Trick of the Light

by Rob Thurman

  Before that information had come my way, we’d passed out of the casino into the sun, making our escape as Trinity went on, wasting no thought on the man left behind. “Where is the next step, Iktomi? I assume the Light passed its next bit of the puzzle to you. There is no other reason to be discussing it.”

  “I don’t know.” It wasn’t completely a lie. The winter sun, mildly warm, felt good against my skin and I held my face up to it. “It’s all sliding through my head. One big, jumbled puzzle of letters and identity. It hasn’t come together yet. It might not for a day or two. I’m not quite used to telepathic Lights playing with my brain or its carrier leaving me with a huge appetite for raw fish.” I let the tourists swell around us on the sidewalk. “I want to go home. You can leave your pit bulls behind to watch the place if that’s what you want, but being at home, being someplace familiar will help me get my brain unknotted.” I looked down. “Besides, I have bras there. And while I like to consider myself a free spirit, I’m not that free.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was the bra argument or the little regard Trinity had for me, but he had me dropped off back at the bar with men taking turns watching the place, two at a time. I didn’t offer them any food or shelter. Their car was more plush than my place anyway. Griffin was torn, but not so torn he didn’t go back to Zeke’s side—which was the way it should be. More than ever his partner needed protection . . . from injury, from himself, and maybe from Eden House.

  I walked into the bar and Lenore was pecking, bored at the countertop. A bright eye flashed at me and he cawed, “Boom chika boom.”

  “I’m not Dolly Parton, you horny crow. It’s not that noticeable,” I retorted, then went upstairs to change into some sweats and take a nap. You’d think it would be swimming with the sharks that would take it out of you, but that wasn’t it. It was the Light. It weighed down every thought, buzzing like a swarm of bees setting up camp there—every gray cell a honey cell. I took a quick shower before changing, getting the aquarium salt off me, pulled on the softest sweats I owned, and climbed into bed. It was only then I noticed a sprinkling of brown dog hair on the foot of my bed. I took a quick glance around the room. Nothing was missing. The girl hadn’t been up here, but her fat friend had taken advantage of a soft bed for a nap of his own.

  I clucked my tongue, but I wasn’t mad. If I were a fat little dog, I think I probably would’ve done the same. It was a comfortable bed. He had good taste. I rolled my hand into a loose fist and tucked it under my chin, closed my eyes, and drifted. I dreamed of family. Of traveling the world, as we always had—as our ancestors had—seeing mountains, forests, oceans or water and sand, seeing people of every color and language. Of coming together with my mother, brother, and cousins, laughing and swapping stories, then going our separate ways again. It was a good life, and though each of us was born a wanderer, we kept close—coming together again and again. They were always the best of times, except the last time. Without Kimano.

  “Sorry about that,” Kimano said in my dream. He lounged in the chair in the room’s corner, legs sprawled, wearing bathing trunks with a shell necklace around his neck. I could even see the beads of Pacific Ocean water on him. “I’ll bet I deprived Mama of some prime bitching about my work ethic.”

  “What work ethic?” Sleep was good. Sleep was wonderful. It was the only place I saw Kimano since that bloody beach.

  “True.” He shook his dripping hair as if he were a wet dog, then combed his fingers through it. “But you can work and play at the same time.”

  “You could, but you never did, and Mama knew that.” In the dream I sat with my legs tucked under me on the bed, wearing a bikini with plumeria flowers in my hair. Their scent, so unmistakable . . . more of Heaven than Heaven itself . . . filled the air. “But you were still her favorite.” I tried to scowl, but couldn’t pull it off, not in the face of his teasing pleasure.

  “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” He tapped his foot on the side of the chair, dumping a rain of sand on my rug.

  “The lazy wheel, you mean, and cut that out.” But once again I didn’t mean it, not really. Kimano was Kimano. It would be like getting angry at the wind or the moon. He was what he was and I liked that. I loved that. I missed that. I missed that so much.

  “I’m gone, you know,” he said abruptly, sitting up with serious eyes. “All this you’re doing, all that you’re risking, it won’t bring me back, kaikuahine,” Hawaiian for sister. He’d traveled too, but always back to the islands as I always tended to return to the desert. “But I think . . .” He leaned and held out his hand. I did the same and our fingers just brushed. “I think we’ll see each other again. And if we do, I hope my lazy ass doesn’t keep you waiting too long while I’m off wandering. Have a mai tai until I show up.”

