“It most definitely wasn’t you,” Niko said, “or another puck. Besides you, vampires, and peris, I don’t know any paien that associate with humans. What kind of paien is Spring-heeled Jack exactly?”
“Not me?” Goodfellow put away both flasks and gave a predatory grin. “Are you sure? I do have a preoccupation with licking the velvet-skinned throats of blond women and blond men. Blond anything really.”
“Put it back in your pants.” I snorted. “And even you couldn’t leave a hickey the size of a hand.”
Apparently I was wrong as he continued to grin. Niko frowned impatiently. “Goodfellow, we have a vicious paien serial killer roaming free skinning people alive. Focus. And if you continue with your lecherous behavior, I’ll tell Ishiah.”
Goodfellow stretched his arms, spread his fingers, then linked them to put his hands behind his head. “Feel free. He accepted me as I am and although I am giving monogamy a try, it wasn’t a requirement. And I still talk the talk and look the look.” The grin grew wider. “I’d have to be dead for that to stop. As for what Jack is”—the grin disappeared—“I don’t know. I wasn’t in England then. I’ve not seen him. Let me think on it.” Rolling eyes in my direction, he continued, “I will need more alcohol. It’s far too early to be thinking. Morning mounting is mostly muscle memory and a nice alliteration, but thinking . . . for that I’ll have to bribe my brain.”
I raided the fridge for two six-packs: one for him and one for me. Yeah, nice alliteration and one I was going to do my best to scrub from my own brain cells. As he looked down his nose at anything as common as beer, I was pouring Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper into a glass with the beer on top of that. Beer for the amnesia, the rest for caffeinated coherence. I wasn’t good with mornings either. I considered one or two p.m. still morning. I considered five thirty a.m. an abomination. If Hell had existed, it would always be five thirty there.
“Seriously?” Goodfellow asked dubiously as he watched me mixing the brew with the combat knife that had proved useless against Jacky-boy or what might be Jacky-boy as Robin remained on the fence there. At least the puck was distracted from his own horrifyingly domestic brew.
“Dr. Dew. Good for what ails you and a barrelful will decompose a body if you’re out of sulfuric acid.” I had no idea if that was true, but it sounded true. It also felt true as the first swallow hit my stomach and became a miniature nuclear explosion. I was back on the couch and guzzling. When I felt my eyes begin to burn and my nerves do a convulsive dance, I said, “Okay, I’m awake. For about forty minutes. Jack—our monster of the month. Maybe. Go.”
Robin had finished his first, second—hell, he was on his fifth beer in less than a minute. “Black, fog or mist, possible wings, the ozone smell you said, I’m thinking some sort of storm paien. Too bad it’s not a parasite, looking only to drain energy. They’re more pests than anything. This one, however, sounds far above the pest category. Hopefully it’s a creature or spirit and not a god.” Yeah, we’d fought pseudo-gods before. Not fun. “Perhaps in earlier days he associated with uptight humans. Your people are quite good at that, labeling anything such as sex, gambling, and drinking as being depraved.” All of which happened to be the puck’s favorite activities. “Insanity beyond the pale. You said Ishiah was certain all the victims were human, yes? That would make sense if he clung to humankind for a pace. We hate what we love and love what we hate. Let me consider this for a moment longer.”
All human victims. Or at least partly human when it came to me. Then once tasted, I was off the menu. That hurt my feelings.
As Goodfellow closed his eyes to concentrate, I finished my Dr. Dew. When I came back with a second one, my knife that had been on the coffee table was gone. I glared at Niko, who was drinking soy milk with the obvious delusion there was some sort of taste to it.
“When you stop twitching like a lab rat with electrodes in his brain, you’ll get it back,” he responded calmly. “Stir your poisonous concoction with your finger and if it eats the flesh from your bone don’t come crying to me.”
I stirred, drank, and growled. My finger turned slightly red but that was probably psychosomatic. When I said so, Niko told me I didn’t have the depth of imagination for a psychosomatic disorder. I poured half of the Dr. Dew in his grass milk. He poured all his milk over my head. Normally he would’ve flipped me over the couch, but this was his way of being considerate of my stitches.
“This is what you do while I think?” Robin’s eyes were now open. “Squabble like children in a sandbox?”
“No, usually I kill something when I’m bored, but there’s nothing here to kill except you,” I complained halfheartedly. “And Niko hid my knife.” I tried to wring the milk out of my sopping hair.
“Lack of an immediately convenient weapon. Never was there a truer sign of friendship.” He got to his feet. “I have an idea or two and someone to verify them. Fortunately, her business is open twenty-four hours a day. She’ll be awake. Let us go.”
“How about a shower first?” I complained.
“No, leave the milk.” His lips curved in a way I long recognized as being at my expense. “She’ll like you better for it. Apollo knows, you need all the brightening of your personality that you can get.”
“But . . . milk?”
“Milk,” he confirmed at the door before pausing.
“Oh. And a dead rat if you happen to have one.”
“A cathouse? You brought us to a whorehouse?” Niko, arms folded and eyebrows furrowed, looked up at the face of the four-story brownstone built of warm-colored stone and accented with creamy white. Nice. Expensive. Classy. This wasn’t the place if you wanted a quick fifty-buck suck-and-fuck.
“Now you sound as judgmental as Jack-the-skinner-Sprat, if that’s who it is. And it’s not a cathouse. It is the Cathouse. It has existed for well over four thousand years in different locations. I have stock in it. It’s quite profitable . . . except for the kilos of catnip they go through monthly. That does eat into the profit. But we all have our vices.”
It had been a twenty-minute cab ride here and I now smelled like sour milk. I had two guns under my jacket and Niko had given me my KA-BAR knife back, but my mood was not good. There was the caffeine crash combined with the itch of new stitches and it was still too goddamn early for anyone or anything to be upright and viable for life.
Sometimes I hated my job.
I ignored the doorbell, a softly glowing button surrounded by a curved brass sleeping mouse, and pounded on the door. “We’re three little kittens who’ve lost our mittens. Ah, the hell with it. It’s a whorehouse.” I pounded on the door again. “Kits who need tits. Open up.”
“I wish I could believe he was drunk. But I know his Auphe metabolism better,” Robin grumbled as he nudged me aside to press the bell. “Are you certain you raised him or did you let Hannibal Lecter babysit him? Genghis Khan? Attila the Hun? Please, enlighten me.”
Niko was undisturbed per usual. “Cal is his own person. I learned at a young age to accept that or step in front of a bus and move on to my next incarnation.”
Goodfellow gave a peculiar hum. “You always have been a glutton for punishment. Over and over and over again.” It sounded, best guess, half smug and half melancholy and entirely more specific than his usual random comments on Niko’s Buddhist philosophy. My general annoyance factor needed no extra commentary, apparently, but before I could ask him anything he was already ringing the bell again.
“Why are we here? You wanted proof. How are we going to find proof here?” I asked.