Trick of the Light t-1

by Rob Thurman

  “I am not sleeping with him.” I shot him a poisonous glare. “If I had a bumper sticker, it would read, ‘Demon slayer, not demon layer.’ ”

  “Your mouth says no, but your cleavage says yes.”

  I looked down automatically, but saw the same as usual. I was a medium B cup. The only way I was going to get “yes” cleavage was with a fifty-dollar bra or the Army Corps of Engineers. “You are such an ass.”

  “That’s better than what I used to be.” He flashed a grin and started closing up the bar. He waited until I was at the door before he said, “Be careful.”

  I gave him a grin just as bright. “You should’ve given that advice to Solomon.” He simply shook his head in resignation and finished turning out the lights as I opened the front door to pass through. Unlike most Vegas bars, we closed when we felt like it. Usually at one or two. Tonight had been fairly empty, and we’d closed at midnight. That was a little late for a dinner, but in Vegas, time has no meaning. The card Solomon had given me was of a very upscale, difficult-to-get-into restaurant that served until four a.m. And miracle of miracles, it wasn’t on the Strip.

  Soon enough I was handing my much-abused car over to a dubious valet. The restaurant was called Green Silk. Green wasn’t my color, but I appreciated the atmosphere. Candles and candles alone lit the dining room. It made each table seem like the only one there. Once I was escorted to Solomon’s table, we were promptly deserted. Usually in a place like this you would have a waiter hovering by your table in case a crumb should fall or you should need a single drop of wine to restore the liquid in your glass to the perfect level. Privacy was a nice change, although when it came down to it, I preferred pizza joints, Greek food, Ethiopian, a hot dog stand . . . anything run by people, real people—not mannequins. Places where you could laugh and not shatter the paper-thin crystal glasses at your table.

  Solomon had stood as I was seated, then sat again. “You look. . . .” He smiled and raised his glass, already filled with wine. “I have no words.”

  “Funny. Leo had quite a few words.” I tasted my wine. It was the good stuff, as they say, very, very good. There were some advantages to the high life.

  “But you came anyway.” Solomon put his glass down. “Have you ever listened to anyone in your life, Trixa?”

  “Oh, I listen and then I do what I want, but I do listen. I’m not rude.” I had another sip and savored the cherry and spice flavor of it.

  “Homicidal, seemingly suicidal at times, with a smart mouth you never bother to rein in, but not rude. I see.” His eyes were warm in the candlelight. “In all my years, and they have been many, I’ve not met anyone quite like you.”

  “No?” Food was placed before me. Solomon had taken the liberty of ordering before I’d arrived—I hated it when dates did that, but this wasn’t a date, I reminded myself. And as it was a small, enormously thick, and extremely tender piece of steak, I let it go. “I still think I’ve met plenty like you. So, tell me, Solomon—make me truly believe you aren’t like all your kin. Tell me. . . .” I thought for a moment. “Tell me about the Fall. The real story, not the made-for-TV version.”

  His eyes went from warm to somber. “It’s not as different as you might think.” He looked at his own steak but didn’t cut it. It seemed his appetite was gone. Slowly, he started. “Lucifer was best loved by God, when he was an angel. You’ve heard that, I know. But fathers shouldn’t do that. They shouldn’t love one of their offspring more than the others. And that’s what we thought we were . . . children of God—not tools. But actually we were creations with a purpose, no more a child than a television or a car. Lucifer was the first to tell us it wasn’t right. He told us that if he ruled Heaven, he’d be our father and he would love us as children and love us all the same.”

  “And did he mean it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. At the time I was sure that he did. God didn’t deny what he said. He said nothing and left it up to us . . . with our precious free will . . . to decide. In the face of that silence, it didn’t cross my mind that Lucifer might lie, that God might be testing us.” Solomon was looking into my eyes, but I didn’t think I was the one he saw. “Lucifer was an angel. Angels do not lie, or didn’t then, and, truthfully, we thought him the best and brightest of us all. If you could have seen him. His face was the sun, his wings the moon, and now”—his lips pressed tightly together and he drained his glass—“you would die. One glimpse of him and you would die. When we fell, we all became the opposite of what we were. He changed most of all. Our would-be father was turned into something so hideous, even we demons can only glance at him from the corner of our eye. The Morning Star fell, and an endlessly hungry Abyss came to life. Destroying him would’ve been much kinder. But perhaps he deserves it for taking us all with him.”

