Rob Thurman - Blackout

“Maybe your mummy can tell me why the spiders like me so much,” I offered. “That one was number six. Pretty good for someone not in the exterminating business, especially if you count them by pounds.”

“You did kill a nest of four of them. The fifth could’ve been part of the nest and followed you.” He put the bowl and spoon away, slamming the drawer. The washing and drying hadn’t been enough to let him swim out of that mood yet. I should’ve eaten five more bowls. “This spider no doubt wanted payback. It’s a frequent complication. Those who have killed anything that crosses their path can become inconveniently vengeful when something kills one of their own.” Much like Leandros himself did.

“They don’t get that occupational hazard deal?”

“No, they do not. Irksome, I know.” He moved from the kitchen and tossed me my jacket from the couch. “And this is neither a closet nor a coatrack, nor has it ever been.”

“I have amnesia. Cut me some slack,” I protested as I slipped the jacket on, feeling the comfortable weight of metal fall into place. I’d scrubbed the leather down when we’d gotten home to get rid of the canal smell. It didn’t hurt it any. The leather had been plenty distressed long before that wipe down.

“Laziness and sarcasm—now two things Nepenthe venom cannot affect.” He was already wearing his own weapon-concealing long coat. “Zip up your jacket. It’s a fair trip to the museum.”

I groaned. Brain damaged or not, I knew I didn’t want to see some dusty old relics or equally dusty and evil-minded mummies who hung about the place. Nonetheless, see them both, I did. The fact that the mummy ended up set on fire …

Completely not my fault.

Someone Leandros knew managed to sneak us past security at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art by the devious and cunning method of having someone walk us through the metal detectors and snap her fingers at the guard who moved toward us when the beep beep beep filled the air. Snap. Point. Bad dog. Go. Sit. Her name was Sangrida Odins-something. She was big, blond, and, had she been wearing a metal bra, she could’ve taken out a tank. She also was a monst—She wasn’t human. If I’d been pushed to the wall on it, I would’ve guessed Valkyrie. She looked like Thor from the comic books, only with breasts … and maybe more muscle.

She aimed an annoyed flap of her hand at the detectors, explaining it was for an ancient gemstone and jewelry traveling exhibit. I understood her lack of enthusiasm for jewelry. She’d probably much rather have a nice gut-stabbing spear than a bracelet.

Leandros introduced her as the director of the museum. I nodded and kept my eyes off her as much as possible while he asked in low tones as we walked if she’d had any trouble from Ammut or the spiders. If she caught any of what she considered inappropriate looks from me, I knew—in my bones I knew —she’d stomp me to death with her size-twelve sensible-heel shoe. And there was no way it would take more than one stomp.

Sangrida said they had had no trouble at the museum nor had she had any at home, but she would alert us if she did. As she unlocked a door to the basement, she also stated she wanted to thank us again for handling the museum’s small difficulty before. I waited until the door shut behind us and Leandros and I had started down the stairs before I asked, “What kind of small difficulty did Wonder Woman there have that she couldn’t handle by herself?”

“A cannibalistic serial killer with a body count of near seven hundred. He rose from his own fifteenth-century ashes to eat whomever he could find and hang dead bodies in trees,” he replied, as offhandedly as if we’d simply dropped by one time to shoo a homeless person out of the souvenir shop.

“You do that on purpose, don’t you? You and that puck,” I accused with a growl. “You love screwing with my head and trying to scare the shit out of me.” I was tempted to give that blond braid of his a hard pull to let him know my leg was feeling just as pulled. “Making things sound worse than they are. Like Goodfellow freaking me out with that gods and goddesses thing when Ammut is just another monster. And you wonder why I tried to stab him with a fork. Now you’re doing the same damn thing.”

“No. Goodfellow enjoys that, but as for me?” There was a glimmer of his serious gaze over his shoulder as he went down several more steps, pulling ahead of me. Longer legs, the bastard. “The truth is enough. I’m sure you’ve noticed the bite on your chest.”

The bite? Holy shit. That enormous scar that looked like someone with a big mouth and a bigger appetite had tried to make me lunch? “That was him? He did that? He tried to turn me into a buffet?” I gritted my teeth. “ Before he killed me? He couldn’t kill me first and then eat me? That’s just fucking rude. Tell me he’s dead and tell me he cried like a goddamn baby when he went.”

“He’s dead. Permanently this time.” He took another step. “Very permanently.”

“Good. I hope we got paid a shitload for that one. Because, you know, being eaten and all, I think we deserved a fat paycheck for that.”

“Could we change the subject?” The demand was abrupt and sharply edged.

Curious, I took the steps faster to keep up with him. “Why? What happened to that shared-past stuff? You know me, I know you. History. I thought we were bonded through blood, family, fighting side by side. All that. Follow me to the ends of the earth, hairy bare feet, ring, volcano. Mordor, here we come. Epic bromance.”

He stopped, but he didn’t turn to look at me. He simply … stopped. After a few seconds I thought again about tugging on the braid. Ding-dong. Anyone home? But before I could, he said, “Blood doesn’t always mean family. Sometimes it only means blood. As in how much you lost, how you nearly died, and how it was by the barest chance we found a way to save you.”

And we didn’t talk about that—watching a brother almost die on you. He’d nearly seen it again last night. Leandros was my brother before he was anything else in this world. If you knew where to look, you could see it in his pelting me with a candy bar and stealing pretzels for me from the dead cat. Or searching for me days without sleep because a brother did not lose a brother. Ever. If you had to go to Hell itself to bring him back, then that was what you would do. Memory or observation, either way, it was true about Leandros. Talking about it made him relive it and reliving it—that was obviously bad, and the canal thing last night couldn’t have helped. It hadn’t done me any good, I knew that. But another rule in the Good Brother Handbook —you don’t hurt your brother. Not sincerely. Not outside atomic wedgie range.

“So … Wahanket’s a mummy, huh?”

The stiff spine unlocked, the shoulders relaxed, and we were moving again. “A mummy, yes, but a mummy of a human? No, I don’t think so. And Robin won’t tell us, which means he doesn’t know either. He can keep a secret if he wants to, but—”

“He never wants to?” I snorted.

“Precisely.” The glance over the shoulder this time was more amused. “Sangrida would probably pay us to evict him from the museum basement, but the destruction wouldn’t be worth the payoff. Now, watch out for the cats. Salome might be the pick of the litter, but she wasn’t the only one in it.”

Great. More dead cats. Salome’s compadres. If I had to take one of those out, assuming I could take one of those out, would the puck’s cat want revenge as the spider had? Damn. It was too bad Ms. Thor couldn’t have gotten me and a flamethrower past security.

Past the basement there was another basement. Subbasement. Basement squared. Whatever you wanted to call it, it meant a lot of goddamn stairs. “I don’t like exercise,” I grumbled.