Roadkill

3

Abelia-Roo and her clan were at a campground in the Catskills. They would be tucked away in a less scenic and more private corner of the RV park where they could avoid any contact with outsiders, gadje. That wasn’t to say they weren’t running some cons, doing a little tarot or palm reading; Abelia- Roo wasn’t the best role model or leader, but they’d be more likely to do that in the nearest town. Wouldn’t want the natives having a map to the front door of your Batcave, or considering Abelia-Roo, to your volcano hideout complete with lasers for toasting the genitals of your luckless hero.

It was a two-and-a-half-hour trip late that same afternoon and Niko actually let me do the driving. We retrieved his car from where Robin let us park it at his lot, although in the back, far separated from the other cars like the old days of leper colonies. To give Goodfellow credit, it did look contagious: patches of different-colored paint, older than either Niko or me; no MP3 player; no disk player, cassette player; not even an eight track player. I wasn’t exactly sure what that last was, but it would have to be better than the AM radio, which is all we managed to get. And with that luxury option, the big brown and maroon monstrosity was slightly better than his last car, which had bit the dust six months ago.

I was still surprised my brother let me drive his latest shitmobile. This one was a Cadillac Eldorado convertible back from the days when they were apparently made to double as tanks in case war broke out on the Jersey turnpike. He was possessive of each and every one of his massive, beat-up babies, although he’d yet to clue me in on why he kept his weapons, his clothes, his routine, his bedroom, his life immaculate, but the cars-they were the opposite. When I asked, he always said with a faint trace of condescension, “One day you’ll understand, Grasshopper.”

There were many one day s. I just chalked up the car one with the others and was grateful I actually made it in the big-boy seat. Granted, my window didn’t roll down and the air conditioner… There was no air conditioner. I sat and sweltered in the heat, which had climbed since morning. “Jesus”-I mopped sweat from my face-“let me break the window. Come on, Nik, I’m begging you.”

“And won’t that be refreshing when January arrives?” He gave the rearview mirror an annoyed look at the bright red cubes that swung back and forth as I swatted them his way. “And what did I tell you about the fuzzy dice?”

“Hey, they’re from Goodfellow. You’ll take it up with him. Besides, if you drive a car that looks like fuzzy dice were in the option package, you’re going to get fuzzy dice.” I slammed the heel of my hand against the radio to shut it off. It stayed on. It always did. “Who the hell is Air Supply and why do they hate me so much?”

“Did you tell him what you learned from the revenant? And it’s a band from the seventies.”

Music before we were born and an evil that made revenants look like fuzzy puppies fighting over a chew toy. “How do you know that? You couldn’t possibly listen to that crap.”

“Because I know everything,” he said as if it were the most simple of conclusions. And with Niko, yeah, it was. “And Robin?” he said, pushing.

“I told him. Better safe than sorry when dealing with the Kin.” I trusted Robin with my life and he’d come through every time. That kind of trust was a huge step for me, and Goodfellow had never made me doubt he deserved it… at least not since the first time he’d saved Nik and me. Trust didn’t have anything to do with why I almost hadn’t told him, changing my mind only at the last minute. The reason was simple enough: I just hadn’t wanted to talk about it. I had thinking to do. I also didn’t want to do that. Not yet. My Zen, one-with-the-universe, happy-frigging-lucky mood had disappeared in that hangar-no getting it back, but it didn’t mean I wanted to dwell on it.

It was hard to lose something that was almost impossible to find to begin with.

But I had told him all the same. The revenant had said the Kin had found out about Delilah and me, all of the Kin-not just her former screw du jour that I’d neutered in the park. “I didn’t have to tell you though, did I?” I asked Nik.

And I hadn’t. I’d walked into the apartment and he’d seen it, what I’d learned, behind my blank eyes and blanker face. He’d known, because he could read me like a book. He had asked what the revenant had said the Kin were going to do about it, though. But, that, the revenant hadn’t known. It was easy enough to guess. They’d either kill Delilah or give Delilah the opportunity to redeem herself by killing me. Simple. To the point. The Kin weren’t much on Machiavellian-style schemes. Hump it, eat it, or kill it-that was good enough for them.

Niko didn’t dwell on it after the short discussion, which was what I needed. He let me drive the car too, which I’d thought I’d needed, but now I was wishing for his side with the window that worked. Cooking in a sauna was a distraction, but not the most entertaining one. I’d switched to short sleeves and left the Eagle and Glock at home. This time I was carrying my SIG Sauer. I had to rotate my toys so they all got action. My jacket was in the backseat in case we were pulled over or had to stop at a public place and I needed to cover up the holster. The bandage taped over my forearm did the same for the revenant bite. I wouldn’t have bothered hiding it behind a bandage after cleaning it; it had stopped bleeding early on, but people tended to notice what looked like a human bite mark on your arm. Oddly enough, that kind of thing didn’t label me friendly, cheerful, and trustworthy to the world at large.

