I only heard snatches of those phone conversations, but I could tell Promise was ashamed. . . . No, that wasn’t the right word. It was worse than that. She felt disgraced by her daughter. Ashamed, dishonored, guilty—as guilty, I thought, as if she’d been the one to shred Nik’s mind herself. It wasn’t her fault, though—as much as I’d wanted to think it was.
Because her I could reach. Cherish was gone.
But Promise had warned us in the beginning about her bitch of a daughter. It hadn’t mattered. We’d been pulled in by our ties to Promise, and the fact Cherish had apparently changed. Our loyalty to her mother had led us into the trap, and Xolo had closed the door on it. Not intentional on Promise’s part, no, but it had happened all the same. Sucks, but there you go.
Then at the end of the week I’d come back from the deli, counting myself lucky Nik let me out after dark by myself, and stopped at the top of our stairwell to see them standing in our doorway. Niko had taken her hand. I slid back out of sight to give them privacy.
“I think,” I heard him say after a brief hesitation, “that I can’t be with you for a while.” There was nothing but solemn silence from Promise. “When I see you,” he continued, “I see her. And when I see her, I see Cal. I see him dead.” The calm in his voice sheered sideways—an earthquake sliding the side of a mountain into fragments far below. “More than that,” he managed roughly, “I see him butchered like a piece of meat. I feel his head on my shoulder as I pull him up, trying to hold him together. I could barely hold him together, Promise. He was all but in pieces.”
I leaned against the wall of the landing and didn’t slam my fist into the concrete block wall. I didn’t, but God, I wanted to. I wanted to. Over and over again.
The mountain firmed. The ground settled as he went on. I don’t know how he went on, but he did. “When the memory fades some. When I don’t see it every time I close my eyes to sleep or when I open our apartment door.” Fuck finding a no-fee apartment. Robin’s pricey real estate friends could get us a new place. Next week. Tomorrow.
“I don’t expect you to wait,” he added somberly. “It could be weeks or months.”
Or never.
“I will.” I heard the sad smile in the next words. “Who knew after the lies there could come something so much worse? I told you she was a liar and a thief with a care for no one—and so charming she made us forget that, I think, even without Xolo’s help.”
“You had to help her. From what you knew at the time, you had to help your daughter.”
“No,” she answered Niko. “I could’ve remembered a hundred times in the past. I could’ve remembered that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. But I didn’t. I trusted her and I trusted Seamus. I was such a fool. Niko . . .” Tears don’t have to be tangible to be real. They could be something you hear rather than salt and water you can touch. I went back downstairs and came back fifteen minutes later. Good-byes, permanent or temporary, shouldn’t be said in front of others, especially those sneaking in the stairwell.
That weekend we moved. Unheard of in New York, right? Found a place in a day. Where there’s a will . . . or where there’s a will, a handful of pearls, and one of Robin’s more unscrupulous pals, and we had a new place. It reminded me a little of the one we’d had the year before, only fit for human beings this time—half-human ones too. A SoHo loft with a wall full of windows, a polished wood floor, and a bathroom you could actually turn around in. Amazing what a difference having money makes in your life. The one job that had actually made us successful, and the Auphe had done it for us. I shook my head.
“What?” Niko asked as he dropped a box on the floor and took a look around at walls painted an oddly, some might say hideously, butterscotch yellow-orange. Very trendy, though, I’d bet.
“Nothing,” I replied. “Some place, huh?
Still eyeing the orange, he gave a nod. “It will do.”
“Do? We never had it so good. That one place we lived in when we first moved here didn’t even have a stove.”
“Cooking food robs them of most of their nutrients anyway,” he said, unperturbed.
I opened the refrigerator door. It was bright, shiny, and new. Unbelievable. “And the fridge didn’t work, not to mention the homeless guy that was living in there.”
“We paid him fifty bucks to leave, I made you fix the refrigerator, and all was well.” He looked at me, mildly smug. “It took you only one DIY book and three months. It was a learning experience and a trade to fall back on when you forget to practice.”
Yep, this was home. From crappy to better than we’d ever had, the snark moved with us.
We painted the walls a cool, restful green—Zen green, knowing Nik. I eventually stopped looking for giant mutated roaches in the toilet and learned ice came from refrigerators. Water, too. Who knew?
I’d also been staggering to the bathroom early Saturday morning when I passed Nik’s bedroom. I heard him suck in a harsh breath and lurch up to a sitting position. That’s when it hit me: every morning he woke up thinking I was dead—with that vision the first thing in his mind. I didn’t know how many seconds it took for his memory to reset to reality, but however long was way too long.
Cherish had done this. Of the three of us, she’d picked him. I was obviously a little unstable, what with the uncontrollable gates and spouting Auphe while finger painting with blood—no way to know which way I’d crack. And she couldn’t get a grip on what would drive Robin to a suicidal rage, homicidal maybe, but facing Oshossi required both. Nik was the perfect fighter and the perfect choice. I was the switch and she’d flipped it. Now he lived with that every day, and every morning I was dead—at least to him.
That night after he’d gone to bed, I went in to his room and taped a picture to his low, spare headboard. “What could you possibly be doing?” he asked in the darkness. I knew better than to think he wouldn’t wake up when I crossed the threshold.
“I’m making like the Tooth Fairy.” I snorted before ordering, “Wait til morning. You’re always giving me chore lists. Here’s yours.”
Niko tended to sleep on his stomach, hand on the hilt of the sword under his mattress or on the knife under his pillow, and I knew when he woke up Sunday morning, the first thing he saw was the picture. It was the cheap instant kind they took when you were posing with Santa. And I was posing with Santa, hopping up and down on his balls for never bringing Niko and me any presents for Christmas. And five-year-old feet can make a real dent in a department store Santa’s balls, from the pained expression on the chubby face. I’d scribbled across the bottom of the picture: Cal’s alive. Now get off your ass and fix him breakfast. I didn’t know if the alive part helped or not, if it beat or canceled out the false memory, but he did make me waffles, so it couldn’t have hurt.
As I ate them, he studied me before looking back toward his room, back in the direction of the picture. “How did you know the presents were from me and not Santa Claus?”
“Because you didn’t get any. And if any kid deserved to be on the Good Little Boy list, it was you.” I leaned back and patted my stomach. Real, non-soy food was so amazing.
“And if anyone deserved to be on the Bad Little Boy list?” he asked, eyes lightening just a little.
I grinned. “Ask that department store Santa. Bet he couldn’t walk for a week.”
That Monday, Nik went back to teaching at NYU. I met him on his lunch break. As he moved through the crowd, I left the corner vendor with my hot dog and a lemonade for him. I handed it to him, and as he opened it, I said, “I was just talking to this guy on the corner. See him over there?” I pointed. “I know I’m a moody, whiny, sometimes possessed, killer genetic monster freak with mommy issues, but do you think Scientology could honestly be the answer to all that?”