Deathwish

8

I woke up to the sound of Cal vomiting. I pulled on my shirt and was in the hall in seconds. Robin, Cherish, and that Xolo creature were sleeping in the upper part of the two-story loft. I’d taken Seamus’s room, while Cal had the couch and Promise first watch. Now Promise stood outside the closed bathroom door, looking bewildered and not a little worried.

“I woke him for his watch. He was fine. We talked . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, setting a hand against the wall beside the door. “And then he said he was sick.” Truly confused, she shook her head. “Humans. You get sick. Does he need a doctor?”

Humans got sick, but Cal had only once—when he was small. At the time, I’d thought it was stomach flu, but as time passed more and more I was beginning to think he’d drunk something toxic while I wasn’t watching him closely enough. A lethal dose of Sophia’s whiskey, perhaps—something that would’ve killed a completely human child, because he’d never been sick before or again. An advanced immune system; the only good thing to ever come out of an Auphe genetic inheritance.

And she, our doting mother, had so many bottles lying about that it was impossible to dispose of them all. Not that I hadn’t tried . . . for Cal’s sake. But Sophia had been a lost cause long before I was born.

“No,” I said immediately. “No doctor.” No doctor to spot what shouldn’t exist in the mundane world.

“Yes, I forgot.” She stepped back as I turned the knob and opened the door.

“Wake Robin for watch,” I suggested as I stepped through.

“No. I’ll wait. I couldn’t sleep anyway.” The worry deepened. “We were but talking,” she murmured, with a touch of guilt in her voice. It was a guilt I’d have to worry about later.

I closed the door behind me. “Cal?”

Done for the moment, he had his forehead resting on the toilet seat. He turned to look at me, sweat-drenched strands of black hair plastered to his jaw and forehead. “She never saw it,” he said hoarsely. “It was right behind her and she never saw it. Oh, Jesus.” He threw up again, more dry heaving than anything else, and when he was done, I was there with a wet washcloth and a white tube.

“You know it’s a crappy day when you’re using a dead vampire’s toothpaste. Ultrafright—it figures.” He gave me a sickly grin to go with the bad joke as he washed his face, avoiding his reflection as always, then put an inch of paste on his finger and started scrubbing his teeth with a grimace.

I waited until he was done spitting and rinsing before asking, “What didn’t she see?” The glance he slid me was so lost and glassy, I hated to ask again, but I did. “What didn’t Promise see? You were talking to her, you became sick. What didn’t she see?”

“No wonder they want me. No wonder they’re so goddamn sure I’m the answer to everything. I am.” He threw the tube of toothpaste in the sink and slammed both fists against the bathroom mirror, the lost quality turning to fury. The mirror cracked, but stayed in one piece. That wasn’t true of the glass surrounding the shower when Cal ripped the toilet lid free and slung it. The glass flew inward, some down to the tile floor, some bouncing off the tile wall. If he’d had his combat boots on, the other wall would’ve been kicked in in several spots. As it was, he had to settle for a few deep breaths to regain control.

“Done?” I asked. I didn’t dwell on how quickly he had done all that damage—how he’d been much faster than he normally was. As fast as I was, which he never had been, and nearly as fast as the Auphe.

A hank of hair had broken free of the tie to hang down several inches past his jaw as he turned his head to stare at me. “We have to go. Just for an hour or two, but we have to go.” He moved past me, flung the door open, and was yelling Robin’s name.

It happened in a remarkably short period of time. Robin, as well as the others, was told that Cal and I were leaving. When Robin protested about what had happened to the staying together to save our lives scenario, Cal had replied, “Call my cell. One ring and I’ll make a gate. We’ll travel back. Nik and I both will. We’ll be here in seconds.” He knew how I felt about that and shot me a darkly desperate look, and I’d given a nod of agreement. Something was wrong, obviously. The sooner I found out what it was, the better. Ignorance is never bliss, it’s only ignorance—often with a less-than-tasty coating of your oblivious blood.

It’s always better to know.

And I still thought that when we sat on the outskirts of Seward Park and Cal told me what had happened. He huddled under his jacket against the cold. “I wasn’t mad.” He’d hooked his fingers through the metal of the park bench on either side of his legs and clenched them there until the skin blanched white. “I wasn’t even that pissed. Hell, I’d started it, trash talking her kid. I wasn’t mad,” he repeated, dropping his head with that still-loose piece of hair swinging low.

