Faded Steel Heat by Glen Cook Page B

daughters, partly because he’s a nice old guy.
    “Is Tinnie here again?”
    No. Tell me what happened out there.
    “The Goddamn Parrot was on top of me the whole damned time.”
    The beast is more limited than you believe. The bird is keen of ear but only in a narrow range. And his visual acuity and sense of smell leave much to be desired.
    “You ought to find yourself a human tool.” But not me.
    Perfect idea. Unfortunately, no human has a mind sensitive enough for remote access. No intelligent creature, whatever the species, fits my particulars exactly. There would appear to be a relationship. I must examine that someday.
    “Yeah,” I muttered, completely confident that I was a failed experiment.
    The door swung open. Dean, platter in hand, held it for someone.
    Someone stepped inside.
    “You?” I was surprised.
    “Me,” said Belinda Contague. “Your lack of enthusiasm is breaking my heart.”
    The woman doesn’t have one. But I didn’t remind her.
    She likes black. She positively loves black. She wore a black evening cloak over a masculine-cut black suit of very supple leather. She wore black boots with raised heels. A pair of long black-silk gloves were folded over her black-leather belt. When she arrived, I was sure, Dean had taken her black hat and veil and put them in the small front room. She’d painted her nails black and had put something on her lips to darken and gloss them. Then she’d used a face powder to make her skin appear more pallid.
    I have seen vampires with more color.
    Despite all that, or perhaps because of it, she was incredibly beautiful. More, she exuded something that made it difficult to cling to common sense and the urge to self-preservation. That bizarre look was very erotic.
    “You sent a message. I was in town. I had no other demands on my time. I came here. You were out but Dean was kind. As he ever is.”
    I glared at the Dead Man, thought hard: You should have warned me.
    He didn’t respond.
    Damn, the woman was bold. She knew what the Dead Man was. Nobody with a conscience as black as hers ought to be anywhere near him.
    Back in those remote times when the Outfit was in transition, passing into Belinda’s regency, we had a brief fling. I might consider myself lucky because I got out alive. Belinda is very strange. And when it comes to hardness she makes her daddy look like a pet bunny.
    I gobbled, “I’m sorry. You took me off guard. You’re the last person I expected.”
    Belinda Contague stands five feet six inches. She looks twenty-five, says she’s twenty. She lived a rough life before she took over. Lived like she was trying to kill herself. She was in good shape now, as her apparel proclaimed eloquently. Nature blessed her with a shape that would have them kicking the lids off their coffins if she strolled through a mortuary. Her dark eyes fell smack into the center of that semi-mythical “windows of the soul” class. You will discover more warmth and compassion in the stare of a cobra.
    I can’t imagine what she ever saw in me.
    I always knew she would come back to haunt me, though.
    “I’m not as bad as you think, Garrett.”
    Her daddy used to say the same thing. “Huh?”
    “My father turned out to be a good friend, didn’t he?” She sounded wistful.
    I grunted. My relationship with Chodo Contague had been strange, too. I did him a big favor once, accidentally, and forever afterward he felt he owed me. He did me good turns even when I didn’t ask. He covered my ass. He tried hard to entangle me in the Outfit’s webs so I’d become one of his soldiers. I repaid him by helping take him down.
    “Crask and Sadler are back in town.” That would take the play out of Belinda.
    “You saw them?” She actually became more pale.
    “No. I heard it from Relway. Via Captain Block. He traded the information for a favor.” She understood that kind of deal.
    She didn’t question my source. “What favor?”
    “It doesn’t involve you or