The Living End by Craig Schaefer Page A

I’m delivering. I’m gonna crash here tonight just to keep an eye on her, but she needs her mom. Any chance you could light a fire under Emma’s ass and get her back here? Don’t tell her about the bar, just…just let her know that I had the talk with Melanie, about what happened to Ben, and I think I smoothed things over a little.”
    Melanie had more weight on her shoulders than any seventeen-year-old should ever have to deal with. I knew what that was like. Unlike me, though, she actually had a chance to make something of her life. I wasn’t sure which way she’d lean in the end, which of her parents she’d take after, and I really didn’t care. What mattered to me was that she knew she had choices, and she knew she was loved.
    Everybody should have that.
    The doorbell rang at six in the morning. I sat up from the couch with a start, rubbed the crust from my eyes, and stumbled toward the door. I thought Emma had come home, my sleep-addled brain not realizing that Emma probably had a key to her own house.
    Caitlin stood on the doorstep, draped in black Christian Dior with a floppy-brimmed hat that made me think of Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. She gazed at me from behind a pair of dark glasses just a little too large for her face, her body silhouetted in the morning glow.
    “You are
way
early for lunch,” I said, “but you look amazing.”
    “Emma can’t get back until tonight,” she said, stepping past me into the foyer. “So I took the liberty of making some plans.”
    An alarm clock whined from up the hall. Melanie’s bedroom door opened and she trudged out like one of the walking dead, with her blue hair tangled and her body draped in an oversized nightshirt that drooped past her knees. She turned, saw us, and froze.
    Caitlin was Prince Sitri’s hound. To his subjects, that meant she was basically judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up in one. It was a bad sign when she showed up on your doorstep unannounced. Melanie’s gaze flicked toward me, with a
what-did-you-tell-her?
look on her face.
    “It occurred to me,” Caitlin said, taking her glasses off and staring at Melanie, “that we haven’t been spending enough time together. We’re addressing that. Today.”
    Melanie gulped and gestured vaguely toward the bathroom. “I, uh, I have to go to school.”
    “Not today, you don’t. You’re home sick with a terrible flu. Might even last two days. Meanwhile, I have plans for you, young lady.”
    “I’ll tear up the fake ID,” Melanie squeaked. “I’ll never do it again!”
    Caitlin blinked, then nodded pleasantly.
    “Well, yes, you will, but that’s not why I’m here. We have reservations at the Canyon Ranch SpaClub. Shiatsu massage, vitamin infusion facials, sauna, mani-pedi, and of course we’ll get our hair done. How does that sound?”
    Melanie gaped. She fumbled for words, eventually coming up with, “That…sounds pretty okay.”
    “Well, then, you’d best get showered and changed. Hop to it. Go on.”
    Melanie vanished into the bathroom. Caitlin put her dark glasses back on and studied her fingernails.
    “I
know
how to make someone relax,” she told me. “She’ll be a puddle of happy jelly by lunchtime.”
    “You’re amazing, have I told you that lately?”
    “I’m pretty okay,” she said.
    “How did things go with our, ah, guest?”
    “We spent the night taking each other’s measure,” Caitlin said. “Seduction is a slow dance, not a sprint. She’s definitely eager to be courted, but she doesn’t want to seem
too
eager or give me any opportunity to upset her position with Prince Malphas. She goes back to Denver this morning. We’ll see what comes of it.”
    While Caitlin and Melanie prepared for a day of pampering, I had a less glamorous job on my plate. Pixie’s missing-persons problem had kept me tossing and turning all night while I tried to find an angle. The problem, I realized, was that I was doing all the hard work. Why hunt the