by Rob Thurman
“Yeah, excellent,” I parroted colorlessly, losing what little appetite I had. “If we knew which tribe had it. How many could there be in the world anyway?”
“O ye of little faith.” He gave a superior smirk. “I might not know everything, but I do know everyone. Give me time and I’ll find out which tribe it is and where they are. Things will come together, Caliban. We’ll have George home soon. Safe and well. Try to believe it.” He fixed me with eyes as green and fathomless as the primeval forest “You were the one who once told me that life is a fairy tale and everyone lives happily ever after.”
Yeah, but it had been a lie then and it was a lie now. “You were shit-faced then, Loman.” I gave up on the pizza. “I’m surprised you remember anything I said. Besides you were too busy sniffing Nik’s hair.” I tilted my head back and offered innocently over my shoulder, “Oh, hey, big brother, fixed up already?”
The utterly blank face was better than any scowl. “Amazing how well you hear when you want to.” Niko retrieved his pizza from the oven, sat in the seat next to mine, and pushed my discarded plate back toward me. “Eat. I’m not dragging about your malnourished form from here to there. I’ve better things to do with my time.”
I turned to Promise. “An ice pack is okay for a sore back, but it isn’t much help with the cranky SOB part, is it?”
She brushed a hand over my hair and gave me an absent smile, but there was a sliver of unease behind her eyes. I think that she’d forgotten Niko was human . . . vulnerable. Well, relatively vulnerable. This was Niko we were talking about after all. “You two.” She touched a cool fingertip to the bruise forming on my jaw. It was courtesy of the coffee table, not the troll, but that was between me and the furniture. “Always falling in with a naughty crowd.”
“Abby’s nothing if not a bad influence.” I slumped down in the chair, a combination of aches and exhaustion making an upright position not too desirable. “Pretty much a shithead too, if you were wondering.”
Niko gave a reproving snort, then commented, “I believe all that he is has become all that he was. He was ill to begin with. He couldn’t have survived the cave-in.”
I wouldn’t have thought he could’ve survived an entire clip to the brain either, but he’d proved me wrong. This time, however, the troll had wanted to die. When he’d thought the Auphe’s time had passed, he was ready to follow. They must’ve been lying extremely low for him to have believed they were truly gone. Either that, or the sickness had affected his mind. “Here’s hoping,” I muttered, resting my chin on my chest and rubbing the back of my neck. The movement felt clumsy, as if my hand were moving through a thick fluid instead of air. “Loman says he can find the Gypsies.” I closed my eyes against the eye-searing brightness of the kitchen light.
“How long will it take to locate them?” That was Nik . . . who suddenly sounded far, far away. I didn’t hear Robin’s reply. I didn’t hear anything at all. When I woke up, the light was off, and I was covered with that comforter from my bed. There was also the taste of fermented garlic in my mouth and a god-awful crick in my neck. I straightened my head and was rewarded with the howling protest of abused muscles. Hissing at the discomfort, I checked my watch. Five hours. I’d slept five hours. Goddamn it. I threw the blanket off, put my hands against the table, and pushed up. I staggered for a moment, as stiff as a ninety-year-old man. It’d been a long day. Long week.
Long, Georgie. So damn long.
I made my way through the darkened apartment back to my room to ask Niko what had happened after I’d fallen asleep. Pushing open the door, I took in the spill of sable and silver on the pillows and the curve of a naked shoulder. I smiled to myself. About damn time.
“You feel better?” I turned at my brother’s low voice at my ear.
“The question is,” I countered with a knowing grin, pulling the door shut between Promise and us, “do you?”
He’d come out of the bathroom and now motioned me back toward the living room. “You nearly died once today. Are you so anxious for a repeat showing?”
I didn’t bother with the overhead light, instead relying on the light coming through the window from the street. Sitting on the couch, I took in the blanket and pillow piled with hospital neatness at one end. The cushions had been scrubbed with ruthless efficiency and smelled of nothing but soap and water. No mud, no Abbagor . . . nothing of that remained. Nik. He couldn’t fix George, couldn’t fix me, so he concentrated on the little things. Until he could get his hands on Caleb, he’d impose order on the chaos available to him. “I’ll pass on the beatdown, thanks.” I watched as he leaned against the wall, still as a statue, but something was different. He wasn’t completely happy. He couldn’t be, not under the circumstances, but he was relaxed. And my brother was never relaxed. He might appear at ease on the surface, but underneath he was always taut, always ready. Always walking the edge of constant vigilance. But now . . . who would’ve thought?
