All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [62]
Fiona crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“True,” Louis said. “I am often not where I am supposed to be. And your mother has promised to kill me if I ever came near you again.” He shrugged. “But she does not know of this meeting, so the point is moot.” He stood, pulled out a chair, and gallantly offered it to Fiona.
Fiona remained standing and glared at him.
Louis was unfazed by this. He looked for the waiter, saying, “Let us not dwell on the ugly past and all these wretched parental custody issues, shall we? Let us just forgive one another, order breakfast, and chat. There’s so much lost time to make up for.”
“Forgive each other?” Fiona said. “What have we done that needs your forgiveness?”
Louis raised a finger. “Tut-tut. I won’t hear of it. All is forgotten and pardoned.”
Eliot sat.
Sure, he was still mad at Louis for using them as bait to lure Beelzebub into a trap (a trap, by the way, that hadn’t worked). Only by the narrowest of scrapes had they not been killed. And sure, Louis was an Infernal, the Prince of Darkness, and perhaps evil incarnate. But he was their only relation who had ever given them straight answers. Something in very sort supply these days.
Besides, Eliot was hungry.
A waiter came and took out a notepad.
“Shall it be two or three specials?” Louis asked Fiona.
She toyed with the rubber band on her wrist, and then reluctantly settled into the chair.
“Ten minutes,” she told Eliot. “No more. If we’re late again for class . . .”
“Yes,” Louis purred, “Miss Westin once had a guillotine for her tardy students.” He looked utterly serious and he made a chopping motion onto the table. “Three specials,” he told the waiter. “Make it a rush.”
“Oui, Monsieur Piper.”
Eliot studied his father. He looked so different from the dirty homeless person he’d been just a few months ago . . . and definitely different from the bat-winged fallen-angel woodcuts he’d seen in Paradise Lost (part of last night’s reading assignment). Louis wore black slacks and a black silk dress shirt undone to his sternum (with buttons that looked like real diamonds). Eliot thought this might be what a stage magician would look like.
But it was Louis’s face that fascinated Eliot most. His eyes sparkled as if he had just been laughing; his nose was crooked and hooked at the end; his thin mustache and goatee were immaculately trimmed and pointed; and his silver-streaked hair had been pulled back. It gave him an air of casual grace, elegance, and above all else . . . mischief.
“What do you want?” Fiona asked their father.
“What I want?” Louis got a faraway look in his eyes and stroked his chin. “I want my family to be whole and happy. I want you two to graduate from Paxington maxima cum laude, bar none, merito puro! I want to sail a galleon of solid gold upon a lake of jewels in my treasure kingdom the size of Nevada! I want the love of a beautiful woman. All women! I want the respect and adulation of billions. I want the world to be my pearl-stuffed oyster!”
Louis made eye contact with the waiter. “Although,” he said with a sigh, “I’d settle for a cup of this establishment’s wonderful Turkish coffee. What about you, darling daughter?”
“I want you to stop calling me that,” she said.
“I want answers,” Eliot chimed in before his sister worked up a head of steam.
Louis brightened and turned to him. “And so you shall have them, my boy. Ask! Anything. I shall be your unbiased oracle.”
The waiter brought coffee and orange juice and a basket of steaming blueberry muffins drizzled with butter.
Eliot tore into a muffin, drank half a glass of juice, and then said, “Uncle Kino drove us to the Gates of Perdition. To show us where Infernals come from. Was it really Hell? Is that where you live?”
Louis considered for a moment, and slipped four sugar cubes into his coffee. “He showed you . . . yes, but only the absolutely most wretched part. It’s like driving through the worst sections of Detroit and being told that is America. Why, you’d miss out entirely on Disneyland and