I almost reached out and ran my hand in one sweep from her shoulder down to her wrist, but I didn’t. Although, current differences aside, I understood how she could feel that way about him considering their history—bloody and violent though it may have been. She wasn’t feeling for him, but for what she thought he had managed to become. Another lie—his this time.
“Cal.”
“What?” He folded his arms stubbornly and glared at me. “He tried to kill you, and it looks like he killed enough girls to have the Vigil on his ass. He deserves exactly what he got.”
Robin, for once defusing the pressure rather than adding to it, said lightly while scanning the walls, “His art will most likely triple in value. Anyone for a souvenir?”
Only Cherish seemed shocked and upset. She knelt by his torso and rested her head on the still chest. “Tíío. Papa.” There were no tears, but grief hung gray beneath the pale brown of her skin. Xolo, in what was turning out to be typical behavior, lurked in her shadow. Cherish raised her eyes to Promise. “This is your Seamus, Madre. Our Seamus. Why do you just stand there?”
“Yes, this is Seamus, and he was a killer long past our killing days. He killed innocents and he tried to kill Niko. He’s my Seamus no more.” Promise’s melancholy disappeared under an iron determination. “Obviously, he won’t be needing his place any longer, and Oshossi’s cadejos don’t know of it. They do know of my penthouse. You will be safer from them here as well as from the Auphe, hija.” She reached down and smoothed the black hair.
“But Oshossi . . .” Cherish began instantly, her mood shifting just as quickly to demanding and desperate as she rose from Seamus’s body.
“No matter what you think, Cherish, Oshossi isn’t nearly the threat the Auphe are. This is the best way to protect you, and I do want you protected. Call us if he manages to find you again and we’ll do what we can to help you.” Pausing, she corrected, “I’ll do what I can to help you.” She felt she couldn’t speak for me, and I certainly wasn’t sure I could speak for Cal in this case. He watched out for me the same as I did for him, and while he had suggested last night that I would be happier with Promise than without, there was no guarantee he would want to lend our support to Cherish when we could least afford to give it. I’d say Robin would be even less inclined. But as for me . . . I couldn’t not say it.
“I’ll come as well.”
Cal’s jaw tightened, Cherish’s son-of-a-whore remark still with him, I knew, but he gave in. “Shit. Fine. We’ll help.” The “but I don’t have to like it” hung unspoken in the air.
“Lemmings,” Robin sighed, “all of us. Still, it should be entertaining if we don’t end up dead and buried.” He walked to one wall and took a painting of blues, purples, and an acid green. “I wonder who did our artist friend in. The Vigil is good, but good enough to take Seamus’s head without a struggle? They would definitely be a force to be reckoned with.” He considered another painting and took it as well. “Ah, now, this one I like.” It was a nude, of course, in a startling primary red.
“A force indeed.” I gave Seamus one last look and then dismissed him as ancient and decomposing history. If I nursed a feral satisfaction, no one need know about it. “Are we done here?” I addressed everyone, but Cal in particular, whose face had gone from annoyed to bored in a heartbeat as Robin had rambled on about the power needed to kill Seamus.
“Yeah, I’m more than done.” He headed for the door.
Cherish’s eyes followed us as we left, and they weren’t saddened anymore. They were brilliant with anger and fear. She really was in a trap of her own making, but from what I’d seen, she could hold her own in a fight. Young or not. It might be enough. It might not. The same could be said of us.
“You would go with them?” she demanded incredulously. “You would choose them over me?”
Promise stopped in the doorway at that, softening further. “If you had seen the Auphe but even once, you would know the escape I’m giving you. Now, there are those outside who will be in to clean this all up. Get the keys from them. And please be as careful as you can. Know I’m never far.”
“But I am never close, am I?” she said softly, but with a trace of bitterness. It could’ve been aimed at herself or her mother, but she shut the door between us before I made the determination.
“And this is why I’m glad I reproduce in the old-fashioned way,” Robin said as he balanced the paintings that were too large to tuck under an arm. The Vigil were four men waiting at the end of the hall for us to be finished with our business. They were dressed in uniforms, not brown or gray, but somewhere in between. They could’ve been movers or exterminators. No one would know or care enough to ask—which is no doubt how they managed to get away with a good deal of what they did. No one noticed; no one cared. Much as I did not care either. I was more curious about Robin’s comment than I was about the Vigil’s cleanup methods.
“Which would be?” I asked. Not once had I come across in any book a hint as to how pucks multiplied. Since there were no females of the species I was sure it was, if nothing else, noteworthy. And, no doubt, profoundly pornographic. These were pucks after all. Someone had once called Goodfellow a mitotic bastard. It was a clue, but it didn’t go far enough for picturing it in your head . . . if you were perverse enough to want to.
“Should I decide to double your pleasure in all things Goodfellow, you’ll be the first to know,” he retorted with a wicked grin. “Participation isn’t strictly necessary, but I always enjoy an appreciative audience. Volunteers are especially”—he caught Promise’s eye and shifted smoothly—“but never mind that. I was thinking Thai for lunch. Any takers?”
Promise’s gaze moved to meet mine. What I saw there . . . I wasn’t sure what it was. A chance? An unwillingness to surrender what we had? Both perhaps, and both still built on secrets. She had compromised with me . . . my half-Auphe brother. Our ongoing battle with those monsters. She had been loyal when it would’ve been in her far better interest to be otherwise. She had risked her life. Actions are supposed to speak louder than words.
I still wanted the words.
I wanted the truth—whole and unvarnished. I wanted it all. With my mother, I had had nothing. With my brother, I had the words, the action, and the truth . . . no matter how grim it might be. I had no experience with the territory that lay between the two extremes. I didn’t know that I could dwell there.
I caught Cal’s elbow before it could connect with my ribs. I looked from Promise to him and he tapped his nose meaningfully. “I’m good for another one,” he said.
“You’re a good brother,” I replied dryly. Despite his good, if overly physical, intentions, now wasn’t the time to make any decisions. It was time to concentrate on the Auphe—they were certainly concentrating on us.
Cal had said they would come. He’d said it hollowly in the dark of his room where the only light had come firefly-distant through the window and from the sickly gray illumination flowing around his hand. They would come and they would come soon because that’s how he thought . . . no, how he knew they would think.
I wanted him to be wrong. And it wasn’t that the more time without the Auphe, the more time we had to sharpen ourselves, to prepare. It was a good reason, but that wasn’t it. I wanted him to be wrong because I didn’t want him thinking that his thoughts were the same as Auphe thoughts. They weren’t. Cal was not Auphe. In the past, I’d threatened those who’d said that. And I’d hurt those who’d attempted to act on their belief, inflicted a great deal of pain with an even greater lack of regret. I wouldn’t have anyone believing Cal was Auphe, not even himself.
But in another way I wanted him to be right. If he were right, then what I suspected from what he had seen in Washington Square Park would be wrong, and I’d never wanted to be wrong so much in my life.