Deathwish

1

Once, when I was seven, I was chased by a dog.

We lived in a trailer park then, my brother, our mother, and me. There were lots of dogs around, most of them running loose. I didn’t mind. I like dogs. But dogs . . . dogs don’t much like me in return. Puppies do. Puppies like everyone. They’d crawl in my lap, chew happily on a finger or the tattered edge of my sneaker. Dogs are different—one sniff of me was enough. The upper lip would peel back, ears would flatten, and the warm brown eyes would go glassy and slide sideways as they hunched away with tail tucked beneath their legs. Dogs don’t just not like me; they’re afraid of me.

Except for Hammer. Hammer wasn’t right; not right being flat-out crazy. One hundred pounds of shepherd mixed with Rottweiler mixed with God knew what else, Hammer wasn’t afraid to look at me as the other dogs were. No, Hammer liked to look at me. He liked to think about me. If anyone thought animals didn’t think, didn’t plot, didn’t plan, then they’d never met Hammer. Two trailers down and one of the few dogs in the park kept on a chain, he watched me every day as my brother and I walked to school. He never barked. He never growled. He never even moved. He just watched.

Because of his lack of apparent aggression, any other kid might have been tempted to pet him. Not me. Even at seven, I knew a monster when I saw one. It didn’t matter whether his owner had made him into one or he’d been born one like me. Hammer was Hammer. You didn’t pet him any more than you petted a rabid grizzly bear. You just walked by and kept your eyes on the ground. You never looked. . . . Just as Hammer never moved.

Until he did.

Hammer was bad inside, wrong, and as I recognized him, he recognized me. And when drunk old Mr. McGee let the chain finally rust through, Hammer came for me. I had my dollar-store sneakers and a bagged lunch my brother had made for me, but I didn’t have my brother. He’d gone ahead, although he was still in sight. He never failed to make sure I was in sight. I’d forgotten my backpack like kids do. I’d catch up. No big deal, until Hammer made it one.

He’d been lying in the same position he lay in every day. Bowl of dirty water, gnawed club of wood. That day, like every day, I wondered why he didn’t like me. We were both twisted. Both wrong. So why? I didn’t get a chance to wonder any further than that. There was a blur of fur, jaws clamped into my backpack, and my body was thrown sideways. He dragged me several feet before he tore the pack completely off me.

I didn’t think. As I said, I’d seen monsters. You didn’t hang around and ponder the situation. I got up and ran. While I’d seen monsters before, been followed, watched, I hadn’t ever been chased by one. It was my first taste of death at my heels, my first taste of running for my life.

It wasn’t my last.

In fact, I ended up spending a vast amount of my life running. Not just living my life on the run, which I had as well, but actually running. I wasn’t seven anymore, but I was still flat-out hauling ass. Like the wind—like the fucking wind. Running from this, running from that—usually from something with teeth, claws, and the attitude of a great white on steroids. Things that made Hammer look like a toy poodle.

I hated it, the running. Hated it like poison. Which may be why I had finally decided I’d had enough and committed to staying in one place more than a year ago, and that place was New York City. A veritable Mecca for monsters like me, as well as monsters like Hammer—those that had me literally running for my life or the life of one of the few people I gave a shit about. There weren’t many of those. Part-time bartender, private investigator/bodyguard/jack-of-all-trades to the nonhuman world, and one suspicious son of a bitch, that was me. Not precisely Mr. Social. It paid to be wary in a dark world thought to be nothing more than fairy tales and ghost stories by most people—most people being the blindly oblivious, the cheerfully clueless, the ever-so-lucky assholes.

The handful of people, humans and non-, that I did give a crap about had all ended up in New York, too—in the City That Never Sleeps, a good place for us creatures of the night. Everyone I cared about, and one in particular: my brother. He had been with me since the beginning, my beginning, and now had me running through the streets to make sure my beginning didn’t bring him to an end.

The running—it always came back to that. A pity, because I was an inherently lazy son of a bitch. Burning lungs, knotting muscles, stuttering heart—I could do without any of that, thanks. But now I was running toward something, although there was plenty to run from. Death behind me; the unimaginable before me—an unholy situation, and it only made me run faster. The bus that nearly clipped me as I ran across the street? That wasn’t even a blip on the radar. I had bigger, badder, and far more destructive things on my mind.

“Traitorous cousin.”

The side of that bus brushed my jacket as I looked up at the sound of the icy hiss. For a second I saw it crouched on top, proving that mass transport wasn’t just for hygienically challenged humans. I saw metal teeth, red eyes, and hair the color and drift of jellyfish stingers. I saw a killer. I saw a monster.

I saw family.

Then I saw something more immediately relevant—the front of a cab barreling at me. I dodged to one side as it braked. I rolled across the hood, taking down a bike messenger. Vaulting the cursing man, I ran on. I didn’t look behind me. I didn’t have to. I knew what was there. I knew what was coming, and I knew it wasn’t alone. But that was the least of my concerns. What was important to me now was getting to the park, because I had other family. Real family.

