Rob Thurman: Doubletake

I passed through the large open space that formed the combination living area, kitchen, and workout gym to the door of our converted garage, and undid the one bolt. Most New Yorkers had several. Unless it was a particularly nasty case we were working, Niko and I didn’t have a problem with encouraging break-ins. Spontaneous sparring was like a jolt of extra caffeine in your coffee. Perked you up.

Opening the door, I began to snarl a natural, “What the hell do you want?” It was way too damn early and I embraced NYC manners like a native. What else would I say?

It turned out I didn’t end up saying anything at all. I swallowed the words as I saw it…him.…all in a split second. I saw the dark blond hair and olive skin, the familiar profile, the way he held himself on the balls of his feet, cautious and loose. A fighter. A warrior. I saw it all in an instant and I gave him what he deserved. Not a word, not a demand, not a greeting.

I tackled him in the doorway, slamming him to the floor.

I said I wore just sweatpants and socks to bed. I did. That wasn’t a lie. But I always carried something to bed, and out of it, with me. Sometimes it was the Desert Eagle tucked under my pillow. Sometimes it was the black matte Ka-Bar combat knife I kept under my mattress. Sometimes I swapped them. I wouldn’t want to get into a habit. Being predictable gets you killed. This morning it was the knife, serrated and ugly. Yet when it saves your life often enough, when it’s buried against the flesh of a traitor’s neck, it becomes a thing almost beautiful.

“You should be dead,” I hissed at him, a wholly inhuman hiss. I had one knee firmly planted in his flat gut, pinning him. He wasn’t struggling or fighting me and he could have. I felt the hard play of muscles under my knee. But if he didn’t want to defend himself, I didn’t care.

I’d thought it when fighting the kishi: I didn’t play by the rules. If you played by the rules, you died, and if anyone was going to die in this moment, it wasn’t going to be me. “You should be worse than dead.” This time I cut him, scarcely enough to split the skin…to let a measly few drops of blood course down to cup in the hollow of his throat.

“You motherfucker. You could’ve helped him. You could’ve saved him.” He could’ve saved him from our mother.

Saved him from me.

I could live with what I was now. It had taken years and finally an amnesia-induced epiphany, along with an inner sacrifice, but I could cope with the thing I was. That didn’t mean that Niko should’ve had to. He could’ve had a normal life. Ours was anything but.

Black eyes gazed at me impassively. “Are you going to kill me or not?”

I wanted to. More than anything in the world, at that moment I wanted to. And I didn’t see a single reason I shouldn’t…save one. I growled, my chest vibrating with the sound, and then slammed the blade home…millimeters from his head into the cheap pressed-wood flooring and padding we’d put down over the concrete. “It’s not my place to, you worthless son of a bitch. It’s his .”

I got to my feet and looked over my shoulder at Niko standing several feet behind. He was dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans, wet hair already braided, his gray eyes fixed on me with confidence. Knowing I’d do the right thing, or what he thought was the right thing. But that wasn’t it. It was what I’d said. The fate of that piece of shit on the floor was in Niko’s hands, not mine.

Gray…I was glad his and my eyes came from our mother. It was one thing he didn’t share with the man flat on his back. I peeled back my lips and gave a savage grin. “Daddy’s home. Want me to make the tea?”

I’d known what my father was since I was five or so. Sophia had told me from the day I was born, I was sure, but to genuinely grasp that Dad is a Creature Feature, you had to have a few years on you. When it came to Niko’s father, she’d told us he left before Niko was born, had left a few weeks after Niko was born, had visited once or twice but Niko was too young to remember. Sophia didn’t bother to keep her lies straight, because she didn’t lie to deceive, not to us. She lied to hurt.

Niko and I hadn’t known any truth of his father except he was Rom like Sophia and of the same clan, Vayash. Only Vayash had the occasional blond hair from hundreds of years ago, when they’d stayed in northern Greece for a time. And though it was forbidden to marry or have sex with a gadje , an outsider, that northern Greek blond hair and lighter eyes had made their way into the clan regardless.

Horny then was no different from horny now.

But that had been long ago and the Rom were nothing if not practical…eventually, which was how Niko could be blond and still be considered full Rom. He had their dark if slightly olive skin, and all Rom knew the quirks of all the clans. My black hair and gray eyes meant nothing when combined with my pale, decidedly non-Rom skin. I’d have been rejected as tainted with outsider blood.

If I weren’t already rejected as tainted with much worse.

I bent over and retrieved my knife before going into the kitchen. I wasn’t making any damn tea for Niko’s sperm donor, but the kitchen was as far as I could get while keeping an eye on him. As for me, normally I would’ve had waffles with half a bottle of syrup, and coffee. This morning I didn’t have an appetite for anything that wasn’t red and spilled with a blade. I folded my arms on the breakfast counter, bent at the waist to rest my chin on my forearm, the Ka-Bar remaining in my hand, and watched through the long strands of hair that still fell over my eyes.

A panther watching unblinking through the tall grass.

A last drop of blood ran from the tip of the knife to mar the sand-colored countertop. I lifted my top lip to show teeth at the sight of it and I went back to watching. The man…Niko’s father…didn’t miss any of my show.

He stood smoothly, moving the same as Niko moved: effortless and flowing as water. His clothes were similar as well. Dark, not particularly noticeable, would blend into the shadows well. He shifted his dark eyes from me to my brother. “I am Emilian Kalakos. Your mother, Sophia, I didn’t know if she told you that—my name.” He was confident with the smear of blood remaining on his neck. I almost growled again.

Niko regarded him without emotion before saying, “No. She didn’t. Close the door behind you. Our reputations here do not need any further fuel for the fire.”

“I am welcome then?” That was custom among the Rom. They didn’t include the gadje in it, but Rom wouldn’t enter another’s home without knowing they were welcome there.

Glancing at me, Niko quirked his lips, a somewhat less homicidal version of my predatory smile. He was letting me know he knew who his family was and it wasn’t this older reflection of himself. “No. But if you wait for welcome you will die an old man on the sidewalk. I leave it up to you.”

Kalakos apparently knew when to push and when to not look a gift horse in the mouth. He shut the door behind him. “Do you want an excuse or an explanation?” he asked calmly. I hated the sound of his voice. It was wry, amused, self-possessed—it was Niko’s voice, and Niko was unique. This shithead shouldn’t be moving like him, looking like him, or sounding like him. The fact that he deserted his son meant he shouldn’t be at all. This time I did growl once more.

“That would be Caliban. Your brother?”

To give him some credit, there wasn’t the hesitation I expected before “brother.” Nor were there the many other words the Rom had for me, none of which meant “brother” or anything remotely close to it. The Vayash, shamed as they were that a woman of their clan had whored herself out to a thing fouler than the word “monster” could begin to describe, had nonetheless eventually told the other clans of my existence once one hired us for a job. When that had happened, I couldn’t be a secret any longer. The others had to be warned.