She definitely hadn’t told him. Promise had messed up indeed. Knowing Niko, knowing how he felt about Promise—how he trusted her, he might have thought that long-ago-photographed little girl was dead. Not a matter of honesty—a matter of too much pain for her to talk about.
Cherish would’ve been a lot less trouble dead, and that was my honesty—because from the set of her chin and the desperate spark in her eyes, she wasn’t going anywhere. “The Auphe.” The olive skin grayed. “How did you get involved . . . never mind.” She shook her head, the sweep of hair coming to rest on her shoulders in a fall of black silk. “I can’t leave. I can’t do this alone. And Tíío Seamus told me to come to you if I needed help. That you had friends, strong ones. I’ll need all the friends and all the assistance I can get. Oshossi wants me, and he won’t stop. He will never stop. This is what he does.”
“Hunts,” Robin cleared up our confusion. He’d turned over a glass-sprinkled cushion and dropped onto the couch. “Never met him, but he’s some sort of immortal creature. Likes to hunt. Likes to fight. Usually sticks to South America. He’s a forest type. Nature and whatnot. Likes dogs too. Obviously. If he’s come all this way to this place of concrete and steel, he is wholly pissed.” He propped his feet on a dead cadejo-canine. “So you stole from him, eh? Thievery. Tsk.” He raised eyebrows at Nik and me with his next words, “Uncle Seamus, eh?”
Cherish gave a deceptively delicate shrug, recognizing a kindred spirit. “It’s a hobby. Everyone should have one.” It was said breezily, but the pallor remained. Between the Auphe and this Oshossi guy apparently wasn’t the best place to be, but it didn’t have her offering to leave. “And, yes, if it is any concern of yours, Uncle Seamus. Step-papa Seamus, whatever you wish to call him. Family takes care of family. But when I told him that what I took I had already sold and couldn’t retrieve it, he sent me here. He knew he and I couldn’t handle Oshossi alone.” Damn Seamus, jumping at the chance to make things harder for Niko. The more distractions, the easier he’d be to kill. Then again, he wanted Promise. He wouldn’t want to risk her. He might have genuinely thought the group of us had a better chance than just he and Cherish. And when Promise told him the case was off, I doubted she’d brought up that the reason was the Auphe . . . for my sake.
Cherish sighed, a self-deprecating downward curve to her lips. “No matter how much they glitter, the things I ‘borrow’ tend to bore me quickly. I did try to make up for it. I gave Oshossi the name of who I sold it to, but either he can’t find them or he’d rather have his revenge instead.”
“Or maybe,” I said, “you really pissed him off at, I don’t know, the worst possible time for everyone in this whole goddamn room. You think maybe that’s it?” I didn’t care if I sounded bitter—I was. Uncle Seamus. Step-daddy Seamus. A full-grown daughter out of nowhere. An entire family. What the hell had Promise done to my brother?
That had some color returning to her face as she said frostily, “And what did you do to piss off the Auphe, hijo de puta?”
“I missed the family reunion.” I bared my teeth in a humorless grin. “And, yeah, Mom was a whore. Thanks for the reminder.”
It was true. I existed solely because Sophia had taken gold to screw an Auphe. I existed because not only had Sophia whored herself out to anyone, but also to anything. Like Cherish herself had said, everyone needed a hobby. And despite what Niko had thought . . .
It looked like Promise’s hobby was lying.
6
“She didn’t know about your mother. She didn’t mean it, not that way. She’s one hundred and sixty-five, but in human terms that makes her barely eighteen.”
I didn’t care about Cherish’s age, and I barely heard Promise’s words.
Samuel and his colleagues had come and gone. They’d taken the cadejos with them as well as the rug that was ruined beyond repair. They hadn’t said a word other than a murmured “careful of the teeth” amongst themselves as they rolled the bodies in tarps. They were knowledgeable; Samuel hadn’t been wrong about that. He didn’t ask any questions when he arrived or when he left. He simply did the work, paying his debt.
If he thought he was done, he was mistaken. He may have helped to save Cal, but he had helped to betray him first. Seeing him made me remember things I’d sooner not. The sensation of my sword’s blade sliding into Cal’s abdomen. The absolute certainty that I was going to have to kill my brother to save his soul. That I had failed him. Knowing I chose to die with him hadn’t changed what had twisted my gut, had frozen my brain . . . the feeling of . . .
There were no words.
I, who had read so many of them in my life, had no words for it. The blade slipping through the resistance of his flesh. The blood. On me, Cal’s blood, warm and flowing. Dripping from my hands to the floor. Red with a quick patter like rain. Images and sensations; I had those. So many. But no words. Words were for defining, capturing. I didn’t want that moment defined. I only wanted it gone. Over a year later and I still just wanted it gone.
Samuel could clean up every dead body in the city if he desired. I didn’t know that it would ever be enough.
I leaned my forehead against the glass and watched the lights below, the nearly empty street. Promise’s bedroom was large, her apartment spacious, but now it felt tight and small. I wanted to be down there running. Running was like meditating. It stilled your mind, sank your thoughts in a pool of calm until there were no thoughts at all. There were only light and peace and the ground thudding beneath your feet. Clarity.
Sometimes.
It should’ve put Promise’s deception in perspective, the dark memory of my brother dying in my hands . . . by my hand. Yet somehow it didn’t.
“She didn’t know.” Hands rested on my shoulders and a warm weight leaned into me from behind. “I promise you, Niko. She didn’t.”
“I know.” But Cal didn’t. He thought it was written on his forehead. Son of a whore. Gypsy trash. Monster. All the lies Sophia had told him for fourteen years were always waiting for the opportunity to whisper: They know. They look at you and they know. Everyone knows. No one was quicker to think the worst of my brother than he himself.
But he dealt with it. He always had; he always would. He was strong. Promise knew that and she knew this wasn’t the conversation I was going to have. Not now.
“But Cal doesn’t know.” The breath at my ear was touched with regret. “I’ll have her apologize.”
“Promise,” I said coolly as I straightened. “Stop.”
When she’d asked in the past—most often among tangled sheets, I’d told her about my life, childhood, and time on the run. I told her about Sophia, amorality made flesh, a woman who’d tarnished our lives as equally as the Auphe. The reason I required absolute trust, the reason Cal thought everyone but me lied. I talked more about Cal, the things he wouldn’t have minded her knowing. She’d already inadvertently learned the worst. I told her all. From the beginning of our relationship, I had given her only the truth. And when I asked her about her past . . . I received quick snapshots. The Great Plague of London in the 1600s. How blood was hard to come by then. It was the only time she’d ever mentioned feeding. How you drank to survive and tried not to kill. “Dead cows don’t give milk, do they?” she’d said with a sadly bleak smile. Yes, you tried not to kill, but trying wasn’t always succeeding.
Ugly truth, but truth.
She told me how she had come to America following the Civil War, how vampires blended into the larger cities. Her parents were long dead, or so she’d heard. Vampires didn’t stay together long in large groups. They didn’t crave the contact of their own kind the way humans do. Nature’s way of keeping the predators from outbreeding their food source. She didn’t talk much of her lovers. The hundreds of years she’d lived, I didn’t expect to hear of every one. She hadn’t mentioned Seamus.