Trick of the Light

Chapter 17

It was good to be home, and I didn’t feel the need to bite my tongue at the word. Incredible. Home. I looked around the bar. Same stained floor. Same pool table and dartboard. Same beat-up tables and chairs. Despite myself, I was fond of it. Oh hell, I loved it. It beat Ramses II’s palace hands down. Forget gold, carnelian, or lapis lazuli; this was better. This was home, the first one I’d ever known and the first one I’d ever wanted. It wasn’t the dirty word I’d always thought it. I think Kimano had figured that out before he died, as much time as he spent in Hawaii. Not a fighter, not close to being a halfway good trickster, but he’d been smart in a way I hadn’t. He’d known what a home could do for you—what it could be—when I hadn’t had a clue.

“You’ll be all right?”

I looked over my shoulder at Griffin. “More than all right. Go home, boys. You’ll get to sleep in your own beds tonight. No sharing and no napping in bathtubs.” I was a good little trickster and didn’t say any more, although I did measure them with my eyes. Yes, Zeke was definitely an inch or two taller. Big spoon all the way.

Griffin walked over to the bar, took a bottle of whiskey, and said in explanation, “It’s been one hell of a week. Put it on my tab, would you?”

“As if your money’s any good here.” I waved him off.

“Your money would’ve been good replacing my ostrich skin jacket you ruined,” he grumbled halfheart edly, but nodded and disappeared out the front door.

Then there was Zeke. He stood there, looking the same as he’d always been. But could he be? Finding out he’d been an angel, and that’s what had made his human brain different from others, not a drug-addicted mother. Discovering his partner and best friend had been a demon—the one thing he lived and breathed to kill, his one and only purpose. Learning the head of his House was a traitor in Hell’s pocket. Seeing that his friend/surrogate big sister wasn’t human and had been involved in some elaborate plot of revenge and espionage for more than fifty years—what was he thinking? Behind those placid eyes and blank face, how did all of that impact on someone like him?

“He really liked that jacket,” he said disapprovingly.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Of all of us, I thought Zeke might have the healthiest outlook on this whole situation, whether he believed it or not. I hugged him hard. “I think it’s your turn to take care of Griffin. He has a lot to brood about. Don’t let him think he’s any different now than he was yesterday. He’s not. He’s a good, good man.”

“The best.” The placid bottle-glass green went fierce. “The best in the whole goddamn world.”

“Make sure he knows it.” I let go and nudged him toward the door. “And I’ll have you know a B cup is the perfect size. Dick.”

He waffled his hand back and forth. “Eh, but the ass. Now that . . .” I pushed him through the door and slammed it after him before I was forced to hear the rest. I wasn’t in the mood for any more violence this soon.

The quiet left behind was perfect. As was my bubble bath, toes with nails painted bronze peering from mountains of pink foam, followed by my silk pajamas, my own bed, my overstuffed pillows. I turned on my side and let my eyes drift over the piece of amber resting on my bedside table. It glinted faintly in the streetlamp’s light that came through the half-open blinds. I couldn’t see the imprisoned spider clearly. It was only a shadow. “You’re not trapped,” I murmured. “You’re just taking a break. Resting.” Long dead, it probably didn’t care. “Anyway, get used to it.” Because I had. I felt for the shotgun, closed my eyes, and slept.

In the morning I woke up and Leo was there.

Not right there. Not sitting on the bed or looming like a window-peeping pervert. But he was back. I knew the way I always knew—it was the way I couldn’t tell Griffin when he’d thought Leo had been kidnapped by Eli. Tricksters always know other tricksters. We usually know all other supernatural creatures. Païens. Not always, but the majority of the time. Some you don’t know until you’re face-to-face, assuming they look human. If they don’t look human, you obviously don’t need any special sense to recognize them. Some païens you could feel a block away. Those were usually the ones you didn’t want to see face-to-face like the others. No chatting with them or passing on gossip if you were in the boonies far from a cluster of other païens.