My brother was at Washington Square Park, waiting for me. We were supposed to spar. “Spar” was a word Niko used when he meant he was going to beat the shit out of me for my own good. He kept me sharp and quick. He kept me evading monsters and taxis with equal alacrity. He was the reason I’d lived this long. The ones that followed me, the Auphe, knew that too. They hated him nearly as much as they hated me. And hate was like air to an Auphe. When something was as easy as breathing, you got pretty damned good at it. But the Auphe weren’t good. No . . .

They were the best.

That’s why I ran. Not because they were behind me, but because I suspected they were also in front of me. They’d been waiting for me at the apartment building at St. Marks’s, where Niko and I lived. I’d come home to see them lining the roof, and I’d felt the internal wrench as they ripped holes in reality and slithered through. The dread was instant. If they knew for sure where I lived, they knew where I went. If they knew that, they knew the same about Niko. Months ago they had said they’d kill everyone in my life before they killed me. I believed them. Reapers and rippers and older than time—living murder wrapped in cold flesh. They didn’t lie. Why would they when blood-soaked destruction was so much more entertaining?

Yeah, it had been months, but they said it, I believed it, and now was apparently the time. Long months of waiting, but, hell, I’d have been happy to wait a little longer.

No such goddamn luck.

I came off East Eighth Street, crossed Astor, then hit Broadway and kept running. This time I was hit, a big, ancient black Lincoln, but it only grazed my hip. There was the screech of brakes as I was knocked to the asphalt. As I scrambled back to my feet and kept moving, the skies opened up and dropped a waterfall of icy rain. I was soaked instantly, but the cold I felt on the outside couldn’t touch what swirled inside me. Once on Fourth, I was running through the people. The human and the non-. The blissfully ignorant and the voraciously aware. The dinner and the diner.

Among the walking, talking snacks that were now cursing the rain, I could see the occasional pale amber eye, the gleam of a bared tooth. Upright Hammers. And they knew me as Hammer had. Smelled me. Werewolves were good at that. Leg humping and sniffing out a half-Auphe—it was all a piece of cake.

There were other monsters among the unwitting, but I didn’t bother to pick them out. I didn’t have time. I didn’t have time for anything except getting to Nik. It was a fifteen-minute run, going as fast as I could. Fifteen minutes was a long time. I didn’t let myself think it might be pointless, that Nik had been at the park for more than an hour now. I just gulped wet air, tried not to think how much easier it would be if I shot the people milling in front of me, blocking my way, and kept running.

There were people in the park, but they were all leaving—running themselves, although not as desperately as me, for shelter from the unexpected downpour. When it was cold enough to shrink your balls and wet enough to prune up everything else, it tended to put an end to casual walks and Frisbee playing. Niko would be on the far side of the green. There were bunches of trees gathered around the perimeter of the park. We worked out by a particular group of them in the northwest corner. As I ran toward it, I smelled the grass crushed under my feet, the mud, the dead leaves, the acid-free oil Nik used to clean his swords. . . .

And Auphe. I smelled Auphe.

Elf and Auphe, one and the same. Proof that mythology never failed to get it wrong. How it had gotten blond, prissy, silk-wearing elves from the world’s very first monsters, I would never know. After pointed ears and pale skin, the resemblance stopped, and the steel teeth, razor claws, and lava eyes of a demon started.

I ignored the few people who gave me quick stares as they ran in the opposite direction, and tried to get more speed. I couldn’t—I was giving it all I had and more. But then I was there. I was in the trees. The leaves had all fallen and the dark branches should’ve been bare as they split from the trunk to spread against the sky. They weren’t. They were filled with Auphe, as pallid as the winter sky behind them. They were hidden enough by the rain that I could barely see them, but they were there. There had been no one behind me because they had beaten me here, the same twenty from the apartment building. From the roof to the trees—it was only a step for them. Open a door in reality, pass through, and there you were.

The one on the bus hadn’t been following me. It had been playing with me. Homicide and humor—it was one and the same to the Auphe.

And Niko faced them all.

Revealing himself, he stepped from behind a glistening black tree trunk. Jesus. Alive. Fucking alive. And he was ready, with dark blond hair pulled back and katana held high in the pounding rain. The Auphe didn’t blink, didn’t move. “Gun,” Nik said calmly.

I was already reaching under my jacket for the Glock .40 in my shoulder holster. My grip should’ve been tight and cramped with adrenaline, but I’d pointed one weapon or another so many times over the past four years that my touch was light and confident. The rest of me could’ve taken a lesson. Normally I was good at this—I saw monsters all the time and faced them head-on. Kicked ass, tail, flipper . . . whatever they had. But this . . . this was the Auphe. Half of my gene pool. They’d been not only the bogeymen of my childhood, but of my whole damn life. Outside windows at night, around darkened corners, trailing behind me from the time I was born until I was fourteen. Bad, right?

Wrong.

There was worse. They took me. For two years. I didn’t remember those years and I probably never would, but inside, at a level I couldn’t access, I somehow knew what they had done. Could feel it. Seeing just one was enough to have the taste of screams and blood in my mouth and a chunk of ice in my gut.

Seeing twenty of them was like seeing the end of the world.

