Nevermore: A Cal Leandros Novel (30 page)

I shrugged, gathered the supplies including another towel, alcohol and a light bandage so it wouldn’t scrape against whatever pants I was able to steal later. “First time?” I knew it was. He’d bandaged me several times before, but stitches hadn’t been needed. He nodded just as I was grabbing the bathroom garbage can. “You might need this.”

“Why? I have one in my room. I can toss the leftover supplies in there before bagging them for the Dumpster.” I followed his blond braid to his bedroom. I’d have tugged it if I had an extra hand.

“This isn’t for leftovers,” I said blandly. “Not the kind you’re thinking of.”

•   •   •

I limped into the main room wearing another pair of Niko’s sweats. Cal looked past me. “Where’s Nik?” The sound of flushing and water running from the bathroom was muffled but audible.

“Taking a short time-out. Be thankful. The first time he stitches you up, he’ll have the vomiting out of his system.” It wasn’t that he had a problem with blood or a natural queasiness when it came to medical procedures. It was simply impossible to prepare for—sliding a needle through your brother’s skin and flesh, mainly as it didn’t actually slide. Flesh and skin are tougher than that. The first doesn’t give and the second stretches past where you would imagine it could. On occasion you have to punch the needle through and as long as my cut was, that had added up to over fifty stitches easy. That’s more spearing than you’d counted on through the meat of your brother’s leg.

Who had been your brother.

Heading for the chair, the only chair, I dropped carefully in it. Niko’s idea of pain killers was over the counter herbal crumbled leaves in a bottle that had the S
AGE
label peeled off and replaced with O
RGANIC
H
ERBAL
P
AIN
R
ELIEF . . . SUCK
ER
. The sucker was implied, but I knew it was there, because the pain relief I was receiving was good for seasoning a Thanksgiving turkey and accomplishing nothing else.

Robin was already showered, hand bandaged, scrape on his forehead cleaned and covered with a Band-Aid, hair shampooed with, hell,
product
in it. He had a faint floral odor around him and was wearing nothing but a rich ruby red sheet—a silk sheet. He sat on the couch, eyes closed, head resting on the back cushion and hands folded across his stomach. Looking far more comfortable and pain-free than before, he’d apparently also gotten much stronger medication than I had from the same location as the soap, shampoo, and sheet.

There was one bathroom in this apartment, and I knew bathing in the kitchen sink limb by limb wasn’t in the realm of possibility for him, but he was clean and bandaged before me. My stitches had taken longer, but I could see the bathroom from Niko’s room. He hadn’t been in there. The floral smell from a woman’s shampoo and soap and freaking product; the silk sheet in the color of passion for women and patriotism for older Russians.

“You went over to the
rusalka
’s,” I accused. “She cleaned and bandaged you up, fixed your
hair
, you vain son of a bitch, and gave you a sheet to wear? A goddamn sheet? How many people’s dead drowned bodies did she have over there?”

“You’re terribly quick to condemn,” he tsked. “She keeps her apartment immaculate, no dead bodies at all. She’s pleasant, attractive, and if we don’t all die, I, as thanks, plan on escorting her for dinner and an all-night festival of orgasms—also to return her sheet. And why not a sheet? It’s of excellent import, comfortable, and I couldn’t fit in any of her clothes. I wasn’t about to wear any to be found in this . . . abode. Ah, I nearly forgot. She said to remind you that you owe her two cases of Costco heavy-duty garbage bags.”

“I have never tried so hard to not kill a handful of people in my life.” I paid no attention to the damp hair sticking to my face. “And for it to be people I know. People I sincerely give a shit about.” I narrowed my eyes. “
Gave
a shit about rather. It’s unbelievable. Someone give me a knife. I want to stab something.
Anything.
”

“You can’t kill me.” Mini Me was getting snarky and smug again. “Kill me, if you’re capable of it, and you’ll disappear. Eight years dead. So suck it.”

“It’s hysterical how you think that a) I can’t kill you with the TV remote if I wanted and b) that nonexistence right now would remotely be enough to stop me,” I said darkly.

