Rob Thurman - Blackout

“Sore but bearable.” He was limping, but not too badly, which was good as we had a lot of dead spider ass to haul. “I’m going to take a shower.” There was a towel half in the bathroom and half in the hall. “My keen observational skills tell me you already have. Did you brush your teeth?”

“What are you?” I took another bite of a peanut butter and jelly bagel. We were out of bread. I chewed and propped my elbows on the breakfast bar. “The damn Tooth Fairy? My diaper days are over. Go on already.”

He gave me a look, a now easily recognizable “brother look,” picked up the towel off the floor, and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I waited until I heard the water running, gave it several seconds, then put the bagel down and went into his room. I hadn’t forgotten which drawer the picture was in, but I hesitated before the dresser as if I had. “Suck it up,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s just a goddamn picture. It’s probably of Niko potty-training you. Suck it the hell up.” Suck it up I did and opened the drawer with a resolute hand. That same rock-steady hand reached inside and brought the picture out. I stared at it. I saw what I’d seen before. There was no flood of memories or the trickle of a single one, not yet, but I saw. I saw what I’d wanted to deny and never remember and embrace all in one.

I saw everything.

Destiny was easy. Choice was difficult and free will was for the fucked.

I was well and truly fucked.

“I am going to make Goodfellow rue the day he ever gave you that gift certificate. His Christmas present to me is years of aggravation from you. Tricksters—no wonder they’re the least popular supernatural creature alive,” Niko growled. We were at Goodfellow’s place to tell him the news about Ammut in person, discuss, plot, and all that shit. Why not just use the phone? Because he wouldn’t answer the damn thing or return voice mails. After two hours we gave up and made like Jehovah’s Witnesses, knocking on his door.

I blew air upward to clear the hair from my eyes. I could see why I’d had a ponytail. This was on my last nerve and that Goodfellow approved of it meant it was fashionable, and I didn’t want to be fashionable. That meant I tried. I didn’t want people to think I tried. Cool guys who kick monster ass do not try. Our coolness is inherent, goddamn it.

“It was the only clean thing I had left,” I grumbled as I pounded my fist against the puck’s apartment door for the third time. “I don’t think I like doing laundry.” The object of Niko’s exasperation was the T-shirt I was wearing under my jacket. It was black. When it came to me, I’d discovered this was the same as saying water is wet. It had cheerful yellow letters across the front: I LIKE PEOPLE! Below that were the words THEY TASTE LIKE CHICKEN!

“You didn’t actually say you think you don’t like doing laundry, did you? Because if you did, I may have to hurt you in ways the Spanish Inquisition itself couldn’t begin to imagine.” He was favoring his leg, but short of wrapping a pain pill in tofu in the hopes of shoving it down his throat as you would a cranky cat, there wasn’t anything I could do. He was one stubborn bastard.

“I told you to take a pain pill before we left,” I said unsympathetically, “or wait until the guy answered his phone instead of coming over here to kick down his door. Don’t be getting apocalyptic on my ass. It’s not my fault.”

“Apocalyptic on your ass?” The aggravation, not that genuine anyway, shifted into a more encouraged echo. The old Cal must snark more than I did. That made me wonder when he/I had time to breathe.

I grinned. It took some effort, but I did it. “Hey, medieval’s been done.”

Before I got a comeback on that one, the door finally opened and Goodfellow, in all his unclothed glory, snapped, “One knock, wait. Two knocks, leave. Three knocks, and I turn Salome loose on your testicles.”

“Oh, fuck me.” I covered my eyes as fast as possible with my hand. “No, wait—I didn’t mean that. I absolutely did not mean that. Just words. Bad words, very bad. I probably shouldn’t curse as much anyway. I blame Leand … Niko for not raising me better. Hell, I blame you too. When you answer the door, put on some goddamn clothes.”

“I’m a puck with normal puckish needs. You feel I can’t walk around in my own home as I please? As a puck and a homeowner, I’m offended.”

“As a person with eyes, I’m offended,” I shot back, offended eyes still shut.

“He’s not as secure in his masculinity as he could be,” Niko said, his tone indicating that while he was having a good time at my expense, he was also not entirely unfreaked-out himself. “Unfreaked-out” … Was that a word? At the moment, did I care? Hell, no. “Although to be fair,” he continued, “not many men would be in this position.”

“‘This position’ is why I didn’t want to answer the door. I obviously have better things to do.” I peered through the crack between two fingers to see Goodfellow wave a cranky hand to invite us in. I edged in, back to the first wall I could find, sealed my fingers again, and waited until I heard a distant bedroom or bathroom door shut. I was about to relax when I felt a touch against my thigh and promptly nearly shot Goodfellow’s mummy cat between her firefly yellow eyes.

“Holy shit.” I slid down the wall to crouch, gun dangling from my hand as Salome—yeah, that was her name, I was pretty sure—curled herself around my neck and purred in my ear. Of course, purring doesn’t often sound like gravel grinding or avalanches crushing hikers beneath them, but we weren’t all perfect.

“You’d better find a grip on the situation or Salome may eat your head. She likes fear. Fear is catnip to a mummified feline.”

I looked up, growling at Niko’s enjoyment of my, yep—I admit it, full-blown terror. We were in a marble foyer. There was a living area, a kitchen that probably came with a chef, through another door, a dining room, and directly across from us a hall that ran to bedrooms and whatever else the orgy king had going on. Rich. Goodfellow was rich. That wasn’t worth wasting a thought on. What would be were the two or three gold-barred white feathers I saw here and there down that hall. Ishiah’s feathers. “This is so not good for a working relationship with your boss.” I groaned. “That guy needs some Rogaine for birds or something. Christ.”

“Don’t be such an infant.” There came the increasingly familiar swat to the back of the head. “It’s sex. You’re a grown man. You’ve done it and with an incredibly psychotic Wolf to boot. More times than I could begin to count.”

“Then you have no problem with my seeing your vamp Promise parade around our place buck-ass naked?” Actually that was a mental picture I had no problem with. Definitely worth remembering more than a mummy in a museum basement, which was why I guess the visual of her was still spectacularly vivid, practically 3-D. She was pale, but she had all that hair and those clutch-of-violet eyes and probably some spectacular ti … The smack was to my forehead this time, banging the back of my head against the wall—a two-for-one special. “Ow. Jesus. What was that for?” I complained, rubbing my forehead, then the back of my head, then my forehead again.

“You know perfectly well what that was for.”

Yeah, okay, he did have me there.

By the time Goodfellow came back, leaving whoever left those feathers—yes, I told my mind, I know who, so shut up—hidden in the bedroom, I was sitting on his couch while trying to decide whether to shoot the cat, now humping my leg—I didn’t even know cats humped—shoot Niko, whose smirks might be invisible but still detectable, or shoot myself. The puck, wearing a dark green robe, flopped down on the wraparound contour couch and demanded, “Explain, and if this is not very, very good, I’ll let Salome hump the both of you to death.” I stopped trying to shake the cat off and gave Goodfellow my full attention, which was enough to let me see from his sprawled position what he was wearing under the robe.