Pointing a gun at the end of the world seems fairly goddamn futile. I did it anyway. “It’s broad daylight, assholes. Seems bold even for you,” I said tightly. I didn’t freeze, not this time. I swallowed the bile, grew a pair, and kept the Glock steady. Two-headed werewolves, mass murderers, dead bodies hanging like fruit in a tree, I’d faced all of that—I’d face this. “Or did you get the weather report I missed out on?”

“Faithless cousin.” Hundreds of titanium needle teeth bared at me as the closest one spoke. “The blind do not see us.”

“And when your eyes are ripped from their sockets,” hissed another, “neither will you.”

Jesus, family. It was a bitch.

But maybe they were right. Even if the water falling from the sky hadn’t been the next best thing to the biblical flood, it still might not have mattered. Because if you saw them, you’d have to be insane, wouldn’t you? So instead, maybe you’d just turn your head and keep moving as your brain glossed over what simply couldn’t be. Maybe your average human was smarter than I gave him credit for.

“We nearly wiped your race from the face of the earth.” We’d also gotten our asses spanked and handed to us on a silver platter in the process, but Niko didn’t feel the need to mention that. Show the enemy no weakness. A throwing knife appeared in his free hand as he continued without hesitation, “We finish what we start.”

That’s when they fell from the trees. Predators who had no equal. The hundred others we had killed had been a suicide run we’d unexpectedly survived. A big-ass explosion, a collapsing building, and the good fortune of several lifetimes; I didn’t think we’d get that lucky again.

They were like lightning as they fell—that quick, that deadly, and that inescapable. I heard steel hit flesh as Niko swung his blade, and I also heard the thud of my back hitting a tree as clawed hands lifted and threw me before I could get a shot off. God, they were so damn quick. Another one snatched at my shirt, scoring the skin of my chest, and tossed me to the wet ground and then landed on me to pin me there. I could see my skewed reflection in the mirror of its teeth as I jammed the muzzle of the gun under an unnaturally pointed chin and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit nothing but the rain. The gate, one of twenty opening, gobbled up the Auphe just as it gobbled up the others.

They were just playing with us.

Blocking the rain, the gray light of the gate shimmered above me, hypnotic in the twists and turns of it. It slowed me for less than a second—I’d seen my share—but that was long enough. The hand came through to wrap around my throat, black nails snagging in my shirt and my flesh. I didn’t wait for the muscular jerk that would yank me into the light. I emptied my clip into it instead. As the bullets vanished, the hand against my skin spasmed tight enough to cut off my air, then went limp. When it did, the gate closed, leaving a pale arm severed at the elbow lying across my chest. Dark blood pooled on my stomach as the arm suddenly twitched, fingers opening and closing before slowly stilling, this time for good. Dr. Frankenstein couldn’t have done any better. “Shit.” I pried it off of my neck and with a lifetime of revulsion threw it to one side. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“So”—there was no whisper of drenched grass, no ghost of the faintest of footsteps, but suddenly Niko was looking down at me anyway—“other than that, how was your day?”

Actually the day had sucked ass before the park, during the park, and it didn’t look to be getting any better.

We’d called Promise and Georgina to warn them about the Auphe. Niko spoke to both of them; my call wouldn’t have been precisely welcome on George’s part. She had cut me out of her life as of that morning. I’d worked toward that for a year now and I’d finally gotten what I’d wanted, although I’d never really wanted it. But I had bad genes, and not wimpy little alcoholic or schizophrenic tendencies either. I had the DNA of Dahmer and Godzilla combined, and I wasn’t passing that on.

Promise was a vampire and George a psychic, when she wanted to be, and they weren’t helpless against the Auphe. Not completely. It didn’t make me feel any better. The Auphe were the Auphe.

Now we were here to warn the third person in our lives. He was a cocky, annoying, conceited, lazy son of a bitch. He was also a friend, one who’d had a few bad days of his own this week. He was currently holed up in his apartment and had been for three days. No one went out; no one went in. For a chronically social, not to mention horny, puck, that was alarming behavior.

I pounded on the door of his Chelsea apartment. I was slowly drying off; the rain had stopped not long after we’d left the park. “Goodfellow, open the hell up!”

There was silence, then a muffled but cutting reply. “How did you get in the building? You can’t afford to piss on the topiary out front much less walk through the door. Go away.” I heard something hit the door with a shattering of glass. “When I want to see belligerent, fashion-impaired monkeys, I’ll go to the zoo and watch the feces fly.”

That would be Rob Fellows, car salesman of the month, year, decade. Better known to us as Robin Goodfellow . . . Pan . . . Puck, whatever name he’d been passing off at the time. Immortal, stubborn, and could talk shit with the best of them. He’d also saved our lives more than once. That made his nonstop mouth a little more bearable.

“This lost its entertainment value as of yesterday.” Niko folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Kick in the door.”

Unlike most siblings, I listen to my big brother. I kicked in the door. It was a good door—solid, thick. It took a few tries to get it open. There was quite a bit of damage—splintered wood, locks ripped free of the frame—none of which I planned on paying for. Goodfellow was right. I couldn’t afford to piss on his bushes, and he had money to burn. Besides, tough love was tough love. And right now that’s what the infamous Robin Goodfellow needed.

