Fifteen minutes later he was back with clean damp hair, the Betadine scrubbed away from the stitches, and wearing scrubs instead of the hospital gown. He was still bruised, but he was steady on his feet, which was a good thing, because Promise was there, having walked past a scolding Nurse Tigger like she didn’t exist. They really were fascist with their visiting hours there.
She walked past me the same way she had Tig, so I took the tray out to the hall to give them quality vamp-human time. Cherish was waiting out there in black-on-black with a collar of gold, pearls, and onyx. She liked the shiny stuff, no way around it. She and Robin, they would always be thieves, but there were worse things to be. As long as the thieves were on my side when the chips were down, their private lives were none of my business. Hair swept up into a smooth coil pinned with more pearls, she held the hand of Xolo. He was in a parka, new from the sheen of it, with a hood that kept anyone from seeing anything but large shadowed eyes.
“You saw him again, then? Oshossi?” Her leather-gloved hand tightened on Xolo’s.
“You could say that.” I dumped the tray on a metal cart loaded with other dirty ones. “You could also say you owe us a car.” I folded my arms and leaned against the wall beside her. “I’m hoping you’ve never seen this guy fight, because I’d like to think you’d have mentioned he invented ass kicking and has a black belt in taking names.”
“No, I never saw him fight.” Her mouth, painted the color of poppies today, tried for a smile but didn’t pull it off. “I saw other sides to him. I do know he has never lost prey once he’s started the hunt. He’s very proud of that. Too proud, I thought. Arrogant, perhaps even foolishly so. But I was the fool. This is it, then?” she said more to herself than to me. “You and the others have faced him and barely escaped with your lives. I am a fighter.” The blackness fogged her eyes, and I saw her fangs, if only for a second. “An excellent fighter, but I’ve seen you and your brother . . . with the cadejos and the ccoas. You’re hunters, just as Oshossi is. If you can’t take him, neither can I.”
“Hey.” I wasn’t sure if I was insulted or felt bad for her. I rolled a meditation bead against my wrist and had a flash of that insight everyone’s always talking about. Know thyself.
Yeah . . . I was insulted.
Okay, okay, I felt a little bad for her too. “It’s not just you, remember? It’s all of us. Robin’s been around longer than Oshossi, you can bet that. When he has to, he can fight like hell. He might not like it, but he can do it. And if it hadn’t been for the car thing, I think Niko would’ve given Oshossi something to think about.”
I touched another bead. “Niko’s human, but . . .” I stopped and thought about it. “He’s a Caesar, an Alexander, a Genghis, a Minamoto no Yorimasa.” And he’d always said I never paid attention to the history books he’d used to teach me. “Some people are born warriors. He’s one of them. What it takes some creatures hundreds of years to learn, Nik was born knowing. Every once in a while the world comes up with a natural-born predator. We’re lucky nature screwed up and gave Cyrano a conscience along with it, or it’d be Alexander all over again.”
Huh. I’d gone through the entire mala, bead by bead, and hadn’t noticed. And I’d talked more than I usually did about personal things, and what the hell was up with that? So what if Cherish was Promise’s daughter, and Promise was with Niko. So what if that sort of made her family. So what if . . . damn, I was getting soft in my old age. Twenty—who knew you went to instant pudding then.
I grabbed my cynical nature and pulled it back into place. She was not family. She might have come around to care for someone other than herself, but that didn’t mean I trusted her.
My phone rang, and I walked down the hall from her. I’d brought my cell out of the room with me to call Robin. I’d called him last night, and I was hoping he’d learned something between then and now. He’d beaten me to the punch. “How’s Niko?” he asked.
“Good,” I said. “Once he gets his CT scan we’re out of here. You find out anything about Oshossi yet?”
“I did indeed,” he responded smugly. “He’s renting a brownstone in Harlem, the entire thing. He apparently likes his privacy.”
“It only makes things easier for us.” I pressed against the wall as a gurney went flying by, nurses doing CPR as they ran. It was pointless. I could smell the death on the guy.
“Easier?” Robin said incredulously. “You did say he flipped over your car last night, didn’t you? I can’t see there will be anything easy about this.”
“Hell, he might just spank us and send us on our way,” I said wearily. That hour of sleep hadn’t done me much good.
“I’m going,” Cherish said over my shoulder, having moved up behind me. “That will keep him there. After all, it’s me he wants. Anything, anyone else is incidental.”
She had a point, although he’d known her location when he’d sent the ccoas after her and his cadejos had followed her. He hadn’t been there then either. The only time he’d shown up was to warn the rest of us to back off, and that’s what it had to be because he could’ve made things much more nasty for us if he’d wanted. Maybe he wanted his animals to do his work for him to show the contempt he had for a common thief.
Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. With Promise involved, we were up to our necks in it. I looked back toward Niko’s room. Not that I liked it, not one damn bit.
“You coming back to the house?” I asked Goodfellow.
“No. But I’m on the move and, no offense, I’m better off on my own. I’ve honed my escape abilities over the years.” That was probably true. The fact that he’d stuck with us for so long, confined unnaturally for any puck, yet had been ready to help when the fight came, that said something about Robin. Something better than you could say about me.
“But I am staying in those hotels worthy of my presence,” he continued. “If you need help, you’ll know where to come for me.” That was the thing about traveling. I had to know where I was going. I couldn’t open a gate blindly to a place I’d never been or seen at a distance. And Robin had filled me in on what hotels were good enough to suit him. . . . There weren’t many. I knew all their locations, passed by their doors in my years in New York. “And call me when you’re ready to take on Oshossi. Just make sure there are no cars readily available when you do.” With that he disconnected.
I shoved a hand through my hair. I needed a shower too. I’d cleaned all of Nik’s blood off me in the sink last night, scrubbing until my skin was red and stinging, but there were moments where I could still feel it. It was something that was happening way too much lately. It was easier to be irritable than thinking about that, and I turned my attention to Cherish and Xolo. “Seriously,” I asked with annoyance, “what is up with that thing? Why don’t you just get a dog? Alpo’s easier to come by than goat’s blood.”
“Some of us aren’t as fortunate as the four of you,” she said with an edge of bitterness, and turned to walk back to the room. “Sometimes pets have to do.”
Not many pets played Go Fish, but she was right. I was lucky, and I intended to stay that way. No matter what I’d thought on the beach when the Auphe had taken the eel. No matter that I thought we were going to die. No matter that I’d found out it was even worse than that. Whatever happened to me happened, but I was keeping Nik safe and alive. The real shitfest had yet to come. So let it. I wasn’t going to lose what I had, even if I lost myself.
Deniaclass="underline" Sometimes it was all that kept you going.
I took my shower while Promise and Cherish watched over Nik, who would’ve been offended that I thought he couldn’t take care of himself even with a concussion. They came to take him to CT while I was in the shower. Promise went with him. By the time they came back I’d gotten our weapons back from Rafferty’s, where I’d tossed them before the ambulance had come. The hospital had metal detectors at the ER entrance, but Cherish had said the front doors were clear. Good news, because walking out of this place unarmed wasn’t my idea of smart. Promise and Cherish had brought extra blades for us, but I felt more comfortable with my own and I definitely felt better with my gun—not that it had done me any good with Oshossi.