Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

And since then, neither angel nor demon has shown a molting feather or scaly ass in New York City.

“It was like Mardi Gras.” I leaned against Ishiah’s shoulder. By his expression, he had memories less fond of the experience. “Beads, bondage, and breasts. Wolves Gone Wild. And when those girls flash eight of those honeydews at the guys, they get a whole mess of beads.”

Leo did look regretful on missing that, but he focused in on Ishiah instead of dwelling on what might have been. “And how did your ex-pigeon son of a bitch with allegiance to no one manage to stay in the city? Obviously he did or he’d be pissed off at you, not contemplating fornication. Isn’t that what your type calls it?” Leo grinned darkly. “Fornication.”

“I’m not contemplating fornication with Trixa,” Ishiah said evenly—a little too evenly, a little too sure. I wasn’t vain, but I wasn’t dead either. Give a girl some validation. “I fornicate elsewhere.” He folded his arms, already on the defense, and I was suddenly more curious than insulted. “The same elsewhere, the same someone, in fact, that convinced your kind to let me stay in New York. I don’t call it fornication anymore.” He presented the information as if it were a secret handshake or a cop’s badge, and it was. We were brothers, comrades, or, damn, practically in-laws.

“You’re sleeping with Robin ?” I said in disbelief.

“ Goodfellow? You’re screwing a puck? Worse yet, that one?” Leo was even less disbelieving and did a good imitation of being disgusted—which would be solely because he couldn’t keep up with a puck. Few could, verbally, criminally, or sexually, and no one in the world could keep up with Robin Goodfellow. Ishiah called me the vain one; he had his nerve. Robin was vanity walking . . . granted walking practically on three legs, rather than two, but vanity was vanity—well deserved or not.

Leo wasn’t done. “He’s a walking, talking dick....”

“Literally,” I interjected on Goodfellow’s behalf.

It was a good thing Leo’s powers were temporarily on hiatus or I might have been nothing but a scorch mark on the floor. There was some history between Robin and me, but even I had my limits. That puck could talk the paint off the walls, the skirt off the waitress, and the pants off the doorman . . . and that had all been in less than thirty minutes. Shortest date of my life, but one that had put me off the mere thought of sex for months. The man had a mirrored ceiling in his pantry. His pantry . I didn’t want to guess what he had in his bedroom. It was bad enough running for my millennia-gone virtue because I was nosing around the puck’s pantry. It was a toss-up between chocolate and curiosity by the way—as to why I was nosing it to begin with.

It went without saying that Ishiah had reserves in him I’d never dreamed existed.

I put my hand across Leo’s mouth so we could get this conversation over with and his butt cheeks unclenched. “Robin did talk the rest of us into leaving the peris be. You’d always left us alone once you retired. It seemed fair. I couldn’t figure out why he did at the time, what with that hate-hate relationship you had going on.” Now I knew.

Ishiah’s eyes shifted sideways . . . a bare fraction, but I saw enough of it for confirmation. Not hate-hate after all, but love-hate. Oh, those two had their plates full now. “Anyway, for Leo’s benefit, let’s wrap this up.We won. Ish let some of us party at his bar to celebrate. I was drunk for three days, hungover for a week, and that’s the last time I saw Ishiah. It was also the last time my brain tried to crawl out of my ears to escape alcohol poisoning. The last time I tried to pick up a werewolf only to find out it was actually a German shepherd. The last time I grew wings and flew naked over the heads of drunken païen saying that I was Tinkerbell and they needed to follow me to never-never land. The last time . . .” I uncovered Leo’s mouth. “Never mind. It was more last times than I can or care to remember and we won’t discuss it again. Right?” I pointed a finger at Leo’s chest. “Right?”

He studied me impassively, then smirked. I hadn’t ever, in our long, long years of knowing each other, seen Leo smirk. He didn’t do it. It wasn’t his new, improved, laid-back yet solemn and kick-ass self, and it definitely wasn’t his big bad “a frown is just your body methodically broken to bits and turned upside down” former self. This could, in no way, be a good thing. “I’m going to the office. I have some calls to make. You two catch up.”

“Don’t you dare call my mama! Don’t you even think about it, Leo!” I called to his back right before the door shut behind him. Although she had to already know. There was hardly a trickster alive who didn’t, but she’d love the opportunity to verbally smack my ass over it. “Oh, goddamnit, I’m dead as they come.”

Ishiah coughed behind a balled fist and said mildly, “Blasphemy. Some old habits die hard.”

“You’ve been a peri forever now, so get over it,” I grumped. “Do you want to go down to the diner and get some breakfast? I’m starving.”

“More like lunch, but, yes, that would be acceptable if . . .”

I raised a hand as I answered my ringing cell. I recognized Zeke’s number immediately when I pulled the phone from my jeans pocket and held it up. “Kit?” I answered. “Is everything all right? How’s Griffin?”

“Fine, fine, everything’s fucking fine,” came the dismissal. “How do you say asshole in German?”

“ Arschloch , and you’d better tell me you didn’t call me just to ask that,” I demanded, but it was too late. As I’d cut off Ishiah, so had the click of a disconnected cell phone done to me.

“Problems?” Ishiah raised his eyebrows. Ishiah was the peri who probably did know about Zeke, who’d become a peri by virtue of not retiring but by telling Heaven to kiss his ass, but he certainly didn’t need to know about Griffin, the only peri with demon wings. He might be all right with it; he might not. It didn’t matter. Tempting fate was something I did with my own life, not my friends’.

“Actually more of a daily routine.” I grabbed my small leather backpack and jacket. I already had my gun on me. It was time for about three pounds of biscuits and gravy. Carbs were good for the brain. Bad for the ass, thighs, and heart, but good for thinking, and with Ishiah here, there was bound to be serious thinking ahead. “Let’s go eat and you can tell me why you’re in Vegas, how you got here. . . . I know it wasn’t with those wings of yours. Was it by bus or plane? And how did you get that sword through security?”

He had flown . . . by plane. The wings did work, but flying across country would take a while, and he’d bought the sword once he arrived in Vegas. It didn’t do for peris outside New York City to go unarmed. Demons liked killing them as much as they liked killing angels, only peris were more vulnerable. When they retired, they could keep the wings and transform to a human body, but that was it. No zipping up to Heaven, no flashing in and out of existence, no changing from flesh to a crystal statue that was the true form of an angel, one that looked like it belonged in an art gallery and not moving around in real life. Ishiah had been one of the very high and mighty in his day, so he had a difference of such to him. Give him a few weeks of storing up energy and he could give a light show like he’d given me last night. But that was it. A Vegas magician could do a hundred times better. I told him so. Leave the shows to the experts, I’d advised.

He’d have puffed up those feathers like an outraged rooster if we hadn’t been in public. Keeping them invisible for the moment, he finished up with his food and told me why he was here. I was on my second helping and had a ways to go, but Ishiah was an efficient creature, always had been, and I listened to him as I kept scooping up some gravy with the softest of biscuits you could imagine—the cook had to be from the South. No Vegas cook could make biscuits worth a damn.