“That’s probably wise.”
When I’d woken up I’d been panicked at the time lost. Five hours sleeping was five hours waiting for Caleb to find out what had happened. It was five hours that I wasn’t trying to find George. Worse yet, it was five hours that I wasn’t thinking of her, wasn’t imagining what she might be going through. It felt like a betrayal, but . . . I exhaled and fell backward onto the couch. There was more involved here than just George and me. Above, the ceiling was striped gray and milky white. It was never dark in the city. Never. You think that’d be a comfort to someone who knows the things that giggle insanely in the dark. It’s not. At least, not always. Sometimes a blanket of swaddling black velvet would be . . . nice. Sometimes not seeing is better than seeing. Then again, sometimes seeing isn’t so bad. I turned my head toward Niko and smiled at the recollection of striped hair and long lashes resting on pale cheeks. “She’s beautiful.”
“Inside and out.” He bowed his head, a strand of hair falling across his eyes. Rumpled and disheveled, completely unnatural for my brother.
I grinned again. “It took a vampire to make you human, Cyrano. What are the odds?” Then the grin melted and I went back to watching shadows crawl sluggishly across the ceiling. So, George, who’s going to make me human?
The cushion dipped under Niko’s weight as he settled on the edge. He sat quietly for a few moments before asking, “Can you do it again?”
I had no trouble following the change of subject. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I did it to begin with.” Didn’t know . . . didn’t want to know. All I did know was that being able to rip a hole in reality was no kind of inheritance. Where was the gold watch? The hefty life insurance payout? Monsters, they never thought ahead. “Could be that the next time the world falls in on my head, it might kick in again.”
“And then again it may not.”
“Mystery.” I shifted my shoulders. “That’s what life is all about, right?”
“I know you’d rather not hear it.” The dim light gleamed on his bare back and was in turn swallowed by the inky blackness of his sweatpants. “But I wouldn’t mind you having the equivalent of a parachute.”
“A get-out-of-jail-free card?” I snorted and rolled over onto my side. “I’d rather do without.”
“Stubborn.” The cuff on the back of my head that I’d imagined in Abbagor’s cavern materialized. “Get some more sleep, Cal. There’s nothing we can do until Goodfellow gets back to us, and we need you rested and sharp. Georgina would tell you the same.”
Ever read those books? See those movies? Someone will be missing or presumed dead, yet their loved one will “feel” them. They’ll know, without a doubt, that they’re out there . . . alive. Sense the unbreakable glowing bond between them. Feel the touch of their invisible hand. How nice for them. As for me . . . I didn’t feel shit. Okay, the big black hole where George had once been, that I felt. Emptiness and the ground falling away beneath my feet. Yeah, that was pretty goddamn palpable. But George? A honey-colored hand on my shoulder? The softness of he
r hair against my face? Those were nowhere to be found.
Nowhere.
The present came the next day.
Wrapped in expensive paper of muted blues and greens and tied with a thin silver cord, it waited in the hall outside the door. I’d been on my way outside to grab some breakfast for Niko and Promise, who were still warming the sheets at six a.m. That was serious sleeping in for my brother, but, damn, who could blame him?
Nudging the package with my toe, I eyed it suspiciously. It was about the size of a shoe box, and I knew instantly who had sent it. Pricey wrapping paper, innocent exterior—it had to be Goodfellow. I couldn’t begin to guess how he’d known this night had been the night for Niko and Promise. Maybe he’d picked up on some subtle verbal cue between them that I’d missed when I’d dozed off. Hell, maybe he’d smelled it on them.
If Robin had a sixth sense, it was focused solely on sex . . . a radar for arousal so powerful that it could pick up a horny Martian across the vast emptiness of space itself.