“You weren’t angry,” I said, though I knew better.

Weren’t angry? He was still angry.

I reached over and pulled the tie from his hair, letting the rest of the mess fall free, and put the holder in my coat pocket. “Not at Promise, who brought up feelings about your past and about who you are. Who was saying you’re a burden to me.” Which I did not expect to hear repeated—would not tolerate being repeated. Not about my brother. “But more importantly, not at Promise, who has hurt me.” I rested a hand on the back of his neck and squeezed. “There are so many layers within us, Cal. Stairs, really. Standing at the top, you were fine. Truth is truth, uncomfortable or not. But go down those stairs and on every one something is waiting. Me, Promise, you yourself—with two monsters as parents. Go down far enough and anyone who’s lived your life will find anger. You said something unkind; Promise said the same back. And then, to make matters worse . . .” I moved the hand from his neck to briskly swat his head. “You want to protect me. Ass. Rest assured, whatever happens with Promise, I can protect myself fine.”

He rubbed the back of his head, but not with much spirit. “The human half of me might know that, but the Auphe part didn’t get the e-mail. I don’t remember doing it. Swear to God, Nik. I don’t remember.”

“Of course you don’t. You didn’t do it purposefully.” I sat for a moment, trying for just the right analogy . . . one that could make him understand. “Do you see that squirrel?”

He looked up and saw it scampering in long dead leaves across the way. “Yeah. Fluffy. Cute. Whatever.”

“Watch.” I took his ponytail holder and tossed it at the rodent. It ran immediately, scuttled up the tree, and cursed me fiercely. Dye it black, and it would be a good imitation of Cal and his morning bitching. “It ran. Did you see?” Before he could respond, I asked, “What do you think a cat would’ve done? Would it have run?”

He shrugged, the wind whipping his hair. “Nah, he would pounce on it. It’s a cat thing.”

“It’s an instinct thing,” I corrected. “Humans and Auphe have instincts too. Humans get angry and they snap, turn red, maybe yell, maybe even hit . . . maybe on a very rare occasion, kill. An Auphe gets angry . . .” I inclined my head toward him.

“It always kills,” he finished slowly. “It gets angry and it always kills.”

“You can’t erase evolution.” I went after the tie and brought it back to him. “You have some Auphe instincts; there is no way to avoid that. You’re like the cat, only you didn’t pounce. You started to, a half-grown instinct drove you to, but you didn’t. And you won’t.”

“You don’t know that.” He took the tie and shoved it in his own pocket.

“I do know that,” I countered without a shred of doubt. “You could’ve kept silent and she would’ve stepped backward through the gate, but you took her hand. You closed the gate and you kept her safe. You were sleepy, annoyed, about two hours away from real consciousness, and you still ignored instinct and kept her safe. You have an unbreakable will, Cal.”

It was true. The Auphe had once broken his mind, but they had never broken his will.

He shook his head, not completely convinced. “You always think the best of me. When it comes to the Auphe part anyway. One day you’re going to be wrong, Cyrano.”

“I’m never wrong.” Completely untrue, but he needed to hear it anyway. Because he was right. I’d been wrong in the past, I’d be wrong in the future. But I would not be wrong about this. “And trust me, the last time I thought the best of you was before you spoke your first word.”

He gave a half grin. “I come by that naturally. Good old Sophia probably knew words I still don’t.”

“At least ‘mother’ was part of it. Couldn’t leave the other half off, could you?”

Not true, of course. His first word had been much shorter. He still said it every day. Like this moment.

“Nik, do we . . .” The words trailed off as he settled back against the bench, the anger visibly reduced. Still there, but faded. He exhaled, “Stupid. There’s no ‘do we,’ is there? We have to tell everybody. Hate for someone to have to die for taking the last piece of pizza.” It was a joke, yet it wasn’t, and it deserved only one thing.

“Idiot.” I swatted again. “(A) You are not going to kill anyone over artery-clogging food. (B) We tell them only if you want to.” I said it and I meant it. Without reservation.

