by Rob Thurman
I thought about throwing something at him, but there was nothing within reach and I was not getting up. Wait. There was a sock stuffed behind me. I could feel the soft wadded shape. I snatched it up and nailed the puck in the face. From his choking and the watering of his eyes, it was one of Cal Junior’s epically ripe ones. It was the first genuine grins the two of us had exchanged, at someone else’s expense or not.
“Leave Niko alone. Of all of us, he’s the single exception to the soulless bastards banner we all fly,” I said. Whether his trust came and went. It had better stay from now on or I’d do this job with Robin, if his excuse—when given—was good enough, or I’d do it alone. I wasn’t fighting shadows by the sides of shadows.
I dug around subtly for another discarded sock as I introduced them. “This is Rob Fellows to humans. Robin Goodfellow, puck, Pan, trickster of tricksters to paien. Those are the so-called monsters if you’ve forgotten. I left him a message to pass on to my Niko if I don’t make it back.” The letter part was true—not what was in it—but a letter did exist, and this Niko knew the real reason for the letter. He knew that Goodfellow was a puck, an acquaintance—I hadn’t been willing to get into how he was more or why his death, if a disease, would be as terminal to me as my Nik’s. He knew to not approach him early. To wait a year like it was meant to be and not take chances by doing otherwise. Niko would’ve followed that to the letter. He wasn’t fond of the smallest or safest of gambles.
It was Goodfellow that had not met a rule he wouldn’t tie in a thousand knots, a gamble he wouldn’t take, or advice he wouldn’t ignore. “He was supposed to wait a year like Niko to let the natural order of things fall into place. But he’s a know-it-all dick who doesn’t listen to anyone but himself, and that’s how it is.” I shrugged. “The long and the short of it is there’s nothing we can do about it now. If there’s damage, it’s already done. You can’t get rid of him now that he knows. He’s more tenacious than the world’s worst venereal disease.”
I waved a hand at the puck. “So, here you go. Have a friend for nine years instead of eight. You’re welcome.”
Niko asked, eyebrows arched and bemused. “You’re giving him to us as a present? A friend? Like a cat would gift its owner with a dead mouse on their pillow?”
“Trust me. This will be less irritating than when he stalked us originally, especially as he stalks from about three feet away,” I promised, hand in fake vow to a fake God. It could be less irritating. It wasn’t impossible.
Cal was standing behind the couch, glaring down at the cheerful gaze that looked back up at him. “I don’t want a friend. We don’t need a friend.” We’ve never had a friend. We’ve never trusted anyone. They went unsaid, but meant basically the same as Cal’s words. We don’t know how to trust anyone but each other.
That’s what I’d thought when I was young and naive, such as . . . last night when Niko had dropped the first bomb.
“Are you certain he’s not Lazarus? He could be some sort of shape-shifter like a Wolf, but more skilled.” Look at Niko. He’d gone from nothing but vamps, Wolves, and Auphe to skin-walkers, rusalka, lamia, wendigo, and now was willing to believe in shape-shifters.
“Yeah, no. We ran into Lazarus in the sewers and if there’s anything out there more badass than him, we should murder-suicide pact it right now.” I slid a glance at Cal where he was lurking behind the couch and recognized in his eyes what I saw often enough in mine. “Cal, don’t stab Robin. Believe it or not, in the future you’ll need him.”
“How’d he know you were here? Here as in our fucking address here? He’d have to know or how’d he come here showing his face a year early?” he demanded suspiciously, of me or Goodfellow or both was the question. I guessed both.
“After I left him the letter for my Nik, he did what he does. Figured it out.” There was a spasm that passed over Cal’s face at the mention of the letter. Leaving one for his Nik if he died, this Cal knew how that would end. “He ignored the instructions to not change things. He ignored the warning about bringing the world down around us and all. I shouldn’t have been surprised he decided to come early.”
“Coming early is a disaster in certain vital situations,” Goodfellow agreed slyly, “but this is not that situation.”