“Oh, good.” Wavy brown hair disheveled, green eyes bloodshot, the puck was sprawled on his couch in pajama bottoms and an open, wrinkled silk robe. “The Hardy Boys are here to show me the light.”

I walked into the apartment, which was an unholy mess. Considering his housekeeper, Seraglio, had been killed just days ago, that wasn’t much of a surprise. As she had been trying to kill us all at the time, I wasn’t crying a river over that. On the other hand, I still remembered how she’d made me peach pancakes. It was a concept that was hard to fathom. Pancakes and assassination. What a mix.

There were empty wine bottles everywhere I looked, littering the floor, the granite counters, and there was even one embedded in the screen of the plasma TV. Damn, I’d loved that TV.

I nudged a bottle out of my path, moved closer, and winced at the sheer volume of alcohol fumes seeping through Goodfellow’s pores. I had a good nose, as good as your average dog, thanks to my Auphe sperm donor. But even a normal human nose could’ve picked this up easily. “Jesus.” My eyes watered as I squinted at him. “How are you not dead?”

“I was there when the first grape was fermented,” he grunted. “It makes for a tolerance a fetus like you couldn’t begin to comprehend.”

“So you were the one who taught Bacchus to drink?” Niko asked with a gleam of skepticism in his gray eyes that came from a year’s familiarity with Goodfellow and his . . . er . . . exaggerations. He didn’t wait for the answer, instead making his way to the kitchen.

“Actually, I did. Of course, I think he’s in AA now.” Mournfully, he lifted a bottle into the air, then drank. “It is to weep.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I sat on the massive rock crystal coffee table in front of him. “Okay, Robin, you deserved a little holing-up time, but now you’ve got to shake this off. The Auphe are back playing their games. They messed with Nik and me in the park. They could come here next. They were toying with us. They might be more serious with you. As in rip you open and get drunk on that alcohol you call blood. You have to be ready. Sober your ass up.”

“Gamo the Auphe.” Goodfellow had known the Auphe when people were still living in caves, gnawing on mammoth bones and picking fleas off one another. He had a healthy fear of and respect for them. Very healthy. At least up until now, apparently. “Bring them on.” He took another drink. “Lead their pasty asses hither. I’ll give them something to chew on.”

I wasn’t sure whether he meant his sword or himself, and that worried the hell out of me. He’d been through it, I knew, but I wasn’t sure how to deal with a depressed and ashamed puck. I’d never seen him less than confident—brazen as hell. Cocky and way too willing to show you why that word was appropriate in more ways than one. Anything different from that, I wouldn’t have been able to picture as of last week. Now . . . now I’d seen it and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t puck—it wasn’t Robin. I didn’t like it. Goodfellow had lived a long, long time. Now wasn’t the time to give up.

I reached over and snatched the bottle out of his hand. “Okay, fine, you fooled some people into worshipping you as a god. And, yeah, their descendants chased you for thousands of years, wanting to kill you for deserting them. So what? They failed. Get over it already.”

The glassy eyes blinked several times before he gave a slurred drawl. “You know, say it that way and it doesn’t sound so bad.” Of course it had been more than that. Two people had died—died very bloody, terrible deaths because of his massive puck ego, when he had been their “god.” He hadn’t meant for it to happen, but it had and that’s what had him in the bottle, not being worshipped and nearly killed by the last of his followers’ tribe. Speaking of bottles, he grabbed at it and missed. I’d seen Robin drink, but I’d only ever seen him drunk twice before. The first time had been when he’d met us, and the last time had been days ago. Both had been for only a few hours. This time, I would bet he’d spent every minute of these past three days like this.

“Look,” I said sharply, “we don’t care what you did back then. We only care what you do now. You’re a friend, and you were a friend to us when any person with the sense God gave a mentally challenged rock would’ve run the other way.”

He let his head flop against the back of the couch. Looking up at the ceiling, he exhaled, then reminded me with a faint note of nostalgia, “Don’t forget that you threatened to slit my throat when we first met.”

“And even that didn’t dissuade you from talking endlessly.” Niko appeared and deposited a plate on Robin’s lap. There was a sandwich on it and what looked like homemade potato salad. I tried not to think how Seraglio had no doubt made it herself. “Now eat, sober up, and face up to the fact that what you did was wrong, but not wrong enough to justify your murder as penance.”

Goodfellow remained motionless, either thinking about it or ignoring us entirely. Niko leaned in, planted a hand on each side of Robin’s head, looked down at him, and asked silkily, “Did I or did I not say ‘now’?”

Yeah, the tough love. Niko was all about it.

There was more silence, a grunt; then the puck straightened marginally and reached for the sandwich. “I hate you both.” He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and added grudgingly, “But I’m glad the Auphe didn’t kill you. The massive hero worship you have for me brightens my day.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.” I pushed a few bottles off the coffee table and spread out a little while Niko distanced himself to stand at the other end of the couch from Robin. I doubted it helped with the alcohol reek, but I gave him credit for trying.

