by Rob Thurman
Instead when he commented, he was as studiously detached as only he could be. “So. . you know what a peymakilir is. Studying behind my back?”
“Goodfellow has one painted on his guest bathroom wall behind the toilet. It’s screwing a satyr and the whole thing is labeled in hellish detail in gold paint. Hard knowledge to avoid when you’ve got a full bladder.”
Robin, meanwhile, hadn’t caught on to the fact that the peymakilir disposal conversation was over. “You blew her up. You opened a gate inside her like you did with Suyolak.” Suyolak, the antihealer who’d started the Black Death. Suyolak, the Plague of the World. Suyolak, the asshole who’d totally had it coming.
Goodfellow moved his shoe so the remnants of a peymakilir hand slid off that fine Corinthian leather. “But Suyolak was desperate measures.”
“Then,” I agreed.
“You’re wasting gates on something you could’ve easily shot. Gates are for emergencies,” he continued, mouth twisted in distaste. No one liked a gate or the way it looked, the way it tore apart the world and made it scream, the way seeing it twisted the brain and stomach. No one liked them-except Auphe. “Emergencies,” he emphasized.
“Then,” I repeated with a dark grin. “And emergency is a relative term.”
I wasn’t a morning person, nope. I hadn’t had more than two hours’ sleep. I was fuzzy headed and irritable. I smelled like milk gone off and was sick of the taste of Mountain Dew. None of it was excuse enough. It wasn’t an excuse at all. I’d done it because I wanted to-simple as that. She was far more of a killer than the men I’d sent away by the Ninth Circle, and she wasn’t human. There was no thought needed on her before or after the fact.
Robin had been our friend since we’d met him six years ago at his car lot. He was the first we’d had, the first we’d trusted. But Nik had protected me from. . hell, the entire world basically. . for so damn long that he simply couldn’t stop, whether I needed it or not. He hadn’t mentioned anything to Robin and he wouldn’t. But I would. The puck deserved to know that things had changed. That I had changed over the past months and more radically than he’d no doubt already guessed. He knew I’d been more shadowed. He knew that in the past weeks I’d regained my gating ability, but he hadn’t known to what extent. The way of the gun was all right-I still loved my babies, but the Auphe way was a new toy. And I wanted to play with that toy.
And now Robin did know.
Goodfellow was a trickster. He lied, but not to us. I wasn’t going to lie to him.
“Goodfellow, what havoc have you wrought now?” A smooth voice came from the top of the stairs as jade green cat eyes blinked at the carnage decorating her foyer. “This reminds me of when you were mourning the fall of the Sacred Band of Thebes. You ravaged and eventually burned down my establishment in Greece.”
“But every lady and gentleman on the premises fled the flames in a state of complete sexual satisfaction,” Robin countered promptly.
Above the eyes was an elaborate arrangement of amber-fire hair. . or a mane that would cover feline ears if she had them. Her face was smooth skinned and without fur, but there was a split in her lush upper lip and ivory fangs when she smiled. She was a cat, in some aspects at least, and who better to run a cathouse after all? She lifted a hand and beckoned. If she was furred in other areas, her green silk dress kept that a mystery. “You may as well come up. I don’t care for peymakilirs, but they are excellent guardians. I assume you had good reason to kill her?”
“Don’t I always have good reason for my kills?” he challenged, willing to take the heat for this one. Keeping the Auphe swept under the rug for the moment.
“These days, perhaps.” An eyebrow arched. “You have mellowed. But you will have to pay the cleaning service’s bill. I am most certainly not running a charity here. Now come along and introduce your friends. One of them smells absolutely delicious.”
We spent the next hour in a room full of expensive furniture and more expensive cats, male and female. Our hostess-she preferred it to madam-was Bastet, the original Egyptian goddess of fertility and sexuality. After tiring of being worshipped she took her avocation, so to speak, on the road nearly four thousand years ago and now owned fourteen of the best houses of the most ill repute around the globe. She was a proud business-woman and only incidentally a former lover of Goodfellow’s. Of course, who over the age of two hundred and didn’t mind pucks wasn’t a former sexual partner of his? Only those with quick minds and quicker running skills.