“But you didn’t tell him where to find us. You didn’t want him here early; you wouldn’t have given him our address.” Niko backed a few steps away from the couch. “How did he find us? ‘Figured it out’ is not explanation enough considering we’ve spent our entire lives avoiding people and . . . things.” Auphe was what he didn’t want to bring up. “We, and it is no exaggeration, excel at it.”
“We do. For humans. He’s a puck. A trickster. A born trickster, evolved or created to do this and nothing but this. He could find anyone if he tried. Remember that stupid Where’s Waldo book when I was a kid? You never see those anymore. Probably because Goodfellow found Waldo and sold him into sexual slavery,” I grumbled. “There were cameras, recognition software programmed to detect his real written name. Who does that? Then from that and the cameras he was able to get the cab I was in on tape, bribe the cabbie to find out where he dropped me off, and had minions sweep a ten block radius from that point with my picture from the tape.
“He was Tommy Lee Jones. There was a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, town house, coffeehouse, teahouse, clubhouse, penthouse, courthouse, schoolhouse, firehouse, warehouse, whorehouse—”
“I think we have it,” Niko responded wryly. “He is good at what he does.”
I jumped in before Goodfellow could talk about how excellently not good he was and of all the many, varied, often sexually illegal in every state with a single voting Republican activities he was excellent at in addition to the innate trickster capabilities in him. “From there on, it wasn’t difficult. He or one of his minions followed us here.”
“And we didn’t notice?” Cal questioned. Con artists didn’t care for it when someone was more talented than you and when we were one person, Cal and I had conned our way across cities, states, and the entire country for that matter. “How likely is that?” He was shifting his weight again. That was another sign I knew well from the mirror.
“Damn likely if it’s Robin. Hell, for all I know, his minion is a giant hyperintelligent cockroach with my picture taped to its back. Nothing we’d be looking for offhand. And I see that little stabbing boogie you’re doing. Do not stab him. I’m not kidding. He saves your life some day. From eight years on the other side now seeing what I used to be I don’t know why he did, but he did. If you want to live, don’t stab him.”
“Or shoot me. That’s equally as annoying as being stabbed. Of course neither is one quarter as irritating as your complaining. The conniving I’d approve of if you, the younger you”—Goodfellow nodded back toward Cal—“weren’t somewhat of an amateur at it. If you were properly trained, you’d have caught on to Caliban’s little tricks by now.”
“Amateur?” Cal was all but frothing with rage. If he were a dog, anyone would’ve put him down for rabies with a clear conscience. “I’ve been conning people since I was four.”
“I didn’t say rank amateur.” The puck’s voice was placidly soothing, but there was a wicked glitter in his eyes. A fox winking from a depthless forest. Tricksters did love to poke and prod at people’s vulnerabilities, and Cal had an uncountable number of buttons waiting to be pushed. I had too until I’d decided I didn’t like multiple areas of exposure. I didn’t care for having a buffet of weaknesses open to greedy hands. I’d unplugged the whole system, burned down the restaurant. It had resulted in fewer opportunities for my customary level of violence, but you can’t have everything.
“Four. I was four. Lying, stealing, conning, arson by the age of seven. Seven.”
“And I’ll bet you were adorable.” He rearranged the sheet he was wrapped in to make everyone but him even more uncomfortable and spread his arm
s along the back of the couch causing the cloth to ride up farther. That rusalka needed to invest in a larger bed for the larger sheets required. “I’ve been conning since I was born, not that Homo erectus was that taxing to fool or had anything I wanted to con out of them. Pointed sticks, sharp-edged rocks. Sharp-edged rocks tied to pointed sticks. Nothing I’d care to put on my shelf. And, Athena’s wit and wisdom, they were boring.” He yawned.