However he knew, it would be just like him to send them a little “gift.” Probably one picked up in the type of store that used to grace Times Square. Or could be it came from his own personal collection. Gah. I picked it up gingerly with the tips of my fingers and carried it back to the kitchen table. I didn’t have much choice. The coffee table had gone to an early grave. It didn’t change the fact I was having serious doubts about ever eating in the kitchen again. The box wasn’t addressed to anyone, so, braver than any hero of legend, I threw myself on the grenade. Oils, things that buzzed and vibrated, tiny scraps of leopard-spotted cloth—I was expecting pretty much anything.
Except George.
When Niko found me it was not quite an hour later. I’d left the apartment without my phone. It was just me and my present. And it was mine, no one else’s. I had left a note, though. With the Auphe out there, I couldn’t just walk out. I hadn’t said where I was going or why, but I should’ve known Niko would track me down sooner rather than later.
I didn’t look up when the bell tinkled rustily as the front door opened. I didn’t have to; I knew who it was. The soda shop was empty except for the two of us. Mr. Geever had closed it up while George was gone. People kept coming in to see her, leaving flowers and colored paper stars, creating a memorial for a girl who wasn’t even dead yet. Geever couldn’t handle it. The street outside smelled overwhelmingly of roses and lilies, funeral flowers. I’d swum through them to use the key I still had from opening the place for him two weeks ago. Only two weeks. Jesus.
“So.” Niko slid into the booth opposite me. “When did the overwhelming craving for ice cream hit you?” When I didn’t answer, he asked quietly, “What’s in the box, Cal?”
It sat in front of me, stripped of paper and ribbon . . . just a plain white box now. No cheerful paper, no shiny silver ribbon. Nothing left to distract from what lay inside. “George,” I said tonelessly, looking up at him. “It’s George.”
He reached over and pulled the box out from beneath my hand. Lifting the lid, he stared down at the contents. The fury behind his eyes was swiftly squelched, but his lips remained a knife’s edge as he dipped a careful hand in to lift out a mass of copper curls. It could’ve been worse. I knew that. It didn’t change the fact that when I’d opened the box for the first time and saw George’s hair I felt something break inside.
“Encouragement from our friend Caleb. He knows, then, about the crown.” He rubbed a thumb along a length of red silk and gently returned the tumbled coils to the box. “We’re almost there, little brother. A few days at best and we’ll have another one to put in his damned hand and your George will be free.”
Not mine. If I ever had doubts about that before, I didn’t now. George wasn’t for me, not if she wanted to live to see the ripe old age of twenty. Caleb had admired our work. He had wanted something from us and chose the most vulnerable person in our circle to use as leverage. Why he’d gone to such lengths we still didn’t know, but did that matter? The result spoke for itself.
“Flay wake up yet?” I asked, reaching over to put the lid back on the box. I couldn’t look at it anymore.
“Actually, yes.” He stood. “Why don’t we go discuss things with him? It’ll be much more entertaining to hurt him while he’s awake.”
“You’re trying to cheer me up, aren’t you?” I said suspiciously.
“Perhaps. Is it working?”
“A little,” I admitted. Picking up the box carefully, I slid out of the booth. “Let’s go chat with the furry prick.”
Promise had been relieved of guard duty and was gone. Goodfellow had taken over—if you could call watching porn on cable guarding. He was also on our phone, speaking some Slavic-sounding language. A helluva long-distance call, but if it found George, he could run it into the millions for all I cared. Niko took the box from my hand and placed it carefully on Robin’s lap. It was a combination of incentive and a simple right to know. Goodfellow had a great deal of affection for George too.
We didn’t wait to see his response. Our own had been enough. We entered Niko’s bedroom and closed the door behind us. “Snowball.” I bared teeth in the nastiest sort of grin. “I hear you’re feeling better.”
Better, maybe, but he wasn’t completely healed, not yet. The slashes that had run from chest to navel were brutally ugly and red, but they had mostly closed. A few more days and they’d be shiny pink scar tissue. The glassiness had faded from his eyes, leaving them alert if not precisely sharp. There was still a wheeze to his breathing from a damaged lung. That might take more than a few days to heal, maybe a week, but it would. Wolves were tough bastards. You let one crawl away from a fight and chances were it would keep crawling.