  No one can lie to you like your own mind can. I woke up, dry-eyed in a way that was beyond pain. I wanted to think I’d see my brother again, but I didn’t know. I did know Heaven or Hell wasn’t for the likes of me. The Buddha-loving Wilbur and I had that in common. Where did my kind go? The free spirits, the wanderers, the gypsies at heart? We turn our backs on Heaven, refuse Hell—and occasionally kick demon ass while we do it. There was a place for us—I did know that—but whether I deserved the same eternity as my brother, I wasn’t as sure.

  I heard a pounding on the floor, Leo slamming his fist on the ceiling below. “Trixa, get your ass down here!”

  Leo was not in a good mood. It would have been “your beautiful ass” or “your gorgeous ass” if he had been. I sighed, rolled over, and checked the alarm clock. It was just past eight p.m. Considering the day I’d had, I felt I deserved to sleep around the clock, but that particular timbre of pounding meant something was up. And by the time I made it downstairs, that something was up all right, in full force.

  Zeke.

  Zeke and Griffin, to be more specific, but Zeke was the one making all the trouble, as usual. It was his gift. He was still drugged as he’d been in Eden House’s minihospital, but he was conscious this time. In a way. Griffin was holding him up—Griffin and the hair of a customer with his face smashed against his small table. “Tip . . . your . . . server,” Zeke slurred. Lank strands of his hair fell over a completely bloodless face and the green of his eyes was almost completely obscured by the huge black of his pupils. He was dressed in hospital scrubs and sneakers, no socks.

  “You were going to tip Leo but good, weren’t you, sir?” I managed to pry Zeke’s fingers from the unfortunate cheap bastard’s hair. A small trail of blood crept down from the man’s right nostril to pool onto his upper lip.

  “Tip. Yeah, tip. Was about to do that.” He wiped at the smear of red, left a wad of bills for Leo on the table, and bolted for the door.

  “What the hell?” I helped Griffin ease Zeke into the just-vacated chair. Barely in time, too. His legs melted like butter and he collapsed into the wooden framework without a single moan. Yes, very, very good drugs. You couldn’t look as transparently pale as he did, with Tim Burtonesque charcoal smudges under his eyes, without being host to a shitload of pain. I hoped Griffin had brought some of those excellent painkillers with him, because Zeke was going to need them for a few more days at least. “I’ve heard of bad doctors, Griff, but not even a chiropractor with an online degree would’ve let Zeke out of bed, much less into a slightly less than sterile bar.”

  “Eden House kicked us out. Trinity said we’re tainted by our association with you and painted as liars for keeping your demon hunting a secret.” His fine suit jacket rumpled beyond repair, he crouched beside Zeke to keep him upright in the chair. His eyes looked up at me with perfect candor layered like frosting over the perfect lie. He didn’t bother to give me a little empathic jolt. I’d read him like a book when he was a kid, and I’d only gotten better at it over the years. He knew I’d grasped the real reason right away.

  Eden House had sent two spies to keep an eye on me, sent their two best men. The trouble for Mr. Trinity was I’d gotten hold of those men . . . b
oys then . . . first. I had fed them and sheltered them and I hadn’t used them in the meantime. Trinity couldn’t say the same. Now in return for his emotionless employment, lies, and icy coldness, he had two double agents. They simply were double agents for me.

  I touched blond hair as mussed as I’d ever seen it. Griffin was riding a thin line. Being betrayed by his employers, his partner injured, more or less at a loss as to what was really going on, he had had a hard day. Knowing I’d gotten what he’d been trying to tell me, he turned a haggard face toward Zeke . . . a thin face. Leo and I had eaten at Eden House, but I didn’t recall Griffin doing so. “Come on.” I motioned Leo over. “We’ll get Zeke up to my bed and get you both some food.”

  Leo and I took Zeke’s weight from Griffin—probably the first time that had happened in days, physically or emotionally. We basically carried him up the stairs. His legs made uncoordinated motions that were more unhelpful than anything, but he did make an effort. Griffin followed us. By the time we reached the bed, Zeke’s jaws had begun to tighten and he was shaking in our grip. We got him under the covers while Griffin went to the bathroom for a glass of water to go with the two pills he’d fished from the amber bottle in his pocket.