  I was quiet for a moment as he abruptly turned and called for more wine. When he had it and was making his way through it with a grim intensity that had a passing waiter wincing at the lack of appreciation for its age and taste, I asked, “You said free will. I’ve always wondered how there could be a revolution in Heaven if angels had no free will. That doesn’t make any sense. How could you rise up without wills of your own? I know angels learn it eventually if they spend enough time among humans, but the Fall was a long time ago.”

  He put the glass down and gave a faint smile, pleased to be one up on me for once. “Contrary to popular argument, angels did have free will in the beginning. It was after we were cast down that God stripped free will from the remaining angels. Not much of a reward for loyalty, is it?”

  Or perhaps he thought it was like a fast car and a sixteen-year-old new driver. Dangerously beyond their control. Not that it mattered. The angels that interacted with humans on a regular basis regained the will they’d lost. I’d seen it, seen them. It didn’t automatically make them the Precious Moments angels with the oh-so-cute tipped halo. Free will can make you a saint or a bastard. There were no guarantees. “So demons didn’t learn free will on their own. They had it all along?”

  He raised his glass. “We did and we kept it. The one single parting gift left to us by God. Which is ironic. Since with our free will many of us wanted to return home.”

  “Even if you had had to lose that free will if He let you in?”

  “To be in his grace again, it would be worth it. Even without, even as not best loved.” He pushed his untouched plate away.

  Give up my free will? There was no grace worth that. He read my face. “You don’t know. You can’t know.” For a second, bleak misery flickered behind the gray as his hand fisted on the table. “Grace and home, I’ll never have either again.”

  There were two sides to every story—three sides on some occasions, but I couldn’t say that to him, not then. Instead I reached over to rest my hand over his fist. He turned his hand under mine to clasp my wrist lightly. “I want the Light, Trixa, but I want you too. I always have. To talk with you, laugh with you, to sleep late in cool sheets with you.” His pupils dilated. “To be inside you. To be one with you.”

  “Clichéd,” I said, a faint flush warming my face. “So very clichéd.”

  “But effective?” he smiled.

  We didn’t talk about the Light as I’d expected. We didn’t talk about anything else at all. We sat and stared at each other before he kissed my wrist and let me go. I went. I hesitated at the table and I looked back at him halfway across the room, but I went. As I took my last look at the strong planes of his face years familiar now, I thought. . . .

  Solomon, what am I going to do with you?

  It was a good thing that I flew the “Slayer Not Layer” flag, because when I did get home, my bed wasn’t empty. There wasn’t room for Solomon. There wasn’t room for me either.

  Zeke was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, unloading and reloading his gun. I blinked. No, he was really there. He and Griffin had gone back to their house earlier. They had a dingy box of a house in a concrete alley in a neighborhood over by La
ke Mead in North Vegas. It was a perfect choice for them—a part of town so bad that an occasional gunshot from a demon attack wouldn’t be investigated by their neighbors or the police.

  I was sure Griffin would’ve preferred something more like the District at Green Valley where expensive condos were located over the top of expensive stores, all painted a rainbow of pastel colors that reminded me of the houses known as Painted Ladies in Charleston, South Carolina. Gracious Southern living brought to the West. Griffin did like the finer things in life, the things he’d never had as a foster kid. But personally I felt my brain twitch at the thought of shotgun-toting Zeke living above a Pottery Barn or a Williams-Sonoma.

  The outside of their current shack might have been for work, but the inside was the dream bachelor retreat. Huge flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, surround sound, slate floor, leather couch and chairs, spartan glass and bamboo wood kitchen, all in desert colors. Griffin had gone all out, although the TV was probably Zeke’s baby. If Griffin couldn’t live where he wanted location wise, he’d make the inside up to his standards. Then it had been a simple matter of Zeke using his telepathy to pick out the dealers and thieves in the neighborhood, knock on their door, and stick a shotgun muzzle in their face with a matter-of-fact, “Do not fuck with our house. Do not fuck with our car. Do not fuck with the blond guy.” Thanks in advance for your cooperation and lack of future bloodstains on our driveway. I doubted he’d actually added the last sentence. Politeness wasn’t one of Zeke’s strong points. I also knew Griffin didn’t need Zeke acting as his bodyguard. He was as deadly a fighter in his own right. He didn’t need babysitting.

