Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

Subject was over.

“Have you talked to him lately?” I asked. Lately for Leo, a benched god, could’ve been yesterday or five thousand years ago. I hadn’t ever talked to him. I’d never seen him. I didn’t want to. When I’d talked about that ranking of gods, tricksters, and demons, I’d left a few rungs out. Cronus was above gods and that would most likely make me nothing more than an annoying chirpy cricket in his eyes.

“Lately?” Leo grimaced. “Try never. He did send me the . . . ah . . . equivalent of a thumbs-up when I was toying with the world-destroying hobby. And don’t ask what he sent. You don’t want to know, but they—or what was left of them—did have a ribbon on them just like this one. I think”—he touched the ribbon with a careful finger—“it’s his way of saying if we don’t bother him, he won’t bother us.”

“You mean you,” I pointed out. “He won’t bother you. He might accidentally step on me and scrape me off the bottom of his shoe when he found the nearest curb.”

“Not exactly eloquent, but not exactly wrong either.” Leo decided eight thirty in the a.m. was fine by him to break out the liquor, opening a beer for me and then himself. “He spawned the great Greek horndog god Zeus, who would rape anything living and hump anything not. And with Zeus being a vast improvement over his father, I don’t want to even guess what Cronus would do . . . to anyone, not now.”

“Now that he’s insane?” I prodded.

“He was always insane. Let’s say, over time, probably exponentially more insane.” Leo took a swallow of his beer.

“Well, we do know what he would do in one particular case. Demons.” I tasted my own beer before getting my cell phone and making the call. Voice mail. I’d only called Eligos twice now since he’d hit Vegas last year and both times I’d gotten voice mail. How he made his quota, I had no idea. My Avon lady had five times his work ethic. If you can’t reach a demon, you can’t sign over your soul, now can you?

“Why?” Leo had already finished his beer and started on his second, which he tapped against the phone.

“Because he knows the what and we now know the who. Put it together and maybe we’ll know the real why.” I gave up on the beer and decided bad news of this sort called for something a little more efficient in perking up your mood. Godiva dark chocolate liqueur. I kept it for me and me only. It made one helluva martini and dessert mixed in one. That was the great thing about being human. Instant chocolate, instant endorphins.

“Again, why? Whatever it is that Cronus wants or is doing, there’s nothing we can do but stay out of his way. And I’d have said the same thing last year before we were both temporarily demoted.” He watched as I whipped up the world’s fastest sugar-loaded orgasm, studying me intently before accusing, “But you’re curious, aren’t you?”

“Among other things.” I told him those other things as I coated the martini glass in a slow slide of chocolate, then admitted, “But curiosity is one of them. That’s why you’ll always be an amateur trickster, studly, never a pro.”

“Because I can suspend my curiosity and trickster-loving ways to not die a horrible death?” he said dryly.

“If you’re careful enough, you don’t have to die.” The chocolate was all I’d hoped, the alcohol a little less. “And the curiosity isn’t actually a choice. You’re born with it.”

“Like scaly sex appeal.” The air shimmered across the bar and then Eli was sitting on a stool. He was wearing a brown bathrobe, expensive naturally, and his normally sleek pelt of straight hair was rumpled from sleep. Demons actually slept. There was an interesting fact. Or maybe they only slept while transformed into their human costumes. Regardless, I was glad he’d bothered with the robe, because I knew there was nothing beneath it. Eli in pj’s—I just couldn’t see it. He yawned and went on. “I’m assuming whatever you found out is earth shattering . . . as in a ‘Kennedy killed Marilyn Monroe and her corpse rose from the grave to pull a zombie-revenge assassination’ category of earth shattering. Because it is that early in the morning. That goddamn early.” He cheered as he brushed a hand over his hair. “You want to know who really did kill them? If you’re as curious as you say you are, maybe we could arrange a trade. I know you don’t have a soul, not the kind I can take, but I have quite a few things I could think of that you could cough up that would make me a very happy demon.”

“Happy? Really?” I smiled, put down the martini glass, lifted the rose from the vase, and tossed it to him. He caught it effortlessly and with an inhuman speed I’d unfortunately had to give up for a while. Turning it in his hand, he saw the ribbon . . . and read the name on it. “Happy now?” I asked. I didn’t have to be curious about that, because I knew the answer.

One big fat no.

Since Eligos was in his human body, it had the same human reaction as any human body. He paled slightly. I was impressed. A lesser demon/human would’ve probably vomited on the bar. “This had best not be some pathetic version of a trickster joke,” he said with a quiet as darkly malignant as a newborn cancer cell.

“Trust me, sugar, even I don’t think this is funny.” I returned to the martini. “We all liked it much better when Cronus was stuck in Tartarus or had that bipolar happy moment and skipped around the Elysian Fields keeping things in order. But those days are over. He’s here in this world now. Has been for a few hundred years, but this is the first time he’s decided to have fun. But for the life of me, I can’t think why killing demons would be that entertaining for him. Like swatting a fly. A slow-moving, half-dead fly. Where’s the sport?”

“There has to be a reason,” Leo added. “Cronus is mad as they come, but even if killing your kind were entertaining for him, he’d have still bored of it long before nine hundred.”

Eli ignored the “reason” topic, which meant he knew the reason and had known it most likely when he’d had his chat with me at the car dealership. That made him more deceitful than I’d given him credit for and I’d given him very high credit in that department. It was too bad about him being a murdering sociopathic spawn of Hell. We tricksters did love deceit. If he were a peacock, his feathers would be brilliant, bright, and attracting every female in sight. But he wasn’t a vain bird. He was a killer and right now a stronger and quicker one than I was. I kept that in mind as I regarded him over a surface of rippling chocolate. I also kept in mind that I was smarter. False modesty could kiss my ass.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, dropping it onto the bar.

“It was left on the doorstep. I found it when I got up this morning.” I sipped.

“And why did he leave it here . . . for you?”

“Insane doesn’t always have to mean impolite, but to be honest,” I said, surprised the air didn’t sizzle on my tongue when I uttered that word, “it’s less for me than for Leo. Cronus was a ... a fan, I guess you’d say . . . of his work. He has a certain respect for him, rather like you would for a precocious three-year-old who drew you an especially pretty picture for the refrigerator.”

Leo growled at me but confirmed, “If we stay out of his way, he won’t obliterate us. Maybe. But we know the same isn’t true for you. Too bad.” He gave a rumble of amusement. “Yes, too damn bad.” Leo didn’t out and out grin often, but he did now as he finished off his second beer.

“You wouldn’t know why Cronus is into killing helpless little minnows like you, do you?” I gave Eli a second chance to tell us the why . . . although the why was only half of what I was interested in—the how I could use it to my benefit was something I was invariably interested in. “Don’twant to share? Sharing’sgood for the ...mmm ... whoops. Not the soul obviously. Psychological well-being?” I leaned over the bar and smelled the rose still in his hand. “Assuming you have a being to house that psyche in.” I looked into eyes that were distant, the bits of copper bright in churning thought. “And, Eli? Sweetie, that’s one assumption you can’t be making for too long, you hear?”