"Beloved of whom?" she asked with a wistful curve to her wide mouth. A spiral ringlet hung to her collarbone, fallen from the casual upswept mass of her hair. Just one strand, one curl perfect in its wildness and exuberance.
Everyone whose path she crossed. Shrugging, I silently licked the spoon clean and replaced the lid on the container. "All the ones you help with what you see. That cranky old ice-cream pusher who lives off you. Little old ladies you help across the street. You know, people." And at that moment you didn't have to be a psychic to know that I was lying.
She studied me, then sighed and took the ice cream from my hand. "To have faced the monsters you have, you are the biggest coward." Standing, she shook the smooth fall of her dress out, slid her feet into sandals, and said without pity, "We're going to talk, Caliban, you and I. If I have to lock the door and have Niko tie you to a chair, we're going to talk. So get prepared." Before I could move, she bent and brushed a kiss on the corner of my mouth. "It's going to be a very long conversation, cherry chocolate boy." And then in a swirl of sheer cotton and copper hair she was gone. Gone from the room. Gone from the apartment. Gone from my life.
"Gone?" I said hollowly, the numbness spreading through me with firestorm speed. I didn't ask if he was sure. Niko was always sure. "How?"
"I don't know. I don't know much of anything." He pushed me toward the kitchen chair and put a cup of tea in front of me. Niko… he'd come away from martial arts training with the unshakable belief that there was a tea for every occasion. If the herbs didn't help, then the warmth of the liquid and the very act of drinking would give you something to focus on… other than the shit that was bringing down your world as efficiently as Samson at the Temple. I didn't know what kind this was; it smelled like licorice. I'd never liked licorice, even as a kid. I wasn't in the mood, to say the least. I pushed the cup away.
"Tell me," I demanded with frozen lips.
He exhaled and sat opposite me at the table. Taking the tea for himself, he turned it one way and then the other with his long fingers. "She didn't make it to the ice-cream shop. As far as I've managed to piece together, she left here and simply vanished. She didn't show up at the shop and Mr. Geever became concerned and called her mother. That was seven hours ago and no one has seen her. Her mother just now became desperate enough to call us."
George's mother had never been our number one fan. Her daughter hadn't told her I was behind the wolf assassins sent to her apartment to kill George. I was possessed at the time, but still. And although she was grateful, if confused, that Niko and Robin had saved the family from some peculiarly hairy burglars, she still had questions as to the lucky coincidence of their lurking in the vicinity, armed and ready. She knew George was a friend… goddamn it, a friend… of ours, but for her to break down and call us, she must be terrified.
She wasn't alone.
Friend. The plastic of the table bit into my palm as I gripped the edge with locked, aching fingers. It was amazing the catastrophes that had to occur to get you to stop lying to yourself. Yeah, fucking amazing. Pushing my chair back with a violent motion, I stood. Niko didn't need to ask where I was going. He only stood with me. "We'll find her, Cal," he said firmly. "Don't doubt it."
We'd find her all right. We'd find George, and then we'd make someone very, very sorry. The kind of sorry that involved spilled blood and a suddenly silent heart. As for the search… I knew George. She would've headed straight for the soda shop. Duty, responsibility, she took all that as seriously as my brother did. People would've been waiting for her, just as they did every day. We followed the path she would've taken. It was something of a walk to the shop, thirty to forty minutes, but George didn't like to take the bus or the subway if she could avoid it. Too many people in too confined a space, that sort of thing was rough on a psychic, even one with the power and control that she possessed. So she walked.
But not a single soul had seen her.
In this city I didn't expect any differently. But what was telling was that not even the hot dog guy on the corner had seen her go. Both George and I were on a first-name basis with him. God forbid I should bring mystery meat into the sanctity of Nik's kitchen. It might taint his karma, his tofu aura, his whatever. When the urge for a chili cheese dog hit me, I went to the corner and saved myself a lecture. Body. Temple. Yeah, you know the rest. Marvin the hot dog guy knew me all right and he especially knew George. He had a thing for her. It wasn't sexual, not in sixty-six-year-old Marvin's case, but it was a definite thing regardless. Her hot dogs always came with a free soda or bag of chips, and she wouldn't have walked by his wagon without stopping to say hello. But she hadn't.
That meant she hadn't even made it a block. Between our building and the corner she'd vanished. Bright and warm in her cherry chocolate dress, she'd melted away as quickly as the ice cream she had carried to me.
"Cal."
We were going to talk, she'd said. No way out of it for me. No way at all. I guess I'd proved her wrong there.
"Cal," more insistent this time.
The taste of supper, chicken burrito, lingered in the back of my throat. The salty tomato salsa was so similar to another darker flavor that I wanted to gag. George was strong-willed, independent, quick-witted, and fierce, but she wasn't like us. Not like me or Niko or Robin or Promise. She wasn't a killer. And sometimes… sometimes you had to be.
To survive.
"Cal." The hand pinched a nerve in my shoulder, generating an electric tingle.
On autopilot my hand rubbed at the spot. It hurt, but it hurt in a place that wasn't here… wasn't now. Or maybe it was me that wasn't here, wasn't now. "We're screwed, aren't we?" I asked colorlessly.
"No," Niko said instantly. "We're not. You were gone much longer and I found you."
"Actually, I found you." Then I'd fired a bullet right at his heart. And I was a good shot. Helluva one, really. I hadn't missed. Closing my eyes, I felt a slow acid burn pass through to the back of my brain. "Not the best example you could've come up with."
"Perhaps not." His hand pushed mine aside and efficiently rubbed out the ache of the twisted-nerve attention getter. "But it doesn't change the fact that we'll find her. And then we'll clean our swords." The promise, deadly and gray as a hurricane sea, wasn't for me. "But for now you'll stay with me, and I'll call Caleb."
By staying with him he wasn't referring to being glued at the hip holster. He was talking mentally, not physically. Big order. Making with the superglue would've been easier, proved by the fact it took a few moments before I caught on to the mention of Caleb's name. "What the hell are you calling him for?"
"Goodfellow and Promise are already contacting everyone they know. But Caleb works for Cerberus and is in a unique position for gathering information."
It was true. Not only were the Kin involved in 99.9 percent of supernatural crime, but they also kept a greedy eye on that tiny fraction that they didn't own. All well and good except for two things. "Why would Caleb or Cerberus help us?"
"We waive our fee for last night's job."
We hadn't exactly found out the info Cerberus had wanted, but we had discovered there was a spy in his organization. We also might have sent Boaz to the pet cemetery. I know I was keeping my fingers crossed. As for earning Cerberus's goodwill, it might be enough. That and a fifty-thousand freebie. It was a hope, not much of one, but something. That left only the second problem.