Making his way methodically through the sandwich, Robin looked us both up and down, and then asked between bites, “The Auphe came at you and neither of you have a scratch? How did you manage that? Are you carrying nuclear armament now, Caliban? Did you give up on the pop guns?”

“Like I said, they were just playing with us. Talking shit.” I did have a few claw marks, but in our work if you could still walk and talk, that didn’t count. “They were on the roof of our apartment building when I came home, and then they traveled to the park where Nik was practicing.”

I often thought of going through the gates as traveling now. I’d been called “traveler” repeatedly by a homicidal asshole in the past two weeks. Sawney, mass murderer and one seriously crazy son of a bitch, was dead and less than ash now, but the term had stuck with me. It was as good a description as any for what the Auphe did . . . for what I could do. And as it also covered my other half—Rom—it fit.

“And you”—he grimaced—“traveled after them?” He’d gone through a gate with me on one occasion. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation for non-Auphe; not unless you were into puking your guts out.

“No. I ran my ass off.” Traveling, once difficult, had suddenly become easy. Too easy. It put me in touch with my homicidal Auphe roots more than was good for me . . . or for anyone around me. I’d told my brother I wouldn’t do it again if I could avoid it, but if I hadn’t been in the midst of a sidewalk full of people I would’ve done it in a hot second. He was a helluva lot more important than wrestling with the wrong half of my Jekyll-and-Hyde issue. He was worth losing a piece of my soul. . . . If I had one, it was only because of him anyway.

Still, it wasn’t anything I wanted to talk about. How I felt the mental stirrings of a bloodthirsty heritage when I passed through the gray light wasn’t my favorite topic right now. The Auphe nature wasn’t mine. I wouldn’t let it be. And if I said that to myself over and over and sprinkled enough frigging fairy dust around, maybe it would be true.

Clap your hands. Clap them goddamn hard and wish like a mother.

“But why—” He stopped when he saw Niko’s eyes narrow fractionally, effectively ending the subject. When your overprotective big brother carries a sword, people tend to pay attention. “Moving on.” Robin tossed the plate onto the table’s surface, knocking over yet another bottle, and rubbed his eyes. “I need a new housekeeper.”

I didn’t say anything. He’d liked her; he’d lusted after her; he’d even respected her—a rarity for Goodfellow—and she’d tried to kill him. What was there to say in the face of that?

Actually, I did have something to say, although it was not about Seraglio. It was about what had happened in the park. I hadn’t been completely sure then. . . . No, that was a lie. I had been sure, but I didn’t know how I was sure and I didn’t want to talk about that—that the only way I could know was because of my two stolen years. The Auphe were a subject I avoided, but discussing those two years—that I avoided at all costs. I was afraid—hell, terrified—that talking about it might one day peel back the darkness that swallowed those years, which would then swallow me. And I’d lose my mind. For good this time.

“Yeah, or you could pick up after yourself,” I said distractedly, then went on before his outraged laziness hit me in the face. “Nik, Robin, in the park . . .” I ran a thumb over the smooth stone of the table’s surface and grimaced before going on. “They were all female. The Auphe.” I tended to think of the Auphe as “he” or “it,” because physically there was no difference between male and female to the eye and because I didn’t want to give them the label of actual biological organisms. They were too goddamn horrific for that. Too alien.

Niko frowned, both at the knowledge and the fact I hadn’t told him sooner, I knew. “What are they usually?” I could see he was annoyed with himself for never asking that question before. He was dedicated to knowing every fact about the Auphe that he could gather, because one day one of those facts might save me.

“I don’t know.” I gave a defensive shift of my shoulders. “I usually pay more attention to not pissing my pants and staying alive, so I guess they’ve just been a mix.”

“How do you know they were all female?” Robin asked curiously, his reddened eyes slightly more alert. “It’s not like the male Auphe keep them swinging in the breeze, and I assume they have something to swing or one couldn’t have impregnated your mother.” He considered the matter as he popped in the last bite of sandwich. “Perhaps they recede up inside the body. There are some animals—”

“Robin,” Niko said matter-of-factly, “be quiet.”

Goodfellow caught a look at my face, which, considering how much I wanted to hurl right now, probably wasn’t the best it had ever looked. “Ah yes. Well. Sorry,” he apologized sincerely before making a washing movement of his hands to scatter any remaining crumbs. “The male and female no doubt have a difference in scent.”

He was probably right, but what the hell did it mean? It didn’t do jack shit for us if we didn’t know what it meant. I said as much and changed the subject abruptly. “Where do we go from here? A rehab center for Goodfellow here?”

Niko was silent just long enough that I knew he would bring this up later when we were alone—whether I wanted to or not—but then he said smoothly, “Promise wants to talk to us. She may have some work for us.” Most of our work wended its way through our favorite vampire. “That includes you, Robin.”

The brown head dropped into waiting hands. You could virtually see the hangover forming. “Why? I’m highly looking forward to the alcoholic coma due me, thanks so much.”

“Because with the Auphe reappearing, we all need to stay alert. And you”—Niko flicked the side of Goodfellow’s head with enough force that I heard the thwack that was usually reserved for me—“you are not alert. Shower and dress. You have fifteen minutes.”

