by Rob Thurman
“I guess you see why they call me the dog lady.”
I’d heard the flush from behind a door and was already facing her when she came out. Her hands were pink from the recent washing and she had enough dog hair on the sweater she was wearing to have knit a second one and had enough left over for matching mittens. “Someone has to be the dog lady on your block. Why not you?” I had no problem with it. I liked dogs. I’d been a dog once or twice. Dogs were good people. Furry, but good people.
Her eyes were sharp behind bifocals. “That’s very true, young lady, if a bit slippery of tongue. Pull up a chair.” With her tightly permed short gray hair, she could’ve counted as a seventh dog herself, an intelligent poodle who might or might not nip you if she thought you deserved it. Rolling her wheelchair up to the table, she reached into a flower-patterned bag that hung from the armrest. It looked as if it ought to hold yarn and knitting needles, but it wasn’t a half-completed scarf she pulled out. No, it was a .357 Magnum to be laid on the table. “Nothing personal, dear. But I’ve been robbed once. I won’t be robbed again.”
“No problem, ma’am.” I pulled the chair up to the table and sat down. “I can honestly say I feel right at home.” Guns and dogs, so far she was fine by me.
“Good. Then everything is right as rain. I don’t believe in dragging things out. . . .” She lifted her eyebrows in inquiry and I hastily provided my name. “Ms. Trixa. I had a schnauzer named Trixie once. Good girl. Lived to be sixteen. Became a little senile in her old age and started doing her business in the bathtub, which is an annoying chore. Scrubbing the bathtub every day with bleach, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m Mrs. Smith. You may call me Mrs. Smith, and I’ll go ahead and tell you up front that whoever you want to talk to might not be around—probably won’t be around—but there are no refunds. If I call for them and they’ve already gone on to their heavenly reward, you’re still out two hundred bucks, Trixie, and don’t be whining to me about it. Think of me as a phone call. Whether that person you’re calling is home or not, you still have to pay for that call.” A plump pink palm presented itself. “And that was two hundred, Trixie.”
I started to correct her on the name, a pooping-in-the-bathtub schnauzer not the role model I longed to be connected to, but realistically, I’d been labeled worse. I put four fifties into her hand. “Now, I’d like to—”
She stopped me in my verbal tracks. “And don’t be asking me to talk to Elvis or any of that nonsense either. He’s not there. And anyone else famous who is, well, they’ll drive you to tears and medication with their sobbing all over the place with what they’ve lost and who wronged them and whom they wronged. It’s nothing but ego masturbation, Trixie, and I don’t have the patience for it.”
I gave a wary nod, beginning to lean away from the warm feeling that the guns and dogs had engendered. I hoped Elvis had moved on and Eli had been lying when he said he’d eaten him, but more than that, I hoped the woman let me finish a sentence. I had a mouth on me, yes, I did, and not being able to get a word in . . . That didn’t happen often. “No, no Elvis. I just want—”
“Don’t be expecting some sort of light show either. You want some two-bit magic, you have the whole strip to choose from. I talk to the dead. I don’t set off fire-crackers and crank up the dry ice machine.” She picked one hair off her sweater—one hair out of hundreds—and let it drift to the floor. “Well, Trixie, girl, let’s get going. I don’t have all day to waste on your dithering. Who is it you want to talk to?”
“Anybody,” I said quickly before her lips, covered in a thick coating of bubblegum pink lipstick, could part again. “Anybody at all. Can you just send out a general notice? ‘Dead person wanted. Big balls required.’” Back up went her eyebrows. “Or brave. Brave would get the point across. This is less of a chat and more of a job interview.”
“A job interview. I have to say, missy, even my Trixie was smarter than that. The dead can’t do anything but talk. They can’t haunt your ex-boyfriends, of which I’m sure you have more than a few. Young people these days. We always said why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, but nowadays, you’re squirting your udder at every man who passes by. Girls calling boys. Women calling men. It’s disgraceful. My neighbors are into that bisexual, couple-swapping, orgy thing. ‘Try’-sexual if you ask me, ’cause they’ll try anyone, do any type of perversion. They leave their blinds open a little and I see what goes on.”
