Blackout

7

“What do I do for fun?”

This time it was me waking Leandros up too damn early in the morning. Not that I hadn’t already woken him up walking into his room in socked feet. I didn’t hear any noise of my own making, but while I’d heard a killer she-Wolf above, I was learning my brother heard almost everything. If a squirrel burped in Central Park, this guy heard it half a city away. He was sleeping on his stomach, one arm hidden under the covers.

My well-intentioned last puke by the canal hadn’t distracted him from thoughts of lost brothers as much as I’d hoped. He’d had a long night, what with checking on me every hour to make sure I didn’t die of secondary drowning. I’d asked what that was and he told me if I did die of it, then he’d tell me. Until then it wasn’t pertinent knowledge for me and might interfere with my sleep. Considering we’d run—I’d staggered—to get away before the cops arrived to investigate an explosion and it had been the longest day of my life, I did need the sleep. Unfortunately, the grenade hadn’t injured Ammut as we didn’t spot any unrecognizable chunks of whatever she looked like floating in the water. If we had, I’d have slept a lot sounder.

Good thing I hadn’t.

“Betcha have a sword under your mattress and you sleep holding on to the hilt.” I grinned as an eye slitted at me, fully aware. “That’s what I would do if I were a sword guy.” But a pillow and a gun were what helped me sleep at night. Warm milk didn’t cut it in this business.

“You’re extremely observant of people’s behavior and the general area around you or you’re remembering more.” He sat up and laid the sword on the bed as he swung his legs to the ground. He wore black cotton pajama pants but was bare chested. He had a scar there that wasn’t as deep and ugly as mine. It was plenty odd, though—a round circle of silvery scar tissue as big as a dinner plate as if someone had drawn a giant O on his chest. I guessed they had, only they’d used a knife instead of a crayon to do it. “How are you feeling? Any more coughing?”

“No more coughing and no more remembering, but things are more … eh … deja vu-ish.” His room was as clean, feng shui-ed out the ass, painted in a calm, serene silver green with not a single dust mote daring to rear its fuzzy head. Same as yesterday and the day before. He had a low bed and an equally low and discreet dresser. No mirror, though. There was one mirror in the place—in the bathroom, and it was a small one with a towel rolled up and propped on top of it. The towel was to wipe off the mirror if the shower steamed it up or to cover up the mirror for no good reason at all, which I did before I went to bed last night after showering twice to sluice the canal taint off me.

Leandros hadn’t mentioned the mirror; I followed right along in his nonverbal footsteps. I didn’t like monsters and I wasn’t that fond of mirrors. I’d work on the monster thing first. I imagined the mirror thing, if I brought it up, would only embarrass me or make me look like a phobia-ridden nut job—maybe both. All humiliation in its own time.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I pointed out. “What do I do for fun?”

“Why are you up so early?” he countered. “One of the primary extracurricular activities of your life is sleeping, not to mention running, fighting boggles, Wolves, and doing your best to die yesterday. I’d expect you to sleep extra late today.”

Oh, as if it were my fault, almost dying. That made me enjoy what was coming next all the more.

“Eh, there was this thing.”

Yeah, there had been this thing all right, and it was getting more and more annoying.

“And I was hungry anyway. Ate some cereal. Knew we had some shit to do early and then I thought, hey, what’s a guy like me—when I don’t have amnesia—do for fun? I’m curious,” I said, then added, “Wouldn’t you be?”

He took the ponytail holder out of his hair, then pulled it back again, straightening the sleep fuzz. “I work as a TA teaching history at NYU part-time and part-time at a dojo as an instructor. I train you so that you can fight off a toddler should one escape the local preschool. I meditate. Read. Research. Spend time with Promise.”

That was all fascinating. The life of Niko Leandros, multitasking modern samurai. He was stalling. If this guy valued perfection, and he did, he valued it in all things, including excruciatingly accurate (and long) answers to easy questions. That made me wonder why he’d stall at all, much less over such a simple question. “But I’m not you,” I said, boosting myself up to sit on one end of the dresser. “What do I do?” Slouching, elbow on knee and chin resting in hand, I waited for the answer.

He watched the impatient swing of my foot, or the dirty bottom thereof invading his oasis of sterile tranquility. “You like to … hmm … watch TV.” He paused. “You enjoy browsing gun shops, although of course we obtain our weapons in a less legal fashion. You like your job at the bar.” There was a longer pause before he said triumphantly, “Ah, sometimes you like to read.”

He grabbed on to that one as if it were a life preserver. Brothers who worked together, lived together, weren’t at each other’s throat, but that didn’t necessarily mean we were close. Then again, there was that lie-down-and-die-for-me attitude he’d been spouting on the drive from South Carolina. Willing to spend his life looking for me, willing to die for me, but as for knowing what I did in my spare time, he was drawing a blank. Lots of people needed their personal space? Right? That was normal, especially as we did work and live together. He could not have a clue as to what I got up to on my own time.

Yeah. I wasn’t buying it.

“I read. What? Porn?” I was a guy. Sue me if the important literary works rose to the top.

“Mostly, but the occasional book that has a paragraph or two to give the porn context isn’t completely out of the question.” The end of his katana smacked against my foot smartly. It stung, but it was a baby tap compared to what the weapon could’ve done and I stopped swinging the clearly irritating foot. “You like to shoot.”

As if the world’s largest weapon store shoved under my bed hadn’t told me that much. That and how very quick I’d been to kill the Wolf outside the bar last night. I wasn’t quite right with that yet, and I didn’t know when I would be.

I could’ve shot to wound—why didn’t I? A good guy would have, but it was a surprise, quick, and over before my thoughts caught up to my trigger finger. If I’d had time to think, I would’ve shot to hurt, not kill. I knew it. Good guys don’t kill if they don’t have to … now that I was slowly accepting monsters as people, sort of.

Lies. You’re lying to yourself. You know what monsters are.

I returned to the conversation, leaving uncomfortable thoughts behind. “Shooting. Gotcha. One-track-mind me. Porn. Guns. Sleeping with chicks who want to kill me. Nothing else? No, I don’t know, movies? Bars and not just to work in, but to do more interesting things, such as get laid by someone who doesn’t want to kill me? Sports? Parties?”

Leandros jumped on the last item quickly enough that it smacked of desperation. “Parties. Yes. You went to a … You like parties.” He stood, moved to the dresser, and opened the bottom drawer farthest from me and my unclean, heathen foot. “Here.” He handed me a photo, computer printed but on glossy paper, the extra white neatly trimmed away. It was headed for framing one day. A w w w, wasn’t that sweet?

