I shrugged and nodded, my face so studiously blank that it hurt.
He didn't seem to feel much better about it, but he did continue. "He blamed himself, you know. For losing you to Darkling and for getting you back only to lose you again. He never said a word about it, but he didn't have to… It was so clear. And then there was the gate. You and that thrice-damned gate." The long-fingered hand swooped with agitation through the brown curls. "What else could he do?"
Nothing. There was nothing he could've done except kill me. Which he should have… would have, in fact, except for what he'd seen at the very end. In Darkling's hesitation, he'd seen my hand reaching out for his. He'd seen me, when I hadn't even seen myself.
But if things had been different, if he'd been forced to free me in the only way left to him, then Niko wouldn't have walked away from that warehouse. He wouldn't have walked away from me. I knew that as well as I knew anything in this world. We'd always been together in this life. We'd always be together elsewhere as well.
"It's okay." I smiled reassuringly at Goodfellow. "He did what he had to do." I never had any doubts about that; I never would. Sharp green eyes studied me, then, reassured, took me at my word.
A sleepy grumble from Catcher brought us around. "Sorry," I apologized to the wolf. "We'll get out of your room."
"His room?" Robin exhaled, palpably relieved to be focusing on something else. He looked around, his gaze caught by the tumbleweeds of reddish hair peeking from beneath the bed. It then focused on the world's largest rawhide bone against one baseboard, and a bowl of water sitting on a folded towel. "Ah. Quite a few of these things are his, aren't they?"
I took a look around myself. There was a beat-up acoustic guitar propped in one corner, a pair of skis in another. An open closet door showed hanging clothes with sneakers and a battered basketball on the floor. The bureau had a coating of dust, along with a handful of change, a wallet, and, at the far end, a framed picture. In comparison, the glass and frame were spotless, not a speck of dust on them anywhere. Two men stood on a ski slope, their arms slung casually over each other's shoulders. One was Rafferty, his head topped with a knit hat pulled down to his ears, and his nose red as fire from the cold. The other man, unless you looked with extreme care, looked enough like him to be his twin and not the cousin he was. The auburn hair was half a shade darker and the amber eyes a full shade lighter… yellow, in fact.
Turning my attention to identical yellow eyes, I sensed an agreement, an implied permission, in them before they shut once more. "They're all his things," I said quietly to Robin. "Every last one of them." Ushering Goodfellow out of the room, I left Catcher alone with the remnants of his old life and the harsh realities of his present one.
Robin looked understandably mystified. He peered over my shoulder back into the room. "But…" At my frown he lowered his voice, not that it would make much difference. Catcher would still hear. "He's not a werewolf. He doesn't have the slightest hint of otherworldliness about him at all. How can that be?"
"It's not my story to tell." I continued to urge him down the hall. "You'll have to ask Rafferty. I guess it'd be a toss-up as to whether he'd tell you or just punch you in the nose." Rafferty wasn't much on "sharing" or airing his family's laundry, dirty or otherwise, to anyone. Still… Robin had done a lot for Nik and me. He'd risked his life many times over for us, virtual strangers, when the smartest thing to do would've been to run for the hills. I owed him more than I could repay. Relenting, I murmured, "Catcher's sick. And it's not the kind of sick Rafferty can heal." There was more to the story than that, I sensed, much more, but that was all I knew.
Stopping at the bathroom door, I changed the subject. "I'm going to grab a shower." The fastidious wrinkle of Goodfellow's nose commented that might not be such a bad idea. I snorted, half annoyed, half amused. "You're something else, Goodfellow. It's almost enough to make me forget you saved my ass."
"Not just your ass," he reminded me with a haughty rise of his eyebrows. "It was the asses of all mankind. In fact, savior of the world wouldn't be an exaggeration. Hmmm, I wonder if I could get that on a plaque for my office wall. A nice gold finish. Polished rosewood. My face staring nobly into the distance."
The sad thing was that he probably would. The puck did love to provoke. Irritating, vain, self-absorbed, complacent as hell, and with a sexual appetite that would've had Mae West running for her mother, that was Robin Goodfellow all over. But in addition to that, he was loyal, intelligent, courageous in the heat of battle, and defiant in the face of death. Without him we wouldn't have survived. I'd still be lost inside a monster and Niko would be dead… or worse yet, unmade. It was a debt I would never forget. "Robin…"
The self-satisfied expression on Goodfellow's mobile face shifted to something more rueful and true. "Don't. Let's not ruin my reputation. What would my fans think?"
"Probably the same thing I do. That you're one helluva guy," I said with the utmost sincerity. "I owe you, Goodfellow. I won't forget that." Putting a hand on his shoulder, I squeezed it and then gave him a light push. Smiling, I added, "After all, you said it yourself on the way up here, right? You're a hero. And, Robin? You really are. Doubt anything else you want to, but never doubt that."
He eyed me with an uncertainty I hadn't known he was capable of. "A hero," he echoed, bemused, as if the meaning escaped him. Although I believed it wholeheartedly, it might be a while before Robin could bring himself to.
"Doesn't mean you're not still a pain in the ass, though," I pointed out with a grin before walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind me. I doubted he noticed I was gone. Through the door I heard him repeat "hero" again. The word had a wholly different inflection to it now from the self-mocking version he'd labeled himself with in the car. Maybe if he said it often enough, he'd finally take it to heart. I hoped so. He deserved to.
I undressed and examined the wound on my stomach. Rafferty did nice work. It was completely healed, leaving only a fading purple ridge of scar tissue. Touching a finger to it, I thought of what it must have cost Niko to do what he'd done. What it was still costing him even now. As dark and worrisome as that thought was, something pulled my attention from it. Like diamonds it glittered in the corner of my eye.
The mirror.
Funny how something so innocuous and commonplace could turn so quickly into the scuttle of a scorpion, the slither of a snake, the hand breaking through the grave. So why wasn't I laughing? Grimly, I turned the shower on full blast. The hard-running water provided covering sound as I wrapped a towel around my fist and shattered the mirror over the sink. Only then could I turn my back on it and climb into the shower. Only then did I feel safe.
The shower was actually an old iron claw-foot bathtub. It'd seen better days, like most of us. The shower curtain looped around it on a metal pole bent into a U. There was rust on the tub's outer belly, orange stains on the pregnant curve of a waddling hippo. But on the inside it was sparkling clean and smelled strongly of soap. I picked up a bar and sudsed it absently in my hands as the steaming water flattened my hair and ran in rivulets down my body. It wasn't long before the soap squirted from my grip and landed with a clunk on the tub bottom. I looked at it blankly. At that particular moment picking it up seemed… pointless. And not merely mundanely so, but senseless on a cosmic scale. Like it was fate that the soap should be lying there, melting in the falling water. Since I'd gone toe-to-toe with destiny and fate fairly recently, I decided I'd do something else this time. Sitting down in the bathtub, I rested my head in my hands. And then?