Don’t get me wrong. Tricksters, no matter which kind, were bad-ass. I wasn’t going to be shy and retiring, modest little Trixa. No. I was damn proud of our rep. You messed with a trickster, you took your life into your own hands, paws, claws, whatever. We would mess you up six ways from Sunday and then we’d call in our friends and family to decide how to put you back together again. Puzzles can be fun, right?

But . . .

And there’s always a but. There were things out there that even tricksters didn’t care to get too close to. So it was a nice evolutionary benefit we’d developed. It was rather a mixture of an angel’s telepathy and a demon’s empathy. You knew who was païen or you could feel them coming. That was how I always knew whether Leo was in the bar or gone.

As for knowing whether Eli had kidnapped him and was chopping bits off him . . . just as Solomon had been no match for me, Eli was no match for Loki the Lie-Smith, the Sly-God, the Sky Traveler. He’d have been ended in seconds. Of course, in the old days, Loki and Eli probably shared a few interests and might have tossed back a few meads together. Now, though, Loki was Leo, and Leo would’ve made short work of Eli. I’d known Eli didn’t have him, but I couldn’t tell Griffin that, not then.

“Trixa, are you going to sleep all damn morning or not?”

Sometimes feeling Leo wasn’t necessary either. I could wait for him to yell for me to get my butt in gear instead. I showered, dressed, did the whole hair-makeup thing. It really is easier when you’re covered with fur or scales, but the effort was worth it. Primping could be entertaining at times. Other times it was a pain in the ass, and then it was a ponytail and lucky-to-put-on-a-bra kind of day. But today was a good day. A great day. If there was an all-out war, our people would survive it. Kimano’s killer was never going to destroy a family again. More than fifty years of searching and planning had brought me to this moment. Victory. Success. For the first time in five decades I wasn’t bent on vengeance and finding a way to save all supernatural kind, all at once. For the first time I was free to do what I wanted, no agenda, no undercover work. I was free.

Leo found me sitting on the stairs. I’d made it halfway down before my legs gave out. “What are you doing?” he asked, the dark copper skin beside his eyes crinkled in exasperation.

“I have no idea.” I wasn’t panicking. I wasn’t. The last fifty years had been a drop in the bucket compared to my lifetime. For someone like me it wasn’t long enough to build up habits or, worse yet, a rut so deep you couldn’t see the top of it. Okay . . . maybe a little panic. “I have no idea, Leo. What do I do now? It’s over. Solomon’s dead. We have the Light. What the hell do I do now?”

He sat beside me. “Trick the stupid, criminal, and unwary as always.”

“Yes, right. I can do that.” As I’d thought yesterday, even in human form I could deliver just deserts.

“Serve drinks.”

I nodded. “Five more years of slinging alcohol. I can handle it.” His glossy black braid lay on his chest and I wrapped it around my hand like a lifeline.

“Keep Zeke and Griffin out of trouble,” he went on. “You know they’ll need it,” he said dryly.

That was true.

“Torment my future girlfriends,” he added.

“You’re staying, then?” I asked, surprised. I’d told the guys he wasn’t a traveler like me and he wasn’t, but he’d been here ten years. I thought he’d at the very least want a vacation for a few decades or so, or that he’d want to spend more time with his family since they were at least speaking enough to ask for his help.

He frowned. “I may as well. I don’t have much choice. The Light seemed to think, like my family, that you’re a good influence on me.”

What did that mean? “And? Since when did you listen to anyone or anything you didn’t want to?”

“Since this.” The braid disappeared from around my hand and Lenore gave a harsh croak at me from the step. A second later Leo was back in place. “That’s it. That is the sum total of my changing ability until you get yours back.”

I laughed. “The great and powerful Loki and you’re stuck as a Poe joke and a bartender. That is damn priceless. Your family will never let you live it down. Never.”

