Keep Cal from starving
. I didn’t think it would actually come to starvation before I hauled my ass to the grocery store, but the following one was painted a biblical red kick in the ass.
Reassure neighbors the smell of Cal’s laundry is not a decomposing body.
I snorted. There was more in that general category about sparring and running and making sure I was capable of fighting off a Pomeranian if the need ever arose. On my side of the board, in handwriting so sloppy I should’ve gone to med school, it read
1) Sit on ass 2) Kill things.
And that was it. That covered my day every day of the week, three hundred and sixty-five a year.
We didn’t have a lot of family-type things around. Goodfellow had said something about a fire and Niko had added that our mother had died in a fire. That would tend to wipe out a good deal of when-we-were-little-and-cute mementos. I was surprised the Santa photo had made it. Mementos didn’t make a family, though. They made a convincing TV commercial if enough were plastered through a fake house with fake people, but real life wasn’t TV.
And didn’t I have something more convincing than solid, tangible souvenirs of the past? I had a brother who’d been half dead on his feet from no sleep when he found me after a four-day disappearance. From all the hints I’d gotten, including the horrific diaper one, I gathered that he, rather than our mom, had raised me. His patience was unreal when anyone else would’ve been looking for a baseball bat to beat me to death. I also had the battle that had happened barely an hour ago. If I was going down, this guy was bound and determined to beat me to the grave by a mile.
What did I do in return? Bagged spiders and told him, no worries, he’d get all of his brother back. He wanted it all too. For all he said I might be happier to be only part of Cal, one that had been born less than a week ago, he wanted me back—the entire package. My past was his past. Before Promise and Goodfellow, it had been him and me alone for a long time. You didn’t live with fake IDs and find lying easier than telling the truth if you were surrounded by a caring circle of family and friends. That was easy enough to figure out. It had been him and me, and now he’d lost half of me. If I didn’t get the rest back, I wouldn’t be whole and neither would Niko.
Oddly enough, I cared more about his being whole than about me.
Softy. Goddamn softy. I didn’t even know him. I mean, I knew what he told me and what he showed me and what I felt, what I’d almost remembered… .
Because I had almost remembered earlier, and that other picture had been a nudge that had speeded up the boulder already rolling down the hill. The venom had been wearing off. I’d seen the picture and then we’d gone to the museum to talk to that mummy informant and … shit … something had happened. I didn’t know what, but something had happened—something that, like the picture, I didn’t want to remember. At the same time, though, it had felt … good. It was a bizarre combination of “Don’t look, don’t see” and the feeling of riding a roller coaster when you’re a kid. That adrenaline rush. I’d remembered part of me; I’d been coming home and bringing my past with me. Niko said my past had baggage. That meant his did too. What kind of fucking brother would let some bad memories stop him from being the family his own brother needed him to be?
Not the kind of brother I had. He’d shown me that. He deserved better, and my chickenshit ass was going to give it to him. I was a good guy and good guys didn’t leave their brothers twisting in the wind. I was going to start the ball rolling again, no matter how much I didn’t want to do the one thing that had started it. It was a picture, for God’s sake. I was standing in a mass monster graveyard partially of my making and I didn’t want to look at a picture.
Fuck that cowardly shit.
Hours later when Niko woke up, it was six p.m. He came out into the hall, pants on—thank you, God, and just give me a little time on the naked-guy thing—to take in the place. “You cleaned up.” It was said as skeptically as if I’d called in a maid service and passed it off as my own work.
“The smell.” I shrugged. “Apparently that’s the one motivation my laziness can’t beat back down. How’s the leg?”
“Sore but bearable.” He was limping, but not too badly, which was good as we had a lot of dead spider ass to haul. “I’m going to take a shower.” There was a towel half in the bathroom and half in the hall. “My keen observational skills tell me you already have. Did you brush your teeth?”
“What are you?” I took another bite of a peanut butter and jelly bagel. We were out of bread. I chewed and propped my elbows on the breakfast bar. “The damn Tooth Fairy? My diaper days are over. Go on already.”
