The Trickster's Strings: A Superhero Adventure-Romance (Godsongs Book 2)

by Jax Garren

  “Anytime,” she repeated to Giselle—ignoring him.

  “Gracias por todo,” Giselle repeated. “You’re an amazing chef.”

  With a wink, Mercedes went back inside, and Coyote wrapped Giselle’s arm around his own as his grin returned. “Stick with me, you’ll learn Music 101—you seem like a smart gringa. But your sarcastic appreciation of my obvious talent is not why I’m smiling.”

  She couldn’t help laughing at his arrogance. “Then why are you?”

  They turned the corner to the alley with the motorcycle, and he threw his arm around her shoulders in a friendly way. “You waited for me.” The unabashed pride in that statement made her insides flutter. He was prouder that she’d waited for him than that he’d impressed an entire restaurant with his singing? That didn’t seem like him.

  “Don’t you want to know what we’re doing before you sign up to go?”

  “Nope.” He threw a leg over the motorcycle. “But you might want to give me directions.”

  “Head for Corpus.”

  “Gonna call Sekhmet? See if she wants to join us? We can swing by Fort Mitchell and check if your Harley’s still there—damn, that seems like a long time ago.”

  “Not three days ago?” she teased, sticking her helmet on.

  “Oh, fuck me.” He stuck his own helmet on—his loathed headdress hadn’t even made it out of the lair—and started the bike. “I think we should offer her the bike and you can ride with me.” He patted her leg, and she rolled her eyes—not that he could see it—and sent a text to Rawan before he took off down the street.

  Turned out she didn’t just have a partner, she had a team.

  “Lemme know when you hear back,” he said, his voice coming in clear through the radio set in the fancy, Bluetooth-enabled helmets. Because gods forbid anything Coyote bought not have all the latest tech.

  It was pretty nice, though, to be able to have a conversation without screaming over the motor.

  “So what’re we tackling in Corpus?”

  A wave of unease filled her at the thought of her old and new lives crashing together, and she leaned a little closer into him. “Someone I know from a place I used to live is in trouble. You’re going to get tired of helping my idiot friends from the shelter if you keep coming with me on these. It’s like they can’t stop themselves from doing stupid things.”

  “Like running off to the underworld by themselves when they have a perfectly good partner willing to help?”

  “Hey, I thought I was forgiven!”

  “Forgiven? Sure. I may even get over it. Eventually. Maybe.” He reached back and patted her knee. “Tonight went a long way.” His voice got low and toe-curling in its honeyed sound as he said, “But regardless, I’m still going to harass you about it for the rest of our lives.”

  “Rest of our lives, huh? How long you planning on living?”

  He didn’t respond right away. Finally he said, “A long damn time. You too. I plan on you living a long damn time too.”

  HER BIKE WAS STILL, miraculously, on the side of the road. Feeling indulgent, Giselle opened the cake as Coyote used one of his spy doohickeys to scan for bombs—none—and trackers—three, which he deftly removed. Then he joined her at the bike and snatched the fork out of her hand. A fork war ensued, which might’ve ended with Giselle owning the fork and Coyote with icing all over his nose.

  About then, a car pulled up, and a woman in a dark cloak got out. Coyote gave her a salute with a napkin as she jogged over and the car pulled away.

  “Rideshare to a superhero gig,” Rawan said. Energy pulsed over her, and she pushed back the cloak to reveal Sekhmet’s leonine mask. Giselle gave her roommate a hug, and Rawan squealed, “This is so awesome, guys! We’re superheroes! We’re going to go save someone! Can I have cake? That looks really good.”

  Giving a sideways glance to Coyote, Giselle handed her the fork. “Hey, look, asking instead of taking! It works!”

  “All I’m saying is, there wouldn’t have been cake without me.” He gave Rawan his dashing Coyote grin. “Hey, Sekhmet, part of being a team is sharing, right?”

  Sekhmet, the traitor, took a big bite and passed the fork back to Coyote.

  Coyote turned his smug face back to Giselle and licked cake off the fork in a way that sent her mind squirreling down terrible directions. “How did you get a nice friend like her?” Giselle flipped him off, and he shook his head at Rawan like he was some sort of martyr. “You see what I put up with? Know how to drive a motorcycle?”