“I couldn’t force myself to do it for sheer practice. They spoke about four words and grunted a great deal, granted they made those four words work for them. Sex. Hungry. Stranger. Kill and eat the stranger for he is different from our kind, which causes fear among our community—dibs on his liver. I take it back,” he commented. “They did a lot with that fourth word. It was the rest that wasn’t that impressive.” He opened and closed the fingers of his bandaged hand. You didn’t want any wound to stiffen up, but especially not a hand wound when you’re ambidextrous in the use of weapons of many kinds, which we all were. “Speaking of hungry, while liver doesn’t sound appetizing, I did skip breakfast.” Lie. I’d been covered in his breakfast before my shower. “Could someone feed the guest?”
Cal didn’t know what to do with the first part. We should’ve studied the evolution of man more when we were kids. He’d have known if Robin was lying then. I knew he wasn’t lying about the million years and I didn’t care about the home life or nutrition of Homo erectus. Niko, however, was interested. Goodfellow, sooner or later, would be drained dry of all the knowledge he’d let Niko pry out of him. Cal, seeing what I did, gave up on that one. He knew the unstoppable thirst for learning his brother had. He made a quick subject change before Niko could get started and went straight to the second portion of Robin’s rebuttal.
“He’s treating us like the sole reason we exist as more than amoebae”—he had to get his shot back on the Homo erectus name-dropping—“is to scrub his toilet. He’s ordering us around like he’s the richest asshole in the city and we’re the kind of human lapdog that follows him around hoping for his greasy used Armani-clothing crumbs. If he wants food, there’s a fridge with one shelf of food, health food, which is all we have since Nik threw out my leftovers. You, dick, can get your junk off our couch, which you’re defiling, and make yourself a carrot juice, yogurt, tofu parfait for all I care.”
Goodfellow shuddered. I think he’d have rather eaten one of the rats from the sewer. Raw. I didn’t blame him. “You are too kind, but I’ll pass. My appetite has miraculously vanished. And, for future reference, I am the richest asshole in the city. That’s what my tricks gave me.”
“Richest man in the city? Then why aren’t you ordering all of us lunch and a new couch on the side?” Cal was on the canvas and the referee was counting him out. From the creasing of his forehead, his headache must’ve been hugely painful. He gave up and washed his hands of the puck for the moment. Goodfellow could drive a person to that with impressive skill and speed.
“That’s an excellent idea. My phone was destroyed in a wading pool of sewage the likes of which I’ve not smelled in my long life. Caliban apparently knows all the places in New York that no one wants to see or experience. He has an aptitude unparalleled. I’ve not seen its equal. Could I borrow yours?” He directed the question to Niko with a pornographically predatory smile that this Nik was destined to see for years. He did the smart thing, tossing it to him while staying out of reach. He also ignored the sexually charged smile to mouth “no meat” at Robin and tilt his head to indicate me. I exhaled, too tired to want to do this over again.
“What tricks? He said I should’ve noticed your ‘little tricks’? What tricks?” Cal pressed, from me now, circling the couch and past it to where I slumped opposite in the chair to get directly in my face. “How does he know I’m complaining, conniving, and like to shoot things? And he does know, doesn’t he, because he said don’t shoot. He didn’t say anything about the stabbing part . . . Wait, how the fuck do you even know I was going to knife him in the kidney?” Cal demanded, face tight with irritation and mistrust. I could easily picture the matte black KA-BAR combat knife in the hand hidden behind his back. “You weren’t even watching. You want to tell me before I put it in your kidney instead?”
It was official. Goodfellow had pushed one too many buttons.
“You know you’re trying to intimidate yourself, don’t you? We aren’t intimidated by much of anyone, you and I, are we? I know I’m not by my diaper-wearing younger self, yeah, not happening.” Stretching out my legs, I crossed my ankles that were covered, half my feet as well, in another pair of Niko’s too long sweatpants. This time travel crap was hell on clothes. Lazarus and his shadow weasels. “Forget the tricks. They’re harmless or you’d have noticed by now. Picking up on the complaining and conniving is thanks to him spending the first part of the morning drinking beer while I scared off three wolves who wanted to rob Talley’s place. I complained, connived, and threatened to shoot them.” I hadn’t threatened to shoot. I’d threatened worse, but I’d displayed enough guns to show they were more than a hobby.