“You’re worst than identical twins as neither of you are the good one.” Niko was out of the bathroom and examining the image on the couch. His face, wet from the splashing we’d heard from the bathroom, was blank as Niko’s tended to be when there were too many vexing emotions swirling around and he was choosing one to focus all his exasperation on. Disbelief. Disgust. Appalled. Shocked. Had enough of this day—time to put my katana to good use. “Goodfellow, you are wearing a sheet. No, I apologize for the misinformation. You are draped with a sheet, meaning your naked genitals and ass are kissing cousins, so to speak, with our couch
cushions. Guests do not put portions of their anatomy where they don’t belong.”

The puck opened his eyes. “If I paid any attention to that rule, then I would never get laid,” he drawled. “In further refutation to that decree, Niko, was it? This piece of what you refer to as furniture is pleather or similar and that should not be put near the locations of portions of an innocent guest’s anatomy as it could cause chemical dye burns, and the peeling off of skin scalded by its faux hoggahyde upholstery—at least I hoped it was fake. If a hog like that had existed, I didn’t want to know about it. Then there is the once hearty will to live that is currently being siphoned from me down to between the cushions where Morlocks doubtless dwell. I await your apology, provided I am not drained to a husk by this monument to incredibly bad taste before hearing it.”

I thought about throwing something at him, but there was nothing within reach and I was not getting up. Wait. There was a sock stuffed behind me. I could feel the soft wadded shape. I snatched it up and nailed the puck in the face. From his choking and the watering of his eyes, it was one of Cal Junior’s epically ripe ones. It was the first genuine grins the two of us had exchanged, at someone else’s expense or not.

“Leave Niko alone. Of all of us, he’s the single exception to the soulless bastards banner we all fly,” I said. Whether his trust came and went. It had better stay from now on or I’d do this job with Robin, if his excuse—when given—was good enough, or I’d do it alone. I wasn’t fighting shadows by the sides of shadows.

I dug around subtly for another discarded sock as I introduced them. “This is Rob Fellows to humans. Robin Goodfellow, puck, Pan, trickster of tricksters to
paien
. Those are the so-called monsters if you’ve forgotten. I left him a message to pass on to my Niko if I don’t make it back.” The letter part was true—not what was in it—but a letter did exist, and this Niko knew the real reason for the letter. He knew that Goodfellow was a puck, an acquaintance—I hadn’t been willing to get into how he was more or why his death, if a disease, would be as
terminal to me as my Nik’s. He knew to not approach him early. To wait a year like it was meant to be and not take chances by doing otherwise. Niko would’ve followed that to the letter. He wasn’t fond of the smallest or safest of gambles.

It was Goodfellow that had not met a rule he wouldn’t tie in a thousand knots, a gamble he wouldn’t take, or advice he wouldn’t ignore. “He was supposed to wait a year like Niko to let the natural order of things fall into place. But he’s a know-it-all dick who doesn’t listen to anyone but himself, and that’s how it is.” I shrugged. “The long and the short of it is there’s nothing we can do about it now. If there’s damage, it’s already done. You can’t get rid of him now that he knows. He’s more tenacious than the world’s worst venereal disease.”

I waved a hand at the puck. “So, here you go. Have a friend for nine years instead of eight. You’re welcome.”

Niko asked, eyebrows arched and bemused. “You’re
giving
him to us as a present? A friend? Like a cat would gift its owner with a dead mouse on their pillow?”

“Trust me. This will be less irritating than when he stalked us originally, especially as he stalks from about three feet away,” I promised, hand in fake vow to a fake God. It could be less irritating. It wasn’t impossible.

Cal was standing behind the couch, glaring down at the cheerful gaze that looked back up at him. “I don’t want a friend. We don’t need a friend.” We’ve never had a friend. We’ve never trusted anyone. They went unsaid, but meant basically the same as Cal’s words. We don’t know how to trust anyone but each other.

That’s what I’d thought when I was young and naive, such as . . . last night when Niko had dropped the first bomb.

“Are you certain he’s not Lazarus? He could be some sort of shape-shifter like a Wolf, but more skilled.” Look at Niko. He’d gone from nothing but vamps, Wolves, and Auphe to skin-walkers,
rusalka
, lamia, wendigo, and now was willing to believe in shape-shifters.

“Yeah, no. We ran into Lazarus in the sewers and if there’s anything out there more badass than him, we
should murder-suicide pact it right now.” I slid a glance at Cal where he was lurking behind the couch and recognized in his eyes what I saw often enough in mine. “Cal, don’t stab Robin. Believe it or not, in the future you’ll need him.”