“After what Promise did, keeping an entire family secret? You think that’s okay now? Not telling them something that important?” he asked with a skeptical curiosity. “Me being the last . . . you know.” He grimaced, but went on, “That won’t make a difference to their survival, one way or the other, but this might. And you don’t think we should tell them?”

There it was, wasn’t it?

“Just because I’m your teacher doesn’t mean I still don’t have a thing or two to learn,” I answered ruefully. “I haven’t lied to Promise about you since the entire mess first came out with Darkling, but . . . I would.” How odd I hadn’t known that about myself. I’d assumed a situation wouldn’t come along where I, the so highly principled Niko, would stoop from my pedestal of unyielding truth and honor to actually lie to someone I cared for.

I would.

Cal was my brother, but I had also raised him. My brother, my family, the one I’d protected from the moment he took his very first breath. I would tell any lie to anyone to keep him safe. Make any omission. Promise had told her lies for a different reason . . . to keep herself safe from the heartache of her failure and the blood-soaked memories of her past family. But all the lies originated in the same place. To protect. I wasn’t in a position to be her judge.

“So good enough can be good enough?” he asked.

“That makes absolutely no sense, and, yes, maybe it can.” For Promise and me—if she understood what Cal was to me and it wasn’t a burden, maybe it could be enough. I spotted a hot dog vendor setting up down the block. “Hungry yet? You can eat all the mystery meat you want, and this once I won’t say a word.”

“Really? Mustard, chili, onions, the whole nine yards? And no bitching?” He stood and dug for a few dollars in his jeans. The crumpled paper appeared and he folded the bills back and forth as he hesitated. “Nik? You’re not afraid, then? Of me?”

“Afraid of you?” I leaned back to drape an arm along the back of the bench and cross booted ankles. “I’m still waiting for your testicles to drop so we can buy you a cup for sparring. Now go eat your hot dog,” I commanded.

The glower, snarky grin, and annoyed mask he wore as armor against the world—I’d seen the making of those over the years, and I’d seen through them just as long. This time I didn’t have to. There was nothing to hide the emotion: relief, pure and strong. It was in the loosened set of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the lightening of his eyes. Then he shifted his gaze away for a second before looking back again with the armor once more firmly in place. “Just for that, you bastard, extra onions,” he promised vengefully. “Until it comes out my pores.”

“And that would be different from a normal day how?” I snorted. “Bring me back some bottled juice. And remember, just because it’s orange does not necessarily make it juice. Look at the label. Try a little of that reading thing you hear so much about.”

He was thinking of flipping me off, I knew it. But I also knew he was thinking of what had happened the last time he had. Ah, the interesting process of making a brace for a sprained finger using a Popsicle stick. Education at its finest. Grumbling under his breath, he turned and crossed the grass to the sidewalk. I put on my sunglasses against the just-risen sun and watched him go. Jeans, old cracked and worn combat boots, and a beat-up black leather jacket. Wind-tangled mop of hair and a scowl only a native New Yorker could’ve equaled. Despite what he thought, he was so human, in all the very best and worst ways there were to be human. Grit, loyalty, determination. Anger, vulnerability, fear.

Afraid of him? No. Afraid for him? Every day. Every single day.

He came back with a bottle of something purple that consisted, per label, of nearly two percent genuine fruit juice. It was effort on his part and so, against my better judgment, I drank it. The chili cheese dog was half eaten and the rest tossed to the squirrels brave enough to face the onion fumes. There weren’t many.

“You only get one bitch-free one,” I reminded him as he tossed a piece of bread with mustard toward a squirrel sitting on a brightly colored swing set. “You shouldn’t waste it.”

“I know. Just not all that hungry.” He threw the last bit and wiped his hands on his jeans. After a minute of quiet, he said, “When I opened the gate, I had a flash . . . a feeling. It was what I was thinking before, but this . . .” He shrugged. “It might confirm it. I don’t think the Auphe are done playing with us, with you guys yet. I think they still want their fun. The end game is coming. . . .” When they would kill us and take him to an existence a thousand times worse than any death. “But right now?” he continued. Rubbing a thumb along the arm of the bench, he studied the faint rust smear as if it held the secrets of the universe, before looking up at me and saying flatly, “I think they still want to play. Pick you off one at a time and let the rest of us wallow in it. But . . .”

