"It should be enough for a teacher." There was the faintest whisper of cloth against cloth. "It's not."
It was a bitch of position for Niko to be in, worse than the poker game. This time there would be no wire, no bailout if I got into trouble. No way to even know if I was in trouble. While a wire could go undetected for the few hours a poker game would take, it wouldn't do for deep cover, the kind where you lived and breathed your role every minute of the day. But I'd be all right. Hell, I'd only be faking what I'd been in reality the year before.
"You don't have to go in alone."
But I did. Robin couldn't go. Most of the monsters considered pucks inveterate liars and thieves, capable of bleeding you dry between one breath and the next. Greedy, rapacious, and incurably light-fingered. Goodfellow wasn't like that. Well, okay, maybe he was, but he was also a friend. But even if the wolves thought Robin was pure as the driven snow and worthy of a friendly butt sniffing or two, I didn't want him in the direct line of fire. Promise either. Look what had happened to George. Just goddamn look.
"Yeah, Nik, I do," I said solidly, opening my eyes and turning to him.
"No." He exhaled and forged on without visible emotion. "I can't go, but you're forgetting Flay. Robin's turning him loose in the morning."
"Rover? You've got to be kidding," I said incredulously. "He's a crotch-sniffing moron."
"Yes, but he's Cerberus's crotch-sniffing moron. Caleb gave him to us for a reason. We would be stupid not to use him." A pigeon, silver and white, flashed overhead in the twilight. "And right now we can't afford to be stupid, for Georgina's sake."
Truth. I shoved fingers in my hair and tried to clear the thickness in my throat. "What do you think this thing is for?" I asked abruptly. "What Caleb wants." I doubted seriously that he was into it for the fashion aspect only. There was a purpose to it, had to be.
"That's a good question and Promise is working on that as we speak. She said it will keep her scarce for a day or two."
"So much for romance, huh?" The dating life of vampire and do-it-yourself ninja once again took a backseat to my train wreck of a life. "Sorry," I said briefly.
"Don't be an ass, Cal," he said sharply. "None of this has anything to do with you. With both of us, yes, but not just you. Caleb wanted us as a team. I may not be on the inside with you, but that doesn't mean I'll be idle." No, Niko could never be that. If something happened, he would have to find another way to save George.
"Any guilt on this we share fifty-fifty," he continued. "You understand that, don't you?" No one had a way of turning a question into a threat quite like my brother.
"Gotcha." I climbed to my feet and gave Niko the faintest of smiles. "You're the king of tough love, Cyrano. All hail the king."
The long nose snorted. "You on bended knee. Why can I not picture that?" He nudged me toward the window. "Go to bed, Cal. You need the sleep or you won't be any good to anyone tomorrow. Not to me. Not to Georgina," he finished seriously.
He was right. But it didn't stop the sound of her name from hitting me like a punch to the gut. Still, I'd made a promise. No more angsting, no more wailing and beating of the breast. It wasn't helping me, and it wasn't helping George.
Right now, nothing was.
Chapter 9
Cerberus.
Let's talk about Cerberus. Days ago, when this shit had begun, Promise had said she didn't know what his "difference" was, why he was considered damaged and unfit by most of his fellow Kin. And I hadn't thought any more about it. In the beginning, I didn't care. And in the end… I didn't care, although for different reasons. Apathy versus berserk rage, yet the results were the same.
But back to my new boss, Cerberus. There were a lot of things to be said about Cerberus, but let's focus on the primary one.
Cerberus was freaky as shit.
I wasn't saying that I hadn't seen some weirdness in my day. Nothing could be further from the truth. So while Cerberus wasn't the most bizarre thing I'd ever come across, he was damn close. And would it have killed Flay to just throw out the word "twins"? Granted, Snowball was as incoherent as your typical pot-smoking fast-food worker, but one simple word was all I was asking for. Okay, I might have wondered why twins went by one name, but I might have been a little more prepared. Because, honestly… I took a closer look… damn.
"Flay says that—" one began.
"You wish to join us," the other finished.
I hoped that they didn't do that a lot. It was disturbing… like a cutesy gum commercial gone horrifically wrong. There was no pleasure here to be doubled, that was for damn sure. Taking a seat in one of the two chairs facing the desk, I leaned back in the opulent leather and tried to give the impression that I was unruffled by what stared at me from behind the desk. "What better place for someone like me? I've heard you look past differences, past"—I didn't have to fake the bitter twist of my lips—"bad breeding."
Look at me. Cool and calm. Hell on wheels and the biggest balls around. That was on the outside. On the inside I had to wonder if I was more than a little nuts to be pitting my woefully amateur undercover skills against that. I definitely saw why that son of a bitch Caleb wanted someone else to do his dirty work. To give my own eyes a rest, I snatched a fleeting look around the office. The place was a palace. All that was missing was the harem. Although, to give credit where credit was due, Cerberus did have a good start. A succubus was filing her three-inch pointed nails while draped liquidly over a couch against the far wall. With hair of midnight blue and storm-cloud silver cascading on her shoulders, she gave me a quick pout that had her finely scaled mother-of-pearl breasts heaving. A flutter of sapphire-colored eyelashes over liquid black eyes ended the flirtation, and she went back to ignoring me.
Cerberus, on the other hand, studied me unblinkingly from behind a desk the size of a small car. At least, one of them did. One head stared at me with slanted brown eyes that flared molten gold as the other turned to address the guard at the door. "Find Orrin. He's overdue and I want a report." The voice was cold and utterly emotionless, just like the eyes. It was unusual for a wolf. Whether it was raging anger, murderous glee, or overwhelming horniness, the lupines usually wore their tiny hearts and even tinier minds on their sleeve for everyone to see. The difference in Cerberus was startling and a little troubling.
Both of the heads had zeroed in on me now, and I made a mental note to kick myself later on for not wondering how Cerberus had gotten his name. The three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell… this Cerberus had only the two heads, but, hey, who was I to bitch? Humans produced conjoined twins on occasion and so did the animal kingdom, but I'd never heard of the wolf community producing any. As I'd thought to myself earlier, weakness was not tolerated in lycanthropic society, and as a rule a wolf like Cerberus should've been promptly killed at birth with one swipe of its mother's jaws. How these two had survived was a mystery, a damn unnerving one. There had to be a name for that type of conjoining. Niko would know it… if he were here. One heavily built body, two sleek heads with identical vulpine faces, short black hair slicked back into an impenetrable pelt over well-shaped skulls—that was the human form of Cerberus. I wasn't looking forward to seeing the wolfen version. Unlike Snowball, Cerberus was of the old breeding; he could choose to be either wolf or human.
The twins wore a suit in charcoal gray, expensive even to my untrained eye, and, beneath that, an ebony-colored shirt with two mandarin-style collars. It must have been a bitch to accommodate the unnaturally broad shoulders and bifurcated spinal column, but the unknown tailor had risen to the challenge. Thick but immaculately manicured nails tapped the desktop in a vaguely familiar rhythm. Then it hit me.