Rob Thurman: The Grimrose Path

“Playing hardball. Cranky, cranky. I would think you’d be in a better mood having your manly needs fulfilled and all.” I took my apron off and stuffed it under the bar. “Morocco. That’s beautiful,” I said solemnly. “Is that where her people are from? Lots of blue-eyed blondes there.”

“I think she saw it on the Travel Channel,” he replied with equal gravity, “and thought it sounded exotic.”

I thought about spearing his hand with a tiny paper drink umbrella, then gave it up as a lost cause and advised, “Hide all your singles when she’s around. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“And you’re going where while I toil at your bar?” he demanded.

“Out to play hooky with demons. You ditched yesterday, so I get to ditch today. Remember, this place keeps a roof over your head. Unless you want to take up stripping yourself.” I gave him a wave and went out through the back office to the alley entrance. That was one thing Leo didn’t have that a born trickster did. We were very aware of money . . . how much we had, how much someone else had, and how we planned on conning them out of it. We were magpies, and money—even in the day when money was shells, salt, or measures of grain—money was the bright shiny thing we loved. Some of us loved it more than others. There were tricksters who had an enormous amount of wealth socked away and some, like me, who kept enough just to be comfortably off when human. Leo didn’t have that same need, that drive. When he needed money, he would get it. But when you were born a trickster, you always needed it, whether you spent it or not.

I did like to spend mine.

In the alley, I opened the door to my car. It still had that wonderful new-car smell and like my last one, destroyed in November, it was red—my color and it had been since my very first trick.

It had started with an apple.

No, not that apple.

Just an ordinary ripe red apple and a greedy farmer who wouldn’t share with a cute little girl with tangled black hair and dirty feet. He probably blamed it on not praying enough to the local fertility goddess when he woke up the next morning to find every branch of every tree bare of even a single piece of fruit, but it was just a baby trickster teaching her very first lesson. Don’t be greedy, and don’t take anything for granted, because something could take it all away from you.

More than nine hundred demons had apparently learned that lesson in the past six months, taking their lives for granted, or so Eli said. And I trusted Eli’s word. Oh, I so did not. Not even in the womb would I have been that naïve. If all those demons had been killed, more than Eli would know about it—other demons would as well. I only had to track one down and ask him . . . or her. Unlike angels, demons would wear a male or female body—whatever it took to get the job done. Angels, on the other hand . . . I shook my head and backed out of the alley into traffic on Boulder Highway, ignored the enraged honking, and sped off. I wasn’t going to ruin my good mood thinking about those chauvinistic pigeons.

I met Griffin and Zeke at Caesars Palace. Zeke had been banned from the Venetian for trying to drown in one of the canals a demon disguised as a singing, then gurgling, gondolier. He’d also been blacklisted at the Luxor for excessive buffet use in one sitting. Zeke was not precisely a Renaissance man. When it came to killing demons and loyalty, he was at the top of his game. When it came to everything else—that’s why insurance existed. He either didn’t get it and didn’t want to get it. Or he wanted to get it and you’d better get your ass out of his way.

Twenty minutes later I was walking past centurions with much better teeth than the genuine ones had had, breathed in air touched with smoke, adrenaline, and despair, and tracked down Griffin and Zeke in one of the bars on the floor of the casino. They were in a small booth in a gloom-filled corner. That was Vegas—all blinding sun outside but always twilight inside—no matter what time of the day. Illusions were kept whole by those shadows and Vegas itself was one big illusion. Inside that illusion, Zeke was nursing a beer and his partner an untouched whiskey from the smell of it when I sat beside him. The alcohol was camouflage or at least it was supposed to be. “Someone having a bad day?” I nodded at the half-empty beer.

“We came by the pool and Zeke had to walk past the buffet.” Griffin gave his partner a shoulder bump. “Like Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed lovers destined to forever be apart.” Zeke didn’t respond beyond sliding down a few inches and having another swallow of beer.

“Don’t worry, Romeo.” I patted his hand resting on the table. “The Luxor can’t have e-mailed your picture to every buffet in town and new ones are opening almost every day.”

“I hate people,” he grumbled. “‘All you can eat’ means all you can eat. Lying bastards.”

I patted him again. “I know. They’re very bad and I’ll punish them for you, I promise.” After all, it wasn’t that different from the farmer and his apple, and my punishment wouldn’t involve gunfire. I couldn’t say the same about Zeke in action. “But let’s concentrate on finding a demon to chat with right now.”

“Chat.” He perked up and moved his hand inside his jacket to rest on one of the guns he always carried in a shoulder holster. His Colt Anaconda wasn’t one of those. I wasn’t sure they made shoulder holsters big enough for a weapon of that size. “Chatting is good.”

“Not that kind of chatting,” Griffin corrected. “We don’t kill demons....”

“In front of people. We don’t kill demons in front of cameras—video or digital,” Zeke recited with a bored expression, before adding, “And we don’t kill demons in front of puppies.” He let go of his gun and used his hand to tilt the beer bottle at me. “I made up that rule myself. Apparently puppies are easily mentally scarred. Griffin brings them up in my tutoring often enough, so it’s gotta be true.”

Griffin had “tutored” Zeke in his decision-making skills for so long and with every scenario he could possibly bring to mind—be it saving kids versus killing demons to saving a politician versus killing demons, which was a tough one regardless of how slippery your grip on free will—that I wasn’t surprised to see Zeke giving him a hard time about it. I enjoyed it, in fact. Zeke had come a long way on a very treacherous path. He deserved to dish out a little mockery.

“So I hear,” I agreed solemnly. “Now, spread out and let’s reel in a fish.”

Griffin had his empathy to feel a demon’s emotions; Zeke had his telepathy to hear their thoughts. I didn’t envy either of them those abilities. The things that demons thought, the things they felt—none of it could be pleasant. As for me, I had the eyes my mama gave me, which was all I needed. I made my way through tourists who had money pouring through their fingers like sand, I studied blackjack dealers who might promise to turn Lady Luck around if given the proper incentive, but it turned out Zeke was the first to snare one. It trailed behind him like one of those puppies Griffin was so concerned about in his lesson plans. That it was Zeke that the demon had honed in on told me something immediately. This wasn’t one of the lower-level demons. They liked the easy marks. Get in, get the IOU on the soul, and get out. They didn’t like the difficult prey when Vegas was so full of ones they could hook in two seconds. This demon obviously liked a challenge, because no one put off “I don’t care” and “Get the hell away from me” like Zeke did. And while Griffin had taught him the basics of hiding his emotions just as Zeke had taught his partner the same about concealing thoughts, Zeke rarely could manage to completely hide his hostility toward demons.