I stared at it and raised my eyebrows at him. “A party? What kind of party?”

“Halloween. Ishiah hosted it at the Ninth Circle. Whatever you must say about the preternatural, they do like their celebrations. Pagan creatures did invent them, after all.”

Looking back at the picture again, I saw Leandros, dressed in, as I’d only seen since he found me, black and gray, including his weapon-concealing duster. Promise was made up as something fancy from the days when men wore tights and enjoyed it. It was a wonder there was a nonovercooked sperm in those days. I had no idea how the human race had survived. Ishiah was dressed normally as Niko had been, but with his wings out. Goodfellow stood behind the bar. I could see him only from the waist up. He was bare chested. “What’s the puck dressed up as?”

There was a sigh and the sound of the drawer shutting. “He thought it would be entertaining to have his costume complement Ishiah’s. Ishiah went as an angel and Goodfellow went as”—you can’t hear eyes roll, but you can imagine that you can—”the Baby Jesus.”

I grimaced. “That means he’s wearing a diaper… .” I didn’t get to finish.

“Preswaddled.”

Preswaddled. That meant he was naked behind that bar. Holy shit, why did he ever bitch about me ruining his clothes when from his talk and the illustrations to go with them he rarely fucking wore any? I moved my eyes quickly to the last one left: me. I was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, two guns in a dual shoulder holster, and had a black apron tied around my waist. I was working, not partying. And my costume? The T-shirt said it all: This is my costume. Now fuck off.

That, as festive as my EAT ME T-shirt had been, didn’t tell the whole story. My hair, half of which was now gone, was in a shoulder-length ponytail, and my expression—it wasn’t an expression. It was a lack of one. It was the same as the expression on the panthers you see in the zoo. They weren’t hungry. And they didn’t give one good goddamn shit about you one way or the other, but if you stuck your arm between the bars, they would rip it off in a second. Why? That was what panthers did, hungry or not. My eyes … They were not the eyes of a not-so-bad guy or a good brother. I’d say they belonged to a very motherfucking bad guy indeed. I’d semi-avoided mirrors since I’d woken up on the beach, but I knew I hadn’t seen that face or those eyes since I’d been spitting salt water.

I’d thought I was badass.

Mama Boggle knew she was badass.

I didn’t think either one of us wanted to meet that guy in the picture.

I tried not to assume. It could’ve been a bad day. A Wolf could’ve marked my sneakers as his territory … while I was wearing them. That werewolf chick Delilah could’ve jumped me, put a collar and leash on me, and tied me to the nearest fire hydrant. Goodfellow might’ve trapped me in a corner and told me more stories that Hustler itself wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, which I’m positive he’d claim to be hauling around in his pants—when he wore any. There were tons of reasons I could’ve been in a bad mood—so catastrophically pissed that the black ice behind my eyes alone would have serial killers writing me love letters from prison instead of vice versa.

Or there was the truth: This guy shot Wolves in the head and didn’t once consider only wounding them.

“Yeah, I’m the life of the party all right. I’m surprised balloons don’t pop out of my ass and streamers fall wherever I go.” I shoved the photo back at him, then thought belatedly about asking what his costume was. I didn’t bother. I knew. Lived with that guy in the picture. Worked with him. Willing to sacrifice his life to find him. Martyr-in-the-making—that was his costume and his reality.

“This is really me? This is the guy you’re waiting to wake up in a few days? He … I … We look like a nuclear bomb with a timer clicking over zero and fast into the negative numbers. And you want him back?” Look at him… . Look at me, I finished silently. If I saw him in a well-lit alley, I’d run like hell. If I saw him in a dark alley, I’d piss myself.

“You are him. Sometimes you have a bad day, but we have a shared history. You have a reason for an occasional bad day, and I have a reason to miss you with your memories. You know me just as I know you.” I could understand that.

Context, he’d said before. I gave him context to his world. I knew that because nothing gave me context to mine right now. “I am who I am because of you,” he added. “You were the making of me and that’s a good thing. I miss you knowing that, knowing what I know, our whole life, good and bad.” He accepted the picture and laid it carefully on top of the dresser.

“Leandros … Niko, you might want to take a closer look at that picture and buy a cattle prod for when I’m all the way back, because that guy is not happy and that guy is not right. I don’t want to be that guy. I really don’t. But, hey, just my opinion … of myself. Since you told me our mom didn’t remember him, maybe my dad was Ted Bundy. Charles Manson on a furlough. Genetics and memories are weird stuff. Take what you want from it all and think hard about getting that cattle prod.”

I didn’t look for his reaction, because I didn’t want to see it. Truth is truth, but sometimes it hurts. Realistically, most of the time it hurt. Instead, I moved on. I had other business, and I preferred not thinking about what I might be under the amnesia, who the real me was.

But how could I not be the real me, amnesia or not? With the same personality formed by genetics and memories, “weird stuff” that they were. I didn’t recall those memories, but they’d already molded my brain and personality. Losing them wouldn’t make me someone else. I couldn’t be that different from the me in the picture, right?

How do monster genetics work? This time that inner voice sounded amused. This was a voice that had no problem with monsters.

Who knew? Who cared? I was human, and that was the only genetics that concerned me now. The picture—it was a bad day, bad day, he—me, the both of us, were just having a bad day. Had to be. Why would these people, even my own brother, want me back if that weren’t true?

I felt somewhat reassured by that train of thought. “Before we start the big Ammut scavenger hunt of the day,” I said, heading out his door, “there’s a spider in my room. Put it in the Dumpster or cut it up and flush it down the toilet again. I don’t mind clogging a motel toilet, but I don’t want to sit down tonight and feel something biting my ass because we didn’t flush hard enough.”

The dead spider was a small one—barely the size of a beagle. Leandros sent it, wrapped in two garbage bags, boxed, then taped securely, by an express-delivery service to the puck. When I asked him why, he asked if I wanted to see the Halloween picture of Robin again. It was a good point. The puck had it coming. But then he went on to say Goodfellow knew a forest nymph who subcontracted for a CSI lab, all about the bugs and leaves, and might be able to find any clues as to where this particular spider had been in the past twenty-four hours. When he finished that, he went out for an hour to get a better lock to replace the spare he’d installed last night. Yep, we kept spare locks, and, yep, we were running low. That didn’t make you think twice, no, not at all.

That he didn’t make me go along did make me think. The boggle and Wolf had shown I could take care of myself, but you rarely saw just one bug. Then there was Ammut, but maybe she stuck to the canal or was recuperating from the explosion. Could be Leandros had a black market secret lock guy who would deal with no one but Leandros. Who knew?

