in. I’d almost forgotten we were out at Sand Point.
When she saw it was me, her whole body slumped like she’d been shot, but she straightened up again and stepped away from me as I approached. My coat was half-buttoned over my shirtless chest, my shoes only barely on my feet. I must have looked like a lovesick hobo.
“Now what?” There was enough chill in her words to make goose bumps.
“I don’t believe you’re doing what you want to do,” I said.
“You don’t know anything about what I want, Bobby. You only think you know. I’m not who you think I am.” She said it with the patience of a weary parent dealing with her spoiled child. “I’m a million times worse than you can imagine. I’ve been in Hell for centuries.” She laughed. It was painful to hear. “They broke me a long time ago. I’m a lifer.”
“Bullshit. You wouldn’t have-”
“Wouldn’t have what? Fucked you? Do you think that makes you unique? Grow up, Dollar!” She looked over her shoulder as a big, black car came sliding up from the front of the hotel. “Oh, shit.”
She grabbed me then and pushed me back into the shadows of the building, but the car just eased up and settled to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk less than ten yards away. I could see a pale-haired silhouette in the front seat that had to be Eligor.
“You’re going away with him, huh?” I was beginning to wonder how much of her visit had been her idea, and how much might have been Eligor setting her on me just to soften me up for the killing blow. At the moment, though, I didn’t care if he shot me through the heart. Wouldn’t have been the first time. Wouldn’t even have been the first time tonight. It never even occurred to me that I was carrying a gun too.
“Yes, of course I’m going away with him. Don’t you understand?
“Does he have the feather?”
She shook her head, but she still had me pinned back against the concrete wall. “Wake up, Bobby! This isn’t a detective novel. No, he doesn’t have it. I don’t have it either, and I don’t know where it is. I told you what happened.”
“Then why did he take you back?”
She stepped back again so that half of her was bathed in the light from the hotel’s grand front entrance. Behind her I saw Eligor lean forward a little as if he was watching. For just a moment his eyes gleamed red in the darkness of the front seat, as if he was his own anti-theft system.
“He let me come back…because he wanted to know about you. All about you. And I told him everything. There? Are you happy? I sold you out, Bobby, just like any good demon. Just like you should have expected.”
“But everything else-”
“Everything else was a lie!” She lowered her head for a moment. When she lifted it she wore an expression of rage and misery like I’d never seen. “I thought we might have something, sure. I like students. I told you that. I thought we might study things together. I thought we might even learn from each other. But I was wrong. You’ve been wearing a body too long, Dollar. You’re just like any other angel or demon who’s gone native. You’re letting your human disguise convince you of things that aren’t so-that can’t be so.” She stepped all the way out into the light. “Goodbye, Bobby.”
She turned toward the long, black car.
“But damn it, I love you,” I said, loud enough that even the monster waiting for her behind his tinted windows must have heard. “I don’t care about Heaven or Hell, Caz. I just want you.”
She hesitated for such a long moment I thought time itself might have ground to a halt. Then she came back toward me and grabbed my lapels as if she wanted to shake me the way I’d wanted to shake her since she first walked into my room. She pulled at my coat so hard I thought she’d rip it, then stood on tiptoes and put her face close to mine so I could feel the chill of her skin, the heat of her breath. She stared at me. I could not have told you for all the glory of Heaven what she was thinking.
“I love you,” I said again.
She turned away, empty, hopeless. “Then you’re a fool.”
She let me go and walked toward the car. The door opened as if by magic and she slid inside, then the black sedan pulled away from the sidewalk and slipped off into the night.
I must have stood there for several minutes watching the taillights dwindle and then disappear in the fog off the bay, wondering why they spent all that money on an expensive replica lighthouse if they weren’t going to turn on the goddamn light, before I realized that something felt funny on the front of my jacket. Only half paying attention I rubbed my chest, looking for wounds Caz’s fingernails might have left, thinking at least I would have a few days before those last traces were gone, too, but something hard and heavy was making a lump in my kerchief pocket. I took it out and let it slink into my palm, then took a few steps out into the light so I could see what I had.
It was a heavy, shiny little oval sitting on a snaky pile of chain like the last little serpent’s egg in the nest waiting to hatch. As I turned it back and forth I finally realized through my haze of blasted thoughts what I was looking at: the locket Caz wore around her neck, the gift her husband the Polish count had given her (if any of her story was true) on the night she’d killed him.
What did it mean? An apology? A curse? Maybe even-and for a moment I almost let my useless human heart get the better of my sense-a promise of sorts? Or was she just telling me that she was done with all obligations, obligations to the dead and to the living as well?
I flicked it open. Inside two curls of hair lay twisted together like the DNA of some unknown species, one brown, which must have come from her little maid, the other a gold so pale it almost looked like platinum, which could only have come from the Countess of Cold Hands. I closed it and walked back to the hotel entrance.
I was standing in the elevator watching the lights flick slowly upward toward my floor, feeling empty and cold as an abandoned house, when the bomb went off in the ballroom downstairs.
thirty-five
There’s an evil old song by Little Walter called,
