Rob Thurman - Grimrose path

We spent what was left of the night at Leo's condo, two hours later, after finally passing through the backed-up traffic. His place was in Green Valley, older but neat and well kept up. This was actually the first time I'd been inside. He tended to bring his bimbo du jour here these days instead of the bar as I'd produced a doctor's note that I was horrifically allergic to silicone. The fact that I'd filled the car of one of the overly enhanced actress/ singer wannabes with tarantulas during their mating season also might've had something to do with it as well. I say, if you're not an animal lover, you can't be trusted anyway… and horny spiders are fuzzy and cute. I was merely pointing out her character flaws to Leo as an act of charity on my part. He, unreasonable bastard that he was, didn't see it that way.

We roused the guys and headed them for the stairs. "What happened to Trixsta?" Zeke asked, yawning, then wincing as his bruised jaw cracked loudly.

"Nothing that can't be fixed," I replied lightly.

Leo, carrying the Namaru weapon mold, spared me a dubious glance. "Nothing that can't be fixed," this time stubbornly determined. He knew better than to argue with that mood.

"Better than before," he confirmed, in my corner whether he truly believed it or not.

When we reached the second floor, a long walk for those who have been in a car wreck, Tasered, and recently comatose, we leaned on the mauve stucco wall beside the door as Leo unlocked it. Inside was cultural pride as far as one could see. "Did you buy out IKEA," I inquired, feeling the first sliver of humor in hours, "or do they have one or two futons left in their store?"

Griffin looked around, his eyes settling on a bookshelf divided into so many spaces that it could have held fifty knickknacks easily. It only held one. "Do you have to make a pilgrimage to their headquarters once a year? Do you face Sweden and pray every day?"

Leo growled, "Do you want to continue to mock my taste in reasonably priced furniture or sleep in the car? It's your choice."

Griffin held up his hands in surrender and fell onto the couch, followed by his partner. I had gone to that ridiculously arty yet functional bookshelf and taken the one object there-a framed picture of Kimano, Leo, and me. Kimano looked as he most often looked, with straight black hair, dark skin, a puka shell necklace, and white teeth flashing in a laugh. The tides weren't carrying away this memory. I held the frame to my chest, silently daring anyone to bring it up, and asked, "Where do I sleep?"

Leo had a spare bedroom, but he put me in his room and the guys in the extra. I cleaned the dried blood out of my hair and off my forehead. The cut was an inch back from my hairline and had stopped bleeding. It would be fine and I'd be better than fine as my hair would cover it up and Eli wouldn't wonder why a shape-shifter was walking around with an easily healed wound. Borrowing a T-shirt from Leo, I slid under the covers of his bed, putting the picture on the bedside table facing me. "You coming?" I asked.

He'd stripped off his dirty and bloody shirt, the one I'd given back when I'd stopped bleeding. He also skimmed off his jeans and replaced them with a pair of loose black thin cotton pajama pants. They looked like what a ninja would wear to bed-or a dark god. He considered my offer. "I guess that depends on you."

I eased down gently, careful of my head and my torn skin, and pulled the covers up to my chest. I was exhausted enough to almost have double vision. I hoped it was the exhaustion as opposed to a concussion. "Unless you're into sexing up unconscious women, I'm afraid you're out of luck."

"No, that's not quite my thing." He turned off the light and lifted the covers to slide in beside me. The spread over us was a silver gray, almost icelike in color, and although it was forty-five degrees outside, the heat couldn't have been on higher than fifty-five inside. The furniture, the colors, the cold-Leo was missing Valhalla.

He moved closer and wrapped his arm around me as I turned on my side to keep Kimano in sight even in the dark. It wasn't the first time we'd slept together platonically. Sometimes you just needed someone who cared about you, understood what no one else could, knew you like no one else could. I couldn't promise the next time or the time after could stay platonic or if the thoughts themselves had ever been platonic to begin with… but if we lived, there was time enough to worry about that. Exhaustion dragging me into sleep, I murmured, "You should go home. When this is all over, you should go home for a visit."

He tightened his grip on me, and I felt his breath rustle my hair. "I might. Maybe you should go with me. Odin loves you. It might get me some brownie points, especially since Thor isn't going to be telling any great stories about me after this incident."

"Maybe I will." I closed my eyes. "While they're rebuilding Trixsta." While I figured out exactly who I was, which wasn't who I'd been raised to be. Maybe one trip would solve all that. I exhaled, long and slow. Maybes didn't get much bigger than that. I opened my eyes for one last look at Kimano, his Cheshire cat smile the only thing visible, and then I fell hard and fast into sleep. I dreamed of gold wings ripped from Griffin and of being in Trixsta when it crumbled and crushed me. I dreamed of Valhalla, talking to Odin over a mug of mead, his one good eye glittering in good cheer and laughing through a long white beard, right before Cronus appeared behind him and ripped his head from his broad shoulders.

Finally I dreamed of Anna, with her soft unassuming smile, her average and wonderfully whole face, her freckles. I dreamed she said, dimpling, "Easy as pie." And then…

"Good-bye, Trixa. Every Rose says thank you, me most of all."

Good-bye…

Good…

There were no dreams after that.

It was eleven in the morning when I stumbled out of Leo's bedroom. It wasn't quite five hours of sleep, but close, and if only one-third of what I needed to function, I'd have to make do. The morning light was too bright, the smell of food nauseating, the furniture too Lovecraftian in its bizarrely geometric shapes unknowable to any but the Swedes and Cthulhu's fourth cousin. I kept moving to the kitchen where Zeke was cooking something in the skillet. It looked as if it had all the four basic food groups, but it smelled as if they'd all been gathered or caught in a swamp. "Someone left a present for you," he said, one elbow indicating a countertop as he continued to earnestly scramble whatever he was cooking down to their separate molecular parts.

There it was, resting on the black granite countertop-a glass pitcher filled to the brim with crystal clear water. The pitcher itself was frosted with condensation and a heart had been drawn on it. Inside the heart, the name Anna was written in loops and swirls with a flourish at the end. The dream had been real. She'd done it, what most Greek heroes couldn't pull off, Anna had done. I'd had faith in her with good reason.

I heard Zeke switch off the oven before he moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with me. "Not much of a present though. Water. You can't wrap it. Can't exchange it for ammunition. You can get your own out of a faucet. Pretty cheap gift." He began to reach out a hand toward it.

"No." I caught his hand. "Don't touch it and don't drink it. It's from the River Lethe in Hades, the Greek underworld. If you drink it or touch it and get a drop in your mouth, you'll forget."

"Forget what?"

"Everything." I picked up the pitcher with the greatest of care and took it into the living area where we had left the Namaru weapon mold. "What your name is, who you are, who you were. Every memory you have will be gone."

"Huh." He followed behind me. "This is for Cronus too? You're going to set up a lemonade stand and convince him to drink it? Then he'll forget all about taking over Hell and wander off? And I thought some of my plans were bad."