“And we charge fifty an hour for babysitting,” I added, “so grab your wallet.” As green as Robin was when he swayed upright, I’d be happy just not to have a gallon of vomit hurled onto my shoes.

There was no vomit, but the fifteen-minute timetable went right out the window. Considering the shape and smell of him, I didn’t mind waiting longer for a clean and slightly more sober Goodfellow to walk back into the room. He was as pasty as the Auphe ass he’d been referring to earlier, but he was moving under his own power. That had to be a good thing. When we reached the street he hadn’t recovered any color and he had a faint wobble to his step, but that didn’t stop him from leering at a passing woman. “Well, hello.”

When she didn’t respond, he switched his gaze to the man behind her. “Well, hello.”

“Three days without sex,” I snorted. “I’m surprised your dick hasn’t deserted you for greener pastures.”

Goodfellow glared at me as he swayed. Niko reached out to steady him and said reprovingly, “I wish, especially now, that you had not done this to yourself.”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure you take your Metamucil shaken, not stirred,” he griped. “But some of us like the grape.” He walked . . . weaved, whatever. “We need a cab before I fall on my face.”

By the time we reached Promise’s building on the Upper East Side—60th and Park, another place too expensive for my bladder—Robin had sobered up more. Pucks—they have one helluva metabolism. It didn’t stop Promise from taking a second look at him when we walked into her place. “You are well?” she asked dubiously.

“I’m alive,” he said tersely. “I think that counts, but ask me again later.” Trudging to Promise’s ivory couch, he collapsed. “Perhaps I could get a little hair of the canine?”

“No,” Niko replied firmly. Leaning in, he kissed Promise lightly. “If you have a key to your liquor cabinet,” he said to her, “this may be the time to employ it.”

She touched her fingertips to his jaw, and then turned to look at Goodfellow. She didn’t say anything further, but I could see the sympathy in her eyes. She knew. She’d been there with us when Seraglio and her clan had nearly killed Robin. She was often exasperated with him, more often pissed as hell, but she was still fond of him—although somewhat less fond after he’d once turned her apartment into the scene of an orgy.

Robin looked away from her gaze. It was bad enough, I knew, that Niko and I had seen him so vulnerable. One more was too much. “I’m not here for an intervention or the entertainment, and I do have my own business to run. Can we move this alcohol-free ordeal along?” Yes, Robin Goodfellow, Puck, Pan, the Goat in the Green, did have his own business that he ran with a ruthless hand. He was worse than any monster. Worse than any beast from a mythical hell.

Like I’d said, he was a car salesman.

Worse still, a used-car salesman, the type of man that bragged that he could sell a condom to a eunuch or life insurance to the undead.

“I’ll come to the point, then, so that you may return to fleecing the sheep.” With a parting kiss to Niko’s cheek, Promise walked to the darkly tinted window and pulled the curtains. In a gray silk skirt slit just above the knee and a scoop-neck sweater that was a soft shimmer of violet, she looked at us with equally violet eyes. Her hair, striped moon pale and earth brown, was pulled back in three braids, tumbling in loose waves at the crown and falling to the small of her back. “I have an old acquaintance. He wants to hire us.”

She was generous with the “us.” Promise, like the vast majority of vampires, didn’t drink blood anymore, but she had gone through five very wealthy, very elderly husbands in the past ten years. However, I was sure every one of them had died with smiles on their wrinkled faces and gratitude in their shriveled hearts. Consequently, she didn’t need the money we brought in; she did it for the love of the game . . . or the love of something else. Someone else.

“An old acquaintance?” Robin waggled his eyebrows. “The naked kind?”

Promise sighed, then ignored him. “Seamus. A vampire like me. He seems to have a bit of an interesting problem.”

“Huh. A vampire. What’s he want?” A vampire acquaintance, eh? Robin might not be so far off. Niko wouldn’t be annoyed. He wasn’t that possessive, and insecurity was only a word in the dictionary to him. But I was more than ready and willing to be annoyed for him. That’s what brothers are for.

“Yes, a vampire.” A finely arched eyebrow lifted. “As for his situation, this is something unusual, Seamus says. This is nothing completely . . . apparent. It’s a subtle thing, and perhaps nothing at all. But to determine that I think we’ll need a team approach.”

“There’s no I in ‘team,’ ” Robin pointed out, starting to get up, “There’s an I in ‘intercourse,’ ‘iniquity,’ ‘illegal,’ ‘intoxication,’ and did I mention ‘intercourse’? But there is no I in ‘team.’ And I’m all about the I, which means that I will see you later.”

“There’s also an I in ‘I’ll kick your ass,’ so sit down,” I ordered darkly. “Maybe if you’re lucky and finish sobering up, we’ll tag your ass and turn you loose in the wild.”

He gave a silent snarl, but by the time we got out of a cab at Seamus’s place, an artistically clichéd loft in the artistically clichéd SoHo, he was sober. Despite that, he made no move to go back home. He might have had only a reluctant interest, but reluctant or not, it kept him there. “Art.” He looked up at the walls of the loft, where the artist’s work was liberally displayed. Not seeing any paintings of himself, he gave a disgruntled snort. “Theoretically.”