“Look who’s talking. You can’t even change into a bird. You’re a bartender. Period. With what I hear aren’t especially large breasts,” he mocked. “And you think I have it bad?”

I was going to kill Zeke if he did not shut up about my breasts, but it didn’t change the fact Leo was right. He was one bird up on me. I groaned and lay back on the stairs. Leo leaned over me and warm hands undid the necklace with the Pele’s tear from around my neck. “But I was going to stay anyway, regardless of the Light’s own little trick. I wouldn’t leave you defenseless for five years. I was going to stay to watch your back.”

He would have, too. With no urging from the Light needed. But . . . “Defenseless?” We both grinned wolfishly at each other. Even in human form we were nowhere near defenseless. “What are you doing?” I asked as he put Kimano’s black tear in his jeans pocket and then dangled another necklace before my eyes. It was a miniature sun with a garnet in the middle. Red. For me, always red.

“The time for crying is over. Now is the time for sun,” he said simply.

I sat up to make it easier to put the chain around my neck. I touched the gold and red with a reverent finger. Odd that Leo had come from a place of unimaginable cold and darkness—his place of birth and what lived inside him for so long—yet he had always been my sun. I would’ve said thanks, but with the thousands of years between us . . . he knew what he was to me. Just as I knew what I was to him.

“Now.” He settled the sun in place on my chest. “What you need is a project. A mission.”

I did need something. A purpose beyond the average trickster job requirements. I was used to it now—like a pastime, albeit a potentially fatal one. “Like what?”

“Let’s see.” He stood and held a hand down for me. “How about driving every last demon from Vegas? Eden House here couldn’t, but the païens in New York did. Do you want them thinking they’re better than we are?”

The thousands of païens in New York had sent their demons packing, as Robin Goodfellow had been reminiscing on the phone when I’d talked to him. He was my fellow trickster, sometime informant, and had also been known as Pan and Puck in the day. I’d been surprised he hadn’t brought up the days of the Kin’s rule of Vegas when we had talked. The Kin was the werewolf version of the Mafia and had worked hand-in-paw with the real Mafia back in the Bugsy Siegel days up all the way until the Mob lost its hold in the seventies. Not that the human Mafia had ever known whom they were partnered up with. People, the ones blind to the real world, rarely did. In the end I thought that the Kin was glad to leave Vegas. All that fur? Far too hot. They’d probably panted even in their human form.

Demons were enough to deal with anyway. Of course there were only Leo, Griffin, Zeke, and me versus the entire population of those demons. I smiled to myself. It seemed like a fair contest. “Sure, why not? It ought to keep me busy for the first two years anyway. What will I do with the other three?”

“At least you won’t have people asking to take their pictures with you or trying to give you money for stealing your land,” he grunted, pushing the door open and tugging me along behind him.

“You chose the form; I have no sympathy. Besides, you’re a trickster. You know more than enough about Native American lore to fool any tourist, Leo Rain of Eagle Droppings. You created some of the lore yourself,” I pointed out. He preferred the North, but like every other trickster, Leo had done his work in every continent and occupied island on the face of the planet.

“I know. I screwed myself,” he rumbled in complaint. “It was entertaining in the beginning. I hate tourists. Making asses of them made my day, but it’s getting old. Next one I’ll offer to reenact Custer ’s Last Stand in extremely vivid detail. Waivers and death insurance included. Worse yet, now I have this.” He lifted his shirt. On his chest was something new: a tattoo of a raven, tribal and stark, arrowing toward the sky, its wings spread.

“The Light really spanked you but good.” I laughed, tracing the outline.

“I’m just lucky it didn’t put Lenore beneath it,” he rumbled in resignation.

The front door opened and two early birds came in. Paunchy, balding, and pink husband. Pudgy, bleached-blond petrified curls, and pinker wife. Both sets of watery blue eyes fixed on him and the tattoo, and the cameras came out. “I’m starting with them,” he growled. “Go write up the waivers.” I laughed again, pulled down his shirt, and shoved him toward the bar.

