The White Gold Score (A Daniel Faust Novella) by Craig Schaefer Page B

barely looking at the menu. “For entrees, he will have the Wagyu steak, and I’ll go with the spiced duck breast.”
    The waitress gave me a questioning look. I handed over my unopened menu.
    Once she left, I turned to Caitlin. “Wagyu? Really?”
    “Certified A-five grade. Wagyu is a fine breed. Not like what they call Kobe in the States.” She sniffed. “Legally you can call
hamburger
‘Kobe beef.’ It’s a sin. And not the fun kind.”
    “I just mean, it’s a little pricey.”
    She arched one slender eyebrow. “And? You aren’t paying for it.”
    We’d had our first meal together in a steakhouse, too, not long ago. Gordon Ramsay’s place, back in Vegas. Talking over a perfect meal, figuring each other out. We were still figuring each other out.
    “I assumed we’d be splitting the bill,” I said.
    “I asked you to dine, so it’s only appropriate that I pay for it. Besides,” she said, flashing a sly smile, “I fully intend to make you work it off later tonight.”
    I lifted my drink—a dirty Grey Goose vodka martini garnished with a blue-cheese-stuffed olive—in wry salute. “Sounds like half come-on, half threat.”
    “Good. Then you’re listening properly. So, what
is
our next move? I’m assuming involving the authorities is off the list.”
    “It was never on the list in the first place. I figure that watch is the key to laying Monty to rest. All I have to do is get it back and slip it on his corpse’s wrist before they bury him.”
    “What if he’s interred before you recover the watch?”
    I shrugged. “Then I’m buying a shovel, and Greenbriar’s gonna have to pay me a
lot
more money. Bottom line, one way or another, reuniting the stiff with his precious Rolex should calm him down enough to shuffle off to his designated afterlife.”
    “Excellent.” She wrinkled her nose. “I dislike the concept of remnant souls lingering past their time. It’s extremely…untidy.”
    The waitress brought over a bread plate, and I slathered butter onto a warm, crusty slab, glad for something to do in the sudden silence. My mind was fifty feet under the streets of Las Vegas, remembering another restless wraith.
    “Penny for your thoughts,” Caitlin said.
    “Sometimes,” I said, catching electric light on my butter knife, “when we’re just…us. Talking, eating, just being us. It’s easy to forget that we aren’t, you know. The same.”
    “That I’m not human, you mean.”
    I glanced up, trying to read her expression. “I don’t mean any offense by that.”
    “None taken. Besides, I should hope it’s easy. I’d be a terrible covert operative if I walked around wearing horns and bat wings, hmm?” Her fingertips trailed over the curve of my hand, teasing against the flat of the knife. “Seduction is what I was built for, Daniel. You know that neither begins nor ends at the bedroom door. Now what’s troubling you?”
    “Stacy Pankow.”
    “I thought we resolved that affair quite cleanly. A task well done.”
    “You knew,” I said, “by looking at her ghost, that she was hellbound.”
    Caitlin smiled and let out the faintest chuckle.
    “That’s scarcely a trick. To my eyes, human souls are like little orbs of light. Some obscenely bright and garish, a disgusting shade of gold, and some beautifully smoky black. Most are somewhere in between, like clouds on a stormy day, with the sunlight struggling to shine through the dark. Or a glass of aged bourbon, complex and layered.” She reached up, curling her hand around the back of my neck. Her fingernails stroked my skin, teasing, sending an electric shiver down my spine. “Yours is right…here.”
    “I know a guy on the east side,” I told her. “Used to be a tent-revival preacher until he spontaneously developed a gift for talking to the dead. Now he’s pretty much a full-time heroin junkie. Dope’s the only thing that makes the voices go quiet, he says. See, these dead people who call out to him, everywhere he