Seamus slid his eyes toward Promise. “Humans and a puck. Mo chroi, I fear for your social standing.”

Promise had said Seamus’s problem was interesting, which was funny, because Seamus himself turned out to be just as interesting. Stick him in a kilt, paint his face blue, and he could’ve stepped into a Mel Gibson movie without missing a beat. Maybe because he’d actually lived through similar battles—the nighttime ones anyway. He wasn’t tall, although hundreds of years ago he would’ve been. About five-nine, he was built with broad strokes. Wide shoulders and chest, muscular arms and legs; he wasn’t your typical lithe and languid, ruffle-wearing vampire of pulp fiction. Except for one small braid that hung from temple to stubbled jaw, the wavy, deep red hair was pulled back into a short club at the base of his neck. That with the tawny eyes made him into a lion of a man, a giant cat walking on two legs. Which would make me a scruffy alley cat, an ill-tempered one who already had a headache from the Auphe situation. . . . It damn sure wasn’t improved by the surroundings.

Seamus was an artist. His massive warehouse loft was wall-to-wall with his work. He liked bright, vibrant colors. Very bright, and vibrating right through my goddamn skull. After the day I’d had, this was like an ice pick between the eyes. I groaned and dug into my pocket for Tylenol, as Promise discarded her ivory hooded cloak onto a battered old chair to embrace Seamus lightly.

“Seamus, it’s been a long time.” Her expression was one of fondness, pleasure to see an old friend, and . . . something else. It was so brief I would’ve thought I’d imagined it, if I hadn’t watched Sophia size up a mark thousands of times. Neither Niko nor I could hope to read people like our thieving mother had, but we held our own.

An old acquaintance, my ass.

I glanced sideways at Niko to see a perfectly blank face. No reason for him to feel threatened by Promise’s past relationships, although this was the first one he’d come across where the participant wasn’t dead and who hadn’t been profoundly geriatric before he slipped into that state. I shook out two painkillers into my hand and then offered him the bottle. He bared his teeth for a fraction of a second, and I took that as a no. Putting the bottle back into my pocket, I popped the pills dry as Seamus welcomed us. Hands on Promise’s shoulders after she pulled back, he leaned forward to brush a kiss across her cheek. “Paris was a cold and lifeless city without you, leannan. I’m glad our paths have crossed again.”

“You’re dusting off the Gaelic, Seamus,” she said reprovingly. “Are the women not falling for ‘lassie’ any longer?”

He grinned, his strong white teeth gleaming a bright contrast to the copper shadow on his jaw. “You’ve caught me, then. The last pretty maid I tried it on branded me a cheesy pervert, I believe. Back in London. A feisty one, that, but I won her over in the end.” Dropping his hands to his sides, he said, “But let us then get down to business, mo chroi.”

“She’s not your heart anymore, no matter what your nostalgia tells you,” Nik said very mildly. There was no edge to the words, but there was one in Niko’s sheath if Seamus wanted to make an issue of it. No jealousy, but a definite line drawn in the sand. And didn’t it figure my brother would pick up Gaelic in his spare time?

“My nostalgia lasts longer than your lifetime, human,” Seamus replied as mildly. “I shall be waiting at a finish line you will never see.”

Promise didn’t look amused by the exchange, and Goodfellow didn’t help things any. “Men fighting over you,” Robin said as he started opening cabinets and rifling through them, looking for that hair of the dog he’d mentioned earlier. Since he was sober now, I let it go. One or two wouldn’t hurt him, and it might help us. “It’s like old times for you, eh? Or it would be if both of them were dueling with their walkers.”

She was even less amused now. Seamus repeated with a snort of disdain, “A puck, Promise? Sincerely, lass, what would possess you?”

“My company is my business, Seamus. Don’t make assumptions on an old acquaintance,” she warned. “You make it difficult to want to give you our assistance.”

He gave her an abashed look from mellow whiskey-colored eyes. Curling his lips, he put a hand to his chest and bowed slightly. “I’m a poor client and a poor host. Forgive me.”

Robin finally stumbled on a bottle of wine and toasted us. “You’re forgiven. Sla inte chugat. Now where’s your corkscrew?”

“As I have no brothel to offer you, Puck, a meager good health to you as well. And in the drawer by the stove,” Seamus answered, suddenly good-natured . . . even toward an odious puck. He waved a hand at the couch and chairs, simple wood and natural fabrics that contrasted against the bold colors of the paintings. The Tylenol was beginning to let me see them as bold rather than eye-melting. “My apologies. Please.”

I didn’t believe the apology or accept it, but I did accept the invitation to sit. Sprawling in a chair, I looked over at Robin pouring a glass of ruby red. I held up one finger, cutting him off with the single glass. He rolled his eyes and ignored me. I may as well have been at work at the bar.