Then again, he was pissed. Or disturbed, annoyed— something in the pissed-off area. With Leandros it was hard to tell simply by looking at him, but he was feeling something all right. That I could tell from the moment he’d walked into the diner. I guessed it was a brother thing. It could’ve been that he hadn’t woken up when I’d killed the spider. He’d been making hourly checks, heard my socked feet, the Central Park squirrel burp, but a killer arachnid he missed? To be fair, it dropped down from the metal ceiling on a silken chain as thick as my finger. Soundless. I hadn’t heard it either. But I’d smelled it. Sour venom, silk that had a sticky sweet scent for wrapping up prey. I’d let it get close enough to see the chitin shine of its legs in the city light through the dirt-coated high windows and impaled it on a sword I’d found under my bed with everything else. I was a gun person, but I kept around a sword or two just in case. I also had a flamethrower.

Of all the things I’d found out so far … I think I liked that about myself the most. Gotta love a flamethrower.

I took a shower while Niko was off FedExing Charlotte’s asocial big brother. When I was done, I wiped the mist from the mirror and took a long look—the longest since I’d come to on that beach. I exhaled in relief and covered the mirror back up. It wasn’t me. The Cal in the picture had had his worst day ever when that picture had been taken because that wasn’t me. Eyes, face—it was as if a shadowy film had been peeled away. I still had a mild thing for wanting to kill monsters and a fondness for forks in all their destructive power, but I’d let a bad photo make me think I was something a helluva lot darker than I was.

I’d also told Leandros his brother sucked, which could have been another reason his mouth was a tight slash of irritation when he came back. It didn’t matter if that brother was the same one making with the insults. I shouldn’t have said it. I’d been wrong, and, worse, I’d told him the brother he would die for was a freak. I’d compared him to a bomb, one in mid-explosion.

Not the behavior of a good brother, and I was a good brother. Leandros said so. The mirror said so. I fucking said so.

Good brother. Not-so-bad guy. I repeated it in my head like a … mantra, yeah. Mantra. Niko was bound to know about those since he said he meditated for fun. Who meditates for fun? For your blood pressure, okay, but for fun? It must kick-start his soy-and-yogurt morning. Meditation and soy all in one day; he was such a daredevil.

By the time he was back with the lock, I was dressed, armed, and ready to kick some ass. I regretted the Wolf, but I didn’t regret the spider. Some are wild, some are bad, and some are evil meant to die. Fighting the boggles I’d enjoyed, because it hadn’t involved killing, but it did have a whole lot of running and fighting and kicking scaly butt. That I liked. I wouldn’t have minded doing some more of that. I’d been wrong on the trip back from South Carolina. This did beat serving up hash and waffles … except the drowning part, but other than that—I liked this shit. Look at me, the adrenaline junkie. Another brick slid into place to help rebuild the old me. “Where to?”

Leandros’s mood hadn’t improved. He could hold a grudge. I wouldn’t have thought that about him. It wasn’t very karmic. Next time I’d throw the spider, still living, over the wall at him, and I wouldn’t insult the me I couldn’t remember. Lesson learned.

“Wahanket,” he replied. “He made Salome, and he’s a mummy himself.” And why wouldn’t he be? Keep dishing out the insanity. At least I wasn’t bored. “If he knows how to infuse a dead cat with some form of life force,” he continued, “then he and Ammut may have crossed paths. Plus, they’re both ancient and of Egyptian origin.” He was in the kitchen washing a bowl and spoon I’d used to eat the Lucky Charms I’d found in the cabinet. I’d left the dishes there on purpose. Cleaning was one hobby he hadn’t mentioned, but come on. Except for my room, you could operate in here. Hopefully, scrubbing in the sink would distract him from the high levels of grimness he was radiating. Being a good brother and being lazy could go hand in hand, I was pleased to discover.

“Maybe they dated,” I offered. “Two wild and crazy kids who both liked screwing around with life forces. Can’t get a match that good online.”

“Of it all, the sarcasm was one thing you couldn’t forget.” He scrubbed harder.

I grinned. “That’s amnesia-proof.” Not to mention, the thicker I laid it on, the easier it was to convince him and the others and myself that I wasn’t as lost as I’d been—and I wasn’t. Some things were slightly familiar, the little things that squatted on one brain cell, the people-only dreams—the two genuine memories of which I’d caught the barest fragment. I didn’t have myself or my life back yet. I had found one or two bread crumbs, but the forest was thick and the path turned out of sight.

Lost, but trying my best to get back home, and trying not to let it show how being lost felt—like falling and falling and seeing glimpses as you went. All the stories Leandros and Goodfellow told me … I couldn’t connect with them. The flashes of memory I’d had, that I felt. I knew them—knew they were real. What people were telling me, though, didn’t trigger any further memories as I’d hoped. The stories seemed as if they were missing something. They were off or wrong, or maybe I was the one who was off, but when I heard them, they didn’t feel like anything other than something that had happened to someone else. Not to me.

“Maybe your mummy can tell me why the spiders like me so much,” I offered. “That one was number six. Pretty good for someone not in the exterminating business, especially if you count them by pounds.”

“You did kill a nest of four of them. The fifth could’ve been part of the nest and followed you.” He put the bowl and spoon away, slamming the drawer. The washing and drying hadn’t been enough to let him swim out of that mood yet. I should’ve eaten five more bowls. “This spider no doubt wanted payback. It’s a frequent complication. Those who have killed anything that crosses their path can become inconveniently vengeful when something kills one of their own.” Much like Leandros himself did.

“They don’t get that occupational hazard deal?”

“No, they do not. Irksome, I know.” He moved from the kitchen and tossed me my jacket from the couch. “And this is neither a closet nor a coatrack, nor has it ever been.”

“I have amnesia. Cut me some slack,” I protested as I slipped the jacket on, feeling the comfortable weight of metal fall into place. I’d scrubbed the leather down when we’d gotten home to get rid of the canal smell. It didn’t hurt it any. The leather had been plenty distressed long before that wipe down.

“Laziness and sarcasm—now two things Nepenthe venom cannot affect.” He was already wearing his own weapon-concealing long coat. “Zip up your jacket. It’s a fair trip to the museum.”

I groaned. Brain damaged or not, I knew I didn’t want to see some dusty old relics or equally dusty and evil-minded mummies who hung about the place. Nonetheless, see them both, I did. The fact that the mummy ended up set on fire …

Completely not my fault.

