by Rob Thurman
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 . . . boys 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 fi
x. 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?”
“Oh. Sorry.” He pulled the curtain around the tub, then stuck his head back out, hair soaking. “I am supposed to be sorry, right?” He took my glare as a yes and jerked his head back in.
“If I’d help them,” I snorted, “why in the world wouldn’t I help you? Besides, I’ve already needed a healer once. I might need one again someday and you’ll owe me.”
“Maybe you’ll owe me for healing the naked guy,” she shot back, and folded her arms defiantly.
“I like you.” I smiled widely. “Damned if I don’t. And you know what? Maybe I will.”
In a few hours I had her cleaned up with a suitcase of new clothes, a bus ticket to Louisiana, and a bright red collar for Koko along with a brand-spanking-new carrier. It had cushions and toys. All the bells and whistles. I could’ve lived in that thing. I also gave her three hundred dollars and a knife. “Put the money in your shoe,” I ordered. “And the knife . . .” I held it up to the sun. It was transparent and gleamed bright enough to make you shield your eyes. “It’s glass, so it won’t set off any metal detectors. Use it if you have to and run like hell if you do. Cops are an aggravation you don’t need.”
She slipped it into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her shirt over it before zipping up the bottom half of her jacket. The authorities might search her bag, but they wouldn’t search her. Not a thirteen-year-old, who looked more like eleven and who, I was betting, could cry crocodile tears of fake fear at the drop of a hat. “The world’s not a very nice place, is it?”
I considered that for a moment. It was something I hadn’t had the luxury to really think about in a while . . . not with Kimano and the Light. “I think that it’s not nice but it’s not that bad either. It’s like a peach. There are some bad spots, a few just mushy ones, and then some really great juicy bites.”
Blue eyes ringed with a thick line of deep, dark purple liner—kids—took that in and she sighed. “That was so lame.”
I tugged at the red streak I’d dyed at the front of her light brown hair a few hours before. I’d called ahead, but I told her this way they’d know she was from me for sure. Red was my signature. I tended to leave it wherever I went. I said, “When you’ve got a better one, come back and tell me.”
Her bus was due at the terminal soon and I left her at the curb with a backpack of clothes, my number curled in one hand, and the handle of Koko’s carrier in the other. I could’ve parked and gone and waited for the bus with her, but in this life she was going to have to be strong. Now was the time to start. Because she was right . . . the peach thing was lame. The world was a whirlwind of life and excitement and danger and death, a kite soaring high or plummeting to a crumpled wreck on the ground. You had to be prepared . . . from day one. This was her day one.
I watched her walk away and then started what was left of my crumpled little car, with its cracked windshield and sand scars along the side. I patted the buttery leather steering wheel under my hand. “You were a good girl. The best.”
“Odd. It doesn’t get around downstairs that you know much about being good.”
The voice was as buttery and smooth as the leather. I turned to see a new demon sitting in the passenger seat beside me. Definitely a demon, and definitely also fresh from Hell. The shimmer of heat that hung around him was slow to dissipate. “Eligos.” He dipped his head slightly in a bow. “You can call me Eli. And the less you know about good, the better in my book. I like wicked women.” Where Solomon was the smoldering, mysterious section of the catalogue, Eli had gone with the charismatic naughty boy. The grin he flashed was so bright and happily predatory that women walking on the sidewalk actually stopped and looked around as if they could feel the warmth of it.
He had brown hair, halfway between tousled and spiky and streaked with
dark blond, hazel eyes, a strong chin, and a dimple beside a mouth that was simply too perfect to exist in nature. He had a thin upper lip and a full lower lip. I was as much a sucker for that look as for the Latin lips Solomon sported. Both were sexy as . . . well . . . Hell, obviously. Eli’s clothes were casual but expensive and he had a brown leather jacket that made him look ready to hop on a motorcycle or in the cockpit of a plane at a moment’s notice . . . with a very heavy emphasis on cock. Like all demons, looking far too good to be true was part of his business.
“So, Trixa, what’s it going to take to get you to Light up my life?”
“I’ve gone through all this Light thing with Solomon. Don’t you guys have meetings down there? Send e-mails? Doesn’t the left hand of evil know what the even more left hand is doing?” I started the car and pulled away from the curb.
“Ohhh, you think we’re all friends down there. That’s sweet.” He leaned back and whistled a few notes of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” “That is so cute. No, sweetheart, we hate one another, almost as much as they hate us upstairs. We’re competitive, we loathe all other demons, and in our scaly little hearts we’d all like to be the one to bring the Morning Star down and take his place.” The grin, if anything, got wider and more playful. “Evil, remember? There’s a bookstore two blocks up if you need a dictionary.” He pulled sunglasses out of his pocket and slid them on. “How about we grab some Chinese and talk? I’m starving. Souls are like Chinese, you know. Eat one and you’re hungry for more two hours later.”
I should’ve shot him. I had my Smith tucked in my back waistband holster. But he was right. I’d assumed Hell was united in this. If they weren’t, at least this one might keep the others off my back. And truthfully enough . . . I was hungry. It crossed my mind that I was getting a little too comfortable in the company of demons. It also crossed my mind they were getting a little too comfortable in the company of me, which meant they underestimated me.