“But?” I prodded.

“I don’t know for sure. Hey, I’m only the diluted product.” He gave a humorless grin. “Watered-down whiskey. The half-and-half of the evil empire. But still good enough for stud service. Lucky me.” He gave a minute twitch that I saw him refuse to let grow into a shudder.

I ignored it. He would’ve wanted me to. Sometimes support is all that keeps us standing, and sometimes it’s what lets us give up and fall to our knees. So instead, I snorted. “Only you could make a dairy reference melodramatic.” If that were his best guess, that’s what we’d have to rely on, because the Auphe followed no logic of battle I’d read of. They had the driving purpose of a dying race. They had obsession and sadistic madness; it was a mixture that was difficult to predict.

“Also, I’ve been thinking. . . .”

“Thinking? That’s astounding, little brother,” I interrupted, tilting my head down to peer over the top of the dark glasses. “Would you like a gold star for that? I’d hate for excellence to go unrewarded.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he repeated between gritted teeth, “maybe we should ask Delilah about Oshossi. He could be holed up in Central Park or staying someplace else and just keeping his pets there. She might know.”

Or he could simply want to put off returning to where he’d lost control and opened up a gate to hell without even realizing it. Either way, I could see the benefit. He needed time, and we could use the information. Cherish wasn’t going to go away, no matter how tempting it was to wish that she would. At least she’d made the offer to stand on her own. That had meant something to Promise.

I checked my watch. We had another hour before we’d said we’d be back, and a quick trip to Delilah’s work shouldn’t get her noticed by the Auphe. “If anyone would know his movements, it would be the Kin,” I commented. “Is she at work this early?” An extra hour wasn’t going to have Cal forgetting about what had happened, but as for distracting . . . I thought Delilah was up to the task.

“Yeah,” he tried for a grin, but as with the chili dog, he only made it halfway through. “I think they have a breakfast buffet.”

He was right. The strip club did have a breakfast buffet. I avoided it like the plague it was. We sat at a table while Delilah, not as picky in her nutritional needs, methodically made her way through an entire pound of bacon. As bouncer, she apparently ate for free. At least it was cooked. She looked at me and shook her head as she delicately snapped another piece in half and chewed. “You fight like wolf and smell like sheep. Strange.” I wasn’t a complete vegetarian, but I was close, and I suppose to a wolf I did smell less than predatory. Cal, on the other hand, must have smelled like the great stalker of pepperoni and cheeseburgers that he was. A meat and nitrate eater through and through.

When she finally finished the pile of pork, she pushed the plate away and leaned elbows on the table. “You two come here. What happened to not safe? What happened to Auphe? What happened to no sex? No sex.” Blond eyebrows lifted mockingly in Cal’s direction. “You think you are so special? You think your dick is so . . .”

I gripped Cal’s shoulder sympathetically and decided that being elsewhere for this discussion was a good idea. I rose and crossed the room, dodging tables and early clientele. The bathroom was cleaner than I would’ve given it credit for. It was barely offensive at all . . . except for the incubus. He was one of the dancers, unless the leather chaps and G-string were simply personal-preference morning wear. With an incubus, you never knew. Like his sister succubi, he had blue and silver hair. It was tied back in a long tail that rested across skin that glittered like mother-of-pearl. Makeup and dye to those who didn’t know better. Liquid black eyes took me in as he finished his business. The lascivious smile he flashed me didn’t show his snake tongue, but I knew it was there.

One might think it odd for an incubus to work in a male strip club that catered to gay men, as opposed to one for women. It wasn’t. Incubi and succubi had one priority, and that was to suck a human dry of energy. The sex of their victim didn’t particularly matter. Did it matter to the average diner if his steak came from a cow or a bull? Incubi and succubi were no different. Male or female victims, they’d weaken or kill them and move on. I wondered how many customers had dropped dead of “heart attacks” since this one had started work here.

The Vigil had their philosophy: Humans were all fair game as long as you didn’t get noticed while eating them. Cal and I had once had a philosophy as well. You don’t bother us, and we won’t kill you. When you were on the run, you didn’t have time for other people’s problems or playing hunter to lions gone man-eater. You looked after your own and kept moving. But now we’d settled. This was our home. If the occasion arose that I could make it a slightly safer place . . .

