Rob Thurman - Trick of the Light

Kidnapping and secrets. That wasn’t the milk of human kindness. That wasn’t someone you could rely on to take care of a psychosocially damaged man. If something happened to Griffin, as far as the House was concerned Zeke would be on his own, or worse. A rogue psychic whose sense of judgment didn’t allow for shades of gray, who saw the action that needed taking, but not always the consequences of that action . . . a man whose actions might be traced back to them. They wouldn’t allow it. Remember Lot’s wife? And she’d just looked in the wrong direction.

And that was why Griffin told me, the true reason. He wasn’t a stupid man. To the contrary, he was extremely sharp at sizing up people. Now he was sizing up his own people and they were falling short. Should a demon get the better of him, he wanted Zeke taken care of, and Leo and I were the only ones who could do it.

“It was a baby, but he didn’t mean to.” He bowed his head and rubbed the back of his neck with enough force that I winced for him. “You don’t think he’d still hold on to that enough to not come back, do you?”

“He’s not leaving us,” I said with determination. “That’s a promise. And you know I keep my promises, Griffin.”

I waited as he straightened and folded his arms to watch the methodical beep beep of Zeke’s heart monitor. “His throat.” He looked away from the monitor, from Zeke, from everything, and stared at the closed door that led out of the room to the hall. “After he realized what had happened. After he knew.” He looked back at me and I saw the eyes of a traumatized seventeen-year-old. Not a twenty-seven-year-old man, but a boy—a boy who’d seen too much death long before he ever knew demons existed. That monsters were real. “He walked into the kitchen. Just walked. Everyone was screaming. Our foster father”—his lip curled—“was so helpfully kicking in the TV screen. I was calling 911 and Zeke just walked past me and went to the drawer by the sink, took out a butcher knife, and tried to cut his throat.”

The ugly three-inch furrow across the otherwise-smooth skin had been half healed when they’d shown up at my place. “You stopped him,” I said without doubt because Zeke wouldn’t have stopped himself. He never did. When he started something, he finished it . . . if he knew what the end was. It was a lucky thing that Zeke had been so young, or he would’ve cut deep enough to have bled to death even from those few inches. But at fifteen, his killing skills weren’t what they were today.

I stood and pushed Griffin into the chair. As much as my back burned, he needed the rest more than I did. “There was a baby and Zeke tried to cut his own throat. Help me out a little, Griffin. I’m lost.”

And tired, hungry, and more than a little concerned that Leo and I’d been outed to Eden House by those damn nosy angels at Wilbur the Buddhist’s place in the desert. I was assuming that’s why the helicopters had shown up so conveniently.

But enough time for that later. Time for this now.

“There was a baby?” I prompted, and leaned against his shoulder.

He exhaled, froze as the heart monitor alarmed for a second, then relaxed again when it quieted back to its rhythmic beeping. “Bob and Angie. Good old bored, fat Bob and good old clueless, even fatter Angie. They were foster parents for a living. That’s all they did. Take in kids, especially special kids like Zeke. They were paid more money to take special ones. They had six then, including Zeke and me. The youngest was David. He was one, one and a half. I never was very good at guessing ages of little kids.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “The social workers told them, told our foster parents , never to leave Zeke unsupervised with things that could hurt him or others. Told them all about his problems and how long it had taken him to even learn to do things on his own, simple things like dress himself. He had to be told. And when he improved: Turn on the stove; make your macaroni; turn off the stove. Eat macaroni; wash dishes; put them away. The stubborn bastard learned.”

He shifted against me restlessly. “He made it to the point he could function almost normally, except for that black and white outlook he has. Because of that, how it affected his decision making, how he couldn’t see past the immediate, he still needed supervision and they didn’t give it to him. I knew he needed it. All the other kids who were old enough knew it—the only ones who didn’t bother to pay fucking attention were the adults.”

He went quiet. I waited for nearly ten minutes before I bent and rested my chin on top of his head. “The baby?”

One more minute of silence and he said without emotion, “Angie told him to give the baby a bath. ‘Zeke, get off your ass and give that filthy baby a bath,’ is probably what she said while she sat on her worthless own fat ass watching her soaps. I was still at school, some after-hours thing, so Zeke . . . he gave the baby a bath.” He exhaled heavily. “Until two kids got into a fight in the kitchen.”

Violence: Zeke’s number-one draw. The flashing red alarm. Protect the innocent; punish the guilty. My mind painted the image easily enough. Off he ran, fifteen-year-old special Zeke, to break up the fight. To keep the smaller kid from being hurt, to show the bigger one exactly what it was like to be beaten on. By the time that was over, by the time that developmentally different, single-minded brain of his remembered . . .

I could see a blue-gray little boy floating facedown in the cooling bath water when Zeke ran back. Blubbery Angie heaving her way off the couch to berate him for making more noise breaking up the fight than the fight itself. Following him to yell at him for being so damn loud and drowning out her stories.

Then the screams, the accusations, the shouted, poisonous blame.

Zeke realizing it was his fault . . . no, not realizing, because it wasn’t his fault. But Zeke being blamed for it, being told it was his fault, and going to punish himself. A hand for a hand, an eye for an eye: That’s the only justice Zeke had in him.

“I got home just in time,” Griffin went on. “Not for David, but for Zeke. I stopped him. I took him and ran. Whom would the social workers believe? Not that it mattered anyway. That had been his last chance. He’d gone through too many homes, too many foster parents who didn’t give a damn about watching a kid, really watching him. If this last one didn’t work out, they were going to institutionalize him. Stamp him ‘not able to function in the outside world.’ ”

“But you saved him.” I watched Zeke’s chest rise and fall a little more raggedly than made me happy, but at least it still moved. “Did he ever forgive himself?”

“No.” He gave a half laugh without an ounce of humor. “It’s why he likes fighting demons so much. He says he plans on spending eternity doing it when he dies. Why not get the practice now?”

“Zeke. Kit.” I straightened and moved to him, touching a finger to my lips and then to his cheek, the cold plastic of the oxygen mask brushing my skin. “You’re not going to Hell. I promise you that.” I hoped at some level he heard me. I hoped he believed me. “And you’re not going to die either. Do you hear me?”

The door opened and Leo walked in with a tray of food. Eden House might try to dispose of us later, but at least for now they were going to feed us, which was a good thing, because I was starving. I have a high metabolism and when I lost weight, the first thing to go was my ass. I liked my ass; I wanted to keep it. It was great for sitting on and even better at making men do incredibly stupid things. By the time they realized my brain was far bigger, metaphorically speaking, it was usually too late for them. It was cheap and cheating, just a little, but when you’re in the information business, you use every asset you have to get the info you want, brain and body. Naturally, they only got to look, not touch, but men . . .