Slow, odd sounding, and it clearly hurt his non-human mouth, but it resounded with truth. I didn't bother to ask how he knew about what George was to me. He would've smelled her on me at our first meeting. What I did bother with was what he had said… and what it meant.
"Oh, shit." The room seemed to shrink in size, the air becoming thick and stifling. I'm not sure what I would've said if I'd had the opportunity, but at that moment the phone rang. Robin must have finished his call, and five seconds later he appeared with the receiver in his hand. "It's Caleb," he announced with white-lipped anger. "He wants to talk to you."
Why me over Niko I wasn't sure, but I accepted the phone with all the enthusiasm I would've shown if he'd handed me a piranha who'd just scented blood. "Motherfucker," I said flatly in greeting. Not precisely phone etiquette 101, but it was the most I could manage.
"And a pleasant morning to you as well, Caliban." Caleb's smooth, placid voice hit my ear. "Are you enjoying a relaxing break after your abject failure?"
I wondered if Flay had filled him in, but then dismissed the thought immediately. Flay had been on the verge of dying as he'd dragged himself after us. It was highly unlikely he'd been capable of stopping to make a report—even with a life depending on him just as George's depended on us. Making a split-second decision I was probably going to regret, I covered for the fur ball, saying harshly, "Did that son of a bitch Flay fill you in? I could've swore we left his ass dead on the roof."
"Ah, that would be telling." The mocking lilt deserted his voice abruptly. "You lost it, you miserable Auphe. You lost the crown and now I'm betting you're quite curious to know what else you're going to lose."
"We'll get it back." I could barely hear myself through the sudden ringing in my ears. "Give us a week and we'll get it back. Seven days, that's all."
"You sound so sincere," he said with a hideous parody of reluctant doubt. "But I have to question your work ethic. Now, how can we provide an incentive you can't close your eyes to?"
"Don't." One word, just one, but it was all I could get out.
"Come, now, you can't tell me you don't want proof that that precious girl is still alive. My little present didn't prove that, did it? It only proved I have a pair of scissors." It was said with a patient tone—a long-suffering accountant explaining for the tenth time why a deduction was so questionable. "How would you like your proof? I pride myself on being an accommodating business partner."
"We'll get it, you son of a bitch. We'll get it. Don't hurt her." Me… who'd never begged. Not to an Auphe, not to any monster. But I was begging now. Raw, rage filled, but begging.
"You have your week," Caleb said with the brisk efficiency of a true businessman. "I would say goodbye, but I believe I'll let someone do it for me."
Seconds later, the phone fell from my hand to thud onto the carpet. I watched it tumble with a distant gaze. "We have seven days," I said remotely.
"What happened?" Goodfellow demanded. "Did you speak with Georgina?" Niko said nothing at all; neither did Flay, whose exceptionally sharp ears had flattened to his head. They knew… both of them.
"Seven days," I repeated, and then I turned and walked away.
"Not your fault."
He hadn't made her cry. Couldn't make her cry. It would've gone easier for her if she had just given him what he wanted.
"Not your fault."
An exoneration… absolution. And yet it didn't make hearing the sound of the thudding blow and the switchblade snicking to life any more bearable. Funny how that worked.
I walked through the apartment and on out. No mirrors to be found. We'd made sure of that. But the lobby had one. It hung over a cheap table with an even cheaper vase host to plastic flowers. Small and oval—a silver window that had once nearly ended my soul and had ended my life. Briefly. Since then mirrors had been a phobia that ruled by mundane details. Looking away from my reflection in plate-glass windows. Averting my eyes from every mirror in every public place. But now I was ready to look. I needed to look… needed to see. With my back to it, I took a breath that filled my chest to the aching point. And then I turned. You'd think I'd expect to see a monster, a long-dead one or maybe a brand-new one with an intimately familiar face. I didn't, though, and I hadn't expected to at all. In the end, I saw exactly what I'd suspected I would.
There was nothing there…
Nothing at all.
Not even me.
Chapter 16
She was just a girl, Georgina King.
Granted, she was a girl in trouble, but that didn't change who she was. A girl who was nothing special to me. Yeah, I'd do my best to help her, like the others would. Give my life to save hers—because it was the right thing to do. She was an innocent… I was not. It was a fair trade. But George? George herself?
George was only a girl I knew.
Too bad I hadn't figured that out sooner. It would've saved me a lot of melodramatic brooding. And Goodfellow would be the first to say I didn't need any extra encouragement there.
Just a girl… it was the only way I could survive.
"You're cleaning your gun."
I rolled my eyes upward to see Niko gazing down at me with an overly bland expression. I recognized the look. He was perturbed by something. "You made it clear that my ass was lazing in that department."
"I did," he admitted, brow furrowing lightly. "But since when do you actually listen to me?"
I turned back to the task at hand. Cleaning the barrel with the rod and a solvent-soaked patch, I said seriously, "I always listen, Cyrano. I'd be damn stupid not to."
He considered that for a moment and sat at the table with me. "It worries me to no end that you're actually admitting that." When I responded with only an absent nod, he moved on. "Where did you go earlier? After the call?" He paused. "Can you tell me?"
"Sure." I finished with the barrel and began to oil the disassembled parts. "I went downstairs to the lobby."
He picked up on the implications of that with lightning speed. "The mirror."
"We can get another one for our bathroom, if you want," I said, putting the weapon back together with several movements more practiced than they had the right to be. "I'm over that now. Pretty stupid shit to begin with, wasn't it?"
"Hell." He stared at me, lines bracketing his mouth. "You've… hell."
I completed the thought for him. "Gone off the deep end?" The corner of my mouth quirked up. "Wasn't a long trip for me, was it?" I started on the next gun. It was a new Glock that I'd gotten to replace the one lost at Moonshine. "Seriously, Nik, I'm okay. Actually, I'm better than okay—I'm functional. And right now, that's what we need."
He was far from convinced, I could tell. I pushed the Magnum in his direction. Something to keep his mind off his worries. "Clean it?" When his eyes darkened dangerously, I said reasonably, "You know you'll do a better job of it."
His disquiet didn't fade, but he took the gun in hand. "That's a given."
"Did Flay say who Caleb took?" I squirted more cleaning solution on another swab. "You know, to keep him in line."
"His son." Niko shook his head grimly and went to work on the Magnum. "He's three."
"Caleb, he's making friends right and left." I shook my head and clucked a tongue. I absolutely did not think of a small child. A little fuzzy no doubt, but as afraid and lost as any human child.
"Flay had no choice. That hardly means he's on our side or even a decent creature, but we have to recognize he was powerless in this situation."