Someone Leandros knew managed to sneak us past security at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art by the devious and cunning method of having someone walk us through the metal detectors and snap her fingers at the guard who moved toward us when the beep beep beep filled the air. Snap. Point. Bad dog. Go. Sit. Her name was Sangrida Odins-something. She was big, blond, and, had she been wearing a metal bra, she could’ve taken out a tank. She also was a monst—She wasn’t human. If I’d been pushed to the wall on it, I would’ve guessed Valkyrie. She looked like Thor from the comic books, only with breasts … and maybe more muscle.

She aimed an annoyed flap of her hand at the detectors, explaining it was for an ancient gemstone and jewelry traveling exhibit. I understood her lack of enthusiasm for jewelry. She’d probably much rather have a nice gut-stabbing spear than a bracelet.

Leandros introduced her as the director of the museum. I nodded and kept my eyes off her as much as possible while he asked in low tones as we walked if she’d had any trouble from Ammut or the spiders. If she caught any of what she considered inappropriate looks from me, I knew—in my bones I knew—she’d stomp me to death with her size-twelve sensible-heel shoe. And there was no way it would take more than one stomp.

Sangrida said they had had no trouble at the museum nor had she had any at home, but she would alert us if she did. As she unlocked a door to the basement, she also stated she wanted to thank us again for handling the museum’s small difficulty before. I waited until the door shut behind us and Leandros and I had started down the stairs before I asked, “What kind of small difficulty did Wonder Woman there have that she couldn’t handle by herself?”

“A cannibalistic serial killer with a body count of near seven hundred. He rose from his own fifteenth-century ashes to eat whomever he could find and hang dead bodies in trees,” he replied, as offhandedly as if we’d simply dropped by one time to shoo a homeless person out of the souvenir shop.

“You do that on purpose, don’t you? You and that puck,” I accused with a growl. “You love screwing with my head and trying to scare the shit out of me.” I was tempted to give that blond braid of his a hard pull to let him know my leg was feeling just as pulled. “Making things sound worse than they are. Like Goodfellow freaking me out with that gods and goddesses thing when Ammut is just another monster. And you wonder why I tried to stab him with a fork. Now you’re doing the same damn thing.”

“No. Goodfellow enjoys that, but as for me?” There was a glimmer of his serious gaze over his shoulder as he went down several more steps, pulling ahead of me. Longer legs, the bastard. “The truth is enough. I’m sure you’ve noticed the bite on your chest.”

The bite? Holy shit. That enormous scar that looked like someone with a big mouth and a bigger appetite had tried to make me lunch? “That was him? He did that? He tried to turn me into a buffet?” I gritted my teeth. “Before he killed me? He couldn’t kill me first and then eat me? That’s just fucking rude. Tell me he’s dead and tell me he cried like a goddamn baby when he went.”

“He’s dead. Permanently this time.” He took another step. “Very permanently.”

“Good. I hope we got paid a shitload for that one. Because, you know, being eaten and all, I think we deserved a fat paycheck for that.”

“Could we change the subject?” The demand was abrupt and sharply edged.

Curious, I took the steps faster to keep up with him. “Why? What happened to that shared-past stuff? You know me, I know you. History. I thought we were bonded through blood, family, fighting side by side. All that. Follow me to the ends of the earth, hairy bare feet, ring, volcano. Mordor, here we come. Epic bromance.”

He stopped, but he didn’t turn to look at me. He simply … stopped. After a few seconds I thought again about tugging on the braid. Ding-dong. Anyone home? But before I could, he said, “Blood doesn’t always mean family. Sometimes it only means blood. As in how much you lost, how you nearly died, and how it was by the barest chance we found a way to save you.”

And we didn’t talk about that—watching a brother almost die on you. He’d nearly seen it again last night. Leandros was my brother before he was anything else in this world. If you knew where to look, you could see it in his pelting me with a candy bar and stealing pretzels for me from the dead cat. Or searching for me days without sleep because a brother did not lose a brother. Ever. If you had to go to Hell itself to bring him back, then that was what you would do. Memory or observation, either way, it was true about Leandros. Talking about it made him relive it and reliving it—that was obviously bad, and the canal thing last night couldn’t have helped. It hadn’t done me any good, I knew that. But another rule in the Good Brother Handbook—you don’t hurt your brother. Not sincerely. Not outside atomic wedgie range.

“So … Wahanket’s a mummy, huh?”

The stiff spine unlocked, the shoulders relaxed, and we were moving again. “A mummy, yes, but a mummy of a human? No, I don’t think so. And Robin won’t tell us, which means he doesn’t know either. He can keep a secret if he wants to, but—”

“He never wants to?” I snorted.

“Precisely.” The glance over the shoulder this time was more amused. “Sangrida would probably pay us to evict him from the museum basement, but the destruction wouldn’t be worth the payoff. Now, watch out for the cats. Salome might be the pick of the litter, but she wasn’t the only one in it.”

Great. More dead cats. Salome’s compadres. If I had to take one of those out, assuming I could take one of those out, would the puck’s cat want revenge as the spider had? Damn. It was too bad Ms. Thor couldn’t have gotten me and a flamethrower past security.

Past the basement there was another basement. Subbasement. Basement squared. Whatever you wanted to call it, it meant a lot of goddamn stairs. “I don’t like exercise,” I grumbled.

“I know.”

We were wending our way through stacks and boxes and glass cases so dusty you couldn’t see what they held. Treasure? Gold? Something sharp like an ancient dagger? That last thought had me stopping to rub at the grime to take a look. I didn’t like exercise, but I did like weapons. “It’s boring,” I went on, disappointed. Tiny carven bits of rock. No daggers.

“So you’ve said many times. Many, many, many times.”

Many, many times. Ninja-know-it-all. “Have I ever said,” I asked casually, “there’s a dead koala bear on the ceiling that’s about to bite your head off?”

His head whipped back as he looked up, his sword out and ready, but I’d already nailed it in the chest as it plummeted down. The shot knocked it ahead of us into the shadows of boxes stacked eighteen feet high. “Winnie was gunning for your ass.” I chambered another round. I knew better than to think I’d killed it with one shot. It was already dead. Predead. Undead. Whatever. I’d most likely just pissed it off. “You should always look up. Even while you’re bitching at me. The worst things come from there, and people never fucking look.”

Wolves, spiders, furry mummies—that was nothing. Bad things, worse things—the absolute fucking worst came from above; it didn’t matter if I couldn’t put a name or a memory to them right now. I still knew. You didn’t stick your hand into a fire, and you always looked up.

Or be the one looking down.

Living with one whispering voice in my head was bad enough, but two was getting to be too damn much.

I shook my head, a sliver of worry spiking through me. “And you’re not just ‘people.’ You should know better.” He should. He did, but he was distracted—by me. That had to stop.

