"Well, he's not powerless now," I pointed out. "He can help us and help his cub all in one. Bonus points all around."
"Yes, and I'm sure that's a great comfort to him right now," he said impassively.
Yeah, probably not. "Goodfellow come up with any leads?"
"He's close, he says. Very close."
Very close turned out to be three days and over a thousand miles away. Lady Lucia, Florida. I'd thought it was sweltering at home; these people breathed lava masquerading as oxygen and somehow managed to keep from spontaneously combusting as they walked in the noontime sun. Promise, who trusted her cloaks and sunblock only so far, stayed in the RV. With the nonvampires of our group practically bursting into flames, I didn't blame her.
"It's hot." I averted my eyes from the unholy white fire shimmering in the midst of a hard blue sky.
"Yes, you said that." From behind opaque black glasses, Niko scanned the shimmering stretch of dead yellow grass that covered the field before us.
"It bears repeating." I wiped at the sweat on my forehead that had formed the nanosecond after I'd wiped the previous moisture away.
"It's closer than the inside of Hephaestus's jock-strap." Goodfellow shaded his eyes, then hissed in outrage when he caught sight of the darkening of his shirt around his neck and underarms. "I'm perspiring." He pulled his shirt away from his chest with fastidious fingers. "Sweat, actual sweat, and there's not even sex involved. It's an abomination." He turned and started back toward the RV he'd provided for the trip. "I'll wait inside with Promise."
Niko snared him by the arm and pulled him to a stop. "We may need you, Goodfellow."
"Suck it up, Loman," I grunted. "You don't hear Snowball bitching."
"He's panting too hard to breathe, much less complain," Robin grumbled.
Unfortunate, but true. Flay, while back in what passed as his human form, was panting with gusto. It was an odd look—a well-dressed albino man with a mane of hair and a continuously moving red tongue. He was wearing a pair of black jeans that belonged to Niko and one of Goodfellow's silk shirts. He'd given a derogatory sniff at the offer of one of my shirts. I loved that. The pound reject thought my stuff wasn't fashionable enough for him. Or more likely, he'd been yanking my chain. There wasn't a whole lot of love lost between the two of us, and while Flay was cooperating with us, it didn't stop him from taking a swipe here and there. I didn't hold any grudges. I tried to torture him while he was comatose; he scorned my clothes. If that's all I had coming to me, I was ahead of the game.
Flay's tongue was dotting his shirt with saliva as he growled with frustration. "Wait."
He disappeared back into our home away from home. Goodfellow had gotten the RV on loan from one of his fellow sales sharks. It slept six, had a bathroom and a kitchen, and all in all was about the size of our apartment. At least it had seemed that way the first few hours. As time wore on, it began to rapidly shrink. Ten hours into the trip it was approximately the size of a shoe box. Even a clean Flay had a pungent musky dog smell that followed him wherever he went, and to add insult to injury, it turned out that one of the most dangerous men alive, Niko, was allergic to dander.
Less than three minutes later, Flay was back… wearing orange-and-black plaid shorts and a T-shirt that read FLORIDA, THE SUNSHINE STATE.
Goodfellow winced. "I don't want to live anymore. I honestly don't."
Well-muscled but transparently pale legs were covered liberally with a dense mat of curly white hair, but it was the frighteningly long, horrifically furry toes revealed by thong sandals that were the crowning touch. Flay scowled at Robin and offered smugly, "Promise said look good. Promise likes way I look."
Promise had picked up a new admirer during the trip, or at least it had seemed that way at first. It wouldn't have been a big surprise, Promise being Promise, but it did give new meaning to the phrase "puppy love." Every inch that she moved in the RV, soulful ruby eyes would follow her. During meals, the best and biggest portion of the fast-food fare would be snatched up and placed before her. A definite, raving doggy-style crush, I'd thought, until I caught the wicked grin Flay flashed at Niko's back. It was all about revenge… annoying, evil, but basically harmless revenge. It should've been funny, but truthfully, nothing was funny much anymore. The world was all gray now. But, hey, you know what they say. You take the bad with the good. Balance. I was all about the balance now.
"Yeah, you're styling," I muttered, grabbing his arm to push him into motion. "Let's go."
We headed across the field toward a gathering of RVs, some similar to ours and some barely mobile, from the looks of them. They all squeaked under that bizarrely blue sky with nothing but swamp as far as the eye could see. After living in New York for a few years, I felt small and exposed in the midst of all this open space. It made me want to pull my knife on the off chance that an alligator or a rabid monkey jumped out of the scraggly brush. They had monkeys down here, didn't they?
Lady Lucia was in southern Florida, land of gators and pissed-off monkeys, and no one could tell me differently. A near ghost town, it was nowhere near the ocean or a pretty, pristine lake. It sat on the edge of the Everglades and the local industry seemed to be mosquito ranching. I slapped the one on my neck and kept moving. We'd been phenomenally lucky. Of course, George would've said it wasn't luck, that it was the way things were meant to be. Meant… to… be. I slapped my neck again, thought gray thoughts, and kept trudging.
Goodfellow, purveyor of this fabulous luck, had connections with a few Gypsy tribes—like we didn't see that coming. After a few hundred calls he'd finally pinned a rumor on one particular tribe. The Sarzo tribe had emigrated from Eastern Europe nearly seventy years ago. They tended to follow a route all over the country, but Lady Lucia was their home base, as much as Gypsies had a stationary home. The Sarzo also boasted of the oldest lineage among Gypsies. Once upon a very long time ago, they'd been a tribe of half-naked nomads when the wheel was still five thousand years away from being the latest and greatest. They'd also known the Bassa. The Bassa had been nomads too… following the sun. Cold-blooded and reptilian, the Bassa weren't huge fans of winter weather. They'd been allies, those who would become the Sarzo and a species who'd slithered rather than walked. If the Bassa had left anything behind, the Sarzo would know about it.
Or so went the theory.
Theories were great, but I was never one to underestimate the invariably piss-poor mood of reality. As we walked on, a few people began to venture out into the heat. Not many, only a few sharp-eyed men and an even sharper-eyed old woman. "Is it like coming home?" Robin asked as we walked.
He knew something about our lives, Goodfellow, but he didn't know everything. This happened to be one of the things he didn't know. He knew Niko and I were Gypsy. I was half, and we really didn't know what Niko was. He could be half, could be whole. Sophia, not one to answer what she considered boring questions, had actually answered that one. She didn't know. Couldn't narrow it down if she was sober and had a week to think it over. It could've been a Gypsy from her tribe. The blond hair meant nothing. Sophia's clan had traveled much of Europe, dwelling in Greece for a time. They'd intermarried there on occasion, although it was frowned on by both sides. A blond northern Greek had slipped in there somewhere. We'd seen evidence of that in the few pictures Sophia had taken with her; they were scattered carelessly in the bottom of a small trunk that held her fortune-teller costumes. Groups of close-faced, dark-skinned Gypsies with one or two bright heads spotted throughout like patches of sun. With his olive skin, Niko could be one of them, but there was no way to be sure. Sophia had left her people before Niko was born. Half or whole, neither of us had been nourished in the welcoming arms of Sophia's kin. It made it difficult to consider them ours.