  I looked at him now on my bed, and thought to myself that it could be there was an exception to that. They must’ve come up the back stairs sometime in the last few hours. “You’d better not get gun oil on my bedspread,” I warned Zeke.

  He didn’t look up. He’d heard me come up the stairs and open the door. Probably heard me breathing. Zeke was uncanny that way. So was Griffin. Eden House training or natural talent? I was betting on the latter. “Griffin is sleeping,” he said unnecessarily.

  And he was, as I’d noticed. In my bed like Goldilocks. I’d seen he was lying beside Zeke when I’d walked into my bedroom, but I hadn’t really wanted to notice or see, so I’d managed to push it to the back of my mind. The bathtub, believe it or not, was not a comfortable place to spend the night and I was seeing that in my future again. “I see that. And why aren’t you both asleep at home in your own place?”

  “Because all he does is sleep. I had to drag him here.” Zeke finished with the gun and holstered it. “He won’t eat. He won’t get up. He just sleeps. And if he just sleeps, he’s not there to help me know what to do. He’s not there to talk to me. He’s”—his light eyes darkened with the slightest edge of panic—“not there.”

  I sat on the other side of him, although there wasn’t much room. I wrapped an arm around his shoulder. It was a lot like embracing a cactus. He only allowed Griffin to touch him without tensing up, at least while conscious. But I gave him a few minutes and he relaxed minutely under my touch. “You were out of it for two days. The drugs knocked you out, but the pain was still there. Not to mention the worry. Griffin didn’t know if you’d make it. The doctors said yes and there was a good chance, but things happen. Griffin has been with you . . . what? Since he was ten and you were eight? That must feel like his whole life that he’s looked after you. He felt like he failed you when the demons took you down; he felt all your pain even when you were out. If he slept for a week, I wouldn’t be surprised. His body is exhausted and so is his mind. Whisper didn’t heal him like she did you.”

  He was silent for a moment, then asked belligerently, “Why not?”

  “Because healing bodies is simple for a healer, but healing minds isn’t. At least that’s what a healing friend of mine said a long time ago. It’s just the way things are.” I smoothed his hair and tugged at the short copper ponytail. “You want to stay here tonight?” I asked.

  His eyes moved over to Griffin and he laid a hand on the slowly rising and falling back. “I want . . .” He stopped and started over, more honestly. “I need help to watch him. If the demons come, he won’t be ready. Not as ready as he needs to be. I have to protect him.”

  Like he protects you. I understood perfectly. “Okay. No problem.” I waited for him to offer to sleep in the tub since Leo was still sleeping on the couch downstairs. And I kept waiting. Finally, I said, “How about I sleep with Griffin and you take the tub and some blankets.”

  “No.” He went for one of his knives this time, one from an ankle holster, and began polishing it—with my bedspread. My expensive, well-loved bedspread.

  “Zeke . . .”

  “No.” This time he scowled. “He’s my partner. I’ll guard him. Understand?”

  Indeed I did. More than he himself, I thought. I looked at the tub and grumbled under my breath. I really was too softhearted for my own good . . . no matter how many demons I’d killed. I grabbed blankets, enough for a thick pseudomattress and one to cover me. I also took a pillow and climbed in. It was a huge, roomy tub, but it still wasn’t a bed. “You owe me, you know?” I told Zeke over the edge before pulling the curtain and changing into pajamas.

  “I know,” he answered without emotion. “I owe you everything I have in my life. I won’t ever forget that.”

  “But I still can’t sleep with Griffin?” I groused, as I tried to find a comfortable position.

  “No.” This time he sounded faintly amused. I pushed the curtain back and peered over the porcelain edge just in time to see the small smile disappear.