“Whoops, here he comes again.” I aimed at the form lunging out of the darkness, sputtering candlelight eyes, tawny fur here and there in lonely tufts peeking through its tightly bandaged frame. The ears, nose, and mouth full of non-koala bear fangs weren’t bandaged, though. “It’s kind of cute.” Except for the barracuda teeth implanted in its jaws. I lowered the Desert Eagle. “I’ll feel bad if we kill it. Piglet, Christopher Robin, they’d never get over it.”

Niko skewered it with his katana in midleap. It hissed, snapped, and tried to pull itself closer using its much longer than average talons to grasp the metal and heave. What was it about mummification that made everything remotely lethal on the thing get so damn much bigger?

I glanced down at the front of my jeans and considered. Nah. There were bound to be complications.

“Except for incinerating it, I doubt we could kill it even if we wanted to.” He raised his voice. “Wahanket, we have business with you. Call off your pet before I dice it into a hundred pieces. They can bounce about all they want then, but I don’t think they’ll accomplish much.”

“Pooh hater,” I muttered under my breath.

“Winnie-the-Pooh was not a koala—why am I even arguing about this with you?” He pointed the blade at me as the impaled mummified guard bear continued to thrash and hiss. “This creature could kill you as easily as one of those spiders. Keep that in mind.”

“You mean the six spiders I killed? Really. That easy, huh?” I grinned. “You’re pissed because you missed it, hanging up there. Big bad ninja missed it. Hey, do we keep tabs on things like this? Is that a brother thing? As in it’s my six spiders and one rabid undead Pooh to your … um … nothing? Nothing, right? Did I miscount?”

I couldn’t see the exact color of them down here, the lights were dim—the bare minimum, but I could see the tug-of-war behind his eyes. One side was, best guess, hit your brother with the mummified killer koala bear. The other side, which I’d have laid money on pulling ahead, wasn’t nearly as forgiving as that.

“Sooo … we don’t keep count?” I concluded.

“Wahanket!”

Damn, Leandros could get the volume up there when he wanted. Where had all that Zen gone?

There was a long sigh, a hot breeze over distant sands, and finally, “I am here.”

“Here” was two narrow corridors over and five rows down. There a space was cleared for what looked like a wooden Egyptian reclining couch—as far as I could tell. It had a King Tut look to it. That was what I apparently used to classify old Egyptian things, and I had no problem with that. It was a good system in my book, especially as it didn’t involve reading actual books about what ancient Egyptians used for furniture before IKEA came along. There was also a computer, a television nicer than the one we had, several mounds of smaller electronics scattered about, a fucking Wii, if you could believe that, and a metal table littered with sharp instruments and blood—old.

But once it had been new.

It was hideous. I could picture … I could remember … cats. Dead cats. Completely dead and being cut up. Couldn’t mummify without cutting, could you? The smell of it. The smell of fear and spilled urine and guts … Monsters kill, monsters murder, and, given the chance, some monsters do a great deal worse.

Wahanket was a monster, no waivers for good behavior, and I hated him. The feeling was sharp and cold, and I knew it was right.

Righteous. Both voices were a choir on that one.

The growl in my chest rose up in my savage smile as I saw the claws of a great lizard where one hand should’ve been. “I did that, didn’t I? You pissed me off. You fucked with me, and I didn’t much like it.” The specifics I didn’t have yet, only the taste of the memory, but the fact was solid and true. Sometimes you didn’t have to remember to simply know. I took a step closer. I’d done that, and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I took another step.

No, I wouldn’t mind at all.

A hand landed on my shoulder and held me back. “Wait, Cal. If he has information, we need it.”

Wahanket wasn’t the mummy of a human being, but l couldn’t have told the difference, except for the scales and claws of his replaced hand. Resin-stained bandages cracked with his every movement. His nose was a dark cavity, his teeth stripped of gums and blackened, a scrap of leather revealed to be his tongue when those teeth parted. A mummy so disgusting and unnatural that Salome and the bear in comparison could be plucked off a toy store shelf. They all did share the same eyes, a wavering, undying glow.

“Why do you come here?” He didn’t bother with my talk of his hand or how I’d been responsible. With his other hand he gestured, joints creaking, and the bear wriggled off Niko’s blade to land on the table where it had been made, turning to hiss and keep us in view. At least it had been long dead before Wahanket had gotten at it, not like the cats, dug up from some old boxed exhibit down here. One stuffed koala bear meant for educational purposes turned into a killer Teddy with no interest in eucalyptus leaves whatsoever. “And with nothing to offer in trade?”

“One of the last times we traded, you tried to shoot my brother with his own gun. That covers our tab indefinitely, I’ve decided.” A hand swatted the back of my head, a daily event, I was learning. No wonder it had felt familiar when Miss Terrwyn had done the same, as it had its roots here. “As for you, little brother, trading guns to homicidal mummies for information is not a good idea. An obvious statement, but one that escaped you at the time.”

As I rubbed the back of my head with one hand, my other was in my jacket searching for something appropriate for the situation—that situation making Wahanket unavailable for all future trading activities. He was a monster even among other monsters—strike one; Niko said he’d tried to shoot me sometime in the fuzzy past—strike two; and I didn’t like him in so many goddamn ways—strike three. Plenty of reasons, although the “not liking him” one was more than enough for me.

The swat I’d gotten on the head was doubled to be felt through the leather of my jacket covering the back of my shoulder. I growled again but let my hand drop. Niko wanted information. I could wait. Once he had it, then I could kill Wahanket, and we’d both be happy. Win-win. I didn’t need the warning tickling the back of my skull.

Monstermonstermonster.

Blackened teeth snapped together, but Wahanket gave in without argument while laying a soothing claw on the back of the hissing Disney reject. “Very well. I can be generous when I wish. What is it you want to know?”

“Of Ammut, and don’t claim you know nothing, you desiccated depravity. If anything, you are one and the same kind, only you are far weaker than she is. She is a god and you’re nothing more than a killer of cats hiding in a basement, the lowest of cockroaches fearing the light.” If this was Niko buttering up an informant, I wished I’d washed my own cereal bowl that morning.

Wahanket … Hadn’t I once called him Hank? There’d been a stupid cowboy hat he’d worn. He’d seemed harmless then. He’d … I blinked and whatever I’d been thinking was gone. It slithered away into the corner of my mind, out of sight but waiting. It was coming back. The cats. The hand. Slowly and playing hide-and-seek, but it was all coming back, the memories. Me.

“A god? She is no god. She can but steal life. I can give”—his claws stilled on the back of the ragged beast of his creation—”as well as take.” The light disappeared in the eye sockets of the bear and it fell stiffly onto his side. It was the same as it was before he had done his work on it—dead. Defaced and definitely less educational, but dead.