I bet she did. All night long, armed with binoculars and popcorn. I’m a patient person . . . when patience is called for. When it will actually benefit you. This was not one of those times. I snatched up her gun before her hand had more than a chance to twitch toward it. I emptied the cylinder—the bullets rolling on the table like dice in a game of craps—smacked it back down on the table, and snapped, “Dead person. Big balls. Now.”
She swallowed, her head suddenly bobbing from palsy. “Oh Lord. Oh me. I’m doing the best I can, dear. There’s no reason to get so snippy.” And damn if she wasn’t edging her hand back toward that flowered bag again. What did she have in there now? Pepper spray? A stun gun? A cattle prod? Who knew? Who didn’t want to know? Me.
I grabbed both of her hands and placed them firmly on the table. I didn’t hurt her. She was old, she was frail, and, more honestly, she was the only medium I’d found. I needed her. “Dead person. Go.”
This time she gave in to the inevitable, although I heard the annoyed click of her dentures against each other, and closed her eyes while mumbling under her breath. Whether the mumbling was cursing at me or calling out to the spirit world, I didn’t care. I just wanted my dead person. I couldn’t talk to my brother. Human mediums can’t reach the païen and there are no païen mediums. We don’t linger like humans sometimes do. Kimano was gone, to one of our better heavens, I knew. He deserved no less. It didn’t change the fact I would’ve given almost anything to talk to him again.
Someday. When my time was up and it was time to fall so another trickster could rise, then I would see him again . . . if I had to search every heaven in existence. And I would. I would feel his hand in mine again. Rough and warm. My family, and I wouldn’t lose him, not for good.
“Trixa.”
I exhaled, annoyed. “Mrs. Smith, I don’t have the time or the patience for this. Don’t make me teach you a lesson about peeping perverts and bad neighbors, because it’s awfully tempting. Just do the job I hired you to do.”
The eyes, magnified by the bifocals, blinked. “Trixa, it’s me. Anna. Rosanna.” The pink lips curved in a shy smile. “Remember? With Sir Pickles?” She blinked again. “One of the Roses.” The Rose. The one for whom I’d pulled the rug out from under Hell itself. “We know what you did for us. I know what you did for me. Tell me what you need. I want to know how can I pay you back, how I can thank you. How can I save you like you saved me?”
Sweet, shy Anna. She’d hung around, not welcome in the biblical Heaven because of the deal she’d made and not ready to pick a païen heaven, because of me. She’d known what was going on once she was freed of Hell. She had known about Cronus. The dead knew a good deal more than demons or angels if you asked them the right questions. She’d waited in case I needed help. She wouldn’t have been the first one I’d thought of when I thought balls, but she had them all the same. She had determination and she thought she had a duty—to thank me. In all my trickster days I think it might’ve been the first thank-you I’d ever received.
“Anna.” I gripped the hands I held in mine. “Little Anna, I’m grateful, but I don’t think this is something you will want to do. It’s dangerous, even to the dead. And it’s terrifying—especially to the dead.”
The brightness in her eyes was twice what it had been when she’d first come to me. “I lost my face, my life, my soul, and I stepped in front of a bus.” The smile was less shy now. It was confident, daring, adventurous, and what Anna should have always been if her life hadn’t changed so quickly. “I think I have a résumé in dangerous and
terrifying.”
“So you’re James Bond now, are you?” I asked fondly.
“Better,” she said promptly. “I won’t stop and have sex with every woman I see on the way.”
“Annie-girl, you are so worth it. Screwing Hell. Freeing all the Roses. You were most certainly worth it all. You are my poster girl of the year.”
Her hands—in reality the dog lady’s hands, but Anna’s for the moment—shook mine playfully. “Then tell me. How can I help you?”
I told her, and to her credit she didn’t flinch, not once. Not when I told her where I needed her to go, how difficult it was to get in, and how far more difficult it was to get out. I hoped dropping my name and the reason behind what I needed should be enough to help her pass whoever remained there, but I told her truthfully that I couldn’t guarantee it.
She tugged me across the table and kissed me on the cheek. “We’ll see. I only wish I had Sir Pickles with me. There isn’t anything alive or dead that’s not afraid of a smack from him. And when I’m done, where will I go?”
“Anywhere you want. We have more heavens than stars in the sky. Tell them I sent you, and I think you’ll find one you like. Ask for my brother, Kimano, when you knock at the doors. I know you’ll like him. All the girls do.”