  “No clue.”

  “Dammit.”

  “You can ride with me,” Giselle told her, dragging her and the forkless cake toward her bike.

  “Or me,” Coyote added, sounding almost insulted.

  “I got a boyfriend. No way.”

  Brow raised, Coyote handed over an extra helmet, likely tricked out with the same Bluetooth communication system. “You’ve got a boyfriend? Does he know you’re doing this?”

  “Uh, no. He’d try to stop me.”

  Coyote shot Giselle a strange look. “You don’t have a, uh...”

  “No boyfriend. You?”

  “Nope, nor a girlfriend.” His smile turned flirtatious. “And I’m great boyfriend material too. I’d like a girlfriend who knew I was doing this.” He shot Giselle a side-eye as he got on the bike.

  Giselle huffed out a breath at his ridiculousness—like he’d want her for an actual girlfriend—and got on the bike. To Rawan, she said, “You can hold on to me, but there’re also handles.” After going over the basics of riding, she started the motor.

  As they took off, Rawan made a sound halfway between a whoop and a feline roar as she wrapped her arms around Giselle’s midsection. Her joy was infectious, and Giselle found herself laughing as she and Coyote shared a lane, speeding down the empty highway.

  Coyote looked over at her, and though she couldn’t see his face, she could imagine the carefree smile he usually sported as he hit the accelerator, challenging her to keep up. As they raced through the moonlit night, cutting the hour-ish drive down well more than they should, she felt freer than she ever remembered. She had two people who cared enough about her to go into a dangerous situation with almost no information.

  “You guys are awesome,” she announced.

  Rawan squeezed her harder as Coyote announced, of course, “I know I am! And so are you, mi diosita.”

  “Team Awesome,” Rawan said.

  “I love you, but that’s a terrible team name,” Giselle announced.

  “What, too on the nose for you?” Coyote announced. “I like it, but I can come up with a name.”

  “Yeah, like Huehu-eyja-met?” she teased, remembering his silly “ship” name and adding the end of Sekhmet to it.

  He laughed. “What, we just add on for every new member? Soon we’ll be “Huehueyjamet-ithu—adding Idunn. Then add Osiris to get Huehueyjametithu-ris? That’s a Pagan god name if I ever heard one.”

  “Until we find Osoosi, then it’s Huehueyjametithu-si,” Rawan added.

  “Let’s do this,” Coyote confirmed.

  “No! I can’t say that. Normal people—er, no, dumb people like me who only speak one language—can’t say that.”

  “Your Spanish was great!”

  “Yeah, I successfully ordered chicken. Give me a medal. No way-wayuh-meduci am I ever getting that word to roll off my tongue.”

  “Your mother’s Icelandic. You have the inherited capacity to say letters stuffed together in incomprehensible jumbles.”

  “I didn’t get my DNA from her, and even if I did, I’m pretty sure that skill’s not biological.”

  Coyote was quiet for a moment, then said, “Have you seen the two of you next to each other? I’m not sure how, but you look a helluva lot like Bryn and almost nothing like Sofia. Plus, you’re both totally nuts, but not in a murder sort of way, so...”

  “Fuck you, Coyote,” she said sweetly, trying to hide how much his words made her wish for impossible things. She’d noti
ced that she looked more like Bryn—of course she’d noticed it. It would be so much better if Bryn were her bio mother. But that wasn’t reality.

  He made a kissing noise into the microphone in response to her cursing.

  Sekhmet interrupted their banter with, “I’m going to go with Coyote on this one. Not the crazy part. But I had a friend in high school whose birth mother was inseminated with her other mother’s eggs, so one was her biological parent and one was her birth mother. Do you think maybe Bryn and Sofia could’ve done that?”

  Giselle was quiet for a moment, thinking that over. Bryn had always told her that she’d adopted her—which was true. She’d received the adoption paperwork as part of the legal file she’d gotten on her eighteenth birthday.

  But if they’d done something like Rawan suggested, then was it possible, in all the chaos, that Bryn had needed to adopt her own biological daughter?