“It is unfortunate,” he began, deciding the subject needed more discussing after all. “I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” he said, echoing Robin’s earlier comment and my own thoughts. In sympathy, I guessed, he hit the radio with a much lighter tap of his hand and this time it immediately shut off. “When are you going to talk to Delilah about this?”

“You’ve had this car six months and you couldn’t do that before now? And when I absolutely can’t avoid it,” I griped, annoyed at the months of horrific excuse for music I’d suffered through. I was scarred. My eardrums were scarred. From what I could tell, the seventies had been a time of singers whose balls hadn’t dropped yet. Voices so high I couldn’t believe they hadn’t shattered every window in the Titanic’s rusty cousin we were cruising in. Although at the moment that would’ve been a good thing, since even with the top down the heat was god-awful. I mopped at the sweat again dripping along my hairline, thankful I’d pulled the now-damp strands back into a short ponytail.

“What fun would that be-not torturing my little brother?” He eased his seat back. “And avoiding it only makes the uncertainty last longer. This is something I would think you wouldn’t want to be uncertain about.” He closed his eyes, lecture over. “I’m going to meditate. If you see a Sasquatch looking for a ride on the side of the road, keep going. There’s not enough legroom in the back.”

I didn’t bother asking if Bigfoot was real. I’d stopped asking questions like that when I was eighteen. Sooner or later you’d find out one way or the other. Why spoil the surprise? In other words, my brain couldn’t begin to store all that was real, all that wasn’t, and the rest no one had a clue about one way or the other. I left that to Nik. It was easier than getting a pocket encyclopedia entitled When to Shoot, When Not to Shoot, and When to Run Away Like a Little Girl in Pigtails. Not to say a little girl in pigtails couldn’t be scary in her own right, especially if her teeth were pointed and her eyes glowed green in the dark. And you could bet your ass there were some out there like that. I might not have known the name or have seen one before, but the world was full of nightmares I hadn’t seen yet. It didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

Diversity: It made the world go round.

“Meditate away, Cyrano.” I tried to put my seat back. Naturally it was frozen completely upright and made for the comfort of the anal-retentive driver, stick up the ass a luxury option. “If I go through a drive-through, I’ll ask for a bag full of grass and oats for you. Maybe a lactose-free, chemical-free, flavor-free shake to go with.”

“You do that.” He folded his hands across his stomach, linking fingers. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten our discussion about gates. I’ll give you a break for now, because of the unpleasant day you’ve had.” The eyes, opened for a sideways gaze, steely and implacable, had me giving an internal wince. That was too bad, considering what I had planned for the rest of the day. It was too bad for me and too bad for my ass, which would receive a kicking requiring an organ donor with an Auphe/ human-compatible gluteus maximus. And those were hard to come by.

“But sooner or later,” he went on, “we will talk about it.”

Sooner would be my bet, and those, unfortunately, were always the bets I won.

I drove on while Niko meditated. I didn’t see Bigfoot, not until we arrived at the RV park, and then I saw them everywhere. Campers with their shirts off and backs hairier than any Sasquatch, Yeti, or woolly mammoth combined. My trigger finger twitched because, honestly, was someone with a carpet on his back, plaid shorts, socks and sandals, any less of a threat to the world-at least visually? But I drove past them and didn’t shoot a single one. I wished for a Weedwacker or a little temporary blindness, but I didn’t shoot, and that got chalked in the success column.

I followed Abelia- Roo’s directions via Nik, who’d gotten them from her when he’d spoken with her on the phone. He’d written them down for me in his neat, precise handwriting. “Hey, we’re here. Nap’s over.”

“Meditation isn’t a nap and if you think it is, maybe once an hour isn’t enough for you.” Niko nodded toward a gravel road to the right.

Hourly was doable. Five, ten minutes and I zipped right through the mantras counted on my mala, but zipping through them probably wasn’t the point. But flying through them or not, it was obviously working, or the meditation combined with the death of the Auphe was working. I’d made those three gates in the past six months without any of the Auphe side effects of the past. It was simple. I didn’t lose myself to it or to something buried in me. I owned it now. It didn’t own me. Only getting Niko to see that was going to be a trick, because he had seen the times it had owned me. And the memory of an Auphe-hissing brother, teeth stained with blood, and sanity on a temporary vacation, stuck with a person. It had stuck with Nik; that was for sure.