The rest of the day blended from afternoon to evening and it was the same as it had always been. The same work, same fried food, same regulars. I hummed and sang the entire time. Once again, my voice isn’t the best, but my regulars are usually drunk enough not to care. I could’ve been an opera singer for all they could tell. Leo eventually couldn’t take it anymore and turned the TV up loud enough to drown me out.

I ignored him, except for flipping him off, and kept singing. About eight p.m., Zeke and Griffin came in. Zeke looked like Zeke, and Griffin looked . . . good. He seemed all right. I smiled at him. He was strong and I knew he’d be strong enough for this, because I wasn’t losing him to despair any more than I was losing him to death. I went to his table as Zeke went to the TV and turned it off.

I sat to the right of Griff. “Is everything all right? You look good.” I patted his cheek. “Good color. Bright eyes. We can get a vet in here to check to see if your nose is cold and wet, but otherwise you look great.” He did. He looked better than he had before the Leviathan thing had gone down.

Zeke sat on the other side of Griffin and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. It wasn’t a squeeze or warning or reassurance, just the comfortable curl of a resting place for his hand. “We’re doing it,” he suddenly announced aloud to the entire bar. The kind of aloud that penetrates through the wall to the bathroom stalls. I mean, it wasn’t precisely out of nowhere, the information, but he could’ve worked up to it a little. That wasn’t Zeke though. “We’re not just screwing either. We’re in a relationship.” He said the last word very carefully, as if he’d never said it. He may never have.

Meanwhile Griffin dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “You are?” I asked him, amused. I’d seen how proprietary they were of each other and that had nothing to do with being partners. Then there had been Zeke refusing to let me share a bed with Griffin. The whole spooning thing I’d taken as a joke, and not because I hadn’t seen this coming. I had. I just hadn’t thought it would be this soon. I hadn’t thought they’d realize it so quickly. I did know Zeke would’ve made the first move. It was the only way Griffin could be sure it was what Zeke wanted and not Zeke going along with whatever he thought Griffin wanted—following his lead, as always. And Zeke had done it apparently, seizing that free will with both hands.

Well, you know what? Good for Zeke.

“A relationship?” I repeated, my lips twitching with humor at Griffin’s sudden retiring nature.

“We are,” Griffin confirmed, hands cupping over his forehead to shield his eyes from Zeke’s show.

“And the sex is fucking unbelievable,” Zeke said, continuing with the rundown.

“Oh hell.” Griffin’s head thunked against the table and stayed down there. I leaned over his back to ask Zeke curiously, “How unbelievable?”

“Last night . . . ,” he started with the same enthusiasm I’d seen him show for his favorite weapons—and that was considerable enthusiasm indeed.

I leaned forward further. It was all kinds of interesting what you could hear when an ex-angel who hadn’t mastered his internal filter started to talk details.

I genuinely had seen this coming. I wasn’t so full of it that I believed brown was this year ’s new magenta. It made absolute sense. Angels and demons were gen derless creatures until they chose a human form (the only form they could choose, by the way . . . amateurs). In their pure crystalline form, angels were androgy nous in appearance—neither male nor female. As for demons, if they had a gender in their true serpent shape, only a zoologist would have a hope of knowing for sure.

Put either creature in a freshly baked cookie dough human body and they had the hormones to work with, I guessed, unless they were like Oriphiel who didn’t pack his plumbing. The others, however, angels and demons alike, I couldn’t see having a strong preference either way. Created sexless, then changing into a human suit whenever they felt like it, I couldn’t see them swinging hard to either end of the sexual spectrum. It wasn’t as if they had a human’s lifetime of social experience or gender role imprinting—although the genetics of it . . . never mind. I wasn’t a biologist. I was just a trickster having the time of her life watching two guys having the time of their lives. Who cared how it happened? It could be like teenagers getting in a car to drive it for the very first time. Do you want a stick or an automatic? Who the hell cares? They just want to go.

