Five minutes later, Rake was putting yet another freshly wrung-out washcloth onto Lillith’s forehead. “There. And when this one stops helping, I’ll get you another one. If you want it.”
“Why do you keep doing that?” Delaney asked impatiently.
“Because he doesn’t know what else to do,” the child answered. She patted the washcloth. “It’s okay. I’m better now.”
“I’m so sorry about your mom. And that you got upset. Can I get you anything else?” Rake glanced around the suite for something to give her and cursed his lack of funds yet again. The Bible? No. The room service menus? No. The tiny shampoo? “Do—do you want a hundred Peeps? I could probably make it five hundred if you needed it. Just wait until I leave before you start gobbling them up. I couldn’t bear to watch.”
Lillith sniffed. “You can’t leave. You’re my dad, maybe.”
“It was—uh—I was only joking. About leaving.” Probably. “Do you—do you feel like talking?”
“No. But I will anyway.” The child sighed and sat up, and Rake deftly caught the washcloth as it fell. She fussed with her shirt, smoothing it over her belly, and then speared him with that disconcerting direct gaze. When this kid isn’t going totally unnoticed, she can glare into your soul. It’s … kind of awesome, and now that I think about it, Mom does the same—
He cut off that line of thought. Fast.
“My mother,” she began, as if reciting a book report, “did bad things for good reasons. She took things from bad men. And sometimes she found out they did something bad, and they’d do nice things for her so no one else would find out they did something bad.”
Jesus Christ in a handcar. “So she was a thief and a blackmailer. Ow!” Rake rubbed his now-throbbing foot and glared at Delaney. “Really? I’m the one who’s out of line in this story?”
“And one day,” Lillith continued loudly, sounding like an aggrieved elementary school teacher, “she found out something really bad about someone who lived in Colorado, too. Something much, much worse than what she was looking for. And while Mama was making a plan for us to run, she … she died.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, honey,” he begged, “but where do I fit into this story?”
“Nowhere. That’s the problem.” This from Madame Spoilsport in the corner. Well, near the corner. “I didn’t know any of this until it was almost too late. It might still be too late. And nobody counted on your coming to Venice.”
“Yeah, including me.”
“But here you are. And that’s very curious. But, ultimately, it’s not as important as Lillith’s safety and well-being, which are the top priority.”
There was an expectant (insulting!) pause, which Rake defensively broke. “What? I’m not gonna argue that. Why would I argue that? She’s a kid who lost her mom and people have to look out for her. A mom I didn’t know, by the way. Just to reiterate. Again.”
“That’s because she changed her name after the Noodle Incident.”
For a second, Rake thought he was going to have a stroke. Half his body seemed to go numb and the other half heated up, like he was some kind of weird Iceman/Human Torch Marvel hybrid. He opened his mouth and let out a tiny croak, all the noise he could muster, since his saliva had dried up.
Finally: “The Noodle Incident we promised each other we’d never talk about. Which is why she changed her name to Nedra Naseef,” he said, and if he’d had any doubts, Lillith’s beam was answer enough.