I just had to get him to see the light, and with his being equally as stubborn as I was, that was going to be a problem. When he was smarter than I was and capable of picking me up off the ground by my neck à la Darth Vader without the asthma-not that he would, but he could-that meant I rarely won an argument. At least I had the upper hand in knowing he wouldn’t actually kill me-no matter how much I deserved it.

I stopped the car before a half circle of about thirty RVs. There wasn’t a single person outside. That was different from the last time. They’d been wary, but I’d seen women, kids, and the not-so-shy-and-retiring muscle Branje who’d almost lost his nose to my temper. “How much do you think they have? The Sarzo Clan? Like down to the penny?”

“Fair-sized clan.” He took in the condition of the RVs. “Their homes aren’t too old, definitely not decrepit. Important enough to have several antiques lying about for sale.” Like the Calabassa crown that had nearly been the cause of his death. “Liquid assets, probably a hundred thousand. Abelia- Roo is sharp in all ways. I doubt her money-making skills are any less effective.”

“Okay then.” I pulled the key from the ignition and tossed it to him. “In case you want to listen to the radio,” I said, smirking.

His eyebrows went up. “You think I’m going to let you do the negotiating without me? You wanted to pistol-whip her last night. Both of us would provide a more balanced approach.”

“Is that your tactful way of saying we play Good Ninja, Bad Monster?” I asked. I opened the door and climbed out of the oven. Draping over the top of the immovable window, I leaned down. “I need this, Nik. Because of her, you almost died. All she had to do was say a few words to warn us. Just a couple and she didn’t. If it had been me instead of you, wouldn’t you want to make her pay a little?”

That brought the brows down, the expression disappearing from his face. “I would want her to pay more than a little. I would want her to pay a great deal, which is why I don’t think your being alone with her is a good idea.”

“I won’t lay a finger on her, swear,” I promised.

He tilted his head, face still impassive.

“Or a knife or a gun,” I added reluctantly. “Just talking, but I want to be mean and I want to be nasty. If you’re there, I won’t be able to be all that. Unfortunately, big brother, you bring out the best in me.” And while the best wasn’t much, it might be enough for me to see her-just for a second-as an ancient old lady, somebody’s great-grandma, instead of the malicious piece of work she was, one who nearly lost me my only family.

“I want payback,” I finished. “But I won’t touch a hair on her balding, snapping turtle head to get it, okay?”

He sighed. “Ten minutes. I’ll go ahead and start regretting my decision now and get that out of the way, but in ten minutes to the second I am coming in for you.”

“Ten is all I’ll need.” That was big talk when our first bargaining encounter with the Sarzo had included Robin, who had ripped off anyone and everyone for the entirety of his long life, my knife up Branje’s nose, and about five hours total of cursing, dickering, haggling, and the traditional imbibing of blackberry brandy. Maybe I should’ve been worried. I wasn’t. I’d been pretending to be human then.

I wasn’t now.

I closed the car door and headed straight for her RV. I recognized it from last time. It was the only one with a cotton candy pink door. It’s the baddest of witches that always have the best candy, isn’t it? I didn’t bother knocking. I wasn’t a polite kind of guy. Opening the door, I walked in to find her waiting at the small kichenette table. “I don’t see Hansel or Gretel. Did you eat them already?”

“You talk to your elders like that? Have you no shame?” she said sharply, the dark skin over her cheek-bones faded to a dirty pale gray.

Well, well. Look who didn’t like me anymore.

“Nope, not one tiny bit. And that’s a real pity for you, Abelia-Roo.” She was gray- faced, hands twisted in what looked like a painful knot before her on the table, the rank smell of fear floating around her like a cloud. Her eyes were looking at me, sliding away quickly, then looking again.

She knew all right-knew about me.

They all knew. That’s why every single Sarzo was hiding in his camper, hiding from the monster, hiding from me. Once it would’ve eaten away at me. Once I would’ve despised the unnatural within. Now I just used it and, quite frankly, didn’t care if these people thought I was worse than any story-tale demon-worse than a vampire, werewolf, boggle, troll, or revenant. The Rom knew what most people didn’t. They knew what lurked in the shadow of the world. They knew all the creatures that lived secret lives and they knew the Auphe-first predator, first murderer, first monster. All that meant they thought they knew me.

And that was going to make negotiations so much easier. After all, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t planned on telling her myself, but this worked even better. Someone had done me a favor. She’d had a while to think about me and this meeting, and none of those thoughts would’ve been too pleasant. They really wanted that Suyolak guy back badly if they were willing to pay the devil times ten to do their dirty work.

Payback’s a bitch, Abelia, I thought as I slid into the booth opposite her, just like you. So get ready to suck it up.