“How’d he know you were here? Here as in our fucking address here? He’d have to know or how’d he come here showing his face a year early?” he demanded suspiciously, of me or Goodfellow or both was the question. I guessed both.

“After I left him the letter for my Nik, he did what he does. Figured it out.” There was a spasm that passed over Cal’s face at the mention of the letter. Leaving one for his Nik if he died, this Cal knew how that would end. “He ignored the instructions to not change things. He ignored the warning about bringing the world down around us and all. I shouldn’t have been surprised he decided to come early.”

“Coming early is a disaster in certain vital situations,” Goodfellow agreed slyly, “but this is not that situation.”

“But you didn’t tell him where to find us. You didn’t want him here early; you wouldn’t have given him our address.” Niko backed a few steps away from the couch. “How did he find us? ‘Figured it out’ is not explanation enough considering we’ve spent our entire lives avoiding people and . . . things.” Auphe was what he didn’t want to bring up. “We, and it is no exaggeration, excel at it.”

“We do. For humans. He’s a puck. A trickster. A
born
trickster, evolved or created to do this and nothing but this. He could find anyone if he tried. Remember that stupid
Where’s Waldo
book when I was a kid? You never see those anymore. Probably because Goodfellow found Waldo and sold him into sexual slavery,” I grumbled. “There were cameras, recognition software programmed to detect his real written name. Who does that? Then from that and the cameras he was able to get the cab I was in on tape, bribe the cabbie to find out where he dropped me off, and had minions sweep a ten block radius from that point with my picture from the tape.

“He was Tommy Lee Jones. There was a hard-target
search of every gas station, residence, town house, coffeehouse, teahouse, clubhouse, penthouse, courthouse, schoolhouse, firehouse, warehouse, whorehouse—”

“I think we have it,” Niko responded wryly. “He is good at what he does.”

I jumped in before Goodfellow could talk about how excellently not good he was and of all the many, varied, often sexually illegal in every state with a single voting Republican activities he was excellent at in addition to the innate trickster capabilities in him. “From there on, it wasn’t difficult. He or one of his minions followed us here.”

“And we didn’t notice?” Cal questioned. Con artists didn’t care for it when someone was more talented than you and when we were one person, Cal and I had conned our way across cities, states, and the entire country for that matter. “How likely is that?” He was shifting his weight again. That was another sign I knew well from the mirror.

“Damn likely if it’s Robin. Hell, for all I know, his minion is a giant hyperintelligent cockroach with my picture taped to its back. Nothing we’d be looking for offhand. And I see that little stabbing boogie you’re doing. Do not stab him. I’m not kidding. He saves your life some day. From eight years on the other side now seeing what I used to be I don’t know
why
he did, but he did. If you want to live, don’t stab him.”

“Or shoot me. That’s equally as annoying as being stabbed. Of course neither is one quarter as irritating as your complaining. The conniving I’d approve of if you, the younger you”—Goodfellow nodded back toward Cal—“weren’t somewhat of an amateur at it. If you were properly trained, you’d have caught on to Caliban’s little tricks by now.”

“Amateur?”
Cal was all but frothing with rage. If he were a dog, anyone would’ve put him down for rabies with a clear conscience. “I’ve been conning people since I was four.”

“I didn’t say
rank
amateur.” The puck’s voice was placidly soothing, but there was a wicked glitter in his
eyes. A fox winking from a depthless forest. Tricksters did love to poke and prod at people’s vulnerabilities, and Cal had an uncountable number of buttons waiting to be pushed. I had too until I’d decided I didn’t like multiple areas of exposure. I didn’t care for having a buffet of weaknesses open to greedy hands. I’d unplugged the whole system, burned down the restaurant. It had resulted in fewer opportunities for my customary level of violence, but you can’t have everything.

“
Four.
I was
four
. Lying, stealing, conning, arson by the age of seven.
Seven.
”

“And I’ll bet you were adorable.” He rearranged the sheet he was wrapped in to make everyone but him even more uncomfortable and spread his arms along the back of the couch causing the cloth to ride up farther. That
rusalka
needed to invest in a larger bed for the larger sheets required. “I’ve been conning since I was born, not that
Homo erectus
was that taxing to fool or had anything I wanted to con out of them. Pointed sticks, sharp-edged rocks. Sharp-edged rocks tied to pointed sticks. Nothing I’d care to put on my shelf. And, Athena’s wit and wisdom, they were boring.” He yawned.