Surrounded by silk cushions, he asked her about all the storm spirits and gods while stunning humanoid felines tried to feed Niko peeled grapes and tiny dead shrew from a golden bowl. He didn’t seem pleased. I, who was having the milk thoroughly licked out of my hair by four of Bastet’s purring employees, wasn’t exactly weeping with sympathy for him. Robin had been right about the milk. They couldn’t get enough of it. Loved it. Four rough tongues scratching my scalp and drenching every strand of hair I had in paien cat saliva, I, conversely, loved not at all.
Although the bare breasts were nice, even if covered in silky fur.
“I am sorry, my precious goatling,” Bastet sighed as she lounged on a massive sofa with sapphire silk cushions large enough that each one was designed to substitute as a bed. She had a bare foot in Robin’s lap and was using it to massage his crotch lightly. Ishiah wasn’t going to care for that at all, no matter what he said about accepting the puck in all his ways. “No storm spirits have come our way and no rumors of them either.”
“And what about Jack?” he asked grimly. “Have you heard any rumors of Jack?”
Her slit pupil eyes widened. There seemed to be only one Jack in the paien community and it wasn’t Jack the Ripper. Bastet stared at us with the unblinking wariness of a cat cornered by a coyote before looking away. “Now is not a good time to be human in New York. Nor is it ever a good time to get in the way of Spring-heel himself.” She removed her foot from its perch. “Go. I want no part of this. You know he prefers humans, but if he thinks one of us is carrying tales, he’ll kill us just the same. More quickly, but we’ll be dead nonetheless. Now go.”
“He’s here then. You’re certain?” Niko asked, pushing away the bowl of grapes with its fur-covered garnishes.
This time Bastet bared an impressive brace of pointed teeth, survival instinct triumphing over fear, and pointed at the door. “Go.”
That was a yes if ever I heard one.
Goodfellow’s face was more grim than his voice had been. He had his confirmation and he wasn’t happy about it. Some things in life you’d rather not know. Not believe. Life didn’t care about that though. Once you’re stuck with something, especially when that something is known to be unstoppable, you’re screwed. That was the truth of it. And it appeared as if we were stuck.
Whether we wanted to believe it or not.
6
Niko
Twelve Years Ago
I didn’t want to believe it. Yet there it was. Black and white, a piece of someone’s soul stapled to a telephone pole.
It was brutal and ugly and in no way matched the pure blue sky of a perfectly crisp autumn Saturday. The sun itself was cooperating, spreading a buttery glow on peeling siding, warped wood, weeds masquerading as grass and scrawny trees that had two or three poppy red leaves-gilding something tawdry into a place that for that hour looked as if it was a home you’d actually want. It was the same as that moment in The Wizard of Oz when it turned from black and white to every color in the spectrum. This wasn’t a movie special effect; it was a natural one.
And it was ruined by the paper fluttering against the wood where it was pinned.
Cal saw it first, but then he had been watching for something like this. I hadn’t. He didn’t point it out. He stopped the skateboard that was all but useless on the cracked and broken sidewalk and squatted down to pretend to tie his sneaker. I noticed that it was already tied in an effective, if sloppy, Cal knot almost at the same moment I noticed the poster. It cove
red layers of LOST posters but it didn’t say LOST. It said MISSING in bold black letters. I always wondered about that-the difference between missing and lost. Whichever word was chosen for you, you were still gone all the same.
Whichever was chosen, you rarely came back.
“Kithser.” I studied the face on the cheap photocopy. “David.” I hadn’t known his first name was David. I’d only known him as the seventeen-year-old drug dealer and probably thief three streets over who’d once tried to sell crack to Cal. It was the week we’d first moved in. Kithser was big for someone who did crack. Big boned, muscle-bound enough that if he wasn’t doing crack, he was certainly juicing. Definitely well fed, I guessed, by the family who was now looking for him.
Did his family know how he was on the streets? That he was mean and nasty with the steroid psychosis lurking in the twitching beside his glassy eyes. Who knew? Either they were softhearted and hoped he’d change or they’d made him the way he was and missed that drug money.