I looked around at the pink and green checkered couch with its small coffee table. There wasn’t a crystal ball or pack of tarot cards in sight. Only ruffles, a flower-patterned rug under the table, and the fading smell of cinnamon from that morning’s breakfast. All that was missing were big-eyed kitten teacups. “Damn, Abelia, you’ve gone all Martha Stewart on me. Where’s the good stuff? The ‘love spells,’ the cards, the paste engagement rings, the hexes? How does all this Bible Belt country charm not dissolve you into a puff of smoke?”

That brought a glare out of her. “We do our work and we do it well. If the buyer is a fool, that is no fault of mine if they end up with less than they expected.”

True enough. But I wasn’t a fool and I’d still ended up with something I hadn’t expected when she’d sold us the Calabassa-the near sacrifice of my brother.

I pulled out my knife and balanced it on its tip in the center of the table, then rotated it slowly with a lazy back-and-forth twist of my wrist. I’d told Nik that I wouldn’t use it; I didn’t say I wouldn’t show it. “Against my better judgment,” I said casually, “and, oh, despite our general loathing and hatred of you, my brother and I have decided to take the job. It’ll cost you fifty thousand dollars.”

She snorted, but it was a weak imitation of her usual snap. “Even a Vayash, even a gadje barters better than that-to start so impossibly high.” Idly I noticed that matching candy pink curtains were drawn over the tiny window. Petal pink and this poisonous centipede of a woman; it would make you think twice about that old saying about stopping to smell the roses. There was no telling what would scuttle out and bite you when you did.

I smiled as the knife continued to turn… just as the gate began to turn behind me. I started it small, out of her sight hidden by my back, and let it grow until it was a full-sized mass of writhing gray light. “But I’m not gadje, at least not the kind of outsider you mean, am I?” I let my curved lips peel back to show my teeth. Some would’ve called it a grin, but only those like me-born in the world’s shadow.

“Fifty thousand, take it or leave it.” I turned my head slightly, letting my eyes slide toward the tarnished light. “Or you could go through there. Trade instead of money. Would you like to see what’s on the other side, Abelia-Roo? Step through there and maybe we’ll take care of your ‘tiny’ problem for free. You won’t find a better deal than that.” I showed more teeth. “Go on. Aren’t you even curious?”

Her wattled neck convulsed as she swallowed, blackbird eyes surrounded by white. She managed to look anywhere but at the gate… or at me. “That… that is more than half of everything we have.”

“You almost cost me my brother, who is the whole of everything I have. It seems more than fair to me.” I stopped spinning the knife and slapped it flat on the table as the gate crept closer behind me. I could feel it. Eager but contained, and good; it felt damn good and nothing like before-no thirst for blood, no shredding of my control, no consuming hunger.

All right. Maybe a little hunger.

But mainly the feeling I could do anything; be anything; was everything. “You pay or we leave.” I stood but braced my arms on the table. “I really don’t give a shit either way. But when I do leave”-I looked at the gate again, thinking fondly what a good boy it was-“I’m leaving my friend behind.”

I took my knife, slid it into its sheath, and headed for the RV door. “Enjoy. I opened it in the middle of a boggle nest. Have anything in your little bags for a boggle?” She didn’t move, frozen-the mighty Abelia-Roo, who ruled with an iron fist and hadn’t bothered to spare a word to save my brother’s life, finally facing something she couldn’t control, couldn’t curse, and couldn’t con.

“I didn’t think so.” I swung the door open. “Tell Mama Boggle you’re a friend of mine when she comes through. She really loves me. I’m like the half- Auphe bastard son she never had.”

I was letting the door swing shut behind me when she let out a strangled, “No, we’ll pay.”

Because she thought I’d actually do it, and it could be she was right. My brother brought out the best in me. People who messed with my brother brought out the very worst.

I caught the door. “Is that so? Damn. I’d been hoping you’d say no.” I let the gate thin to nothing. I thought about it first, a long moment, but finally I did let it go before I motioned out the door to Nik. This time I did let it swing shut and went back to my former seat. “Who told you about me? Not that it matters. It’s not a big secret these days. I’m just curious. And don’t I rate any of that blackberry brandy?” She forked the evil eye at me. I forked my own economy version right back-just the one finger needed. “What do they say? The pot calling the kettle black?” I drawled.

“The Vayash told us,” she said between disgusting puckered lips. “I called them after contacting you at the bar. I wanted to know if you were hard workers, would do well by us. Instead, they warned us and revealed to us what you are. Your clan revealed their shame to protect their fellow Rom. It is the kind of loyalty and honor our people share with one another, not that a creature like you could understand that.”

