Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

The pale violet color of his round moon-pie face was only darkening. Leo exhaled and heaved out of the chair. “I’ll call 911. If you get anything out of him before he hits the floor, dinner’s on me.”

“Galileo,” I said sharply. “Now. Now . Tell me what you see.”

His lips framed a word, but I didn’t hear it. He tried again. “Sic . . . kle.” He wheezed and repeated, “Sickle.”

His forehead hit the table with a thunk, but he was still there . . . barely, but still there, eyes rolled back—the yellow a dull shine. “Am . . . I . . . dying?”

“Galileo, sweetie.” I patted his hand that rested beneath mine. “You’re the psychic. You tell me.”

He’d live, the EMTs said, although their best guess was that he’d end up in open-heart surgery.

If so, the surgeons would probably pull Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web plus his five piggy cousins out of the man’s heart, and he’d live to destroy someone else’s hopes prematurely. Take away their few days of blissful ignorance that they had left to them.

What will be will be.

Or maybe not. Maybe Galileo had learned his lesson when he was allowed a peek behind the curtain. He hadn’t seen the wizard, that was for sure. I didn’t pass out hearts, courage, and brains—I tested them. And Leo . . . Leo in the past would’ve taken them and kept them on a shelf as souvenirs. So perhaps Galileo would behave. As a matter of fact, he’d damn well better, I grumbled internally as I cleaned the table he’d collapsed onto. Leo had hauled away the dishes, but there was still an ample amount of drool and crumbs to take care of. The psychic wasn’t a neat eater by any stretch of the imagination. He ate like a fifteen-year-old toothless Saint Bernard, spreading morsels of food up to six feet away.

Oh yes, he’d better behave. I would never forget Jake Stein, a hopeful man with even more hopeful eyes shortly followed by a noose. And I wouldn’t forget this outrageous mess either. Galileo didn’t need a lobster bib; he needed a tablecloth tied around what passed for his neck.

“A sickle. That’s all you were able to get?”

I looked over my shoulder with ill temper at Leo’s patronizing tone. “I could’ve gotten more if you’d held back a bit. I wanted you to give him a glimpse of the Loki trailer, not the whole movie, IMAX and all. You’re the one who all but stuffed a grenade into his heart and pulled the pin.”

“Sometimes an artist needs recognition of his work. Past or not,” he said complacently as his hand moved in a brisk slapping motion toward my ass. The ill temper on my face darkened into something that would’ve blown Galileo’s heart to pieces just like that metaphorical hand grenade and destroyed everything else within a fifty-mile range.

Leo let his hand drop casually as if it had been a joke all along and he would never possibly ever consider slapping me on the ass no matter how frisky he was feeling. Men. Gods. Or a mixture of the two. All the same. “Remembering the bad old days get you a little worked up there?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Just don’t forget why everyone who knows you or has heard of you or done a book report on you calls them the bad old days, all right?”

He grunted and fetched another towel to help me. “I won’t forget. I won’t go back. You know that.”

“I do,” I said, and smacked him on the butt instead. And I did know. I had more faith in Leo than anyone in the world except my mama. The two of them tied.

“And I didn’t boil an ocean.” He used the towel to return the favor, locker-room style, before finishing up the crumbs on the floor. “It was a lake. A very large lake, granted, but just a lake. And despite my past lake-boiling abilities, I don’t know what we’re supposed to glean from “sickle.” Knowing Galileo, he most likely wanted a Popsicle to satisfy his sweet tooth before he shuffled off his mortal coil. Assuming there is anyone or anything large enough to shuffle that mass off anywhere.”

“If he did mean death,” I groaned, and sat down in Galileo’s vacated chair. It was still warm. It was also still in one piece. Amazing. “That could be almost anyone or anything on my list. How many are on your list?”

“Mmm. About ten. The same as are on your list, only I was capable of putting mine in alphabetical order.” He sat too as another of our regulars wandered in out of the afternoon light. Leo jerked his thumb at the bar. “Help yourself.” That was also fairly regular around here. Our customers didn’t cheat us, not our regulars. They didn’t have to be psychic like Galileo to know better; they just knew . . . like a rabbit knows to hold still in the grass when the hawk soars overhead. Bunnies liked to fuck, but bunnies did not like to be fucked up. Our regulars were as smart as those rabbits . . . almost. They paid their tabs promptly and never eavesdropped. Everyone had an agenda. They were perfectly happy with theirs: alcoholic oblivion.

“Leave me alone,” I said crossly. “I don’t like A’s.” One time, the closest time that I was almost eaten, it was by an A. It was embarrassing. And not a little terrifying, as much as I hated to admit that anything could terrify me—me, Trixa, badass trickster. But if you don’t admit to the truth, then you end up as something’s lunch and that beat embarrassing every time.

There were things bigger and badder than me out there. Even some demons, despite how I spelled out the ranking. Regular demons no, but there were demons in Hell so horrific they couldn’t come to Earth without destroying the ground beneath them and setting fire to the air they breathed. If Heaven had gotten one thing right, it was keeping them and Lucifer in Hell for eternity, because they were part of Hell itself. Embedded in it, one with their prison, there was no escape for their kind.

Technically that made me correct in my ranking . . . tricksters outranked demons; reading the fine print wasn’t necessary. But there were creatures on Earth, païen creatures, creatures that began with an A , that could put an end to me, a very unpleasant end—to me and nine hundred demons. Unlike demons, however, they were completely mad, and while there weren’t as many as there had been, it didn’t matter. As long as there was one left and that one came for you, you ran until you couldn’t run any farther. I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t go out without a fight, but some fights you can’t win . . . and that’s why you run and why you don’t put your list in Leo’s anal-retentive alphabetic order because A ’s were a bad letter. They deserved to be on the bottom of the list or, better yet, on the back of the list where you didn’t have to look at the name.

I wrapped my finger in the gold chain of my necklace. “In fact, let’s just assume it’s not the A one, because if it is, there’s nothing we can do about it and if they want to eat demons, better demons than us.”

Leo took my other hand, rubbed his thumb across the back of it, and said with absolute belief, “It’s not them.”

I nodded. “No, it’s not.” I clasped his hand hard. “So let’s take a look at the other nasties.”

“And none of them tried to eat you?” Leo asked with an affectionate humor that had me pinching the nerve in his hand instead of just holding it. “With your sparkling personality and gentle easygoing nature? You’re sure?”

“I didn’t say that. And one does have a scar in an area he might have been fond of at one time, but him I can handle. And I do sparkle. Shine like the sun, the moon, the stars, and every silver or gold coin I stole in the good old days.” I smiled, good mood restored, because it still was the good old days for me. Leo had changed his ways, but mine didn’t need changing.