  By the time I returned upstairs barely fifteen minutes later with food, Zeke was out, his profile marble pale against the deep red of my sheets. The bedspread was pulled up to his chest and his right hand was curled upright against the fiery colors . . . still as stone. His chest moving was the only thing that let me know he was breathing. Beside him, on top of the covers, Griffin was out too, as deeply unconscious without the drugs. I wasn’t surprised. Who knew the last time he’d slept. Before Zeke had been sliced to pieces, I was sure. I left the food, meat loaf and mashed potatoes from the deli down the street, on the bedside table. Ear-length, light blond hair covered Griffin’s closed eyes, and there were deep brackets besides his mouth. Poor damn guy. I covered him up with an extra blanket.

  “You and your strays,” Leo commented as he touched Zeke’s forehead to check for fever.

  “Yes, so glad I’m not as hard-hearted as you.” I didn’t roll my eyes. Instead, I used them to look around the room for a place to sleep. It looked like it was the bathtub for me, as Leo would no doubt be taking the couch downstairs in my office. I could take care of myself, but Zeke and Griffin couldn’t say the same, not right now.

  “I’ll take the couch tonight,” he said, a virtual echo of my thoughts. As predictable as the Vegas summer sun and as predictable as me. I wouldn’t have left him either.

  “He’s too sick to be here,” Griffin said in the morning. “He’s too sick to be anyplace but the hospital.”

  The pills the Eden House doctors had given to Griffin weren’t touching Zeke’s pain. Only morphine and sedation would have. He’d fisted the sheets and covers beneath his hands and was sweating profusely. “F-fine,” he stuttered between clenched teeth. “I’m . . . fine.”

  “Which is why I feel like I’m fucking dying,” Griffin spat, hand clamped tightly around Zeke’s wrist as if he wished he could take the pain instead of only feel it. “God.” His other hand was tangled in his hair and he looked like he needed a shower in the worst way since I’d first seen his dirty, scrawny seventeen-year-old frame.

  “No hospital.” Zeke transferred his grip from the sheets to Griffin’s leg, the fingers biting in hard. “They’ll know. They’ll recognize me. Fingerprints.”

  He was paranoid. Although his fingerprints were in the juvy system, they wouldn’t have made it to the adult one. And even if they had, the hospital wasn’t going to fingerprint him. You couldn’t tell him that though, couldn’t get him to believe it. After what he’d gone through as a child, I wouldn’t have believed it either. Not to mention the fact that Eden House had planned this. They’d seen Zeke getting stronger and stronger with his psychic abilities. They’d set Griffin up as a spy and if Zeke ended up in a psych ward from what he babbled under the IV drugs at a hospital—well, was that so bad?

  “When can he have more pills?” I asked Griffin.

  “Three more hours.” Torture was relative, but no matter how you looked at it, for Zeke—for Griffin, three hours was more than a long time. It was forever.

  I pried Zeke’s fingers from Griffin’s arm and Griffin’s hand from Zeke’s wrist. “Take a shower. I’ll take care of Zeke.”

  Griffin looked at Zeke’s gray face, tightly screwed eyes, then back at me doubtfully, a little hopelessly. “How?”

  “Because I will. Now go. Robe and towels in the closet to the right.” He followed my directions blankly after gripping his partner ’s shoulder lightly. He didn’t pay attention to the fact that the bedroom and bathroom were one room and that he was showering feet away from us, the shadowed silhouette of his body showing through the curtain. Too far gone to care or flirt. And he moved like an old man . . . an old man in a lot of pain. A harsh shadow of Zeke’s pain.

  “We’re here.”

  I was holding Zeke’s hand now, feeling my bones creak under the desperate pressure as I looked up to see Leo, the no-name girl, and her fat dog in the doorway. Both had been coming by every day for food as I’d invited them to. Leo said she hadn’t been by yet this morning. I’d known it wouldn’t be long before she showed up. Koko’s round stomach needed maintaining. The girl might be able to hold off on breakfast herself, but he wouldn’t be willing to. Little pig. The dog grinned as if he knew what I was thinking and wriggled his butt in a spring for the bed. I shook my head at him. That motion would have Zeke screaming in pain. “Later, Koko.”