“The same loyalty and honor you showed us at our last business arrangement?” Niko asked as he came through the door. “And if you think my brother is so lacking in it, why do you want to hire us?”

“Sometimes only evil can find evil, can detect its blackened wake.” She looked as if she wanted to spit to cleanse her mouth of a bad taste, but that wouldn’t have done her squeaky-clean linoleum any good.

“Takes a monster to catch a monster. Maybe I can get that on a T-shirt.” I wedged myself in the corner to give Niko’s longer legs some room, then promptly elbowed him for having the audacity to be a few inches taller than I was. Not my usual “on the job” behavior, but I wasn’t looking to impress Abelia-Roo. She was impressed enough. Impress her any more and I might short out that shriveled black wad of phlegm she called a heart. While that might do the world a favor, it wouldn’t get us fifty thousand dollars or save the world from a murderous, psychotic, and by now, claustrophobic, antihealer.

Niko did something under the table that cut off all feeling below my right knee. Catholic nuns had their rulers; Niko had his one hundred seventy- six ways of making you regret you had nerve endings. I winced and reluctantly tried for a more businesslike demeanor. “Nik, Abelia here, loving and generous granny that she is, is paying us fifty thousand dollars to find their lost jack-in-the-box, killer-in-the-box, whatever you want to call it. Where do we start?”

“Fifty-thousand? That is generous. Most generous indeed.” The gaze Nik turned on me let me know I was lucky he didn’t do something that didn’t paralyze me from the neck down instead of the knee and then pound my head against the table. He didn’t ask how I’d managed to get such a good deal-he knew. Big brothers could always look at their little brothers and not only know they’d been bad, but how they’d been bad. And brothers didn’t come any sharper than mine.

I’d been aware of what I was going to do when I got out of the car and I’d been aware I’d have to pay the price, not from the gate itself, but from my brother. I’d done it anyway. If I had to pay a little for Abelia to pay a lot, then that was the way it had to be.

“Fifty thousand,” I confirmed. “But no brandy. Although with your being pure Rom and human to boot, I’d think you’d rate.”

“Forget the brandy.” Niko turned back to Abelia-Roo, one more narrowed glance letting me know other things wouldn’t be so easily forgotten. Those things were starting to add up at a fast and furious rate. I had four gates to pay for now. “When was Suyolak taken? Do you have a description of the men and the truck they transferred the coffin into? And were there any strangers around beforehand, asking questions about Rom culture or history?”

“A researcher, you mean. A professor and, yes, one did. We are Rom, not naïve sheep. Of course we know he was behind it. He came to talk of our legends. He brought up the legend of Suyolak over and over. Could he really heal any wound, any illness? We took his money, spun him nonsense tales, and sent him on his way. We’d planned on moving on the next day anyway, but the next day was not soon enough.” She pounded her fist sharply against the table. “Johai! The card he gave us was false. The name equally false. He was a tall man, silver hair, dark eyes.” Her hands fluttered about, then disappeared and reappeared with one of her infamous tiny bags. “That night they came, night before last. The truck had no license plate. The men wore jeans, black shirts, and ski masks. They shot five of our clan; shot them dead and carried Suyolak away.”

Niko said, “He needs someone healed then.” I nodded in agreement. Whoever it was hadn’t been trying to hide that.

“It would seem.” Abelia had spilled a small mound of gray powder on the table and was stirring it randomly with a sticklike finger. “We gathered the rest of our men and drove the roads searching for them, but found nothing. The Plague of the World was gone.”

By now she’d drawn an elaborate figure in the powder, one piece of it pointed at me like a spear. I snorted and passed my hand over it, wiping it out and leaving a clean surface of powder. I drew a tic-tac-toe design in the middle. The letters to “screw you” fit perfectly-it even left a nice neat space between the two words.

“Unless that’s anthrax and you’ve gotten Ebola-infected flying monkeys waiting outside for me, you’re out of luck,” I responded. “I know you fool the marks, but didn’t your mommy tell you there was no such thing as magic?” The Calabassa she’d sold us had been a thing of technology made by a race long extinct. Iron and zinc were proven to block psychics… by science. I knew that because Nik had made me watch some long, boring documentary on it. And mummy cats? Wahanket infused them with a tiny portion of his own life force… I absolutely did not want to know how.

But magic? Spells and fairy dust? Fall into the piranha pool at the local zoo and try tossing your magic powder at them. See what happens-beyond seasoning the human soup, doubtfully much. To believe in magic, you had to have faith. I saved my faith, what faith I had, for lead and steel, guns and blades. They worked. Even monsters laughed at the idea of magic.

She swept the powder back into the bag. “I and five of my best will follow you in your search. We will need to be there to escort the coffin back to the clan.”

