Made for Sin by Stacia Kane Read Free Book Online Page B

value of his belongings.
    Majowski sighed. “You have to bring her?”
    “Yeah.” He sure wasn’t going to leave her at his place; he’d probably come home to find she’d cleaned him out.
    Maybe that wasn’t fair—no, it definitely wasn’t fair. But he still didn’t feel like being fair. He definitely didn’t feel like admitting that he thought she was…well, likable. Trustworthy.
    “Okay,” Majowski said. “But get here fast. I can’t delay calling anybody else in for long.”
    —
    There was something special about driving at night in the desert. Especially in a city like his, so awake and so bright; viewed from Frenchman Mountain—their destination—the Strip looked like a volcano of light rising from the sparkling grid laid out around it, a lone beacon in the middle of nowhere. Funny how a place that bustled twenty-four hours a day could look so lonely. Vegas was the world’s most beautiful showgirl, dressed in the wealth of a thousand admirers, dancing for all she was worth in a diamond spotlight on a dark stage. Hard and confident on the outside, but filled with sadness and desperation underneath. And he loved her, and loved that about her.
    For a second—only a second—he was tempted to say something to Ardeth, to ask what she saw when she looked at it. What she thought of, when she thought about it. Then he realized he’d probably sound like an idiot. Besides, he had more important things to think about at that moment, like whether or not he could get away with stealing something from a convenience store. That would stave it off a while longer, but…ugh.
    Not much choice, though. The beast was squirming in his head; he could hear its occasional growl over the sound of the engine and the Them album he had playing. Ordinarily he’d turn the music up loud, maybe roll down the windows so the sound of the wind would mix in with “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” and drown the bastard out entirely, but not with her in the car.
    He should probably talk to her. Actually, he needed to talk to her. There was plenty to discuss, and he didn’t know how chatty she was going to feel after going to look at a mutilated body. Which he was pretty sure they were about to do.
    He’d warned her, of course, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t freak out.
    Oh, who was he kidding? She’d probably seen dozens of corpses. Hundreds. She’d probably seen worse than that, given the types of objects she dealt with regularly.
    Still, might as well get some information from her. “So, who has a demon-sword?”
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “Lots of people have demon-swords. Do you mean to ask me if I recently procured one for someone, or know of someone who did?”
    “You know that’s what I’m asking.”
    “I don’t, actually. For somebody who claims not to be a fan of word games, you certainly like to be vague. Try a little precision, Elvis, and—”
    “Do
not
call me Elvis.” He glowered at her, unearthly pale in the dashboard light. “
Nobody
calls me Elvis.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because,” he said, alternating between glaring at her and at the road ahead, “I don’t like it. That’s why not. Because I don’t want anyone to know it, much less use it. That’s why not.”
    In a softer tone, she said, “I guess there are a few things you don’t want anyone to know about.”
    The count. He knew she was thinking of it just as clearly as if she’d said it out loud, and his grip tightened on the wheel. Damn it. This was why he hadn’t wanted her help. It was one thing for random women—women he knew he’d never see again, women who didn’t care what his name was or what kind of person he was or about almost anything else about him—to see the marks on his chest. Most of them didn’t notice or didn’t comment; the few times he’d been asked, he’d told various bullshit stories. Like that it was the number of times he’d been dealt the ace of spades, or the number of full moons he’d watched rise