  The idea of not sharing DNA with Sofia Messner was appealing—very much so. The fear of inheriting her crazy—a different and far more insidious kind than what Coyote had joked about—haunted her. Made her question every decision and play it safe when she wanted to relax and have fun.

  Had she spent a lot of time in needless worry?

  She tried the complicated name again, wondering if maybe she did have Bryn’s blood—Icelandic, like her pale blonde hair. “Way-way... uh... met... i... thu... see. Huehueyja... meti... thusi.”

  “Wait, is she saying it?” Coyote teased. “Can Freyja pronounce the big word?”

  “Huehueyjameti-screw-you-si, Mr. I-can-trace-my-family-back-to-caveman-days.”

  “Listen to that expert wielding of syllables! She’s clearly Icelandic.”

  She laughed so hard she could barely keep the bike facing forward. “Even if I can say it, I still think it’s a dumb name.”

  “Can you come up with a better one?”

  “No.”

  She could hear his smile through his voice. “Then quit your bitching.”

  Chapter 27

  THE WELL-KEPT, TWO-story house across from a schoolyard in Corpus Christi didn’t look like a psycho kidnapper’s place. The middle-class front lawn was covered in St. Augustine grass and had a soccer net in the yard and a Honda in the driveway.

  “You sure this is the place?” Rawan asked as she gently rocked back and forth on a swing in the elementary school playground where they were watching the house. The bikes parked just on the other side of the chain-link fence gleamed subtly in the late-evening moonlight.

  Coyote eyed the house, leaning against the swing-set pole, then turned to look at Giselle like he, too, was wondering if they were really going to raid a two-point-five-kids-and-a-dog house.

  “Psychos come from all walks of life,” Giselle asserted, though this was not looking likely to her, either. Agitation riding high, she pulled her phone out and opened the app to show the location to Rawan, wondering if she’d gotten something wrong.

  “Looks right to me,” Rawan said with an uncertain shrug. “Do we... I mean, we can’t just break down the door.”

  Coyote peeled himself off the pole and leaned over to check out the phone. “Can we see the video?”

  Giselle nodded. “Last time, then it’s gone.” They gathered around it to listen to Ariana’s terrified plea and look for something—anything—that would give them more clues about what had happened.

  “And you know her because...?” Rawan asked, looking skeptically at the avatar of the freckled girl with wild hair and a too-tight top.

  “We lived in the same...” She took a deep breath, debating what, exactly, to say. Finally she just told the truth. Part of it, anyway. “When I was in eighth grade, I beat up this guy—actually, he was my foster brother—which got me, uh, reassigned to a therapeutic home, one of the places where they put the bad kids. Ariana was there too. My guess is she ran away again and got herself in real trouble this time.”

  Rawan looked at her like she was meeting her for the first time. “Your foster brother, you mean, like, another foster child in the home you were staying at?”

  “No, he was my foster parents’ bio son.” Her shoulders were so tense she could barely shrug them. “I had a reason. But he was on the honor roll and I was a foster kid, and there wasn’t much of an investigation.”

  Coyote looked like he was going to grab her for some sort of disgusting sympathy hug. “What did he—”

  She threw a hand up at him and tried to make a joke. “I have paperwork proving I’m belligerent and prone to fits of violence. If you hug me right now, I will punch you.” He backed off, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Gods, I should’ve done this one on my own.” And she would have, if they hadn’t already been pissed at her about leaving them for Kur.

  As they protested in simultaneous outrage, she rubbed her face, trying to wipe off the grime she’d thought going to college had cleaned. Just seeing Ariana’s face again dragged up all sorts of memories that made her feel like an angry fifteen-year-old.

  “I don’t want y’all seeing this. I’m not this person anymore.” She shoved back one of the tiny braids keeping her hair somewhat in check. “Why don’t y’all take a hike, and I’ll go to the door as myself. That way I can see if there’s any chance this is the right place.”

  Coyote stuck his finger in the air in a sign for them to wait and transformed into a nondescript white guy with brownish hair and hazel eyes. “I’ll go. If you turn off the godstone and something goes wrong, you’re screwed. But I can knock like this.” He turned like he’d just march across the street to the house.

