by Rob Thurman
“There’s also an I in ‘I’ll kick your ass,’ so sit down,” I ordered darkly. “Maybe if you’re lucky and finish sobering up, we’ll tag your ass and turn you loose in the wild.”
He gave a silent snarl, but by the time we got out of a cab at Seamus’s place, an artistically clichéd loft in the artistically clichéd SoHo, he was sober. Despite that, he made no move to go back home. He might have had only a reluctant interest, but reluctant or not, it kept him there. “Art.” He looked up at the walls of the loft, where the artist’s work was liberally displayed. Not seeing any paintings of himself, he gave a disgruntled snort. “Theoretically.”
Seamus slid his eyes toward Promise. “Humans and a puck. Mo chroi, I fear for your social standing.”
Promise had said Seamus’s problem was interesting, which was funny, because Seamus himself turned out to be just as interesting. Stick him in a kilt, paint his face blue, and he could’ve stepped into a Mel Gibson movie without missing a beat. Maybe because he’d actually lived through similar battles—the nighttime ones anyway. He wasn’t tall, although hundreds of years ago he would’ve been. About five-nine, he was built with broad strokes. Wide shoulders and chest, muscular arms and legs; he wasn’t your typical lithe and languid, ruffle-wearing vampire of pulp fiction. Except for one small braid that hung from temple to stubbled jaw, the wavy, deep red hair was pulled back into a short club at the base of his neck. That with the tawny eyes made him into a lion of a man, a giant cat walking on two legs. Which would make me a scruffy alley cat, an ill-tempered one who already had a headache from the Auphe situation. . . . It damn sure wasn’t improved by the surroundings.
Seamus was an artist. His massive warehouse loft was wall-to-wall with his work. He liked bright, vibrant colors. Very bright, and vibrating right through my goddamn skull. After the day I’d had, this was like an ice pick between the eyes. I groaned and dug into my pocket for Tylenol, as Promise discarded her ivory hooded cloak onto a battered old chair to embrace Seamus lightly.
“Seamus, it’s been a long time.” Her expression was one of fondness, pleasure to see an old friend, and . . . something else. It was so brief I would’ve thought I’d imagined it, if I hadn’t watched Sophia size up a mark thousands of times. Neither Niko nor I could hope to read people like our thieving mother had, but we held our own.
An old acquaintance, my ass.
I glanced sideways at Niko to see a perfectly blank face. No reason for him to feel threatened by Promise’s past relationships, although this was the first one he’d come across where the participant wasn’t dead and who hadn’t been profoundly geriatric before he slipped into that state. I shook out two painkillers into my hand and then offered him the bottle. He bared his teeth for a fraction of a second, and I took that as a no. Putting the bottle back into my pocket, I popped the pills dry as Seamus welcomed us. Hands on Promise’s shoulders after she pulled back, he leaned forward to brush a kiss across her cheek. “Paris was a cold and lifeless city without you, leannan. I’m glad our paths have crossed again.”
“You’re dusting off the Gaelic, Seamus,” she said reprovingly. “Are the women not falling for ‘lassie’ any longer?”
He grinned, his strong white teeth gleaming a bright contrast to the copper shadow on his jaw. “You’ve caught me, then. The last pretty maid I tried it on branded me a cheesy pervert, I believe. Back in London. A feisty one, that, but I won her over in the end.” Dropping his hands to his sides, he said, “But let us then get down to business, mo chroi.”
“She’s not your heart anymore, no matter what your nostalgia tells you,” Nik said very mildly. There was no edge to the words, but there was one in Niko’s sheath if Seamus wanted to make an issue of it. No jealousy, but a definite line drawn in the sand. And didn’t it figure my brother would pick up Gaelic in his spare time?
“My nostalgia lasts longer than your lifetime, human,” Seamus replied as mildly. “I shall be waiting at a finish line you will never see.”
Promise didn’t look amused by the exchange, and Goodfellow didn’t help things any. “Men fighting over you,” Robin said as he started opening cabinets and rifling through them, looking for that hair of the dog he’d mentioned earlier. Since he was sober now, I let it go. One or two wouldn’t hurt him, and it might help us. “It’s like old times for you, eh? Or it would be if both of them were dueling with their walkers.”