He gave me a look, a now easily recognizable “brother look,” picked up the towel off the floor, and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I waited until I heard the water running, gave it several seconds, then put the bagel down and went into his room. I hadn’t forgotten which drawer the picture was in, but I hesitated before the dresser as if I had. “Suck it up,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s just a goddamn picture. It’s probably of Niko potty-training you. Suck it the hell up.” Suck it up I did and opened the drawer with a resolute hand. That same rock-steady hand reached inside and brought the picture out. I stared at it. I saw what I’d seen before. There was no flood of memories or the trickle of a single one, not yet, but I saw. I saw what I’d wanted to deny and never remember and embrace all in one.
I saw everything.
Destiny was easy. Choice was difficult and free will was for the fucked.
I was well and truly fucked.
10
“I am going to make Goodfellow rue the day he ever gave you that gift certificate. His Christmas present to me is years of aggravation from you. Tricksters—no wonder they’re the least popular supernatural creature alive,” Niko growled. We were at Goodfellow’s place to tell him the news about Ammut in person, discuss, plot, and all that shit. Why not just use the phone? Because he wouldn’t answer the damn thing or return voice mails. After two hours we gave up and made like Jehovah’s Witnesses, knocking on his door.
I blew air upward to clear the hair from my eyes. I could see why I’d had a ponytail. This was on my last nerve and that Goodfellow approved of it meant it was fashionable, and I didn’t want to be fashionable. That meant I tried. I didn’t want people to think I tried. Cool guys who kick monster ass do not try. Our coolness is inherent, goddamn it.
“It was the only clean thing I had left,” I grumbled as I pounded my fist against the puck’s apartment door for the third time. “I don’t think I like doing laundry.” The object of Niko’s exasperation was the T-shirt I was wearing under my jacket. It was black. When it came to me, I’d discovered this was the same as saying water is wet. It had cheerful yellow letters across the front: I LIKE PEOPLE! Below that were the words THEY TASTE LIKE CHICKEN!
“You didn’t actually say you think you don’t like doing laundry, did you? Because if you did, I may have to hurt you in ways the Spanish Inquisition itself couldn’t begin to imagine.” He was favoring his leg, but short of wrapping a pain pill in tofu in the hopes of shoving it down his throat as you would a cranky cat, there wasn’t anything I could do. He was one stubborn bastard.
“I told you to take a pain pill before we left,” I said unsympathetically, “or wait until the guy answered his phone instead of coming over here to kick down his door. Don’t be getting apocalyptic on my ass. It’s not my fault.”
“Apocalyptic on your ass?” The aggravation, not that genuine anyway, shifted into a more encouraged echo. The old Cal must snark more than I did. That made me wonder when he/I had time to breathe.
I grinned. It took some effort, but I did it. “Hey, medieval’s been done.”
Before I got a comeback on that one, the door finally opened and Goodfellow, in all his unclothed glory, snapped, “One knock, wait. Two knocks, leave. Three knocks, and I turn Salome loose on your testicles.”
“Oh, fuck me.” I covered my eyes as fast as possible with my hand. “No, wait—I didn’t mean that. I absolutely did not mean that. Just words. Bad words, very bad. I probably shouldn’t curse as much anyway. I blame Leand … Niko for not raising me better. Hell, I blame you too. When you answer the door, put on some goddamn clothes.”
“I’m a puck with normal puckish needs. You feel I can’t walk around in my own home as I please? As a puck and a homeowner, I’m offended.”
“As a person with eyes,
I’m
offended,” I shot back, offended eyes still shut.
“He’s not as secure in his masculinity as he could be,” Niko said, his tone indicating that while he was having a good time at my expense, he was also not entirely unfreaked-out himself. “Unfreaked-out” … Was that a word? At the moment, did I care? Hell, no. “Although to be fair,” he continued, “not many men would be in this position.”
“‘This position’ is why I didn’t want to answer the door. I obviously have better things to do.” I peered through the crack between two fingers to see Goodfellow wave a cranky hand to invite us in. I edged in, back to the first wall I could find, sealed my fingers again, and waited until I heard a distant bedroom or bathroom door shut. I was about to relax when I felt a touch against my thigh and promptly nearly shot Goodfellow’s mummy cat between her firefly yellow eyes.