  “Wait!” She grabbed his elbow, then let go quickly, still feeling dirty.

  “What? Oh, do we need more of a plan? Sure.” He smirked at her. “Don’t want to go off all half-cocked.”

  “No! I...” How could she explain this? It had seemed okay forty-five minutes ago to bring them, but suddenly the uncomfortable weight of what they were doing hit her. “I don’t want you guys in this. You’re my now friends. This is old shit. I need to help Ariana, but I don’t want you here. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a bad partner, I just... I want this separate from you.”

  They both leaned back like she was swinging fists or something repulsive.

  “But, sweetie,” Rawan began, looking the closest to upset Giselle had ever seen her, “we can’t just leave you alone with kidnappers or whatever.”

  “They’re humans. This isn’t like Kur. I’ll be fine. Just... go get ice cream or something. I got this.” She shoved at both of their shoulders, hoping, but doubting, they’d go.

  Rawan looked like she might give in, but Coyote’s chin shot forward mulishly as he glared at her. “Uh, no.”

  “Coyote!” She shot him a nasty look.

  But he just shook his head slowly. “No.”

  She narrowed her eyes at the one-word answer coming from the bland man in front of her. “You don’t get to choose.”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously as he re-formed to the Coyote she knew. “I don’t? We’re on a public street. I can go knock on whatever door I want to. You cannot order me to go get ice cream. That’s not within your list of rights. You can be pissed at me for staying—that’s your right. You can glare at me. You can even yell at me, provided you don’t start getting noise complaints. But you can’t tell me I can’t walk around wherever I damn well please in Corpus fucking Christi.”

  “You suck!”

  “Only if you ask nicely,” he deadpanned. “Or at all.”

  She took a step back and curled her lip at his ridiculous reply. “We’re fighting. You can’t make jokes!”

  He shook his head at her mockingly. “You are really into telling me what I can and can’t do today—and yet nothing you’re insisting on is an actual rule. Be as bitchy as you want. I’m staying. We’re partners. Now I’m going to knock on that door. You want to undo your godstone like a moron and come with me, that’s your right. Be nice to know who you are so I can watch out for your reckless ass when you’re not
channeling—because I’m starting to think you need regular supervision.”

  Anger at his patronizing arrogance made her see red. She got into his face. “I am not a child, you pompous, privileged, naïve asshole.”

  “Yeah. But neither are you invincible, you reckless, antisocial, overconfident brat.”

  She shoved his chest, and he didn’t move.

  “Oh, come on. You can hit harder than that. It’s like you’re not even trying.”

  She took a step back and cocked her fist. “You want me to actually hit you?”

  He leaned forward, getting back in her face. “I don’t think you will. Because as much as you whine and protest, you want us here. You don’t want to be alone—”

  “Fuck you! I’m fine—”

  “—you’ve just convinced yourself you’re supposed to be.”

  His words cut, and she threw her fists up before her eyes in automatic defense as she backed away. But the stupid swing set was behind her and she tripped, collapsing backward onto the plastic strap of a seat.

  Coyote grabbed the chain, holding it steady as she clutched it for balance. Embarrassed, she continued to back up, the seat staying with her butt like she was a kid about to swing. “I’m fine,” she ground out.

  “No, you’re not,” he said, his tone back to gentle as he held on to the chain with whitening knuckles. “But with us you’re better than fine. Everybody deserves a team—a family”—eyes narrowed, his voice went back to an angry growl—“and family doesn’t go get ice cream, leaving you alone when things get dangerous just because it might be awkward.”

  A tense moment stretched longer as they stared each other down, Coyote still holding the damn swing chain in place, and he did not back away. Not when she shot him the nastiest glare she could. Not when she juked forward like she’d escape or hit him. Not when she sat back down on the seat and crossed her arms, reduced to a sullen mess.

  She really hated him at that moment—and he had to know it.

  And he was still there anyway. Nobody stayed, not when it got hard.

  Beside her, a chain squeaked as Rawan started swinging in earnest, her knees pumping back and forth in a slow rhythm. Giselle turned to watch her, for some reason letting Coyote win the damn staring contest.