And practice was practice.

I turned and opened the bathroom door. “Delilah,” I called in a low voice, knowing her wolf ears would pick it up easily over the thumping music. “Incubus. Yours or mine?”

She waved a hand and said loudly enough for my human hearing, “He started yesterday. My day off. Idiot human boss. Bad for business. Yours.”

I turned back and closed the door behind me. The incubus’s salacious smile turned to a baring of impressively long snake fangs. He had more than the teeth; he had the quicksilver agility of a snake as well. That helped him for nearly ten seconds—which was impressive for an incubus. They didn’t often have to fight. Their prey was usually more than willing. This one, though, he was more challenge than most. The bathroom was too cramped for the katana, and I pulled my shorter wakizashi sword in one hand and my tanto knife in the other. He reared back, then jerked toward me in an attempted strike. It got him gutted for his trouble. It didn’t stop him. He slithered backward, bones suddenly liquidly malleable. He streaked up one wall and across another before hurtling through the air at me. I swung my blade. A neck parted. Practice was over. Quickly.

Disappointing.

His body continued to writhe, serpentlike, for several moments, the nearly invisible scales whispering against the tile floor. When it stopped, I cleaned the cobalt blood from my blades with paper towels, and sheathed them. As I stepped out of the bathroom, Delilah was there to lock the door and slap an out-of-order sign on it. “Full now,” she said. “Will eat for lunch.”

I had no idea if she was serious or not, and I didn’t ask. I had a thirst for knowledge, but there were some things I didn’t need or want to know. This was one of them. There was something else, however, that I was curious about. The table where we’d been sitting was now empty. “Cal?”

“Manager’s office.” Her smile wasn’t as lascivious as that of the incubus, but it was close. “Watch front door. Ten minutes.”

“This, Delilah, is my brother you’re talking so glibly about,” I said sharply, catching her ponytail in a firm grip as she started away. When she lifted her upper lip in a challenging snarl, I added levelly, “Twenty minutes. He’s had a difficult morning.”

The snarl faded as she said, amused, “You are good brother. Twenty, if he survives.”

He did, and looked a little more relaxed for it. Outside the bar, I inquired, “You did take the time to ask about Oshossi, I’m assuming. Much in the same way I’m assuming I won’t have to take you to the dojo and beat a measure of sense into you.”

“I asked,” he responded defensively, although there was a brief sliver of panic on his face as endorphin-soaked brain cells struggled for the memory. “The Kin doesn’t know anything about Oshossi. They did notice the extra wildlife in Central Park, though. So we’re one for two. But she said she’d look into it.”

“How much?” I asked.

“You saying the mind-blowing sex isn’t payment enough?” He grinned smugly.

“No, of course not. You’re a stallion,” I said blandly. “How much?”

“Two K.” Disgruntled, he put his jacket back on. “Bastard.”

“You’ll think ‘bastard’ when we start meditation exercises today,” I said, entertained by the look of distaste that crossed his face.

“Oh, Christ, just sitting there, not doing anything. Not napping or watching TV. It’s not natural.” He flagged down a taxi and gave Seamus’s address. “And it looks boring as hell. Why the hell would I want to do it?” he finished.

“It’s about control, Grasshopper,” I said, trying to keep it light. We had enough of the dark at the moment without adding to it. “Control is useful in the restraint of emotion.”

“Control,” he echoed. “Control is good.” He went silent for the duration of the drive. I was fairly sure he believed me when I said he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Opening a gate was a far cry from picking up his gun and blowing away whomever was annoying him—which he had done in the past. But they had deserved it. Still, there were easier ways to kill than a gate to Tumulus, and he knew that. Instinct . . . reflex, whatever you wanted to call it, you might not be able to erase it, but you could blunt it, redirect it, control it. Unfortunately, Cal had a lot of anger—most of it justifiable, but that it was didn’t make things any easier.