True. We’d need one of their RVs. People are going to give you a second look when you’re driving down the interstate with a coffin strapped to the top of your car. Then again, I’d sooner ride on top of that coffin buck naked, eating nachos and waving a Yankees foam finger, than have Abelia-Roo tagging along.

“We can rent a truck,” I said dismissively, “when we find it. Or just use the one we find it in.”

“You will also need me to make sure the seals are intact on the coffin.”

“We’ll get a padlock. There are Home Depots everywhere.” I nudged Niko with my shoulder to move the situation along. “Hand over the money. We’ll call you when we have what’s-his-name back.”

Niko didn’t cooperate. “She may be right. It might be a good idea to have along those who’ve been responsible for Suyolak for so long. They know more about him than we can find out in weeks of research. Weeks we don’t have. If he gets free before we find him, they could be helpful. They are his people, after all.”

“Who locked him in a box for hundreds of years,” I pointed out. “The only help they could give us then is that they’d be the first people he’d go after.” I thought about that for a moment. “You’re right. It’s a good idea.”

Niko’s lips twitched in a way that let me know I was both incorrigible, as he’d say, and on the money, as I’d say. “The money, Abelia- Roo, and we’ll leave in the morning. By then I plan to have a direction, at least, to head toward.”

She studied us both, although when she looked at me, it was with the revulsion of someone finding a black widow spider at her bare feet and no house shoe or book to smash it. Not that Abelia-Roo couldn’t strike one dead with one second of her hemlock glare. She probably could and did at regular intervals, but it didn’t work with me. I gave her a sunny smile with not one drop of venom to be seen. “The money,” I repeated. The “I win” I didn’t have to say. The price alone said it.

She twisted her features into one of those old dried apple doll faces you saw people selling by the road in Appalachia. It’d been a long time since we’d been that way… since I was eleven… but I remembered them. Most kids would’ve thought they were creepy, as if they’d come to life in the middle of the night and shove their apple heads down your throat to choke you before you had a chance to scream. But most kids didn’t have a remote clue what creepy really was.

Creepy or not, Abelia would have those dolls winning beauty contests. She slid from behind the table and shook out her dusty crimson and dull black skirts. She definitely hadn’t gone the Martha Stewart route in the clothing department. Abelia- Roo in a pink sweater tied around her narrow shoulders and matching slacks: It was enough to make your brain spasm at the improbability of it all, not to mention the added picture of her passing out holiday brownies… topped with cherries and just a hint of arsenic, of course.

And she was afraid of me. Didn’t that put me in the big-boy category or what?

Rustling back toward the sleeping quarters of the RV, she passed through layers of scarves that hung from the ceiling, none of which were pink-Martha Stewart ended there-and disappeared into a gloom no stray ray of sunshine could penetrate. It took her a few minutes, which was not too good for me. Niko seemed to grow larger with each passing second until I felt about the size of that eleven-year-old boy who’d fed one of those apple dolls to a cow hanging her head over the fence by the road (she spit it out, by the way). Yeah, I was the salmon heading up the falls and Niko was the grizzly bear waiting for me at the top.

Finally we heard the sound of one of those cheap accordion doors closing and Abelia- Roo returned with a paper bag. She put it on the table before Niko, who opened it and counted it with quick and efficient fingers. He might be pissed at me, but that didn’t distract him from the fact that trusting the old woman was a mistake only a fool would make; my brother was no fool. The fact that all fifty was there and not half now, half on delivery, told me something. If this Suyolak guy did get out, Abelia didn’t see a future where money mattered.

“He is a monster,” she said sharply to Niko, “this thing you call a brother, but perhaps you are worse. You are his keeper. We keep our monster under lock and key and you let yours run, free to kill and destroy as he sees fit. Everything he does, the responsibility is shared equally with you.”

“Of everything he does, I’m proud to claim half.” Niko rose to his feet. “We will see you in the morning.” I followed him out the door and back to the car. I started to get back in the driver’s seat, when a hand snagged the back of my shirt and jeans and helped me all the way through to the passenger side of the bench seat and halfway out the open window.

“I guess we’re having that talk now?” I asked, looking down at the gravel beneath the car.

“Why not? Talking to this end of you”-his voice came from behind me, “behind” functioning in a dual sense here-“isn’t any different than speaking with the other end and is about as effective.”

I set my hands on the sun- hot door and pushed my way back in the car. Sliding back into the seat, I took the lap belt from the days when the highest quality of safety technicians thought that crushing your skull against the dashboard was just swell and wondered whether to fasten it or try to strangle myself with it. Asphyxiation would be less painful than one of Niko’s “talks.” This time, though, I knew I was right. All the other times, admittedly, I’d been wrong. I knew I was wrong and didn’t bother to deny how very wrong I was. That made this unfamiliar territory.