“Drinking at six something in the morning?” Niko asked, tone both skeptical and disapproving at once. If you hadn’t grown up with him, it could be confusing. He wasn’t skeptical about six a.m. beer. He was skeptical that availability of alcohol was why I’d chosen Talley’s. He’d guessed—no, he knew I’d gone there to purposely draw out Lazarus and he did not approve of me doing it without him. Cal was his to protect and maybe I was too, if in a strangely skewed manner. I’d thought Lazarus would show up searching for Cal and I would get a look at him. See what he was. I hadn’t thought he’d try to lure me into a trap and kill me. It was pointless for Lazarus to kill me now, only killing Cal would reset it all. It was useless, killing me, but the Vigil was having no problem holding a grudge beyond the grave.
“Talley’s? Is that what happened to my keys?” Cal wasn’t hiding the knife any longer. He was using the blade to tap an annoyed and annoying rhythm on the arm of my chair.
Robin murmured, “That would be one of the little tricks.” He went straight into Chinese on the phone, putting in an order for, the longer he went on, what sounded like a lot of food. I didn’t speak Chinese so I had no idea what kind of food, but that it was food was all I needed to know. I waved my hand at him, a “none for me, thanks” total dismissal. He disregarded it and me entirely.
Cal growled, “You thieving asshole.”
“You were just telling Robin you’d steal anything not nailed down. Where’d that pride go? And we’ve both been stealing since we were four. You do get we were the same exact person, from your point of view, until yesterday? I’ve explained it. Niko probably explained it again this morning when I was gone. We’re not the same person now, but from birth until yesterday of this year, same fucking person,” I groaned. I knew I hadn’t been this bad and while I had hated myself for a while, that had been a mental tangle of self-loathing from what the Auphe had done to me, what I had done for the Auphe. I hadn’t hated myself simply to be petty and spiteful. “Should I say it slower? Every insult you throw at me for something we both did and still do is like kicking yourself in the balls.” I blinked. “I finally get what everyone was always saying.”
The tapping of the blade picked up its pace.
“People told me I was a dick, went out of my way to be a dick, would climb a mountain to find a hermit at peace with the world and be a dick just to fuck it up for him. I don’t get peace, no one gets peace. They were right.” I’d known they were right. I was a dick, it came naturally, why fight it? But I was somewhat stunned at seeing in a living mirror the depths of my dickery. Unfathomable depths where my insults, attitude problems all swam down so far they should be albino, blind, with glowing tentacles, and weird enough to have Jacques Cousteau gleefully crawling out of his coffin to examine them.
“Huh. You don’t get life revelations that profound very often.” I examined it thoroughly, three Missis
sippis at minimum. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—fine, two at minimum. Three would be excessive and unnecessary. I’d come to a conclusion. “All right. I’m over it. We were born dicks. We’re good at it. Best of the best. Keep up the good work. Refusing to exercise our gift would be spitting in the eye of God.”
“You don’t believe in God.” Niko wasn’t letting it slide, leaving them behind while taking on Lazarus, but he was more relaxed and amused, less disapproving.
My lips twitched. “Dick, remember?”
Goodfellow was tossing Niko’s phone back to him while simultaneously giving me a dubious sidelong glance. “There are some life choices I’m suddenly questioning.”
“That shows a firm grasp on reality,” I said. “Be proud.” The nonstop tapping of the knife finally made its way to my last pluckable nerve. It was strung taut as piano wire, piano wire I could wrap around Cal’s neck for a little quiet time. I took it from him the same as I’d taken the other in the bar. Same in that the result was identical. I took his toy. He was more prepared, counting on it. I wasn’t any slower though and he wasn’t any faster despite his anticipation. He did wrap a hand around mine, trying to pry my fingers off the grip. It helped him, but not enough. His other hand had disappeared behind him again. Yesterday I would’ve guessed, but yesterday had been decades ago or that’s how it felt. Today I was too damn tired to speculate or care what weapon he had squirreled away.
