A Plain-Dealing Villain Read Online Free Page A

let me skate on my debt much longer. Didn’t help that a run-in with a pack of fanatics called the Redemption Choir had left me homeless, with my best gear, my occult textbooks, and a cash-stuffed mattress all gone in the flash of a Molotov cocktail.
    Perkins was right. Any thief worthy of the name knew when it was time to lie low and let the heat simmer down. Before I could do that, though, I needed operating capital.
    Like it or not, I needed a fast score. And I was going to have to pull it off right under Agent Black’s nose.
    *     *     *
    The Gentlemen’s Bet was a dive strip club in a part of town where the tourists didn’t go. Not the smart ones, anyway. They were closing up by the time a taxi dropped me off in the parking lot, pushing out the last drunken stragglers as dawn lurked at the edge of the city.
    I’m getting too old to pull an all-nighter
, I thought, rubbing my eyes and handing the cabbie a folded twenty. Working past three in the morning was fine when I had a heist and an interrogation to keep my adrenaline pumping, but the slow ride across the city gave my body plenty of time to realize how long I’d been running without a break. I trudged up the “red carpet”—a runner of Astroturf spray-painted scarlet—and the bald, burly bouncer out front gave me a nod before pushing open the door. Closing time or not, I was always on the list here.
    The mirrored stage stood empty, the speakers dead quiet, with only the hum of a vacuum cleaner pushed by a bored-looking janitor to break the silence. I made my way over to the bar, where Nicky’s bartender—a frizzy-haired woman in her late forties with hard eyes and stale cigarettes on her breath—was going through the motions of wiping everything down. She looked as tired as I felt.
    “Nicky free?” I asked, jerking a thumb toward the back hallway.
    “Not yet. He’s got another guest. Said I should have you wait here. Want a drink?”
    I shrugged. “Don’t want to put you out. Looks like you’re ready to head home.”
    “You sure?” Something glinted behind her eyes, a little spark of mischief. “Nicky’s buying.”
    Nicky’s people were loyal—they were too scared not to be—but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t tweak his nose if they got the chance. I knew the feeling.
    “In that case, Crown and Coke. Pour one for yourself, too.”
    “Now you’re talking,” she said. She didn’t get a chance to serve it up, though; the door at the end of the hall rattled and swung open. Out came Nicky Agnelli, hair greased back, dressed in a Hugo Boss suit and rimless Porsche Design titanium glasses, looking like a Hollywood producer. I didn’t recognize the man with him, but that didn’t stop the back of my neck from prickling.
    He was unassuming, a short Indian man in a black suit and blood-red tie, but a vortex of power that shone like emeralds in my second sight swirled around him. He wasn’t a demon or a halfblood cambion like Nicky for that matter. Demons felt like barbed wire and black diamonds when my psychic tendrils brushed past them. His essence was all jungles, fertile black peat, and charred meat roasting on an open fire. Symbols and textures and emotions rushed through my mind like I was riffling through a deck of cards, taking his measure.
    He wasn’t human, I knew that for certain, and I’d only sensed a creature like this once before.
    Naavarasi.
    At first I thought it
was
her. The rakshasi hunger spirit was an adept shape-shifter, as she’d been all too happy to demonstrate in the past. Then I realized the man’s aura was subtly different, like a set of fingerprints that didn’t quite match.
    So
, I thought,
she isn’t the last of her kind after all. Great. One was bad enough.
    Juliette and Justine, Nicky’s twin bodyguards and personal mayhem squad, filed out behind them. Their usual relentless bubbly glee was gone, replaced by grave silence and unblinking stares. They were scary when they were manic. This was