He got behind the wheel and closed his door with a muffled click, carefully… quietly. It was Nik at his most annoyed. When you could do what my brother could, when you could kill as easily as most people could breathe, it paid to have control-the same kind of control he doubted I had. And to have that control in less than six months with what the gates had done to me before that, I didn’t blame him for the doubt. I did have the gates in check, though, but getting Nik to believe-that was going to be a trick.

“I take it you have the payback you wanted.”

His voice was as quiet and self-possessed as the rest of him as he stared straight ahead, although he hadn’t started the car yet. I gave the bag of money he’d set in the floorboard a dismissive nudge with my shoe. It hadn’t been about the money. It had been about making her feel at least a tenth as terrified as I’d felt when I thought my brother was gone. “I got some, yeah.”

“I think you obtained more than ‘some.’ And there’s only one way you could’ve frightened her that much.” Now he looked at me, almost as though he didn’t know me. That, oddly enough, scared me probably more than I had scared Abelia-Roo. “You did the very thing I told you not to do, and now here we are.”

I opened my mouth, ready to defend myself-in a very real way, desperate to defend myself. Nik was my only family. I’d spent my whole life knowing without a doubt he was always there for me. If my ass needed saving, he would save it. If I was a screwup, which I was some of the time-hell, most of the time-he didn’t care. He corrected me or accepted me. He was my brother. He knew me inside and out and that couldn’t change. I might have control, but “Know thyself”? I didn’t have a goddamn clue. From day to day, minute to minute, my opinion shifted. Man, monster, an ice-cream twist of the two? I didn’t know. The bottom line was I didn’t know who I was, but Nik did, and that was more than good enough for me.

“Nik…,” I started.

He shook his head, cutting me off. “You have control? You swear it?”

“Yes,” I replied. I might not know who or what I was at my core, but the gates, that I was sure about. Absolutely positive.

“All right, then.” He started the car.

“All right?” I frowned and smacked aside a fuzzy dice that swung and hit me in the face as the car backed up. “Just like that? No talk? No kicking my ass? No telling me I’m being a dangerous idiot?”

“I saw you born, Cal.” He braked, cranked the steering wheel to turn the car around, and used the moment to give me the same look, but I saw it for what it was now. It wasn’t that he didn’t know me; it was that he was seeing something new. “I saw you grow up. Now I see the end product. I see the man, and you can’t be a man if I don’t let you be.”

I exhaled and folded my arms across my chest in relief and a little disbelief. “I’m a man? Yeah? Do I get a bar mitzvah?”

“The bris comes first. Do you want to borrow my tanto? I sharpened it this past weekend.”

This time it was my legs I folded and in a fairly unmanly fashion. “Funny. Funny stuff there.” Home deliveries and a doctor/hospital-averse mother left me as nature made me and it was a little late to be changing that now. “I’ve been trying to cut back on do- it-yourself circumcisions.”

He had driven us almost out of the park before he spoke again. “As a full-fledged adult, you will experience consequences to your actions, you realize.”

“There have always been consequences.” Bad ones usually.

“Yes, but in the past I was willing to let some of your idiocy slide. You are now wholly responsible for any and all of your decisions, no matter how catastrophic.”

The sun was falling in the sky, spearing me directly in the eyes. I put on my sunglasses and groaned, “All of them? Is that even possible?” I meant it too. I might have made it to adulthood in Niko’s eyes, but being an adult didn’t mean I was a competent one. I was a gate-building architect extraordinaire and the Traveling King, but that didn’t mean I still wasn’t a screwup in a few other areas of my life. “Cyrano, can’t we sort of ease into the responsibility part? One screwup at a time maybe?”

The Roman profile didn’t shift from its serious set. “You’re an adult, Cal. Embrace it. All little monster killers grow up. I saw it six months ago. I see it now. You can handle it. I have faith.”

Niko’s faith was different from my faith and a little less faith might be good. Killing, tending bar, trying to decide if I was more monster than human, and giving a shitload of bad attitude-that I was good at. Everything outside that was a different story, but if Nik thought I could handle the fallout of my occasionally wildly massive mistakes, then I’d give it my best shot. I’d make him proud-or do my best not to make him regret it.

“You’re right. I’m old enough to kill for my country, die for my country, vote for president, and to be drunk while doing all three.” I leaned back in the chair that worked, enjoying the air through the open window. Damn right I was ready.

“Yes, the very definition of responsibility,” he commented dryly.

Maybe not, but considering my past record, it was a start.