Griffin and Zeke were different. They had had seventeen years or so of living a life they thought human. Zeke mentioned girls. I’d seen Griffin on a date or two. They’d even flirted with me once in a while, but never seriously. None of it had seemed serious. Not the talk, not the dates. None of it.

Subconsciously I thought they always knew they were meant for each other. Two halves of a whole. Zeke needed a guide, the ultimate version of the summer camp buddy system. Griffin, the empath, needed to be needed—for the empath part of him and for the tiny molecule of his subconscious that knew he had thousands of lifetimes of inflicting pain and violence to make up for.

But despite the need on both sides, it was more than that. They just . . . fit. They may have spent seven years in a foster home together, but there was never a sense of brotherhood about them. Not the family kind. The battlefield kind, yes, but not the blood kind, not the emotional bonding of siblings. From day one they’d been partners and that could be a bonding as strong as a familial one. They’d been partners, were partners, would be partners—and now in every sense of the word. You couldn’t look at them and not see it. They belonged to each other like the rest of us belonged to the earth under our feet.

“So?” I prompted Zeke without remorse. I wasn’t too good to hear some nice juicy, mildly pornographic details. “Last night?”

Griffin sat up and cut us both off before I was able to hear anything interesting. “Zeke, I will take your Colt Anaconda and sell it on eBay. One more word about our sex lives and it’s done. Got it?”

Zeke frowned. “Fine. Grump.” He then turned his attention back to the rest of the bar regulars, because, after all, the two of them were regulars here as well. “So what I want to know is if anyone has a problem with this?” The Colt Anaconda Griffin had just threatened was laid on the table with a heavy thud and the steel of it wasn’t any colder than the steel of Zeke’s gaze.

And Zeke? Zeke did not bluff.

Most had shrugged and gone on, some never woke up to hear the announcement, but a few had opened their mouths with disgruntled, unhappy, or judgmental looks on their face. The Colt had every mouth shut and a few tequila shots bought for the happy couple. And they were happy. Zeke might not give a damn about anyone else in this world, with Leo and me as the exception proving the rule, but Griffin was everything to him. On his side, Griffin, who had not once considered Zeke a burden, for all the stolen grenades, dead robbers, beaten cab drivers, car wrecks beyond numbering, the eBay threatening and the final knocking of his head on the table in frustration, had far different emotions for Zeke behind the exasperation. He always had. You didn’t need to be an empath to read them either.

I took one shot that Leo delivered and knocked it back before saying, “An ex-angel and an ex-demon getting together in a same-sex relationship. Heaven and Hell sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Congratulations.” I raised another shot. “That sound you hear is the heads of moral conservatives spontaneously exploding in the distance.” Leo pulled another bottle and joined us.

“Félicitations.”

“Glückwünsche.”

“Congratulazioni.”

“Gelukwensen.”

“Ho‘olaule‘a.”

“L’chaim!”

By then the tequila was gone, but we clinked glasses anyway.

Griffin and Zeke took a cab back to their place. I had a feeling Eli would leave them alone as well as Leo and me—for a while at least. He’d seen what I did to those who hurt my brothers.

We booted out the remaining patrons, most of whom had a cab company on speed dial, and cleaned up the place. As I finished drying my hands, Leo waited and then offered me a gleaming raven feather. I remembered how Griffin had picked up the one that came from Zeke’s wings when we had been in the desert. He’d studied it with curiosity, awe, and wonder. Griffin turned his back on Hell and was now a man who could feel wonder. No one could say that wasn’t a miracle.

This feather was something entirely different. Well, maybe not. It had the touch of a miracle to it too. Under Leo’s patient eyes, I considered it for a moment, then took it. I stroked the sheen of it.

“We’re still too much alike,” I said with a reluctance that tugged sharply at me.