  He sighed, then made for the nearest rug and rolled a good handful of brown hair on it, then rested on his back, happy as happy can be. All across his pink stomach were scars, crisscrossed . . . everywhere. Too many for even the best vet to fix. I’d seen that the first day I’d spotted the girl and her dog. I’d known then what she could do. “So you fixed Franken-doggy, did you?” I said to her.

  The brown hair fell like a curtain, barely concealing her suspicious blue eyes. “He was like that when I found him.”

  “Sure he was,” I said lightly. I’d known all along she was special, just as Zeke and Griffin were special. I had a knack for that; our whole family did—passed from generation to wandering generation. We’d seen it all in the way that only those who wanted to, had to cross every hill they saw could. If it existed, one of us had seen it. “Come over here, would you?”

  I don’t think she would have, but Leo was at her back and she wasn’t leaving her dog. Not for anything. She moved closer to the bed. “Figure out your name yet?” I asked.

  “No.” She hesitated and moved closer. “Your friend. He’s sick. He’s getting better, but he’s still really sick.”

  “Yes, he is.” I patted the air above the bed and she slowly and carefully sat. Even so, Zeke’s teeth went through his bottom lip, blood welling, and I heard Griffin stagger in the shower. “It would be an amazing thing, a wonderful thing if you could do to him what you did to Franken-pup. He hurts, Whisper. He hurts. . . .”

  “So much,” she finished in a stronger voice than her name. “And how did you know that’s my name? I didn’t even know.”

  “You whisper the pain away. That’s what healers do.” I reached over and took her slightly grubby hand and laid it on Zeke’s chest. “Whisper our friend’s away. Please.”

  And after a brief pause, she did. She leaned in and whispered in his ear. I couldn’t hear what she said. If I could have, I’m not sure it would’ve made sense to me. I wasn’t a healer . . . far from it. Her hand continued to rest on his chest as she whispered. It started to shake for a moment, but I rested mine on top of hers and kept it in place. The power that hummed under my skin was incredible. It took a long time, or maybe it only seemed that way. An hour or minutes. I hadn’t checked the clock. The first thing that let me know it was over was not Zeke; it was Griffin. I heard an exhalation so deep and sharp that I wasn’t surprised to hear him fall against the porcelain next. It sounded
like his knees that hit. I assumed he was all right when I heard him breathe his partner ’s name in pure relief.

  Zeke opened his eyes. Not in surprise or shock or even curiosity at being healed or the sudden lack of pain. Because that was Zeke, living . . . no, existing in the moment. “I’m hungry,” he announced. He looked at the girl. “Are you hungry?”

  Small white teeth flashed as she nodded. “Me, and Koko too.”

  We sent out for pizza while the dog ate the leftover meat loaf and Zeke took the next shower, squeezing his partner’s shoulder through the robe as he passed him, silently saying what Zeke himself had trouble even understanding. Griffin hit the bed and was asleep literally in midair. He hadn’t woken up long ago, but the relief from pain had him out again. The girl . . . Whisper . . . watched Zeke walk to the tub with something like awe and fear. “He’s strange—inside his head. Different than everyone else.” She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear marked with multiple piercings. “I couldn’t fix that.”

  “Good,” I said matter-of-factly, sitting on the rug and rubbing the dog’s belly. “Some things can’t be fixed and some things shouldn’t be fixed and some things aren’t yours to fix.”

  “So . . .” She knelt beside me and tickled under Ko ko’s chin. “You’ve seen someone like me before. Someone who can fix animals and people.”

  “Once. But she was really old and gone by now, I think.” Her eyes dulled in disappointment. “But,” I went on, “this sort of thing tends to run in families. I was thinking about sending you down there. Louisiana. Her family likes me. They’ll take you in. Teach you what they know if they have any other healers there, and I imagine they do. It’s a big family.”

  “You’d do that? You’d do that for me?” she said with a huge amount of suspicion and only a sprinkling of hope.

  “Why not?” I grabbed Koko’s nose and gave it a good shake. “If I’d help those two troublemakers.” I nodded toward a snoring Griffin and a wet, naked Zeke. “Damn it, Zeke. The shower curtain?”