The pink smile widened and then, the same as a rainbow-sheened soap bubble popping under your curious finger, she was gone. Anna was gone and I was left with the much less amiable dog lady. I didn’t blame that schnauzer at all for making a toilet out of her bathtub. She was not the most pleasant or reasonable of people. If we lived someplace colder, she’d no doubt force the dogs into ridiculous little sweaters or raincoats. Looking at the pictures on the wall again, now every canine face seemed to be pleading, help us. She brushes our teeth four times a day. She wheels us out in the yard and tries to wipe our asses with toilet paper when we go.
She did feed them though. That was something, every one of them fat and sassy on the wall of fame. It was better than the pound and near-certain death. I couldn’t swat her for embarrassing dogs. But for being rude and peeping at her neighbors, I’d put that on the back burner.
“Thank you, Mrs. Smith. Despite yourself, you were helpful. And, please, the dogs don’t care if it’s one ply or two. They’d prefer you didn’t wipe their furry butts at all.”
“You ungrateful, pushy little bitch. Crazy too—ought to be locked up in the nuthouse with your talk of rivers in Hell. No crazy is killing or robbing me—you’ll see that right here and now.” I’d let go of her hands, and she was scooping up the bullets on the table. Her fingers were as nimble as those of a blackjack dealer, which was why I took her gun with me.
“I’ll leave it outside the door. Don’t shoot your mail-man.” I was passing through the doorway when I felt something hit the back of my head hard. A bullet fell to my feet and rolled across the floor. The hell with the gun, she’d started throwing bullets at me. I rubbed the stinging on my scalp and closed the door behind me in time to hear another one clink against the glass. With that arm she should’ve been pitching in the World Series. I put the .357 down on the concrete. She took very good care of her dogs. If I killed her, who would feed and love them?
I massaged my head again. Leo liked dogs. Tempting, tempting, but no. If being a bitch merited death, I’d be notching my gun belt every day. If I had a gun belt. Damn it, that stung. Human pain, yet another thing I could do without in the whole being-human realm. Their nervous system was far too fine-tuned, ridiculously sensitive. In other forms I’d had my limbs broken, my abdomen clawed open, and, on one memorable occasion, had a lung ripped completely out of my body and none of it equaled one menstrual period of the new and human Trixa Iktomi. That might be a small exaggeration, but it wasn’t that far from the truth.
I knocked on the window of the stolen car and the locks snicked open. Sliding into the driver’s seat, I took in the scenario. Griffin had his arm around Zeke’s neck from behind in a classic choke hold. “Did the lesson take a turn for the worse?”
Zeke was tuning the radio. “He won’t go through with it,” he said without the hoarseness or lack of consciousness the arm across his throat should’ve produced. “He couldn’t choke out a Christmas elf with this hold.”
“But I want to. I very much want to,” Griffin countered. The hard line of his arm, the clenched teeth, the face flushed with aggravation; it all said it was true, but . . .
“Ha,” his partner gloated, “now that’s a lie. I can feel it. I can see it. It’s purple. When you lie, I see purple.” Closing his eyes to concentrate on the color, he then opened them again and focused back to the radio. “Okay. You can nap now. You won’t ever be able to lie to me again, not even for my own good.” Griffin’s jaw, if anything, went tighter, but he let Zeke go, then lay back down in the seat. Being Zeke’s student would give anyone a headache, concussion or not.
In a way, it was too bad. Griffin had chosen the wrong thing to lie to Zeke about, but at the end of the day you sometimes needed someone to lie to you, because some days the truth was too unpleasant, too depressing to hear. A good example would be Eli, carrying the heat of Hell with him, materializing beside the car, tearing the door off to throw into the street, and snarling, “He needs four more wings. Four, and then playing Where’s Waldo is goddamn over. He’ll have an X marks the spot to Lucifer. Your plan, if you have one, better be in fucking motion, because the world is about to come to an end.
“All of them.”
