Trick of the Light

by Rob Thurman

  “You electrocuted him?” Griffin hissed, swerving around a desert tortoise in the road. “Why?”

  “Was it a bad song?” Zeke added helpfully. “Did he suck?”

  “No.” I groaned, reached, and pushed his face back. “He threw a toaster in his mother ’s bath for the insurance money. Probably paid for that guitar with it. He had it coming.”

  “So you’re judge, jury, and executioner.”

  Griffin . . . how he had become so damn good, I would never know. It was a miracle, if you believed in those things, but now he was irritating me with his Eagle Scout tone. I pinched his ribs. “Yes, I am. Just like the two of you were . . . the executioner part anyway.”

  He shut up after that. There wasn’t much he could say to it. We all choose . . . for good or for bad, and we all pay the piper. There were simply a lot more of us pipers out there than he was able to remember. “What about Eligos?” he said quietly after several minutes. “If he knows you’re human, even if only for a couple of years . . .”

  “I know,” I said, brooding. “It’s going to be a long few years if he hangs around.” Long for him, maybe not so much for me. Eligos would make me his personal project of pain and torture if he found out I wasn’t the same Trixa from the cave. God, trickster, demon . . . human. I’d tumbled a few ranks. I might still be trickster at heart, but the body was human for now.

  “I have a feeling he will stay. Take over Vegas now that Solomon is dead.”

  “I have a feeling you’re right,” I agreed with my Eagle Scout, and a very glum and disagreeable feeling it was too. “Vegas seems like Eli’s kind of town. So how about we not let him know about me being more or less human, although one with amazing taste and style. I really don’t want to end up a notch on his impaling post.”

  That ended the conversation for a while as I reassured myself silently that I was a trickster. No one could outthink me, manipulate me, lie to me, fool me, and no one but no one could trip me up on a lie of my own. Eli would believe I could turn him into a Solomon PEZ dispenser if the mood struck me, because I wouldn’t let him think anything else.

  An hour from Vegas, Zeke had sprawled in the back of the Winnebago and was snoring lightly. I slid in an old-style cassette tape and listened to ABBA. Yes, the wife beater listened to ABBA. I ejected it hurriedly and started digging in the floor for something a little less nauseating and much more current. “I’m curious,” I said to Griffin as I kicked the garbage around. “I’ve never measured you, but I think Zeke is taller. So does that make him the big spoon?”

  He didn’t give me the cold shoulder or the frozen blue eyes, which rather worried me. He just kept driving, hands flexing on the steering wheel. “I’m a demon,” he said suddenly. “After all I’ve seen them do, and that’s what I turn out to be? A killer, a stealer of souls, a monster?”

  “You’re not a demon.” I sat up. I was surprised it had taken him this long to crack. Griffin, always in control . . . calm, collected, ready, but no one was ready for this.

  “Fine. I was a demon then. I was a murderer, a soul eater, a hell-spawn,” he said bitterly, keeping his voice low so as not to wake our napping ex-angel. The last thing he wanted Zeke doing was worrying about his partner’s mental health. Zeke’s security in his own mental health wasn’t that high.

  “No. You are not a demon and you weren’t a demon. Glasya-Labolas is dead. You killed him and you killed every horrific deed he ever did. You’re Griffin Reese. You were born at the age of ten with a few false memories of parents who abandoned you and you were born human. A human with extra empathy, but lots of humans are born that way. They made you all human, or an angel would’ve known. Just as they made Zeke all human, or a demon would’ve known. Only a trickster like me or a god like Leo had known. Switching your body whenever you cared to taught you to see when a change had been made in others. The low can’t recognize the high-level, but a high-level can recognize any angel or demon of equal or lower rank.” I rested my hand on his tense leg. “You were and are human. Because you chose to be,” I finished quietly. “Then when Solomon pushed the demon back into you in the cave, you still chose to be human, you still chose to be a man, and you still chose to be good. And if that’s not the greatest accomplishment since the world appeared out of the darkness, I don’t know what is.”

  I squeezed his leg and let go with a pat. “I don’t know that I could’ve done it. I honestly don’t. To give up all that power, to become something a demon has nothing but contempt for?”

  “But you did.” His fingers relaxed on the steering wheel. “Not the contempt, but you gave up your power for your brother. Not for as long maybe, but you gave it up. Sometimes there are things . . . people worth giving it up for.” He automatically turned his head to check on a still-sleeping Zeke.

  “Big spoon or little spoon?” I asked coyly.

  “Oh, shut up,” he shot back, but not as crossly as I’d expected, and when I put in the cassette,of the Eighties’ Greatest Hits, the best the floor had to offer, he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel along in time with “Duran Duran . . . Yes, Duran Duran.” Those were the days. They all were the days.

  “An old Sicilian proverb says, ‘Only the spoon knows what is stirring in the pot,’ ” I said with a grin. “So what’s cooking?”

  “On-the-bench trickster or annoyed peri with a Lou isville Slugger, who ranks there?” He gave his lips a none-of-your-business quirk as he patted the bat leaning against his door.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know.” I smiled and leaned my seat back farther, ready to join Zeke in a nap. “Who could say?”

  Me.

  I could say.

  On the bench or not. Griffin’s memories—or those of the demon Glasya—were gone because the demon was gone. But my memories? I still had them. Six thousand years of doing bad things to very bad people. Not to mention some of the best tricksters in the world couldn’t change shape. . . . In fact there is one race of tricksters who all have the same shape—clones of one another. One of them had actually ruled Greece for a while, although most were car salesmen now. I’d be damned if I let a puck like Robin Goodfellow think he was better than I was. Eli didn’t stand a chance.

  I waited almost ten minutes before I said it:

  “You’re the little spoon, aren’t you?”

  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. Dis
covering 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.