“If you’re her equal, why aren’t you aboveground killing vampires, Wolves, lamia, and whatever else she can gather with her spiders?” Niko asked. I saw the yellow eyes of a cat crouched on the crates behind him, but Salome’s brother or sister in undeath was content to watch. Maybe it didn’t want to end up like the bear. Or maybe it liked Salome more than the mummy that had killed it before raising it from the dead.

“I have spent more years than you can imagine taking and giving lives. I am older than the pharaohs, older than Egypt or any pyramid. I knew the Nile when it was only a trickle of water and I have existed long enough to know there is no thrill to be had any longer, none that I haven’t tasted. Save one.” The tendons of his neck stretched and split as he turned his head to take in the computer.

“If you wish to know of Ammut, now she cares for higher nests as opposed to warm dens. She likes to view her kingdom, but I have my window into endless kingdoms. I do not need what she needs. I can sustain myself without feeding. I am beyond that. If she were as powerful as I, then she could do the same. If she does not feed, she will starve within a month. Pathetic. I have heard of deaths that could be caused by her, but if she is here, I cannot say for sure. We come from the same place, but we are not the same kind. We are not connected. We are not”—the claws of one hand curled tight—”sociable creatures, either of us.” It was funny how “sociable” could sound as if he’d like to skin her alive and reupholster his King Tut sofa. “She would not come here to me. I know not where in this world that she now perches.”

“She likes to perch while you like to hide from your shadow like Punxsutawney Phil. Is that right?” I asked with a sneer that had a mind of its own.

The distant glimmer in his skull switched its regard from the computer to me. The glow, hepatitis yellow, brightened. Sometimes bright means cheerful; sometimes it means a heightened interest—either good or bad; and sometimes it’s the blaze of sheer fury. His head jerked forward toward me with the same quick action of a striking snake. “What have you done?” His eyes were so bright, it was as painful to look at as staring into the sun. “What have you become? How have you let someone else steal what should be mine?” His teeth snapped and parted to let through a sound like nothing I’d ever heard. It damn sure put the hissing of a dead bear to shame. “I have bided my time, waiting for you to ripen, and now you are barely half of what you were, barely worth taking at all. What have you done?”

Mummies could move faster than any spider when they wanted, faster than a half-grown boggle. Wahanket was a hurricane-force wind and I was the palm tree that went down before it. Long, thin fingers and a lizard’s talons wrapped around my neck, cutting off my air instantly. “It was mine, and you lost it, you worthless sack of skin. It was mine. Itwasmine. Itwasmine. Mineminemine.”

It was getting dark fast and I didn’t think that had anything to do with the natural gloom down here. You didn’t have to choke someone for minutes, unless you were an amateur. Less than fifteen seconds of pressure on the carotid arteries would have your victim out cold. Out cold and on a dissection table. Of all the memories I’d lost, that couldn’t have been one of them. Of course not.

The blackness spread and I couldn’t see Wahanket anymore, but I didn’t need to see to get a hand inside my jacket. My thoughts were getting hazy, but I didn’t need them to choose the right weapon. I only needed instinct, and instinct was all over this.

Monster.

Cat killer.

Motherfucking mummified asshole.

Instinct chose one of my backup Desert Eagles, the one having been lost in the canal. Instinct pulled the trigger. It was a few seconds later when blood made its way back to my brain and I could see again that I found out instinct had been cock-blocked. The round that should’ve shattered Wahanket’s skull had hit nothing. Niko must have kicked him off me, because the mummy was on his back several feet away with a katana skewering him to the floor. But to judge from his thrashing, strong for a pile of bones and jerky, the blade wasn’t going to hold Wahanket forever. The man who’d turned him into a temporary shish kebab didn’t strike me as that concerned. His hand disappeared inside his duster and reappeared with a can of lighter fluid. I hadn’t asked about it when we’d stopped and bought it on the way. If I asked about everything I didn’t know or understand right now, I would never shut up. I was going with a mostly wait-and-see policy until I was back to normal.

I had to say, I liked what I was seeing.

Niko sprayed the mummy from head to toe and with one flick of his thumb set him on fire. The flailing redoubled and the cursing started. I sat up. “What about your sword?”

There was a dismissive shrug. “It’s not one of my favorites. I came prepared. You never know when Wahanket will have useful information or not, the same as you never know if he’ll go from mildly cooperative to wildly homicidal.” He held down a hand to me and pulled me to my feet.

A lot of people seemed to be taking my amnesia personally—the Wolves, the boggles, and now this piece of shit. “What was he talking about? That I’m only half of what I was?” I rubbed at my throat, but it was in one piece other than the scabbed spider bite. I owed that to Leandros, who was as fast as he’d been when disarming me in Nevah’s Landing—as fast as I had the strong feeling that he always was.

“He can take life forces like Ammut, even if they’re not the same. Perhaps a meal for these kinds of predators includes it all: your life, your memories, your skills, your emotions. And you most definitely do not care for Wahanket, the same as he does not care for you.” That was fairly obvious, I thought as Niko went on. “He might have been waiting for your … dislike of him to peak before he tried to drain you.”

“The cherry on the top of a Cal sundae, huh?” Niko appeared to have no problem accepting that guess, and Wahanket was one of a kind—puzzling over it would probably be pointless, although it still didn’t explain the Wolves and boggles. I was about to bring that up when I was distracted by Wahanket—not by what he was doing, but by what he wasn’t doing.

The mummy’s cursing was indecipherable, a language I didn’t know—if he was as old as he claimed, then one that no one knew. “Shouldn’t he be screaming? If you set me on fire, don’t think less of my manliness—muy macho and all, but I’d scream like a banshee.” He was burning fast and furiously without a hint of smoke. Too bad, if you were going to eat old meat, it was better smoked.

“I doubt it hurts much. His body is dead. No living nerve endings to register pain. This is more of a temper tantrum and hopefully, once burned to a crisp, he’ll be less physically capable of attacking us in the future—the near future at least. There’s no need to kill him, if we actually could kill him. And we do need informants. He’s no more homicidal than the rest—as long as you show some sense and don’t come alone.”

Being set on fire would only slow him down and not even permanently? Well, damn, let’s see if we could slow his ass down a little more that that. “I’ll be back.”

“Good idea,” Niko commented. “Find a fire extinguisher. We don’t want this to spread. Watch out for the cats.” I had every intention, but I still thought the cats were more on our side than Wahanket’s.