She was even less amused now. Seamus repeated with a snort of disdain, “A puck, Promise? Sincerely, lass, what would possess you?”
“My company is my business, Seamus. Don’t make assumptions on an old acquaintance,” she warned. “You make it difficult to want to give you our assistance.”
He gave her an abashed look from mellow whiskey-colored eyes. Curling his lips, he put a hand to his chest and bowed slightly. “I’m a poor client and a poor host. Forgive me.”
Robin finally stumbled on a bottle of wine and toasted us. “You’re forgiven. Sla inte chugat. Now where’s your corkscrew?”
“As I have no brothel to offer you, Puck, a meager good health to you as well. And in the drawer by the stove,” Seamus answered, suddenly good-natured . . . even toward an odious puck. He waved a hand at the couch and chairs, simple wood and natural fabrics that contrasted against the bold colors of the paintings. The Tylenol was beginning to let me see them as bold rather than eye-melting. “My apologies. Please.”
I didn’t believe the apology or accept it, but I did accept the invitation to sit. Sprawling in a chair, I looked over at Robin pouring a glass of ruby red. I held up one finger, cutting him off with the single glass. He rolled his eyes and ignored me. I may as well have been at work at the bar.
Promise sat on the couch, and Niko stood. Niko usually stood. You never knew when the couch might come alive and eat you. You had to stay alert. Constantly vigilant. Although after the Auphe attack, I didn’t blame him. I dealt with it a little differently. Every cell inside me vibrated with the need to runrunrun. Sitting, slouching, watching Robin, looking at art I didn’t get . . . it kept a small part of my mind occupied. Kept me from grabbing Niko’s arm and tearing down the street. Getting out of town like the old days. Going anywhere. Anywhere but here. Anywhere the Auphe weren’t. Just like a dozen times before.
Good times. Jesus.
It was also a helluva ride waiting . . . balancing on the knife’s edge as I just waited. Waited to feel that heads-up, that gut twist of an Auphe gate opening. The sensation of theirs ripping open were a distant echo of mine, but I could still feel them. It was a nice alarm system, good to have. But it was no fun, the nerve-shredding anticipation. No goddamn fun at all.
“Have one, kid. It will do you good.”
I looked up to see a wineglass in front of me. Robin was right. At the moment, one wouldn’t kill me. The Auphe would, but wine wouldn’t. “Thanks.” I took it and had a swallow. I made a face. It was the good stuff. I didn’t drink much—with an alcoholic mother, I didn’t like to take chances—but I did know the better the wine, the worse it tasted. I liked the cheap stuff. The more it tasted like Kool-Aid, the happier I was. You could take the boy out of the trailer park . . .
Robin clicked his glass against mine and toasted. “As they say, it never rains; it pours. Pours liquid fire from the sky, sets us aflame, and scorches the earth to barren bedrock.” Goodfellow’s glass was now half-empty, but he stuck to the one-glass rule. “Cheers.”
Niko shook his head when the bottle was held in his direction, as did Promise and Seamus, who said, bemused, “You are, without a doubt, the most grim and gloomy puck it’s been my pleasure to come across.”
No one commented. Aware he’d breached a touchy subject, he continued briskly, “On to my difficulty, annoyance that it is. It started nearly a week ago.” He frowned. “I’m being followed. At least it seems that way. Ordinarily, I would know, but this . . . this is different. I do not see anyone tailing me, as they say, yet wherever I go, someone is there, already waiting. Someone who has far
too much interest in me. Always in a public place where I cannot discuss the situation with them.” White teeth, fangs and all, were shown in a humorless and savage grin. “And before I am to leave, they disappear. I turn away for a moment, and they are gone. It seems they know my intention before I do.”
“Same guy?” I asked.
“No, which makes it more perplexing.” He shook his head. “They’re smart, whoever these sons of bitches be, but after four hundred years, I know when I’m being watched. I know when someone’s a little too curious about my affairs.”
