The chupa had crept out of the back bedroom while the others talked, silently watched them with those large eyes for a while, and then moved over to me. I was on the couch, arms folded and doing my damnedest to keep my mind a blank. No matter what Niko would’ve said with dry sarcasm, it wasn’t that easy. Xolo sat on the floor opposite me and placed a pack of cards on the artistic metal curve of table between us. The shaved dog face regarded me gravely. I scowled back. It was habit. I didn’t have anything against Cherish’s pet. He tended to stay out of the way, gave up the remote when I wanted it, and didn’t eat my leftover pizza in the fridge. As roommates went, he wasn’t so bad. Weird, but not as bad as Robin, who’d gotten so desperate it wouldn’t have surprised me to see him humping a table leg.
“What?” I asked. “What do you want?”
Just as gravely, he dealt the cards. Seven to me, seven to him. Hell, why not? I played Go Fish with him. He held up his fingers when he asked for my cards. Any threes? Up would go three fingers. It didn’t work so great for jacks, queens, and kings, so we discarded them. Those eyes would blink, moonlike, the fingers would flash, and the cards would go down. The bastard couldn’t talk, couldn’t fight, could barely dress himself, and he beat me seven games to three.
I turned the cards around to look at the backs. “Are these marked? Are you cheating?” Or was I less bright than a mentally challenged chimp?
“I hate to interrupt your vastly important task”—Niko’s hand pulled the cards from mine and slapped them on the table—“but we’ve narrowed our options.”
“Yeah? Rafferty’s place?” Rafferty was a healer we’d used before. He’d disappeared months ago, but as it was most likely a voluntary disappearance, there wasn’t much we could do about it. He wouldn’t want us sticking our noses in his business, and he had a lot of business to take care of. His cousin was sick, a kind of sick Rafferty couldn’t heal. We’d checked his house after a month of not being able to contact him. . . . We had business too, and it frequently called for a healer afterward. From the looks of the overgrown yard, the house had been locked up and temporarily abandoned. Both Rafferty and his cousin were gone. Rafferty wasn’t one to give up. If he couldn’t cure his cousin, he’d find someone who could.
“Figured,” I added.
“Or Ishiah’s,” Nik said. “From what you’ve said, he can handle himself well.”
“Ishiah’s?” I leaned back against the couch. “You’re shitting me, right? One day, and he’d kill us before Oshossi or the Auphe could.”
Robin immediately backed me up—so immediately, in fact, that I wondered who he was actually trying to keep safe—us or Ishiah. “All of us shoehorned into that overgrown canary’s place? That’s an exercise in natural selection waiting to happen. Survival of the fittest. And that walking feather duster is fit.” His left eye twitched. “Very fit.” This had to be the longest Robin hadn’t gotten laid in, damn, at least in the span of human existence—at least once we’d stopped braiding each other’s back hair and thinking of lice as a tasty treat. “Desperate” didn’t begin to cover the shape he was in.
I was so locking my door tonight.
Rafferty’s place. On the one hand, Rafferty did have the nature preserve behind his house, a good location for supernatural wildlife that wanted to eat you. On the other, it might take Oshossi a while to find us there. I said so, and Niko agreed. As for the Auphe, of course they had to be watching us, but following us on the open road in daylight? Doubtful. We’d lost them time and time again when we’d lived on the run. They always eventually found us, but that we lost them to begin with proved they weren’t infallible.
“Once we get the report from Mickey, we will definitely have to be more proactive about tracking down Oshossi. Robin and Mickey are doing what they can, but we need to get this resolved more quickly,” Niko said. Now that we’d committed ourselves, which I still didn’t think was the best idea, he was right. But helping Cherish fight off a few cadejos and snakes was different than actively going after the one who sicced them on her. He was probably going to be a little harder to take care of than the wildlife.
“Tracking him down and killing him in a truly inspired fashion,” Promise added. Cherish flashed her a smile that was laced with surprise at the fiercely maternal note. If nothing else, this whole thing appeared to have her seeing the error of her criminally wild and wicked ways and bringing her and Promise closer. Good for them. Not too good for the rest of us trying to avoid maiming, mutilation, and, worse yet, pet-dander allergies, but good for them.
“What is up with Oshossi and that goddamn temper of his? And what did you steal from him,” I asked Cherish, “that pissed the living hell out of him?” If I were going to get killed, it’d be nice to know it wasn’t over a lamp or a first-edition Mark frigging Twain.
Cherish frowned, but turned a dining room chair around to face the rest of us and stretched languidly on it. Yep, Robin in a female body. I still couldn’t figure why they hadn’t gotten together at least for a night. She might be the vampire version of eighteen, but apparently had her hormones more in control than Goodfellow did.
“Oshossi,” she considered. “Oshossi is powerful. Every forest in South America belongs to him and he engages in constant guerilla warfare to prevent their destruction.” She tapped fingers on the knee of one long black-clad leg. “But don’t think that makes him some sort of hero. He will kill anyone—anyone who threatens his agenda, crosses his path in the forests, or simply annoys him. He is not a creature of patience or forgiveness.”
“And you, not doing your research, took him for an easy mark.” Robin shook his head. “Even the lowliest of my junior salesmen would know better than that.”
She glared at him. “Regardless, I robbed him, and that lack of forgiveness is firmly aimed in my direction. Our direction,” she amended, glancing at Promise.
“What did you steal?” Niko asked as he simultaneously gestured to me, tapping his meditation beads. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t blow it off. I’d seen where a lack of control had gotten me. I fingered the beads around my own wrist and got to work. I still kept part of my focus on the conversation, which had to not help the meditation. But hearing Cherish’s story was important. I had at least two brain cells. I could split them up.
“Is that so important?” she countered, tilting her head, the black hair falling behind her shoulders, and her violet eyes challenging.
“Yes,” he replied, unyielding. “I think it is.”
“Fine,” she replied, lashes half covering her eyes with what looked like regret or even shame. “It was a necklace. Gold, diamonds, and chunks of turquoise as big as a baby’s fist. I endangered all our lives for one piece of jewelry that was in no way worth the price we’re paying now.”
“Did it do anything?” I interrupted, remembering the power-draining crown another puck had blackmailed us into getting for him.
“Do anything?” she said with confusion. “It sparkled and it looked quite amazing on me. What else would it possibly do?”
“So you hocked it?” Robin asked. “Once it wasn’t quite so amazing?”
“As I said, I bore of pretty things quickly and move on to the next. I’m thinking of changing my ways. It seems a good survival move.” She sighed and touched the ruby choker at her throat. I wondered if it were stolen too.
“Yes, then you can marry men with a foot and four toes in the grave. That’s certainly more respectable,” Robin offered with a smirk.
Promise tapped her crossbow against her leg and said in a voice as sweet as honeysuckle, “I believe, Goodfellow, that I have a painting you should see.”