Control was the answer, at least the best one I had. No, Cal wouldn’t use his Glock or his combat knife over a loss of temper with anyone he actually cared about, but opening a gate instead wasn’t desirable either. Sooner or later something was bound to come out of one of them. Cal had told me once that the gates were two-way. You could go in or something—the Auphe—could come out. But with enough will you could hold it, you could make it one-way. He had done it once, but with this—opening them unconsciously—an Auphe might very well slip through before Cal could close it or lock it to one direction.

Cal stared out the window, hand tightly fisted in the pocket of his jacket. I could see the round outline of it. Cal knew all about control. He had it in spades, although it might not appear like it to anyone else. To anyone who caught him napping on the couch, snarling at the Ninth Circle’s patrons, or slamming a revenant’s head repeatedly against a wall until brain matter came out its ears, it might not seem that way, but every minute of every day Cal was exercising a control he wasn’t even cognizant of. His mind used it subconsciously to keep two years of his life lost, to keep it from driving him insane—literally. He himself used it on a more aware level to not kick daily multiple asses of every creature out there that mocked, scorned, or outright hated him for his Auphe half. He used it to stay in one place when running, from the police seeking Sophia and then from the Auphe, was all he had ever known. He used so much of it, in fact, that I wondered . . .

Was there any left?

When we finally stood outside Seamus’s building, Cal took several seconds to carefully scrape back every strand of hair and tie it off. Stalling. Thinking. “I think it might be best,” I offered before he could speak, “if we waited until later to worry about telling them about the gate. With Cherish and that chupacabra there—they have no need to know, even if we knew they could be trusted.”

He nodded immediately with relief. “When all this Oshossi and Auphe shit is over. Yeah, then.”

I slipped off one of my Tibetan prayer bead bracelets. I wore a double row of them on each wrist. Made of steel, they were as good at deflecting a blade as they were for meditation. I handed it to him and he stretched the mala curiously, then put it on. “Robin will think we’re going out,” he snorted.

“I’m quite sure I don’t want to know what Goodfellow thinks about anything dating related. There’s only so much depravity I can face on a daily basis.” I tapped the beads around his wrist. “It’s for meditation. Say one mantra per bead. Do the entire bracelet every hour.”

“Mantra, huh?” he said. “And what’s my mantra?”

“Whatever you want it to be.” The temperature had dropped drastically, and the sun was gone. Several scattered flakes of snow blew past, a few hitting my jaw. “It’ll work best if it’s tailored for you. A word or two or three that makes you feel calm. Safe.”

“ ‘Thermonuclear warhead’ is a mouthful.” He fingered the bracelet, then pulled the jacket sleeve down over it. “So is ‘wholesale Auphe genocide.’ ”

“Why do I think you’re not trying?” I asked dryly as the wind picked up along with the snow, and we stepped into the building. Cal, calm and safe. Unfortunately, I had to ask myself if there’d ever been a time when he’d felt that way. I paused by the stairs as it hit me. It was the memory I’d had just days ago. The Auphe at the window. It wasn’t the best of ones for me, but for Cal maybe that wasn’t true. It had been our routine. When Sophia left us alone, it was our time and it was a welcome time. A safe time. “Fish sticks and cartoons.”

He looked at me warily as he pushed open the door to the stairwell. “All that granola and carrot juice has melted your brain. What are you talking about?”

I didn’t blame him. It sounded ludicrous aloud, yet . . .

Fish sticks and cartoons; he’d been three when Sophia had taunted him about his father, but he’d been five before he really understood, before he actually saw an Auphe himself. Five years old before he’d started searching every window he passed for the nightmare that usually lives only in a child’s darkest imaginary closet. Up until then, Sophia’s words had just been words, ugly and frightening, but just words. When she was gone, he and I were alone with our ritual. After he was five, he never thought we were alone again. And for the two years prior to that, I hadn’t ever let him think that I knew we weren’t. Of all the things I’d done in my life, I thought I was proudest of that than of anything else.

“It was a long time ago.” He’d been so damn young, we both had, but some memory had to linger. And if not a memory, then a feeling. “Just say it, or my new mantra will involve your head, the nearest wall, and twenty-four prayer beads an hour.”