When I came back, I tossed him the extinguisher, which had actually been his thought and not mine, with one hand and hoisted the fire axe with the other. I hadn’t forgotten my prechoking opinions. Tried to shoot me once and strangle me this time. Monster. Cat killer. Wannabe murderer of me. Motherfucking asshole.

Oh yeah … the last one.

I just didn’t like him. Best reason of all.

He was more sizzling than flaming now. I barely felt the heat as I chopped off his arms and legs. Niko hadn’t mentioned it when reading me his mental list of what entertained baby brother Cal—reading, parties, yeah … lame. No, this—this was what I did for fun. And, goddamn, it was fun.

On the beach when I’d woken up, I’d known I was a killer, but I’d convinced myself along the way that I was a good killer. A noble Boy Scout of killers. But there were no good killers. There were only killers … period, and this bullshit about do the job but don’t enjoy the kill? The road to Hell … The slippery slope; why had I been embracing those idiotic cliches days ago?

What’s worse than killing for a living? Being bored killing for a living. Hell, yes, enjoy your job. Love your damn job. I was on the side of good, right? I killed monsters, kept people safe and all that crap. Why shouldn’t I enjoy it?

“A happy monster killer is an efficient monster killer,” I told Wahanket with the last chop as the yellow eyes continued to glare at me from a blackened, burned skull. He’d gone quiet, the cursing done, but that stare told me I was on his list—forever and top of. Numero uno. That was fair. He was certainly on mine.

“We wouldn’t want me to lose my edge, would we, pal? Practice makes perfect.” I pushed his arm a few feet from his torso. “As for thinking I’m not all I was, I’m catching up and quick. Good thoughts for you to think about while you put yourself back together. By the time you do that, I’ll be myself again and won’t we have some good times then?” I kicked his other arm even farther away. “Hope you have some superglue around, shithead.” I dropped the axe beside him and smiled. It felt good, that smile. Satisfied. So much so that I considered picking the axe back up and turning the mummy into some even smaller pieces. Yep, very, very satisfied.

Niko, oddly, looked anything but.

“Fun and games with Wahanket over already?” Robin, who was sitting on our apartment couch when we arrived home, checked his watch. “That was quick, quicker than Ammut trying to have Cal swimming with the fishes like mobsters of old, and, as ‘quick’ so very often means, I’m guessing you came away unsatisfied.”

“He has a key?” I jammed an elbow in Niko’s ribs. “You have to be kidding me. And you just installed the new lock this morning.”

“Kid, I was picking locks before the human race invented them … or reinvented them. Blatant patent infringement, stealing from our kind.” He stretched and propped his feet on the coffee table. “Well? Wahanket?”

“You’re wrong there. I came away very satisfied.” I grinned—it felt a little dark and a little nasty, but that was okay. Things were coming back. Feelings, no full-on memories yet, but the apartment seemed more familiar—I felt like a driver who had missed the curve but was driving over the median and seconds away from getting back on the right path. No, not the right path—the correct path.

My path.

“He cooperated then?”

“Nope, not worth a damn, which made it massively more entertaining.” I went to the refrigerator and got a beer. There was only one and as it wasn’t made of soy, I was assuming it was mine.

“Mmm. That’s unfortunate, but Wahanket is who he is. We’ve always known that. We’ve always accepted that. It would be a mistake to think he could change or should change.” When I turned back, I saw the fox’s eyes settled not on me, but on Leandros, and there was an odd emphasis not on Wahanket’s name but on the word “change.”

I shrugged. “Then you’d be wrong. He has changed. He’s now a scorched Wahanket puzzle made of six pieces. Not a complicated puzzle, but one I’m not putting back together.” I took a drink. “Especially as I spent the time taking him apart.”

“Mmm,” Robin repeated, running a hand down the front of his silk shirt. I’d noticed him do that before and was now having a deja vu shimmer that it was a habit of his. I checked my weapons; he checked his clothes. “Spiders and mummies. None are spared your wrath. Tell me you didn’t do it with a fork.”

Shaking my head, I took another swallow and flopped on the couch next to him. “Better. Axe. And I’ve been thinking about that Wolf at the bar. I have no idea why I’d felt bad about that. She’d tried to kill me. What was I supposed to do? Pet her furry little head and tell her home? Home, girl! Drag her out to a pet cemetery and have her cremated with a shiny brass urn, bow, and framed dog treat? Jesus. My first and last ever sentimental moment.” She’d been a killer—through and through. Who cared how she’d gotten that way? Born wild, born to hunt, you still made your choices and suffered the consequences. Evolution was no free ride.

But is there anything wrong with free rides?

Things were going great, working out, and I had no time for more voices whispering in my head, especially when the two already there kept contradicting each other. I ignored them. Basically, as they were my voice times two, I was ignoring myself. That was fine by me. I finished my beer. “Maybe I could try a shift at the bar. I’m getting some stuff back up here.” I tapped my temple. “It might be … fun.” A different type of amusement than I would’ve considered this morning when I’d asked Leandros what I did for that sort of thing, but fun all the same. “Mummy fun.”

Wahanket, the boggles, Wolves; I could protect myself against them all, but I could also do more whether I had to or not. I didn’t have to kill. I could … play. Make them sorry. Didn’t they deserve it? Didn’t every one of them who’d scorned me or tried to kill me deserve a little of their own back?

Scorned me—why had they scorned me? Did it matter? For being human. For kicking their asses? For keeping monsters in line.

The one voice laughed. Monsters? There are no such things as monsters. Not to you.

It didn’t make any difference, none of it—the whys, the reasons, the schizophrenic confusion. It didn’t matter, because I was on my way. I was coming back all right.

Coming home …

I was on the path and turning that last curve in the woods, almost in sight of home. A dark path, but I liked the dark. I controlled the dark. Then there were times that it controlled me.

Fair is fair. Share and share alike.

I felt a sudden spasm in my stomach. Shit. My hand resting on my knee was shadowed where a shadow shouldn’t be—like that dark film covering my face in the Halloween picture. Leandros and Goodfellow didn’t say anything. They didn’t see it; they couldn’t see it. If they had, they would’ve said something—something like Wake up, Cal. You’re having a nightmare. But it wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t a nightmare. Nightmares never are nightmares when you want them to be.

I held my hand out under the brightest light by the couch and it was still there, that murky film. The Cal of the worst day ever … pathetic, lame excuse. The Cal of the Halloween picture with ice in his eyes and a flat expression that said killing was nothing but a hobby. You—in the sights of my gun? Sorry—you’re nothing but a pastime. You didn’t come close to ranking as personal. Hope you had a littermate who cared you died, because the only thing I cared about was making sure your blood stayed off my new sneakers. Your blood? That was easy to come by. But good shoes? Much harder.