Promise sat on the couch, and Niko stood. Niko usually stood. You never knew when the couch might come alive and eat you. You had to stay alert. Constantly vigilant. Although after the Auphe attack, I didn’t blame him. I dealt with it a little differently. Every cell inside me vibrated with the need to runrunrun. Sitting, slouching, watching Robin, looking at art I didn’t get . . . it kept a small part of my mind occupied. Kept me from grabbing Niko’s arm and tearing down the street. Getting out of town like the old days. Going anywhere. Anywhere but here. Anywhere the Auphe weren’t. Just like a dozen times before.

Good times. Jesus.

It was also a helluva ride waiting . . . balancing on the knife’s edge as I just waited. Waited to feel that heads-up, that gut twist of an Auphe gate opening. The sensation of theirs ripping open were a distant echo of mine, but I could still feel them. It was a nice alarm system, good to have. But it was no fun, the nerve-shredding anticipation. No goddamn fun at all.

“Have one, kid. It will do you good.”

I looked up to see a wineglass in front of me. Robin was right. At the moment, one wouldn’t kill me. The Auphe would, but wine wouldn’t. “Thanks.” I took it and had a swallow. I made a face. It was the good stuff. I didn’t drink much—with an alcoholic mother, I didn’t like to take chances—but I did know the better the wine, the worse it tasted. I liked the cheap stuff. The more it tasted like Kool-Aid, the happier I was. You could take the boy out of the trailer park . . .

Robin clicked his glass against mine and toasted. “As they say, it never rains; it pours. Pours liquid fire from the sky, sets us aflame, and scorches the earth to barren bedrock.” Goodfellow’s glass was now half-empty, but he stuck to the one-glass rule. “Cheers.”

Niko shook his head when the bottle was held in his direction, as did Promise and Seamus, who said, bemused, “You are, without a doubt, the most grim and gloomy puck it’s been my pleasure to come across.”

No one commented. Aware he’d breached a touchy subject, he continued briskly, “On to my difficulty, annoyance that it is. It started nearly a week ago.” He frowned. “I’m being followed. At least it seems that way. Ordinarily, I would know, but this . . . this is different. I do not see anyone tailing me, as they say, yet wherever I go, someone is there, already waiting. Someone who has far too much interest in me. Always in a public place where I cannot discuss the situation with them.” White teeth, fangs and all, were shown in a humorless and savage grin. “And before I am to leave, they disappear. I turn away for a moment, and they are gone. It seems they know my intention before I do.”

“Same guy?” I asked.

“No, which makes it more perplexing.” He shook his head. “They’re smart, whoever these sons of bitches be, but after four hundred years, I know when I’m being watched. I know when someone’s a little too curious about my affairs.”

“So you see the need for the team dynamic,” Promise said, her hands clasped loosely over her knee. The oval pearlescent nails gleamed. “We can surround whatever curious gentleman shows up. He can’t evade us all.”

Well, if nothing else, it seemed easier than our last few jobs. No flesh-eating kidnappers. No fire-spewing serpents. No dead little girls. And with the Auphe back, something easy was all we could probably handle. If we even wanted to. Yeah, we needed the money, but trying to stay alive trumped that. I had doubts, serious doubts we could do both. I had doubts we could do even the most important one. I looked over at Nik and voted no with two words: “The Auphe.”

Seamus’s face slid into an expression of pure disgust. “Those diabhail creatures. What of them? I’d heard they were no more.”

Promise hadn’t told him I was half Auphe, and vampires don’t have the sense of smell werewolves do. The wolves always knew. Seamus, however, didn’t seem to have any idea about me, which was fine. I’d seen enough of those same looks of disgust shot my way. Disgust and fear. I was beginning to take a perverse pleasure in the last one. Not such a great thing to admit, but being hated for who you were right down to the genetic level leads to some defense mechanisms. Unhealthy ones, probably, but what the hell?

“Yeah, well, you heard wrong.” I pulled the tie from my hair to let the dark strands fall free against my neck. I stretched the black elastic until it dug into my fingers with a painful bite. “They have a problem with us. And an Auphe problem is one fucking big problem. We don’t need the distraction right now.”

Niko disagreed with me. “Job or not, Cal, we still have a problem,” he pointed out with inarguable logic. I hated logic. It was never on my side. “They’ll come when they come; we can’t change that. Whether we’re working a case or not. Putting our lives on hold won’t make us any safer.”

Or any more likely to survive, I added silently. But he was right, and it wasn’t about the money. It was about what I’d said earlier, keeping at least some of your thoughts somewhere else. Not enough to be truly distracted, but enough to keep from drowning in dread and apprehension. I shifted my shoulders to loosen the tension in my neck, and exhaled. “Okay, okay. I’m in.” Moving from kidnapping to extermination to babysitting—our cases weren’t quite heading in the right direction. Thoughts for another time . . . like when our asses weren’t in such a sling. Or when we were dead.

Plenty of time then.

So we took the job. Robin, unable to help himself, jumped in to haggle Seamus up to an outrageous fee. It was a wonder he left the poor bastard with the tartan boxers on his ass. On that slightly disturbing thought, I turned toward the door with the others, leaving behind echoing spaces, powerfully raw art, and Seamus . . . Seamus, who was staring at Niko’s back as I looked over my shoulder. Not at Promise as I’d expected. But at Nik. Staring and staring hard.

This could be a problem.