When had I become this cynical? I reached out to fold a corner under and keep the paper from flapping in the wind. “It’s an old picture,” Cal noted, giving up on his sneaker. A finger plopped directly in the middle of David Kithser’s face. “See? It doesn’t show where you broke his nose.”
Whether someone loved him or not, you didn’t try to sell my little brother crack. Cal wouldn’t have taken it, but the next step would’ve been Kithser trying to steal any money he had on him. That would’ve led to Cal bashing him in the balls. . testicles. Damn it, whacking him in the testicles with his battered skateboard. From that point on, it was hard to say what would’ve happened. Cal had been armed. I didn’t let him take a knife to school, but after school and on weekends, I wanted him able to protect himself. Against Grendels. Against Kithsers, against those even worse than the Kithsers. The only good neighborhoods we knew were the ones we rode through on buses.
Luckily I was two blocks down, saw it, and that was the end of Kithser bothering my brother. I could’ve taken him down without hurting him much. Steroid muscle is useless muscle for the most part. But with drug dealers, bullies, perverts, and what else oozed about, you needed to make an impression. A thoroughly broken nose did that and was essentially harmless in the long run. Kithser had never seen a drop of his own blood in his life until then, I could tell. Most bullies haven’t.
And Cal helpfully kicking him in the b- testicles when he was down and rolling around screaming about his nose hadn’t done much for his pride either. Kithser had paid attention to the lesson and he hadn’t come back to our street. So I’d thought.
Or maybe someone had gone over to his street instead.
Expectant eyes slanted up at me in a rainwater gaze. Now I’d see the truth. No way to avoid it. Not even I could ignore this. “You know the killer got him. Right, Nik?” You’re not an oblivious idiot anymore, are you? Because worrying about keeping you alive is getting to be a chore. I could see all those thoughts spinning under the dark hair.
I rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly. His bones were thin and light under my fingers. Fragile. Breakable. A spun glass version of a brother. I hoped for that growth spurt soon. A knife and some hand-me-down martial art moves from the dojo wouldn’t always be enough.
“Maybe,” I answered, noncommittal. “He leads a bad life. Lots of trouble.” Missing a week now, the poster said. Not crashing at a friend’s place then. “But. . maybe.”
Cal blew a random strand of hair out of his eyes and rolled up the too-long sleeves of his cast-off sweatshirt one more time. “Can we get pizza after?”
I’d already ripped the stapled poster free. I’d done it completely without thought and stared at it with a combination of dread and curiosity. What was I doing? “After what?” I asked, distracted.
Picking up his skateboard, Cal tucked it under his arm and nodded at the paper. “After you go around the neighborhood asking stupid questions about Kithser.”
“How do you know that’s what I’m going to do?” Bemused at his sudden psychic ability to know what even I hadn’t known, I folded the missing poster in half.
“Because that’s you. Good.” He had an expression of patient resignation on his face that I knew was identical to the one I wore when I was cleaning up his SpaghettiOs and soda handprints in the kitchen. “Just. . good. You can’t help yourself. You don’t want to get someone in trouble if they don’t deserve it. You know, in case the weirdo next door is a butcher.” There was a heavy load of sarcasm on the word butcher.
“Wouldn’t you want the same benefit of the doubt?” I knocked lightly on top of his head. “Although all the trouble you get in you almost always deserve,” I added with exasperated affection.
Cal was stubborn and getting him off topic wasn’t easy at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times. “You’re right, Nik. He is a butcher. But he butchers people, not cows.” That’s when the glow that hung in the air faded and the sun was only the sun again. The wizard behind the curtain was just a man, possibly one with an inhuman grin and huge, serrated knife dripping blood.
By then Cal was already walking toward our rental, done trying to convince me. There was work ahead and he wanted it over with as soon as possible. “Bible or crutches?”
We’d learned a few techniques from watching Sophia. She could work an entire block in twenty-five minutes lifting valuables to be fenced later and she had a routine that didn’t fail often. It was difficult to get into a house to talk to and scam suspicious neighbors in our crumbling section of town. It helped to have one of two things.