Shit. Shitshitshit. It hurt. Why the hell did it hurt? “My head …” It wasn’t my head, but I couldn’t say where exactly it was. I knew what it was, though, not that it made any sense.

It was my soul; my damn soul hurt.

“I feel wrong. Something bad is coming.” They were stupid, overly dramatic words I couldn’t stop myself from saying. I hid my shadowed hand under my leg, sandwiched by the couch cushion. They couldn’t see it, but I could. Why had I said that? Something bad is coming? What the hell did that mean?

Something bad is coming.

No, something gooooood.

“Wrong?” Niko echoed, the corners of his mouth tilting downward.

“Sick. I meant sick. Not right. Just a headache.” With my other hand I took the dish towel my brother handed me and wiped my suddenly sweaty face with it. It was a cold sweat, like beads of ice frozen to my skin. “Why did I do that to the mummy?” Because he deserved it and I’d liked it. I’d slipped my leash and let myself like it. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I’d chopped him up and I’d enjoyed every second of it. Whether it killed him or not, how could that be right?

How could it be wrong?

Jesus. If you were going to have voices, your own voices, screwing with your head, they ought to have the fucking decency to agree with each other at least once. I wiped my face again. “Why didn’t I just leave him like he was? Why’d I go that far?” I asked it aloud, to myself but not to the others.

“You see?” Leandros said to Goodfellow quietly.

Before I could ask what he was meant to see, Goodfellow stood suddenly. “If you’re sick, then I had best be off. I can’t afford to come down with some ancient, dusty disease you picked up in that equally ancient and dusty basement. I have places to go, things to do, peris to puck.” He put on his coat. “I don’t suppose you had a chance to tell Wahanket about my monogamous ways before you roasted and chopped him into Mongolian barbecue? Don’t bother with excuses. My condition is everyone’s concern.” He tossed a handful of business cards on the table. They were green with bronze-colored lettering. Trying to cover up my confusion, reaching for casual, I picked one up with a hand that wanted to shake. I didn’t let it, and read the lettering aloud. “‘Robin Goodfellow, Monogamite, established 2010.’” Beneath that was a phone number.

“What’s the—”

“Suicide Hotline,” Robin answered before I had a chance to finish. “I’ve heard their call volume has increased tenfold.” He bowed his head in a solemn tilt. “I do what I can.” Then he was heading for the door. “Niko, I left you a few things as you’ve not been eating much while we looked for your wayward, apron-wearing brother. Enjoy. I’ll see the two of you later. I just have time to surprise Ishiah before he heads to work.” He paused as he opened the door, his eyebrows rising as he smirked. “Forget mice and men. The best-laid plans of vice and sin never go astray.”

He added more seriously, “But other things often do, well intentioned or not. Something to keep in mind.”

As the door slammed, I said, “There’s a lot I didn’t understand with that whole conversation and a lot I wish I hadn’t understood. Maybe I’ll skip the Ninth Circle.” There was no way I was going to the bar. Halloween Cal waited at the bar. I wasn’t ready to be Halloween Cal. At that moment I wasn’t ready to be any kind of Cal. “You don’t think Goodfellow and my boss have done it on the bar, do you? Where I serve drinks? Gah. I think I need a nap to wash my brain.” That was good. That sounded offhand, not on the edge of losing it at all … Never mind the sweat still soaking the back of my neck, the pain, the sickness so sharp I’d have left my own body to escape it if I could.

Leandros was already in the kitchen area, investigating the bags Goodfellow had left behind. He pulled out containers of yogurt, soy cheese, and various other inedibles, but then he tossed me a boxed tube of toothpaste. Minty fresh. Chocolate minty fresh. “You took your own with you to South Carolina and judging from the sounds of gagging coming from the bathroom last night, mine doesn’t meet your approval.”

“Seaweed is apparently not my dental care of choice. Hard to believe, I know.” I pushed up off the couch, steadying myself while he watched from the corner of his eye.

“Are you all right?” He tried to sound casual too, but he didn’t pull it off well. Not with me. Leandros … No … Niko. Niko—he’d always hated lying, all the lying we’d had to do as kids when we had run from … from …

The pain sharpened, leaving only thoughts of bed and collapse. “Just a headache, that’s all,” I repeated, my lie not much better than his. I avoided his face and a concern as sharp as the sickness in me and headed back for my bedroom. I didn’t stop by the bathroom … until Niko spoke up as I passed it.

“Chili cheese dog with extra onions.” That would’ve been the vendor five blocks from the museum. “I’m surprised your breath alone didn’t do to Wahanket what lighter fluid and a lighter did. Brush.”

I was barely on my feet, but I didn’t argue. That would only lead to more time wasted before I made it to my bed. I also knew bitching about it would result in an educational beat-down on the sparring mats or toothpaste squirted into an unsuspecting body orifice. I chose to brush my teeth. I wasn’t afraid of my brother, but I was aware of his limits—none that I knew of.

None that I remembered.

Memories, feelings, pain, fear—fast, coming so damn fast. I was close—God, I was right there, as if it all were on the tip of my tongue. It was, surprisingly, not the best taste in the world. Not sweet, almost bitter with a copper hint of blood. Should coming home taste of blood? I brushed quickly, but extra hard. Chocolate and mint had it all over seaweed, even if the mint had a helluva tingle. If that didn’t erase onion breath and the metallic taste of a brand-new penny, nothing would. Then I made it across the hall to my bed. I didn’t stagger, but it was close. I could feel my brain bunched like a fist, one that was getting ready to relax into an open hand. I had every expectation that a little sleep would finally reset my brain and when I woke up, it would be back.

All of it.

And fighting it was senseless. There’d be no more wondering who I was. No wondering if I was Halloween Cal. I was thinking bad things, wrong things, because all the knots unraveling in my brain were confusing me; that was all. I wasn’t wasting any more time on the imaginary right and wrong of them. I’d spent only days in this life. How the hell could I know right from wrong in this bizarre world in just days? When I woke up, I would be who I was meant to be. No more doubts, no more freaky voices or hallucinations of shadows that didn’t exist. I’d had enough, and I didn’t mind telling myself or my brain so. I yanked the covers up and rolled over as the afternoon light spilled down from above. I closed my eyes and yawned. The pain, wherever it was, head or heart, was suddenly fading, slipping away like sand between my fingers—Egyptian sand. The sickness and pain disappeared along with the last grain to fall. God, that was better.

I was coming home, all the way this time, I thought, foggy and dim.

For better or worse? I didn’t know. I’d find out soon enough.

The next time I opened my eyes, I’d know.

The next time I opened my eyes …