Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

I was not.

Oh holy hell, I was terrified.

A human body? I might as well fight Eli by throwing Ping-Pong balls at him. And Cronus? A can of Reddiwip would be as useful. Yes, I had fought off Eli before as a shape-shifter in human form, but I’d had extra speed, extra strength to draw on anytime I needed it. I always had an out, of becoming my true self, although I’d never had to use it. Then again, I’d never faced an Eligos quite so furious.

Furious with me, who was doing everything I could to stop a creature I couldn’t have before when I was still whole, a creature that gods couldn’t hope to stop. I was doing that. Me. And Eli, whose only contribution this past week in helping with Cronus had been brownnosing his boss, hiding in Hell, and waxing his legs to play a centurion at Caesars Palace, wasn’t doing a damn thing except pitching a hissy like a thirteen-year-old spoiled brat whose daddy hadn’t gotten the Jonas Brothers to play at her bat mitzvah.

I started to climb out of the car. “Stay right there, you bastard. I have a nail file, and I plan on skinning you alive with it.” I had a knife as well, but that would be too quick. I didn’t want quick. I wanted slow . . . slow and agonizing. I didn’t approve of snakeskin shoes, but demonskin ones would work great with my wardrobe.

He took another step back, smoothing his hair with one hand and straightening his black-on-black suit jacket with the other. “I have things to attend to. When I return, you can tell me how the plan is going then.” He disappeared precisely as I leaped. Or tried to leap as Zeke had wrapped his arms around my legs to keep me inside the half-flipped car. I briefly thought about using the nail file on him, but he was trying to do what was in my best interest, and, quid pro quo, I didn’t kill him . . . although it would’ve been a huge stress relief.

“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.” I kicked at his arms, trying to get free. “He’s gone. Let go.” I kicked harder, but not enough to damage him. Zeke and Griffin were my boys. I couldn’t hurt my boys. “Or do you want me to aim my foot at something more specific and valuable?” I could threaten them, however.

Griffin had pushed open his door, banging my elbow, which did not improve my mood. It didn’t worsen it either, but only because it couldn’t get any worse. Human emotions were the same as païen emotions, but like their nervous system, they were a shade too much. Too intense. Too sharp. Too everything.

When his feet hit the asphalt, he scrutinized me. “It’s all right, Zeke. You can let her go. I don’t see the nail file and you need your specifically valuable parts.” Turning, he addressed the ten or so gaping people who’d stopped their cars to watch the show and announced, “Appearing nightly at the MGM Grand. The amazing Eligos and his lovely assistant.” He indicated me, but was careful to keep his hand out of biting range.

Zeke released me. “You need anger management,” he said helpfully. “The people in our neighborhood tell me that. Sometimes they leave pamphlets in our mailbox.”

“Is that so? Including the people whose house you blew up?” I climbed out of the car without giving in to the temptation to put a heel where it would inconvenience Zeke and Griffin the most, instead using Zeke’s shoulder to launch out of the car.

“No. They don’t talk to me anymore. They either run or throw up—sometimes both. It’s not very interesting conversation. I haven’t found a common interest yet, other than they liked their house and I liked blowing it up.” He followed me out of the car. “They’re sleeping in their car in their driveway. If it starts to smell like meth, I can call you to blow it up. Explosions are a good management technique for anger. I always feel better afterward, but I can give you a pamphlet too, if you want. I have plenty. Piles and piles.”

“When the next ice age comes, we can burn them for heat for a hundred years or so,” Griffin commented as he followed me down the sidewalk when I started moving. “Where are we going now?”

“Home. Nearly being killed by a gecko calls for alcohol, gallons and gallons of alcohol.” If we stayed here any longer, Eli might come back or, by fate’s funny little quirks, we might be shot dead by an old lady in a dog-hair sweater. I wasn’t waiting to find out.

“Back to the bar?” he asked.

“No, not that home.” That wouldn’t be home for a while, not with Cronus showing up there on an uncomfortably frequent basis . . . which would be any number of occasions more than zero. “I hope you guys keep your guest room ready for visitors. Fresh flowers in a vase. Chocolate on the pillow. I’m a simple girl with simple tastes.”

Forty minutes and one expensive cab ride later I was standing in the doorway of a small bedroom with approximately fifty handguns mounted on one wall, ten shotguns on another, and a third host to enough knives to supply all the sushi chefs in Vegas. “What?” Zeke asked, aware that I found it somehow lacking but not knowing why. “At least it doesn’t smell like ass and ammonia.”

True. I had to give him that. It was a step up from the storage closet I’d given him and Griffin—or it would’ve been if there’d been a bed. There wasn’t. There wasn’t a couch, no futon, not a sign of a sleeping bag. There were only two chairs, a table, and enough gun oil and cleaning supplies to take care of the army and half of the marines. “This is your happy place, isn’t it, Kit?” I asked.

Griffin answered for him, “This is Zeke porn. I time him when he comes in here. Too long and I have to break out the fire extinguisher and cool him down.”

“That only happened once, and you weren’t supposed to tell anyone.” Zeke waited for a moment, then bumped his shoulder against mine. “That’s a joke, Trixa. It’s not as good as an explosion, but it’s supposed to cheer you up.”

With Eligos, Cronus, and the very probable enslavement of all worlds, I didn’t know there was anything that could. But that was wrong. That was human thinking, not trickster thinking. To the last second of our lives, the fast-talking last breath we took, we always thought we’d pull it off—pull something out of our hat . . . or our ass. And if we couldn’t? We’d laugh the whole way into the maw of death itself. That was the trickster way. That was my way and being human wasn’t going to change that in me. Nothing ever could.

I pinched his ribs. “Actually, it did and gave me a mental picture to share with Leo against his will. That’s almost worth being embarrassed by a demon. Now about that alcohol. Someone whip me up a margarita.”

But this was boys’ town, testosteroneville, and nary a margarita in sight. I made myself at home on a stool at their breakfast bar. It was ironic. I’d left the bar and yet my butt was still parked on a stool as Zeke peered in the refrigerator. “We have beer and . . . um . . . beer.”

I raised my eyebrows at Griffin. “Wine too.” He added, “I picked it out, not Zeke, so it’s in an actual bottle instead of a box.”

I slapped the bar. “What a salesman. Fill me up, sugar.” Contrary to what I’d said earlier, I didn’t want masses of alcohol. Now was no time to be fuzzy headed. All I was looking for was a sense of routine—unwinding, climbing into a bubble bath at the end of a long day with a glass of that non-box wine and relaxing.

Routine.

It bore repeating. I had thought that word and not as a curse. My mama would never let me forget it, if I were stupid enough to tell her . . . and my mama hadn’t raised an idiot. Embracing routine. Forced to exercise. Experiencing human pain, wildly erratic human emotion. I rested my forehead on the bar. It had taken a long time for me to get the news flash that I couldn’t turn being human into a cakewalk, but I’d finally gotten it. Sky and Earth, if I survived this, I didn’t have an inkling how I’d survive the next four years.