With a sideways glance, I took them and handed them to Niko, murmuring into his ear, "I know you two bonded while I was off trying to destroy the world, but exactly how did you go about it?"
The provoked indignation narrowing Nik's eyes was faked, but it helped. It did. As much as it could. "Needlepoint, mainly," he said with a quirk of his lips. "Backgammon on occasion." Cinching the cuffs tight enough to draw a protesting groan, he yanked the panting wolf to his feet. Pointing at the couch, he ordered, "Sit." Foam on his lips, both from near strangulation and fury, Flay staggered, then obeyed. "Good boy. Behave and I won't kill you. Misbehave… and I still won't kill you." Niko didn't smile often, and this tiny, lethal curve of the lips was no exception. "But, Flay, my fluoride-challenged friend, this not killing of you? It will last a week… minimum."
Flay wasn't at the top of his puppy class by any stretch of the imagination, but he got the drift. Ducking his head, bone ivory and scarlet, he stared sullenly downward. White lips writhed. "Behave."
"That is so what Daddy likes to hear." Robin moved over to Niko, then leaned past, and with a motion so fast that I barely caught the blur of it, he rammed a butcher knife from the kitchen into the millimeters-thick space separating Flay's legs. George was cherished, and by more than just me. With the handle resting snugly against his goody bag, the wolf went instantly green. It wasn't as if he could get much paler. "Simply because I'm third in line for your company, you parasite-ridden cur, I don't want you thinking I'll miss my turn," the puck said silkily. Straightening, Goodfellow tilted his head in Nik's direction. "Sorry. I know you chop your tofu with that." Then his eyes cut to me and he gave a disparaging sniff. "Or trim your toenails."
More desperate humor that fell flat, but I appreciated the effort. I appreciated anything that for a split second kept me from picturing George in Caleb's keeping. His not-so-gentle keeping. He'd fooled me, the son of a bitch. I should've known teeth like that are never purely decorative.
"Snowball." I wiped Flay's blood from my hands onto my jeans. "Snowball, Snowball." Resting my foot against the coffee table, I rammed it hard enough against his knees that the wood splintered and he howled in pain. Oddly enough, that fell squarely in the category of things I just didn't give a shit about. When he was done moaning, and it was fairly quick—
Caleb had hired a tough bastard—I asked in a voice empty and sterile, "So, what does the son of a bitch want?"
Flay's voice droned. On and on. A broken chunk of word here, a bit of twisted-metal phrase there—he coughed up Caleb's instructions… along with the occasional spray of blood. Yeah, wasn't that a shame? Not too surprisingly, it wasn't going to be simple. That didn't mean we couldn't do it. We could. To get George back we could do anything. And afterward, Caleb wouldn't live long enough to enjoy his little trinket.
"A crown?" Robin echoed disparagingly. "Really? That look went out long before toupees and polyester did, but if Caleb is so determined, I'm sure any rhinestone-loving street vendor can help him out."
"It… special. Special," Flay pushed out doggedly. He'd already said that. Trouble was, he didn't know what type of special it was. He had a description; hell, he had a full-color sketch in his pocket, but why Caleb lusted after the damn thing… on that, he couldn't guess. That was making the generous assumption Flay had the brain cells to even wonder at his boss's motivation.
On the paper, Caleb's desire was depicted as a simple circlet of metal, an oddly rosy gold. It didn't look like much, but that didn't change the fact that to get it was going to take some doing. Cerberus had it. The Cerberus we'd thought we were dealing with all along. Caleb didn't work for him, but Flay did. Snowball, double agent. It was laughable and even Flay knew it. Niko had asked him why he couldn't sniff around and find the thing himself since he was one of Cerberus's own. "Stupid." Bloody lips twisted. "Stupid. Caleb say. Cerb… erus say." The eyes flared in dull outrage, but there was also acceptance. Flay recognized his limitations, no matter how he might resent them. Since both his bosses derided him, Caleb must've been paying the most. Betraying someone like Cerberus couldn't come cheap.
Flay might not have been smarter than your average toilet fungus, but Caleb was. He'd planned this all perfectly. We'd proved we could take on a wolf as powerful as Boaz. In the same stroke we'd also been given an in with Cerberus. We'd kicked Boaz's ass, maybe killed him. Cerberus couldn't help but have at least a mild interest in someone who had taken down his rival. It would get us an audience with His Furry Majesty if nothing else.
There was more from Flay, but it was all repetition. Useless bullshit. I walked away as Flay mumbled on. Just… walked away. Down the hallway, into Niko's room, and out of the window. The metal of the fire escape clattered under my weight as I sat. The evening air was thick and humid, unwilling to cool, and the snarled traffic moved sluggishly like a turbulent river of overheated metal. I rested folded arms on raised knees and let my eyes unfocus. I kept my eyes on the river, traveling with it as the light disappeared from the sky and hundreds of lights blossomed below. Yellow, white, and eye-searing blue, a river full of stars.
"Is there room?"
Wordlessly, I moved over and Niko settled beside me, shoulder to shoulder. "Goodfellow left to see if he can trace Caleb with his much vaunted 'connections,' " he said quietly after a moment. "He's also taking care of Flay."
I didn't ask what he meant by that. I'd like to have hoped it was shorthand for Robin shoving the wolf headfirst down the garbage disposal, but unfortunately I had my doubts. My brother was too smart for that. Whether we liked it or not, Flay was our only real connection to Caleb and Cerberus. Keeping him alive was the only choice we had, as much as I hated it. Maybe Robin would board him at the nearest kennel and have him neutered while he was at it. Hell, I could dream, couldn't I?
"We have a starting point, Cal. It's something."
I gave a distant nod. Sure. It was something. And the river flowed on.
With olive-skinned hands clasped loosely over a knee, Niko waited. He patiently sat with me in silence, and it was what I needed; it was all I was capable of right then. I didn't try to guess how many hours I was out there or how many Niko sat at my side, but when I finally spoke my voice was rusty with disuse. "What's one more undercover gig, right?"
His eyes moved from the flowing lights to me. "After what you've been through, I never thought there would be a time that I would wish I weren't human. Yet lately it seems to happen more and more."
Niko couldn't go with me. A half Auphe might be reviled, but a human was less than nothing. You don't fraternize with your food. And you definitely don't hire it. "Promise would never let you around all those foxy were-babes anyway." I tried for a grin but my mouth wouldn't cooperate. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the window frame. "You'll still be there, Cyrano, in all the ways that count. Every ass I kick will be thanks to you."
"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.