Rob Thurman - Doubletake

Or might. Taking that attitude would turn the dark road into a vertical slide. Holding on to the human in me was what I had. I’d use it to my last goddamn breath.

“Niko, I know Grimm, Christ, in a way you can’t. You have to listen when I tell you what to do when it comes to him,” I said as I tried to call Goodfellow. I didn’t get through but he had changed his voice mail message to say that if this was the Hardy Boys, he’d had another idea about Janus. He’d call us when he found out something. After three more calls, I gave up. I left the info on Fort Tilden and Janus. He’d call back sooner or later. His facing Janus with us was nothing compared to what we’d faced with the puck reunion.

“Again, when do you listen to me?” Niko demanded with a snort when I flipped the phone shut. “Particularly if someone stabbed me in the hand and seemed inclined to chew off my face with metal teeth?” On the way home from the bar, he’d bought a laptop with an extra battery, as the rain that had filled the place had knocked out the electricity. “We listen, but if we see an opportunity, we take it. I saw one. I took it.” He magnified the picture on the screen. “I was wary of trying to cut off his head. I thought he might see the swing of the blade out of the corner of his eye. I was in the right. Stop complaining.”

“Then why do I have to listen to you bitch for hours if I see a big fat opportunity and don’t do what you say?” I demanded.

“Big-brother prerogative.” He was staring at the screen, a satellite close-up of Fort Tilden. He was memorizing it. He had all that crap on his phone too, but bigger is better for imprinting rough terrain on your brain cells.

“You are such an ass,” I grouched before pushing up to sit on the breakfast counter beside him. “How’d you do it anyway? Neither one of us saw you, heard the door…although you have the ninja-stealth thing going on, but we didn’t smell you either. That much closer to us and we should’ve noticed how much stronger your scent was. You were like frigging Houdini.”

“I was able to do it because you and that misbegotten megalomaniacal would-be ruler of the world have three things in common.” He handed me the computer. “Arrange to meet that supplier of yours, Rapture. We’ll need all the explosives she has in stock.”

I sent an innocent, Let’s grab pizza today at five. My treat , e-mail. “Let’s grab lunch” meant I was in the market to buy. “Today” meant today or not again, and no one could afford to lose my business in weaponry. “My treat” meant I was willing to pay double if the shit was good, exotic, and plentiful.

“Okay, done. Now tell me what Grimm and I have in common.” His being aware that I could have been Grimm in another life was not what I wanted to know, but I could live with it. Not comfortably, but it was doable, knowing that except for one omission of Sidle’s to the Auphe a possibility would’ve been a stone-cold certainty. Past is past. Telling Nik and the others the way things might have been was one thing. Having my brother tell me the same was a knife in the gut. He was the one who told me it wasn’t true. That was what got me through and made me believe it part of the time.

“Not what I wish you’d shown back then.” He looked at my hand when he said the words, the large puncture flushed, stitched, and wrapped in a bandage cleaner than a bar towel. And there’d been another shot instead of ointment. Hands were more prone to infection than most body parts. Nushi didn’t have to teach Nik that. We’d seen that ourselves years before Nushi and we both remembered. Niko had come close to dying from a bite. Not a Wolf bite, but a dog bite.

Like he’d said, back then…

Hell, the dog had been a beagle, but the infection had set in by the next day. His arm had swollen and turned bright red. The bite had been on the wrist. In three days the infection was an inch away from his elbow. He was eight. I was four. Sophia was working two conventions back-to-back, emphasis on the “back.” I was four and I knew what that meant from the smirking kids down the street, but medicine and nonmicrowaved food, those I didn’t know anything about.

She wouldn’t have done anything anyway.

I’d wanted to go to the house next door from where we rented. A nurse lived there. Or she’d been a nurse, but then she wasn’t. Nik had said she stole medicine from the hospital and was fired. Everyone in the neighborhood knew it. I’d brightened when I remembered that and said she’d help us. She was a nurse. She had to have tons of medicine because she stole it. The same as we had tons of things Sophia stole, but useless stuff. No medicine. Nik had shaken his head. “That’s not the kind of medicine she has, kiddo.”

I’d stood by the rickety table where Niko was doing his homework. It was hot, but he wore long sleeves to cover his arm. It was the first time I’d had to help Nik like this, but not the last, and it was the first time he told me: Don’t tell. Don’t tell teachers about Sophia. Don’t tell the counselor. Don’t tell anyone. They’ll take us away. I’d thought being taken away from Sophia sounded great…until Niko had said that then they might take us away from each other. There might not be enough room in foster homes for two kids at once. They were crowded all the time.

Take us away? Niko gone? When he’d said that I’d blinked hard to keep from crying. I was four years old and I was a big boy. Big boys didn’t cry.

“Never tell. I’ll never tell. I won’t forget,” I’d chanted, rubbing the first tear away hard before it had a chance to reach my cheek. “I promise. I promise .”

Niko had looked sicker than he already had. His dusky skin was lighter, kind of gray. After my promise, it had turned as white as his could. He wrapped the arm that wasn’t hurt around me and hugged me tightly. His longish blond hair—no money for haircuts and no trusting Sophia’s shaky hands with a pair of scissors—fell against my cheek. “I’m sorry, little brother. It won’t happen. I won’t leave you. They can’t make me. I promise. Okay? I promise and you know I never lie.”

I’d hugged him back, careful not to touch his bad arm. No, Nik never lied. If he said it wouldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen. He sometimes ducked the truth or circled it somehow, but not to me. He was good , in the way adults were on TV, but sometimes he was too good. Already I knew if you needed something, needed it really badly, being good didn’t work.

I’d offered to microwave him some soup. He said he wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday and then just crackers. I’d said okay and that I’d go outside to play. But I didn’t. I’d gone next door to talk to the used-to-be-a-nurse. She’d opened the door wearing flip-flops and sweatpants and a top that was small enough that I could see her pasty belly pooch out. Her hair was straw blond, her eyes bloodshot brown, and she had a cigarette hanging from her lip. She didn’t look like any nurse on TV. She stared at me and then started to shut the door without saying anything.

“Wait!” I pushed against the door and slipped inside just before it shut. “It’s my brother. He’s sick. A dog bit him and his arm is huge and red and he’s hot. He has a fever.” How high I didn’t know. We didn’t have a thermometer. “He needs medicine. Everyone says you have medicine.”

“Go to the doctor, kid.” She flopped on the couch to blankly watch TV. “My folks might’ve named me Happy, the bastards, but I ain’t no charity and I ain’t got the kind of medicine to help no dog bite.”

“But maybe you could get it?” Four-year-olds didn’t cry. Big boys didn’t cry. I didn’t cry…unless I wanted to. And I did. I’d cried and cried. My face was wet, my shirt, part of my hair. I didn’t whine. Whining was a mistake and adults didn’t like whining. Adults told me how cute I was. Playing outside, shopping in the grocery store with Nik, buying clothes at the Salvation Army. Black hair, pale skin, huge solemn gray eyes. They hadn’t seen a little boy as cute as me. When cute little boys cry, most adults run to help. “Please,” I’d begged, my voice hitching. I was sad and scared. Really, really sad. Really, really scared. No one could not see that. “He’s sick. We can’t go to the doctor, and he’s so sick.”