Flay’s red pink eyes glared at us and the muzzle wrinkled to show a few teeth of his own. Still in wolf form, he yanked at the sheet with shredding claws. “Hungry.” The throat spasmed with effort. “Hungry.”
“Really?” I sat on the edge of the bed and patted my stomach in consideration. “Whatta ya know? Me too. And you know what they say about Auphe.” I leaned close until my nose was a bare inch from his neck and inhaled. “We’ll eat anything.” I hated the Auphe, loathed that they were a part of me. That didn’t mean I was above using them when I had to. Why not? They’d done their level, hellish best to use me.
A hand landed on my shoulder and pulled me back. “You’ll get indigestion,” Niko said with reproof. “If not a hair ball.” The blade of his sword flashed past me to land edge first on Flay’s stomach. It balanced with the utmost serenity, needing but one really deep breath from the wolf to slice open his abdomen. “We talked earlier, you and I,” my brother noted almost idly. “But I wonder if perhaps you didn’t put your all into that conversation. Now, with Caleb less than pleased with your efforts, you might be able to search your mind.” Several split white hairs floated upward. “Truly rack it. It certainly wouldn’t hurt you to get on our good side.”
“And it might even keep you alive,” I added darkly. I didn’t mean it, of course, but I could lie with the best of them. A lifetime of being on the run is good training in deceit.
“Begin with why you led Caleb to believe the crown would be so difficult to locate in Cerberus’s organization. It took us barely days.” Niko made a good point. It hadn’t been exactly a Herculean endeavor.
Flay looked down at the line of silver crossing his stomach before letting loose with a resigned growl. “I knew. I . . . saw it . . . was for her. Vain whore. But knew . . . couldn’t—” The jaws worked painfully. “Could steal, but . . . couldn’t get away. Also wanted . . .” This time the jaws worked in a different way, into a hateful grin. “Cerberus dead. Wanted him dead. Couldn’t do. Not by self.”
I felt a grudging respect for the wolf. He’d pretended to Caleb to be less than he was. Less intelligent. Less cunning. In actuality, he was pretty damn smart. After all, who had ended up taking the up-front risk? Not Flay. He had made his move only when Cerberus had been distracted trying to kill
me. First in his puppy class after all.
“Clever.” The curl of Niko’s upper lip lent a different flavor to the word. He said it in the way you might compliment a cannibal on his willingness to experiment outside a burgers-and-fries diet. We may have lived in deceit, but not once had my brother ever embraced it. He did what he had to do, but I didn’t doubt that it chafed at his sense of honor. “Tell us how you met Caleb.”
“At Moonshine.” Ears flattened to his skull. “Never seen him . . . there before. He talked. Wanted me on inside. Wanted spy. Offered money.” There was drool on his muzzle. It was the kind you saw on a dog when it stumbled onto something that tasted bad. Apparently Caleb’s offer hadn’t gone too well. “Wanted to. Hated Cerberus. Stick it to him—what not good? But . . . afraid. Hated him, but afraid. Know my limits. Know my worth.” From the way he spit the word, obviously he found it lacking in himself. “Turned him down.”
“And what changed your mind, asshole?” I asked with disdain. “Figure out your little plan of having someone else do the dirty work for you? Or did he up the price?”
His eyes bored into mine, so foreign, yet they held an emotion so common to every living, thinking creature that it floored me. “You.” He coughed and it wasn’t from the tattered lung. His hands tore the sheet over him, ripping it to forlorn streamers. The next sentence he said with the utmost care. It was the first nearly complete and whole one I’d heard from him even as he struggling to produce every word with all the clarity he could muster. “You aren’t only one with a George.”
Slow, odd sounding, and it clearly hurt his nonhuman mouth, but it resounded with truth. I didn’t bother to ask how he knew about what George was to me. He would’ve smelled her on me at our first meeting. What I did bother with was what he had said . . . and what it meant.
“Oh, shit.” The room seemed to shrink in size, the air becoming thick and stifling. I’m not sure what I would’ve said if I’d had the opportunity, but at that moment the phone rang. Robin must have finished his call, and five seconds later he appeared with the receiver in his hand. “It’s Caleb,” he announced with white-lipped anger. “He wants to talk to you.”