Chapter 14
Three months ago when I’d lost my shape-shifting ability, I knew there’d come a time, sooner or later, when I would encounter a situation where a fast gun wasn’t going to be enough. It wouldn’t be because of any low-level demon, but Eligos had taken over Vegas when I’d killed Solomon. He would’ve taken it if I hadn’t killed Solomon. Eli had said Solomon wasn’t in his league and I didn’t doubt him. He also thought I was the best toy he’d been gifted with in ages. He thought he was playing with fire when he played with me, and I had to keep him thinking that. If he knew what I was now, he would do to me what I’d done to Solomon. I had no desire to be in so many pieces that I had to be cleaned up with a sponge and buried in a bucket.
That was why I’d asked Zeke and Griffin to do something no telepath or empath, no angel or demon, had done before. Instead of using their powers to pull in thoughts and emotions, I’d asked them to try pushing out those things instead. I knew Zeke couldn’t make someone see something that wasn’t real. He couldn’t make Eli see me change into a giant bear with the mouth of a shark and the tail of a dragon. But if he tried, worked hard at it, after months of practice, he might be able to blur my edges—to make it seem as if my outline was wavering. Shifting. Not a giant bear, but the beginnings of a change, my edges running like a rainbow of oil sliding over water. And if Zeke could do that, then it was possible that Griffin could send out the emotion of fear. Not a powerful thrust, but only a sliver—it could be enough. If Eli saw me shimmer, felt a spike of fear, he’d see a fully functional shape-shifter, not a hobbled one. If he saw it and felt it, it was doubtful he would take time to examine where those things were coming from—he or someone else. It had no precedent to make him suspicious of it and if you had a fully functional shape-shifting trickster in front of you, all your thinking was going to be concentrated on keeping yourself alive.
The guys had given it their best shot, practiced daily, and considering how lazy Zeke was, that was pure devotion. After two months of self-devised training, they’d tried it on Leo, who’d let his shield relax for the attempt. It had worked—more or less. Leo wasn’t a demon, however, and although it had worked on him, I couldn’t be sure it would on Eli. Still, I’d bet my life on many things along the way. Why should I start changing now?
“Well, Trixa? Is your plan going to save us?” Eli put his hands under the car and flipped us over onto our side. I hadn’t put on my seat belt yet. I didn’t slam into Zeke as I’d grabbed the steering wheel, but I didn’t land on him with
the grace and airy lightness of a ballerina either. I heard the muffled grunt as air left his lungs, but that didn’t stop him from already having his shotgun in hand. The same went for Griffin in the back. But Eli was enraged and he was faster and stronger than all of us. Normally, I would’ve tried to talk my way out of this . . . but this time I didn’t believe Eli would be listening. He was asking questions, but he was too furious to listen to any answers—too furious to do anything but kill us.
It was time to see if the boys could do to him what they’d done to Leo. I only hoped they’d been keeping in practice. I gave them a fleeting hand signal. They agreed on a “We are screwed” sign; then I used the steering wheel to pull myself upright, standing on Zeke’s rib cage and rising up into Eli’s view with the happiest, hungriest smile I had in my repertoire. “Plan, sugar? Who needs a plan when I have lunch in my face bitching up a storm?”
Eli stared at me, his face not even a foot from mine. “What’s your pleasure,?” I drawled. “What part of you would you like pulled off first? Your handsome head? Rip your legs apart like a wishbone? It’s all tasty. It’s all good, Eligos. All good to me. Let’s see how good it is for you.” I took the risk and reached for him. I thought I’d guessed wrong, that the training and the work had been for nothing. I thought we were dead when my fingertips were almost brushing the front of his shirt.
Until he took one step back.
Another moment of trickster triumph. If my legs weren’t al dente and in danger of buckling under me, I would’ve been one happy-go-lucky mass of conceit and smugness. I didn’t like being vulnerable. I didn’t like it at all. I’d been positive that I could get through four or so years without my shape-shifting ability. Pie, cake, cougar soccer moms—all things that are easy. It was feeling less and less that way all the time. I’d tumbled far down the food chain and I didn’t like strapping on a fake fin to blend in with the other sharks. I wasn’t afraid to die. Tricksters can’t be . . . not if they want to do what they do best. But I didn’t want to die without pulling off the trick first. I’d done the Roses. I could do Cronus too. If death came as I took him down, I wouldn’t mind. I didn’t fear losing my life to save this world and all worlds while punishing Cronus . . . obliterating a Titan. It was my purpose. I wasn’t afraid.