“Holy shit.” I slid down the wall to crouch, gun dangling from my hand as Salome—yeah, that was her name, I was pretty sure—curled herself around my neck and purred in my ear. Of course, purring doesn’t often sound like gravel grinding or avalanches crushing hikers beneath them, but we weren’t all perfect.
“You’d better find a grip on the situation or Salome may eat your head. She likes fear. Fear is catnip to a mummified feline.”
I looked up, growling at Niko’s enjoyment of my, yep—I admit it, full-blown terror. We were in a marble foyer. There was a living area, a kitchen that probably came with a chef, through another door, a dining room, and directly across from us a hall that ran to bedrooms and whatever else the orgy king had going on. Rich. Goodfellow was rich. That wasn’t worth wasting a thought on. What would be were the two or three gold-barred white feathers I saw here and there down that hall. Ishiah’s feathers. “This is so not good for a working relationship with your boss.” I groaned. “That guy needs some Rogaine for birds or something. Christ.”
“Don’t be such an infant.” There came the increasingly familiar swat to the back of the head. “It’s sex. You’re a grown man. You’ve done it and with an incredibly psychotic Wolf to boot. More times than I could begin to count.”
“Then you have no problem with my seeing your vamp Promise parade around our place buck-ass naked?” Actually that was a mental picture I had no problem with. Definitely worth remembering more than a mummy in a museum basement, which was why I guess the visual of her was still spectacularly vivid, practically 3-D. She was pale, but she had all that hair and those clutch-of-violet eyes and probably some spectacular ti … The smack was to my forehead this time, banging the back of my head against the wall—a two-for-one special. “Ow. Jesus. What was that for?” I complained, rubbing my forehead, then the back of my head, then my forehead again.
“You know perfectly well what that was for.”
Yeah, okay, he did have me there.
By the time Goodfellow came back, leaving whoever left those feathers—yes, I told my mind, I know who, so shut up—hidden in the bedroom, I was sitting on his couch while trying to decide whether to shoot the cat, now humping my leg—I didn’t even know cats humped—shoot Niko, whose smirks might be invisible but still detectable, or shoot myself. The puck, wearing a dark green robe, flopped down on the wraparound contour couch and demanded, “Explain, and if this is not very,
very
good, I’ll let Salome hump the both of you to death.” I stopped trying to shake the cat off and gave Goodfellow my full attention, which was enough to let me see from his sprawled position what he was wearing under the robe.
Okay. Myself. I was shooting myself. There was no way around it. I pried the cat off my leg and tossed her into Niko’s lap. If he was so determined to put himself between me and bodily injury, here was his chance. “I’m hungry. I’m making a sandwich. You two … do … whatever. Discuss. Maps. Plan. Evil Egyptian snob. Me smart.” And I was past the enormous rock crystal coffee table and all but sprinting toward the kitchen.
“Some things never change,” Goodfellow commented caustically. “Mice ever cower beneath the shadow of the mighty hawk. Oh, and Cal? Your T-shirt isn’t accurate. They don’t taste like chicken. People. More like a cross between beef and pork. And don’t give me that holier-than-thou judgmental look, Niko. I get that enough in the bedroom. Either I ate with the natives or I joined Captain Cook on the spit. He was a bastard and a half anyway, already practically pickled in his own rum. He didn’t as much roast as ignite and explode.”
Thoughts of chowing down on a pickled and barbecued captain didn’t bother me half as much as a puck who didn’t own underwear. I started rooting around in his double-doored, Easter Island statue-sized refrigerator and grabbed whatever looked the least healthy. Luckily Goodfellow wasn’t like Niko. He liked his food expensive, but other than that, he didn’t give a rat’s ass, especially when it came to things like heart disease and diabetes. In that respect, at least, he was just like me. Exactly like me. Equal; I didn’t fall short in any way. In any way at all. I scowled as I dug through some drawers, then hovered my hand over a fork before regaining some self-control. I went for the knife and started to chop bread and brisket.