He didn’t bother to say “You wouldn’t,” because he knew I most certainly would. Instead, he grumbled, then muttered low under his breath. I couldn’t hear it, but he had said it. I could tell by the spark of surprise in his eyes. “I feel . . .” He climbed up a step and another before stopping. “Hell, I remember. I watched cartoons and you made me fish sticks.” For a moment he was only a twenty-year-old caught in a pleasant memory. No monster father, no malicious mother. No impending Armageddon. Carefree. Unburdened. What he should’ve been, and what he never could be.

“Yogurt isn’t tartar sauce, Nik,” he sniped, but there was a smile behind it.

“You thought it was.” And our neighbor at the time, ninety with ten cats, had given me free containers of it if I dragged her garbage can to the curb for her. Her granddaughter bought the yogurt for her, and the old woman hated it with a passion. It might be my health-conscious nutrition had begun with a mother who rarely bought groceries and a cranky cat lady who’d survived nearly a century of dipping everything in lard and didn’t see a reason to change her ways.

“I was dipping fish sticks in goddamn cherry yogurt.” He started back up the stairs. “I should so kick your ass.”

“You should,” I agreed amiably, as he moved fingers under his sleeve to bead number two and repeated his mantra silently.

“You tell anyone about it and I’ll kill you.” Bead number three. “Dead.”

“And you’d have every right,” I said as mildly as before, and far more self-satisfied than could be good for my karma.

“Damn straight I would.” Bead number four. Calm and controlled, he was working his way there. Slowly, perhaps, months away—a long, long path, but he would get there. If he continued to work at it. And if I had to throw him to the floor and sit on him every hour on the hour to accomplish that, so be it.

But there is only so much meditation can do. What we found upstairs was enough to destroy an entire five hours of meditation, much less five minutes’ worth.

I opened the door to see Cherish and Robin sitting at a table with cards in hand. The former had a pile of clothes at her feet, and the latter was nude except for one sock. Unfortunately, that sock wasn’t in a place that would’ve provided the rest of us with any comfort. I said a mantra of my own. It didn’t help. There was only one answer to this. I started walking. Fast.

Goodfellow had once told us he had invented the game of poker. I doubted that was true, but I didn’t doubt he excelled at it. The only excuse for his catastrophic loss, catastrophic from my point of view at least, was the desire to show off his puckly attributes to Cherish. As Cal had once told me after accidentally interrupting one of Robin’s more dissolute fests, there was a good deal to show off.

Green eyes turned brightly sly at the sight of us. “Niko.” He knocked on the chair to his left. “We have room for one more.”

“I think you already have three at the table,” I said. And if I walked even faster, I wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed. I, usually the hunter, in Robin’s case knew very well what it was like to be prey. And as prey, you do what you have to to survive.

Run like the wind.

Cal was somewhat less restrained in his comments than I had been. “Jesus Christ, I cleaned my guns at that table last night, you perv. Where the hell am I supposed to clean them now?”

“Perhaps the same place you got laid today?” Robin said smoothly.

“How’d you know that?” Cal demanded.

“It’s a sixth sense,” came the complacent answer.

“Being a nosy, sex-sniffing bastard is a sixth sense? Since when?”

By that time, I was in the bedroom and with relief closed the door behind me. Promise looked over from where she was firing her crossbow at a large painting on the wall. It was an especially fine rendition of Pan of the Green Wood. He was playing his pipes for a virginal maiden clad in a sheer Greek stola. Every bolt was buried in two areas: the curly head and those puckly attributes I’d seen in passing.

“Did you know art galleries will deliver within an hour if you pay them enough,” she informed me as she turned back and casually fired another bolt into Goodfellow’s pride and joy.

“I think Cherish can hold her own with Robin,” I said.

“I know she can. That does not mean I want the sight inflicted on me,” she replied with exasperated annoyance. It was also said with a maternal protection I didn’t think she knew was present. With one last shot, she pierced the chest where the heart would be before tossing the crossbow onto the bed. The room was painted a deep chocolate brown, the same color as the wide streaks in the pale blond hair that was twisted into an intricate braid. She wore different clothes than she had yesterday. The painting wasn’t the only thing she’d had delivered. “I had clothes sent from my apartment, including what you have there,” she offered as she noticed my gaze. “I thought Cal could borrow some of yours. Robin, of course, had all new delivered. Not many, though,” she said. “I expected the entire upper loft to be devoted to them.”

