“Goodfellow?” Niko asked dubiously.
“Yes, Goodfellow. Goodfellow who has been outed as a freak monogamist whose shame will follow him to his dying day. Now who told?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed a handful of my shirt. “Why do I even ask? We are pucks. Didn’t that one brain cell you possess wake up long enough to let you know we all lie? We all deceive? We all hate one another’s attention-snatching guts and would do anything to humiliate one another?”
He didn’t give me a chance to respond. “Ah, what did I expect? You’re a Boy Scout in a con man convention. If con men had the drive and conscience of Jack the Ripper.”
Me? A Boy Scout? With the things I’d done? That was a first, but considering this company, he could be right. Releasing my shirt, he dropped his forehead onto the bar and mumbled, “We should’ve worked out a safe word. Give me three bottles of scotch.”
A hand slapped his shoulder and squeezed. “Would you like a mercy killing? I’d hate for a tainted monogamy cell to enter the race should you lose the lottery.”
It was the one who’d masqueraded as Robin. I could tell only by what he was wearing. Otherwise he and Goodfellow were beyond identical. It was creepy. The bar was full of about seventy of them, and besides length of hair, clothing, and the occasional scar, they were as Nik had said: clones. Your brain squirmed at the sight of it. It was unnatural—mirrors within mirrors. “No, thank you, Faunus,” Goodfellow said smoothly, sitting up. “I’d rather discuss how you haven’t had sex at all in a year. Did you take vows or is it true that an incubus bit off your penis in disappointment at your pathetic performance?” He grabbed the hand on his shoulder, slammed it on the bar, and pinned it there with a beautiful Spanish poniard gleaming silver and needle sharp. “Let us check and see.”
I turned my back just in time to hear the slide of material as pants were yanked down and then a pained groan from the entire bar. Apparently the incubus story edged out the taking-vows one.
“Is this the type of fight you hired us to prevent?” Niko questioned. I didn’t know where his gaze was, on Goodfellow or Faunus, because I remained with my back to the Panic. I might work that way the entire night if it was feasible—serving the customers without facing them.
“Hardly,” Goodfellow dismissed. “A fight will be when one of us genuinely tries to kill another. We need alcohol to lubricate that into motion. Give us an hour. And you can look again, Cal—not that there was anything to see.” There was a wicked gloat at the monogamy revenge in the words. “His pants are back up. Luckily he does have a belt, as there is nothing else to hold them up.”
Warily, I faced the bar again as Faunus disappeared into the jeering and laughing crowd, the bloody blade remaining on the bar. “I think you made an enemy for life.”
“We are all enemies, but keeping the race alive is more important than that. And what precisely are you doing?” I ignored his question as I uncapped the black marker I’d fished out from under the bar, leaned across, and wrote “RG” on his forehead.
“Just a precaution.” I put the marker back under the bar and handed over his three bottles of damn expensive scotch that he insisted be kept especially for him.
“Actually, that’s not a completely idiotic idea…unless it’s permanent marker.” He scowled, but let it go and pointed to several other pucks around him. “This would be Piper, Pan, Shepherd, Paein, Paniskoi, Phobos, Philamnos, Phorbas, Panikon, Puckstein—he converted—Prank, Puca, Puki, Argos…and you’ll never remember the rest. Simply enjoy the spectacle and if you have to take a break, I’d go together. The buddy system is essential during the Panic.”
“Mostly Ps. Why aren’t there any variations on Goodfellow or Robin?” Niko asked.
His face went blank but he smiled…technically. If someone had taken that poniard from the bar and carved the smile on his face, the effect would’ve been the same. “That’s a good question. I’ve wondered myself and then I wonder something else. Hob was the first, a million years on this earth. No one dared to take his name. I say I’m a hundred thousand years old, but as I can’t remember half of those, what else might I not remember? A million more? Hob went insane because he did remember. All those years and all the things that he had done. In a million years they couldn’t all be good things, now, could they? Some might be extremely bad things.”
His imitation of a smile became more unnatural as he continued. “Or if you don’t care what you do, the absolute number of years of boredom alone would drop you into the deepest pit of insanity. Maybe I’m a little smarter than Hob when I know a perfect memory can be the worst of enemies. Then again, maybes are only maybes. Maybe no one else cares enough for my name to steal it.”
The smile disappeared piece by piece, chunks of ice shoved methodically one by one into a freezer. “Do you have any interesting questions to add, Caliban?”
I felt like I’d asked someone what time it was and they beat me to death with Big Ben. Someone was cranky. I juggled more bottles of alcohol, ready to pour. “I was just going to ask why you guys have dicks if you don’t use them for the whole baby-making thing, but I think I can live without the info. Go party. Have fun. Stab somebody in the back. We’ve got it covered.”
His eyes didn’t become any less opaque, but he did turn and disappear into the crowd. “I think I might’ve pissed myself a little bit,” I said conversationally to Niko. “How ’bout you?”
“A drop. Perhaps two at the most.” Niko took the discarded poniard and tucked it away. He did like collecting blades.
“I always wondered why he wasn’t afraid of me like everyone else.” Or hadn’t hated me like everyone else. You hate what you fear. Goodfellow didn’t fear me. He never had. “My monster cred just dropped a notch.”
Both of us had started pouring drinks when one of the pucks shouted, “Where’s the entertainment? The strippers! The whores! I’ve ten thousand dollars in fives and a crotch on fire! Bring on the orgy!”
“Oh God,” I croaked. The glass in my hand fell to shatter on the floor.
And Niko didn’t catch it. Niko and his unmatched reflexes didn’t catch the glass. For the first time in his adult life, I thought my brother was frozen with fear.
“I thought all other paien left when you guys rolled into town,” I said. “Goodfellow said so. I remember. Distinctly. Very distinctly.” With the possible exception of the boggles, and I didn’t see Mama Boggle on a stage wearing pasties over her scaly chest and a G-string made to accommodate her thrashing crocodile tail. Nine feet of croc-a-croc-a burning love. “Oh shit, I think I’m going to pass out.” I clenched the edge of the bar.
“Almost all paien,” one of the pucks corrected. Puckstein—I recognized him by the Star of David around his neck. “Not the lili and lilitu. They can’t smell us.” He stretched as if he were next up in Olympic men’s gymnastics. Jesus. “Hope you have a fire hose handy to clean out the place. You’re going to need it when this night is over.”
Jesus.
I thought about shooting myself in the head. I thought about shooting the puck, but taking out seventy wasn’t going to happen. I decided on the simple: running out the emergency exit doors, if Niko didn’t beat me to them.
But it was too late. There were three reasons for that. One was the commitment we’d made to Robin—by commitment I meant the money we’d taken and had no intention of giving back. The second was the chains I saw wrapped and locked around the emergency door push bars. Goddamn mind-reading Goodfellow. The third was the worst.
The entertainment had arrived.
Seventy or so lions prowled through the front door. They walked upright, dressed in long raincoats to pass among humans, but they were lions. Until they stripped off the coats as soon as they passed through the door, and then they were lions and eagles. Male and female, they all had masses of hair—no, not hair, but manes, tawny or dark brown or a mixture of both. Sunglasses were dropped as well to reveal cat’s eyes in reverse, black with a golden slit of iris. They also had dark brown/black wings springing from their backs. That was comfortingly familiar. It was a peri bar. We were used to feathers here.