“I know.” He rested his hand on my stomach. It was warm, large, and familiar. I could actually enjoy the touch, let myself feel it in a way I’d never let Solomon reach me. There had been only pretense and trickery. It had been unpleasant, but I couldn’t kill him without proof. I needed proof to know he was the one. Otherwise I was only killing a demon with no certainty it was the one who’d taken Kimano away from me. But I never had to feel his touch again.

“You played him.” Leo who always knew what I was thinking—Leo moved until he was close enough that his breath stirred my hair and any thought of Solomon or his touch disappeared. “It was a thing of beauty.” For a trickster there was no higher turn-on than exceptionally well-done trickery.

“You did a convincing job yourself . . . of worried friend and cranky bird.” His hand moved to my back.

“Worried wasn’t that difficult.” I narrowed my eyes and he amended wryly, “Mildly worried. I know you’ve set the bar more than once for tricksters, but this was different. This was personal, the majority of it, and we’re all capable of being reckless when it’s personal, especially when it’s family.”

There was no denying that, and I didn’t as his hand stroked lower to the small of my back. “I knew it. You are so damn stubborn.” He sighed, feeling, I knew, the still-rough texture of the healing skin through my top. It was the road rash I’d received in the alley where Zeke had been wounded. That was what Leo had meant at Jeb’s wake in the desert when he’d said that I could make things easier on myself. I could’ve simply shifted form enough for my back to be healed. But Griffin might have picked up on the lack of pain, although it was unlikely, as concerned with his partner as he was. To be honest, that wasn’t the real reason. I’d lived as Trixa for long enough that I was Trixa. I wanted it all, the bad with the good. When my shape-changing abilities eventually returned, I thought I would still always be Trixa, no matter what I looked like. Just as Zeke and Griffin had been remade, so had I. And I liked it.

“What’s a scar or two?” I asked.

“The sign of a warrior.” He turned me around and bent to press his lips gently to the area between my shoulder blades. I felt the tingle of half pain, half pleasure. In other words, I felt life, because that was what living was. Pain and pleasure. “Or a trickster too distracted by personal vengeance to keep her eye on the ball.”

The enjoyable drift of anticipation that I’d fallen into disappeared instantly. “Is that a comment on my career competency?” I demanded as I turned back to face him.

“No, on the incredible depth of your ability to love.” He cupped my hand in his, the feather still cradled against my palm. “You’re right. We are still too much alike.”

“But?”

He smiled as I said it before he did. “But we might not always be. I’ve changed over the years. Same spots, as you’re always saying, but a different leopard underneath them. You’ve changed as well. You’re darker. You’ve lost. You’re not as cocky. You know now that things aren’t always as you thought they’d be. That the world still holds mystery and the unpredictable, even for us. Griffin and Zeke taught you that.”

He touched my jaw with callused fingers and kissed me, and it was all pleasure this time. No pain. No thought. Only the pressure of lips, the silk of tongue, the warmth of skin. Our first kiss, but it was as intimate as if we’d done it thousands of times before. It was like watching your favorite movie or reading your favorite book over and over and discovering something new. Something bright and dark, joyful and melancholy, all at once.

I was proud to be a trickster, but it was also good to be this—a silver point of light high and blazing in the apricot and violet morning sky, a moment that seemed as long as my life. Then the kiss ended; the morning star fell, as it always did. Leo carefully folded my fingers over the feather. “A token of my future esteem. Someday, if we’re ever less alike than more, give this back to me.”

Waiting was hard, not knowing for certain even more so. It could be years. It could be never. It could be the best thing that happened to me, but then again, Leo already was the best thing to happen to me. No matter if we changed or if we didn’t, that wouldn’t. Couldn’t. A book, written not that long ago from my perspective, said a wise thing. It applied to burning down demon nightclubs, to avenging brothers, and it applied now. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. So elegant, so true, that even a païen like me could appreciate it, embrace it. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. I broke a lifetime of habit to give that wise saying what it deserved.

Amen.

Amen.