“So you see the need for the team dynamic,” Promise said, her hands clasped loosely over her knee. The oval pearlescent nails gleamed. “We can surround whatever curious gentleman shows up. He can’t evade us all.”
Well, if nothing else, it seemed easier than our last few jobs. No flesh-eating kidnappers. No fire-spewing serpents. No dead little girls. And with the Auphe back, something easy was all we could probably handle. If we even wanted to. Yeah, we needed the money, but trying to stay alive trumped that. I had doubts, serious doubts we could do both. I had doubts we could do even the most important one. I looked over at Nik and voted no with two words: “The Auphe.”
Seamus’s face slid into an expression of pure disgust. “Those diabhail creatures. What of them? I’d heard they were no more.”
Promise hadn’t told him I was half Auphe, and vampires don’t have the sense of smell werewolves do. The wolves always knew. Seamus, however, didn’t seem to have any idea about me, which was fine. I’d seen enough of those same looks of disgust shot my way. Disgust and fear. I was beginning to take a perverse pleasure in the last one. Not such a great thing to admit, but being hated for who you were right down to the genetic level leads to some defense mechanisms. Unhealthy ones, probably, but what the hell?
“Yeah, well, you heard wrong.” I pulled the tie from my hair to let the dark strands fall free against my neck. I stretched the black elastic until it dug into my fingers with a painful bite. “They have a problem with us. And an Auphe problem is one fucking big problem. We don’t need the distraction right now.”
Niko disagreed with me. “Job or not, Cal, we still have a problem,” he pointed out with inarguable logic. I hated logic. It was never on my side. “They’ll come when they come; we can’t change that. Whether we’re working a case or not. Putting our lives on hold won’t make us any safer.”
Or any more likely to survive, I added silently. But he was right, and it wasn’t about the money. It was about what I’d said earlier, keeping at least some of your thoughts somewhere else. Not enough to be truly distracted, but enough to keep from drowning in dread and apprehension. I shifted my shoulders to loosen the tension in my neck, and exhaled. “Okay, okay. I’m in.” Moving from kidnapping to extermination to babysitting—our cases weren’t quite heading in the right direction. Thoughts for another time . . . like when our asses weren’t in such a sling. Or when we were dead.
Plenty of time then.
So we took the job. Robin, unable to help himself, jumped in to haggle Seamus up to an outrageous fee. It was a wonder he left the poor bastard with the tartan boxers on his ass. On that slightly disturbing thought, I turned toward the door with the others, leaving behind echoing spaces, powerfully raw art, and Seamus . . . Seamus, who was staring at Niko’s back as I looked over my shoulder. Not at Promise as I’d expected. But at Nik. Staring and staring hard.
This could be a problem.
2
Niko
The seven deadly sins.
Wrath, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, pride.
The puck pillowing his head on the bar counter of the Ninth Circle, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted and overindulged, had the latter six covered. But Cal, my brother, had the first all to himself. He tried to hide it, and from anyone but me, I believe he most likely succeeded. He’d come a long way in a year. Then it would’ve rolled off him in waves, choppy and fierce. Some emotions still did show: annoyance and impatience being the primary ones, and annoyance was threatening enough when others knew you were half Auphe.
Discipline would come. He was only twenty. Twenty and missing two years of his life. Eighteen mentally, the cynicism of a forty-year-old, and one of the bravest men I knew. He would deny it, but it was true. Kidnapped by the Auphe, possessed by a creature that had all but eaten his soul, and he went on. He clawed his way from the pit and went on—balanced on a knife’s edge. The Auphe were determined to snatch his sanity before they took his life. He’d already seen things, experienced horrors that I hadn’t been able to save him from. But I wouldn’t let what had happened before happen again. I would kill anything.
Anyone.
He was my brother.
I’d been handed a newborn at the age of four. Our mother must’ve fed me and changed me. She must have given me the bare necessities to survive, but she didn’t do the same for Cal. From the moment he came into this world, she had never wasted one moment of affection or attention on him. After handing him to me, I don’t think she ever touched him again, not on purpose, in his entire life. Sophia took the Auphe’s gold to bear a half-human, half-Auphe child, but I don’t think she saw him as a child, just as a thing. She’d even named him Caliban—the offspring of witch and demon from Shakespeare, a deformed monster, and she made sure he knew what it meant.
