The Love Scam - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,15

stranger dumped a kid on me we don’t know is mine and then ran off. So there’s that. Which needed to be straightened out ASAP.

There was the nuclear option, but he’d have to be a lot more than broke and stranded in a foreign country with shit drying in his hair and saddled with a cute second-grader before he’d take that step. Maaaaaybe if he was in the ICU. Or had lost the use of his legs, brain, and dick. If he was hanging off the edge of a cliff by one hand and his fingers were slipping. Maybe.

The consulate? Nope; they were the reason he’d been appalled to wake up in Venice in the first place. Venice was beautiful, the food was incredible, the gondoliers had the best stories, and still he’d had no plans to come back after his last visit. The misunderstanding had been … extreme. The kind where grim men in uniforms held on to your passport and asked questions ad nauseum, then finally gave it back, only to immediately provide an “escort” to the airport.

The cops?

Maybe. But only if the consulate mess hadn’t spilled over to the local police, and he wouldn’t know that until he talked to them. Which would be a bad time to find out the knives were still out for him at the Consular Agency: when he was surrounded by cops. “You guys better treat me right! I was rich yesterday!” Pass.

He couldn’t linger in the park much longer, either; loitering was frowned upon when you smelled like he did, and there were laws against begging here. Maybe he could find another friendly homeless person. Thanks for the phone, I don’t suppose you can arrange lodging, too, right? Sorry about that whole homeless thing, by the way. Oh, a sandwich? For me? No, I couldn’t. Well, maybe just one bite. And one for the kid on my left. Ugh.

Rake plunged his hands in his pockets past the wrists and tried to think. There had to be something he—

“We could ask Delaney for help.”

He jumped. The kid had a near-uncanny ability to fade from his consciousness; she didn’t fidget or hum or kick her feet or any of the things kids did when they were bored (and which he still did on occasion). No one would ever feel the need to buy Lillith a fidget spinner. She just sort of faded into the background, blending like adorable chubby-cheeked camouflage until …

“That’s an idea.” He felt for the business card he’d absently tucked away after Delaney left, and now he pulled it out and looked at it. Plain white, neat black lettering, nothing embossed: I. C. Delaney. Exactly the kind he’d have if he ever had business cards. Well, maybe with everything in a kind of shrieking red font. And I. C.? What was that supposed to mean? Didn’t she say her name was—God, what was it?—something from one of the hotties in The Breakfast Club. No, not Judd Nelson. Definitely not the geek who grew up and turned psychic—Claire! That was it, Claire Delaney, who for some reason called herself Delaney, except when she was handing out business cards, when she called herself I. C. Delaney.

She’d even told him where she was staying, probably just trying to be nice—never in a hundred years did he think she was trying to pick him up, not after the horrors she’d endured in his company—but still: He had that info in his brain somewhere.

Somewhere he’d never stayed, somewhere cheap, relatively speaking. He even remembered feeling mild sympathy for anyone who had to stay somewhere less than luxurious in a city with the Ruzzini Palace and Palazzina G. Not that her hotel sounded terrible; it simply wasn’t the best—the best—best—Best Western Olimpia! Yessss! Finally things were going his way! His brain was actually engaging and being helpful! He’d actually figured something out without Delaney’s help! For the first time that day! Suck it, Blake!

“We should probably get going,” Lillith the Uncanny was saying. “Her hotel’s a couple of kilometers from here.”

“How d’you even know— Never mind.” He flipped the card over and saw she’d written the name of the hotel on the back, like she knew he’d have trouble remembering, and where it happened to be at the kid’s eye level. Like Delaney figured he’d need a mental nudge. Which was annoying, and not just because she was right.

“You think you’re soooo smart,” he told the card, then put it back in his pocket. “And you…”