“The Bible or the crutches?” Cal asked again. “And what about the pizza?”
“The crutches,” I decided. The Bible worked less and less for Sophia. It seemed people were as upset by pushy Christians knocking on their door as much as they were the possibility of a home invasion. “Yes, pizza, but vegetarian. You need some vegetables. Otherwise you’ll turn into a can of SpaghettiOs.”
“Okay, but extra cheese.” Which was remarkably agreeable for a kid who loved pepperoni and any other kind of questionable meat more than life itself. It made me wonder uneasily exactly how bad the smell was to him coming from next door. Was there meat in that basement and was it questionable in a very different way?
I planned to find out.
After retrieving the hard-used crutches, we started canvassing the neighborhood. I went from a fifteen-year-old who looked seventeen to a teenager with a hugely swollen foot and ankle, two pair of socks stuffed with more socks, a pathetic limp, and a solemn-eyed little brother holding a box of cookies he could only be selling for school. Granted it was an empty box, another prop and victim of Cal’s appetite, but it would get the job done.
Crutch and drag. Crutch and drag. I looked down at Cal. “This is wrong, all right? We don’t do things like this unless we’re trying to find out if a killer lives next to us and I don’t think that will ever come up again. We don’t do it to steal. We’re not Sophia.”
“I know, Nik. You’ve said it like a thousand times. We’re not. But sometimes I think things would be easier if we were.” That was true. I wasn’t so naive I didn’t know that, but that didn’t mean it was the way it was going to be. Not for me and not for Cal. I’d remind him as often as I had to. If it had to be a thousand, then a thousand it would be. He was holding up the box, taking a whiff, and giving a small smile at the lingering aroma of cookies.
He caught me watching him from the corner of his eye and gave me a look of his own as he kicked a small chunk of concrete down the sidewalk. “You should slump more,” he suggested. “You still look too tall and too. . um. . ninja-ish. Badass.”
Right then I gave up on the language. His school was the educational version of Pulp Fiction. Mine was a teen version of a supermax prison, metal detectors, police, and all. If we made our way through with only foul mouths, we would be doing well. There also might be a serial killer and there were monsters. All that was enough to worry about. So I let it go and took
his advice. I slouched more, aimed for a pained expression, and slowed my pace.
We talked to Mrs. Spoonmaker first, Cal remembering to cough once or twice for that flu I’d told her he had the day before. We didn’t pull the cookie scam on her. I thanked her for calling our schools and casually asked if she knew David Kithser? If she’d seen him around lately. We went to school together and he owed me money for doing his homework. That she would believe. If I said I was his friend and she knew him, she wouldn’t talk to me at all. He was a bad guy. In our world minding your own business about bad guys was good business for yourself.
Cal perched on her couch covered in faded orange and red roses. Covering him were her seven cats. Cats liked him, loved him really. The moment they smelled him they would swarm. Now wasn’t any different. They draped over his shoulders, lap, and feet. If they happened to have a dead mouse tucked away, they’d present it at his feet like an offering. Cal didn’t mind. Affection from anyone but me was rare. He knew when to appreciate it-even in the form of a dead rodent. He stroked the cats, surrounded by a cloud of purring and flying fur. Each one took a turn bracing on his chest to stare into his eyes. I didn’t know what they were hoping to see, but they always seemed satisfied when their turn was over.
Mrs. Spoonmaker knew Kithser. “No better than he had to be,” she’d said with pursed pink lips that matched the pink tint in her short curly white hair. She also said that she hadn’t seen him in months and good riddance. We moved from house to house after that. Five houses down Cal stopped on the sidewalk, several feet away from the porch. “Dog,” he warned. “Big dog.”
I couldn’t smell him like Cal could, but a second later I heard the barking. Loud, ferocious, and absolutely crazed. Big dog was right. Big and wild to attack. Unlike cats, dogs did not like Cal. Not some dogs, not most dogs. All dogs. They had two reactions: fight or flight. And when the reaction was fight, it was instinct that ran back to their prehistoric ancestors-to the death.