Bitch. It wasn’t a word I said often, but it was the only description that suited her.
Sophia had died a horrible death, and I couldn’t say I once felt an ounce of sympathy for her. She’d have made a good Auphe: sociopathic and utterly without compassion. She might have not physically touched Cal. In fact, she barely acknowledged his existence, but when she did, she said things to him—gloating, evil words, and I couldn’t protect him from them all. Call a child a monster often enough and he’ll believe you, maybe all of his life.
After the home birth—no hospitals if they could avoid it for the Rom, living below the government’s radar—pale and sweating, she had cut the umbilical cord, tied it off with a strip of yarn, and handed the bloody, writhing bundle to me. “You’ve been wanting a pet,” she had said, voice hoarse from grunts and restrained screams. “Here you are.”
Four years old. What do you do with a baby when you’re four years old? You learn responsibility. You go next door to the next run-down row house and ask the woman there, the one with five children of her own. She tells you how often and how to feed, because Sophia can’t be bothered, gives you a few cans of formula, a half box of diapers, and an old bottle. Then she sends you away with a look in her eyes that says she’s done all she’s going to do. You’re not her problem, so don’t darken her door again. There are worthless monsters and worthless human beings, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.
I’d been lucky Cal had rarely been sick. Never a cold, never colic, only once with something like the stomach flu; the healthiest baby in the world, thanks in part, I was sure, to Auphe genes. If he hadn’t been, he might not have survived. Best intentions, especially at the age of four, don’t always count.
Bad memories and dark bars—the two seemed to go hand in hand.
We’d come to Cal’s work, his day job, so to speak, after agreeing to take Seamus’s case. It was early afternoon, but the bar was half full. I’d taken a table in the corner by the bar. I flipped my dagger as I opened my book, Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, and ruthlessly vanquished the desire to slam the blade into the polished wood of the tabletop.
I moved on to practicing grips before my control wavered and I did bury the dagger in the table. Memories—you can’t escape them, but you can’t let them rule you either. Or you won’t be any good to yourself or your brother. I should concentrate on this new development on the Auphe front. All female—what could it mean?
“You’re late.”
I didn’t look up at Ishiah’s annoyance. Cal’s employer was both bark and bite. Either way, Cal could handle it.
“It�
��s funny. You say that every time.” I heard Cal toss his jacket behind the bar. “Like you expect something different.”
Ishiah owned the bar the Ninth Circle. He hired Cal as a favor to Goodfellow. The two of them, peri and puck, had issues with one another, Cal had told me. Actually, he’d said they bitched about each other until they made his ears bleed. Always with the turn of phrase, my brother. Apparently, the behavior ranged from cool exchanges to out-and-out threats of violence. While it was entertaining as hell, Cal had yawned one night after work, he never had figured out what their history was. For all their sharp words, they had a certain respect for one another, it seemed. If it hadn’t been for Ishiah swooping in, literally, at the last minute earlier in the week, Robin would be dead. That said something. And I knew Cal was grateful.
But that didn’t mean he was going to be on time.
It was an understanding the two had. Ishiah had given Cal a job when he didn’t particularly want to. And as Cal tended to alarm a good deal of the clientele, it was no doubt best to get some liquor in them most days before he showed up. Sedate them somewhat. But with an understanding or not, Ishiah still called Cal out on it. He was the boss; that was his job. It wouldn’t do to let the other employees see Cal get any special treatment . . . especially as he was the only one without wings. Peris, like every other creature on the planet, weren’t without their prejudices.
The Circle was a peri bar. That meant quite a lot of plants and birds. Peris had a fondness for birds. It also meant Ishiah, Danyel, Samyel, Cambriel, and another peri whose name Cal had never mentioned beyond “it has a lot of z’s in it,” were all peris. The average peri might look like the customary depiction of angels, through a very dark lens, but they weren’t. No one was sure what they were or how long they’d been around.