  Sneaky dog. I curled up in the fetal position, felt for the gun under my pillow, and dozed off. Whether Zeke slept at all I wasn’t sure, but when I woke up in the morning he was in the same position and this time cleaning my weapons. At least he wasn’t using my bedspread this round. It was an improvement. I don’t, as a rule, get attached to things. That was the way of the traveler, but I’d been in Vegas longer than I’d been anywhere else. Things started to creep in. Bedspreads. Whimsically carved beds. A large hunk of amber encasing a trapped spider from long ago. That was actually to remind me. I might be in a cage now, one of my own making, but I’d get out eventually, when I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to do. Then again, the amber was a particularly fine orange-gold. Like being cradled by the sun—comfortable and warm. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to stick around a place for a while. Oh, hell, what was I thinking?

  I’d been here ten years. That was a record for my family. Apparently it was taking a toll on my sanity, along with everything else that was going on. I was a wanderer, born and bred. I had to give it up temporarily for the Light and for Kimano, but I’d wander again. It was my nature, and natures don’t change. Hair color, breast size, houses, cars, schools, and jobs—all of it changed. Every second of every day there was change, but never the spots. You were born with spots and you died with the exact same ones.

  I looked at Griffin and Zeke. Then again, there was always the occasional exception to trip you up.

  “He’s still not up?” I climbed out of the tub, the wrinkles falling out of the silk pajamas as I stood.

  “No.” He sat there with two of my guns in my lap; his hands had stopped moving. “Maybe he’d rather stay where he is. I’m nothing more than a damn anchor around his neck.”

  He sounded defeated and angry and neither emotion was like Zeke. There were long stretches where someone who didn’t know him would wonder if he had any emotion at all. He did. He just kept it buried in a dark place, a place I thought was probably host to cold bathwater and a drowned baby. The way he was showing it now was an indication of how truly upset he was.

  “You’re his friend, Zeke, and you’re his purpose. He’s lucky to have you, more than you know. Knowing your true purpose in life, that’s a miracle.” I padded over to the bed. “I’ll show you.” I put a hand on Griffin’s shoulder and shook him. “Wake up, slee
py-head.”

  His head was turned on the pillow facing Zeke. His eyes flickered instead of snapping open immediately, evidence of his exhaustion, but when they did open, they fixed on Zeke first and foremost. They showed instant relief; then he frowned. “Is it morning? Have you had breakfast?”

  Zeke returned to the guns as if he hadn’t been worried, as if he didn’t even know what worry was, but I saw his jaw relax. “No. I was cleaning Trixa’s guns.”

  The frown intensified. “Did you eat supper last night?”

  “No. I was cleaning my guns. Guns are more important than food.”

  Griffin sat up. “You woke me up and made me eat something. I wouldn’t call it food, but it was microwaved, so I’m guessing you would.”

  “That was lunch. I couldn’t wake you up for supper. And someone has to take care of you. You’re weak and frail,” Zeke said with a sardonic twist of his lips—there and gone so quickly you could convince yourself that you imagined it. “Like a little girl. You asked for a pudding cup.”

  “I did not,” Griffin growled. Griffin of the fine food and fine clothes, who had given up the pedestrian things of a foster child life the moment Eden House had showered him with money. The words “pudding cup” almost literally horrified him. We all do our best to deal in different ways.

  “All this codependency is bringing a tear to my eye, but get up and go eat, the both of you,” I ordered. “At the diner around the corner. I’m ready for a little alone time.” I hadn’t had any in quite a few days. I wanted it, I needed it, and despite them obeying me, I still didn’t get much.

  Fifteen minutes after Griffin and Zeke had gone, Leo was calling for me. I came down the stairs to see Mr. Trinity and his entourage. I was still in my pajamas, but while silk, they covered me neck to ankle. I doubted it would’ve made any difference if I’d come down stark naked or with tasseled pasties rotating like propellers. I didn’t think Mr. Trinity was into sex . . . with either gender. He was an asexual pillar of ice. I didn’t even know that I was a person to him instead of just a thing to accomplish his goal. It seemed all of him, every speck, molecule, iota, belonged to his Creator. His focus lay in serving him and only him. And pardon my political incorrectness, but it was creepy as hell. What was worse was imagining how he might feel if he knew God wasn’t giving him his orders . . . angels were, angels who were using him as a windup tin soldier and didn’t necessarily have a clue as to what God wanted.