Rob Thurman - Blackout

I didn’t look for his reaction, because I didn’t want to see it. Truth is truth, but sometimes it hurts. Realistically, most of the time it hurt. Instead, I moved on. I had other business, and I preferred not thinking about what I might be under the amnesia, who the real me was.

But how could I not be the real me, amnesia or not? With the same personality formed by genetics and memories, “weird stuff” that they were. I didn’t recall those memories, but they’d already molded my brain and personality. Losing them wouldn’t make me someone else. I couldn’t be that different from the me in the picture, right?

How do monster genetics work? This time that inner voice sounded amused. This was a voice that had no problem with monsters.

Who knew? Who cared? I was human, and that was the only genetics that concerned me now. The picture—it was a bad day, bad day, he—me, the both of us, were just having a bad day. Had to be. Why would these people, even my own brother, want me back if that weren’t true?

I felt somewhat reassured by that train of thought. “Before we start the big Ammut scavenger hunt of the day,” I said, heading out his door, “there’s a spider in my room. Put it in the Dumpster or cut it up and flush it down the toilet again. I don’t mind clogging a motel toilet, but I don’t want to sit down tonight and feel something biting my ass because we didn’t flush hard enough.”

The dead spider was a small one—barely the size of a beagle. Leandros sent it, wrapped in two garbage bags, boxed, then taped securely, by an express-delivery service to the puck. When I asked him why, he asked if I wanted to see the Halloween picture of Robin again. It was a good point. The puck had it coming. But then he went on to say Goodfellow knew a forest nymph who subcontracted for a CSI lab, all about the bugs and leaves, and might be able to find any clues as to where this particular spider had been in the past twenty-four hours. When he finished that, he went out for an hour to get a better lock to replace the spare he’d installed last night. Yep, we kept spare locks, and, yep, we were running low. That didn’t make you think twice, no, not at all.

That he didn’t make me go along did make me think. The boggle and Wolf had shown I could take care of myself, but you rarely saw just one bug. Then there was Ammut, but maybe she stuck to the canal or was recuperating from the explosion. Could be Leandros had a black market secret lock guy who would deal with no one but Leandros. Who knew?

Then again, he was pissed. Or disturbed, annoyed— something in the pissed-off area. With Leandros it was hard to tell simply by looking at him, but he was feeling something all right. That I could tell from the moment he’d walked into the diner. I guessed it was a brother thing. It could’ve been that he hadn’t woken up when I’d killed the spider. He’d been making hourly checks, heard my socked feet, the Central Park squirrel burp, but a killer arachnid he missed? To be fair, it dropped down from the metal ceiling on a silken chain as thick as my finger. Soundless. I hadn’t heard it either. But I’d smelled it. Sour venom, silk that had a sticky sweet scent for wrapping up prey. I’d let it get close enough to see the chitin shine of its legs in the city light through the dirt-coated high windows and impaled it on a sword I’d found under my bed with everything else. I was a gun person, but I kept around a sword or two just in case. I also had a flamethrower.

Of all the things I’d found out so far … I think I liked that about myself the most. Gotta love a flamethrower.

I took a shower while Niko was off FedExing Charlotte’s asocial big brother. When I was done, I wiped the mist from the mirror and took a long look—the longest since I’d come to on that beach. I exhaled in relief and covered the mirror back up. It wasn’t me. The Cal in the picture had had his worst day ever when that picture had been taken because that wasn’t me. Eyes, face—it was as if a shadowy film had been peeled away. I still had a mild thing for wanting to kill monsters and a fondness for forks in all their destructive power, but I’d let a bad photo make me think I was something a helluva lot darker than I was.

I’d also told Leandros his brother sucked, which could have been another reason his mouth was a tight slash of irritation when he came back. It didn’t matter if that brother was the same one making with the insults. I shouldn’t have said it. I’d been wrong, and, worse, I’d told him the brother he would die for was a freak. I’d compared him to a bomb, one in mid-explosion.

Not the behavior of a good brother, and I was a good brother. Leandros said so. The mirror said so. I fucking said so.

Good brother. Not-so-bad guy. I repeated it in my head like a … mantra, yeah. Mantra. Niko was bound to know about those since he said he meditated for fun. Who meditates for fun? For your blood pressure, okay, but for fun? It must kick-start his soy-and-yogurt morning. Meditation and soy all in one day; he was such a daredevil.

By the time he was back with the lock, I was dressed, armed, and ready to kick some ass. I regretted the Wolf, but I didn’t regret the spider. Some are wild, some are bad, and some are evil meant to die. Fighting the boggles I’d enjoyed, because it hadn’t involved killing, but it did have a whole lot of running and fighting and kicking scaly butt. That I liked. I wouldn’t have minded doing some more of that. I’d been wrong on the trip back from South Carolina. This did beat serving up hash and waffles … except the drowning part, but other than that—I liked this shit. Look at me, the adrenaline junkie. Another brick slid into place to help rebuild the old me. “Where to?”

Leandros’s mood hadn’t improved. He could hold a grudge. I wouldn’t have thought that about him. It wasn’t very karmic. Next time I’d throw the spider, still living, over the wall at him, and I wouldn’t insult the me I couldn’t remember. Lesson learned.

“Wahanket,” he replied. “He made Salome, and he’s a mummy himself.” And why wouldn’t he be? Keep dishing out the insanity. At least I wasn’t bored. “If he knows how to infuse a dead cat with some form of life force,” he continued, “then he and Ammut may have crossed paths. Plus, they’re both ancient and of Egyptian origin.” He was in the kitchen washing a bowl and spoon I’d used to eat the Lucky Charms I’d found in the cabinet. I’d left the dishes there on purpose. Cleaning was one hobby he hadn’t mentioned, but come on. Except for my room, you could operate in here. Hopefully, scrubbing in the sink would distract him from the high levels of grimness he was radiating. Being a good brother and being lazy could go hand in hand, I was pleased to discover.

“Maybe they dated,” I offered. “Two wild and crazy kids who both liked screwing around with life forces. Can’t get a match that good online.”

“Of it all, the sarcasm was one thing you couldn’t forget.” He scrubbed harder.

I grinned. “That’s amnesia-proof.” Not to mention, the thicker I laid it on, the easier it was to convince him and the others and myself that I wasn’t as lost as I’d been—and I wasn’t. Some things were slightly familiar, the little things that squatted on one brain cell, the people-only dreams—the two genuine memories of which I’d caught the barest fragment. I didn’t have myself or my life back yet. I had found one or two bread crumbs, but the forest was thick and the path turned out of sight.

Lost, but trying my best to get back home, and trying not to let it show how being lost felt—like falling and falling and seeing glimpses as you went. All the stories Leandros and Goodfellow told me … I couldn’t connect with them. The flashes of memory I’d had, that I felt. I knew them—knew they were real. What people were telling me, though, didn’t trigger any further memories as I’d hoped. The stories seemed as if they were missing something. They were off or wrong, or maybe I was the one who was off, but when I heard them, they didn’t feel like anything other than something that had happened to someone else. Not to me.