When we made it back to the loft it was almost dark. Niko had already put his university contacts to work as we rode back to the city, starting the calls before we had made it out of the Rom camp. It seemed he had one contact in the anthropology department in whom he had special confidence. If anyone had a chance of knowing the foremost experts in Rom culture, this guy, Dr. Penjani, would know about it. Next was a tiny woman I’d met once who taught mythology. Her name was Sassafras Jones, Dr. Sassy Jones, and she was sassy too. Loud, big, fond of pink… lots and lots of pink, but it looked better on her than on Abelia-Roo. I was surprised there wasn’t a tinge of pink to her wild halo of silver curls and in the icing on the horrible diet cardboard cookies she shoved on me. Not only did she know all the big mythology, anthropology, any-kind-of-ology experts in the country who’d have come across Suyolak in their studies, but she’d also be able to find out if any of them had terminally ill relatives. When it came to academia, Niko said, she was the equivalent of the neighborhood gossip… for the entire country.

“So what do we do when we find him?” I demanded, flopping on the couch and turning on the remote. Or rather pressing buttons in thin air as the remote disappeared from my hand more quickly than Houdini could’ve managed on his best day. Niko laid it on one end table. “Fine,” I grumped. “No TV. Doesn’t change the fact that if we find him and whoever took him has let him out, we’re just a puddle of hemorrhagic fever goo on the ground. Or he might be nice and only explode our hearts or melt our brains, all before we get within a hundred feet of him. Even if I manage to shoot him before I go down or travel closer and break his neck, I still think he’ll have time to take us all with him.”

“Which is why we need a healer, and since we cannot reach Rafferty, we’ll have to try our former client at Columbia, Dr. Nushi.”

Who was in reality a Japanese healing entity called O-Kuni-Nushi. He was known to his less than observant human colleagues as Ken Nushi and worked as a doctor and special seminar instructor for the premed upperclassmen at Columbia University. With the only other healer we’d known, Rafferty Jeftichew, now missing for almost a year, Nushi was our only hope. You fought fire with fire; and you fought a hyped-up, homicidal, megalomaniac Rom Kevorkian with another healer-and not the kind healing warts for God and five bucks at a tent revival either. You needed the real deal.

Unfortunately, per his answering machine, Nushi had returned to his homeland two months ago-on a sabbatical-and was unreachable at this time. There was no forwarding number or address. Niko tried calling Promise, who in turn called in some favors from the nonhuman crowd-nothing. She even tried the other side of her life, the insanely rich-some of whom had buildings at Columbia named after them. Her luck wasn’t any better there. Nushi liked his privacy. No one knew where he was or how to contact him. “Now what?” I checked my watch. It was almost nine, close to time for me to be heading to work. Until Niko’s pals at the university finished burning the prime-time viewing oil, we didn’t even have a direction to start driving.

“Go to work. I’ll try Rafferty. It’s bound to be pointless, but he’s all we have left.” Rafferty was a healer we’d met about three and a half years ago, maybe longer. If anyone could give Suyolak a run for his money, it would be him. Rafferty had kept me alive when I’d had a single drop of blood left in me. He’d also put me to sleep by merely thinking it and stopped my heart and restarted it without breaking a sweat. But he had a sick cousin and was, as far as we knew, traveling looking for a cure even he couldn’t provide. We’d called a few times, but he hadn’t felt much like communicating, because he hadn’t answered a single call, had abandoned his house, and no one, not even Goodfellow with his network of fellow tricksters across the country, had seen hide of him nor hair of his cousin for more than a year.

Rafferty’s cousin was a werewolf, same as Rafferty-a Wolf healer; weird, I know. They seemed made to savage, not heal, but, like people, Wolves were all different. But that was the only way they were like people. Werewolves were born, not made; they were a completely different species from humans, although the switching from one form to the other could understandably fool those in the past who had passed on the legends. Unfortunately, the cousin was stuck in wolf form. He was also slowly losing the human reasoning werewolves carried with them while wearing the fur. Rafferty was determined if he couldn’t save his cousin, there had to be someone out there who could. He had his mission and he wasn’t straying from it. I understood that. I understood family. But talk about bad timing.

“Go to work,” Nik ordered, as he punched a number into his cell. “Watch out for the Kin-all of them.” After what the revenant had told me, it wasn’t something my brother had to tell me twice. Until I knew what the Kin’s price would be, I’d be looking over my shoulder more than usual. I pushed up off the soft couch with regret at a lost nap, wished for once we’d catch an easy break, and was just grabbing my jacket when Niko said with a surprised tone I didn’t often hear from him, “Rafferty? Is that you?”

Holy shit. Forget the break. Forget the lotto.

We’d just hit the jackpot.