“To be fair, no one can go in his apartment now,” I reminded. “His cat might very well kill them and use the body as a plaything.” And that he’d only had a few clothes was a bad sign that Robin had had all the togetherness he could tolerate.

“Yes, his pet. How very unlike Robin to take on something that requires attention—attention that I’m sure he thinks would be better spent on him.”

Pucks weren’t well liked by other supernatural creatures. Their trickster personalities—in other words, the lying and stealing—didn’t make them very popular. Pucks also tended not to associate with other pucks—ever—which was understandable. All those massive egos gathered together, each vying to be the center of attention—as Cal had said, “All those drama kings in one place . . . no way that would be a pretty picture.”

“He gets lonely.” More precisely, he anticipated being lonely. Despite having us now, not to mention the continuous faceless stream of sexual partners, one day Cal and I would be gone. When you live thousands of years, it’s the price you pay for befriending humans. A mummy cat would be around much longer. Although there was Cal’s Auphe blood. It was possible he could live longer than your average human. Could, but wouldn’t.

I’d been the only constant for his entire life. I’d been the one who raised him. I’d been the one to help him back to sanity after he’d escaped the Auphe following two unimaginably horrific years as their prisoner. He was rational now, but even so, he lived his life balanced on the thinnest of tightropes. I’d seen the suicide run he’d once made to save me. I wouldn’t be around to see the one he’d make to join me, but I knew it would come. I also knew that as much as I tried I couldn’t change that.

“True, Robin and I don’t always see eye to eye, but when the time comes I’ll do what I can.” She laid her hand on my cheek. “I hope he can do the same for me if . . .”

I knew what she left unspoken. If we made it past this. If we were still together. If I could forgive her.

Now I knew there was nothing to forgive. I tilted my head down and kissed her. A warmth of lips, a fleeting touch of silken tongue, and a taste so familiar it seemed I’d known it all my life. “I was a bastard,”

I said quietly, taking her hand and intertwining fingers with hers. “I expected perfection when I’m far from it myself. I’m sorry for that. We all have secrets. Or will.”

An emotion flickered behind twilight eyes. Regret. Her hand tightened on mine. “Now I know how it feels to be on the receiving end. It’s not a pleasant sensation. I’m sorry for that, no matter what my reason.”

I nodded and said quietly, “Cal.” Now worry joined the regret in her eyes. “You have to know and you have to remember, if there had been no Cal, there would be no me. I don’t know who or what I would’ve been, but it wouldn’t be the person I am now. I do know this though: It wouldn’t be a change for the better.”

“Niko . . .”

I didn’t let her finish. “Just remember.”

Her eyes cleared. “I will. I promise.”

Time would tell.

The bedspread on Seamus’s bed was brown and gold. The sheets were ivory, the same as Promise’s skin. The light brown of my skin was a stark contrast to hers, yet it fit. Just as we fit—as we always fit. The touch of my hands on her breasts, stomach, hips; the feel of her beneath me, wrapped around me . . . how could that not always be?

Rosewood blinds hid the now afternoon sun as I finally lay relaxed in a way I didn’t often allow myself the luxury of. There was a kiss in the dip of flesh where my neck met my shoulder. Only a kiss. Promise didn’t bite, not even gently. The lightest of nips, more of a caress, really, was as close as she came. Teeth were for food to her. They had been for spilling blood and ripping flesh for the majority of her life. When that was true, biting wasn’t erotic. It was the equivalent of using a steak knife during foreplay.

I imagined Seamus had felt differently. But a sociopath’s preferences, whether vampire or human, weren’t worth wasting thought on. I twined a mixed strand of dark brown and pale blond hair around my fingers and tugged lightly as she raised her face to smile down at me. “Are things better now?” I didn’t need my brother’s name added to the question to know that she wasn’t talking about her and me. The warmth of her draped over me was more than answer enough to that. As for Cal . . .

I told my first lie to Promise and kept my first secret.

“Cal is fine.”

I met her eyes as I said it. I could’ve hidden that it was a lie, covered it up with my mother’s skill. Or I could’ve looked away to soften it. I didn’t. In my mind I had no choice.

If there had to be dishonesty between us, then I would be honest about it.