He tilted his head, staring at me. I saw emotions roiling behind his eyes. Some I recognized: worry, resignation, and others I couldn’t make out. I hadn’t failed to read Cal’s feelings, any of them, in his short life. This was the first time. “Cal? You do see?”
“I can see how you see that.” He shook his head, long bangs flopping. “But that’s not the way it is. He doesn’t work at a slaughterhouse and he’s not a butcher. He kills people and puts them in his basement.”
“Why?” I demanded, frustration peaking as hard as I was trying to hold it back. “Why are you so sure of that?” Why are you so sure that it’s all bad? Everything? I couldn’t let myself believe that, because how could I hope to find us lives someday, real lives, if he was right?
He echoed my finger tap to the back of his hand. This time his finger, almost as white as his homework paper, tapped and clashed with the dusky brown of my skin. This touch didn’t hold reassurance like mine had though—it held pity for me that I didn’t know. That I was four years older, but I was the one who couldn’t see, not him.
“Because this is the real world,” he said almost apologetically.
Plain and straightforward as it came.
“And this is just the way things are, Nik.”
He picked up his folder and headed for the bedroom. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t get it. That you don’t see.”
He paused to smile. I’d seen that smile before and it never failed to make my chest ache. It was touched with a near-adult bitterness that looked to have been carved into his face with the blade of that fictional serial killer. “But maybe monsters and half monsters are the only things that can see.”
Eleven years old and that’s what he thought of the world. What he thought of himself.
He closed the bedroom door behind him, leaving behind emotions that this time I could read. Disappointment that I didn’t automatically accept and trust in what he thought. Worry for me that I didn’t know enough about the real world. Worry for me—a kid that could’ve been shot crawling around the back of a stranger’s house and it was me that he spent his concern on.
I pulled the black rubber band out of my hair to let my short ponytail fall free, a few dark blond strands hanging in my eyes. It didn’t help my headache like I’d hoped. I could take Tylenol for that, but there wasn’t a pill for the guilt. Guilt that I couldn’t convince Cal the world wasn’t like that, not all of it. Guilt that I couldn’t believe him and possibly ruin a man’s reputation with an anonymous call to the police—not without proof first.
Which meant I’d have to get proof—proof that our neighbor with his cologne of blood did work in a slaughterhouse or a meatpacking plant. I would show Cal that not every corner, not every house, not every street, and not every minute of our lives was touched by hungry shadows. There was sun. There was normal. You had to know only enough to look for them.
Proof, then. It was a plan. I liked plans. I liked order. When everything was sorted and in its place, the out-of-control became routine and the routine became tolerable. I heaved out of the chair and moved to the sink to work on the pot crusted with blackened pseudo-pasta. Self-pity was a luxury I didn’t have and it rarely made a bad day better. Besides, now I had a plan . . . for one problem at least. I looked over my shoulder at the bedroom.
“Half human,” I said quietly, trying to erase his last words. “Not half monster. Not a ‘thing.’”
He didn’t hear me through the closed door.
If he had, after a day of smelling blood and rot that no one else could . . .
He probably wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
2
Cal
Present Day
“There’s a serial killer in the city.”
Yeah? Really?
And rain was wet, grass was green, the sun set in the west; also, reality shows caused brain tumors.
None of it was precisely fucking news.
“Thanks for the info, boss,” I drawled, bored as I mixed a mojito for Elegua, a dark skinned, cat-eyed African trickster, and slid it across the bar. Yes, a goddamn mojito. He used to drink straight rum while smoking his foul-smelling cigars, but once he started visiting Cuba, he became high maintenance. It was getting a little too fancy in the Ninth Circle lately. I missed the days when beer and whiskey were all we had and haul your furry, scaly, or prehensile tailed self elsewhere if you didn’t like it.
Auld Lang Syne.
“But guess what, Ish?” I wiped my hands on the black apron tied around my waist. “There are probably at least three serial killers in New York. That’s why there’s police. Let them deal with it. And why do you even care? It’s human business, not paien business.” Paien was the pagan world, the supernatural world, and half human or not, the world I’d chosen to live in for five or so years now.
It had been gradual, that. From thinking I was a human with a fraction of monster in him to knowing I was a monster with just a little human seasoning the soup.
I couldn’t say I’d changed sides either. Humans didn’t know monsters existed and damn sure didn’t know about the particular monster I was. If they did, they would run screaming, piss themselves, or be caught up in enough zombie apocalypse movies to try to grab an ax to fight back—the latter never ended well. Then there were the ninety-nine percent of the paien who hated me for the Auphe I carried in my blood. But I went with the paien anyway the majority of the time, despite the fact I could’ve pretended with humans and they wouldn’t have known.
But pretending every minute of every day can be tiring. And . . .
Boring.
With the other monsters I could be myself, no matter how much they oh-so-profoundly wished I wouldn’t be.
Sheep aren’t the only ones to piss themselves came the gleeful inner mutter.
I really had to stop thinking of humans as sheep. I’d picked up that bad habit in the past month or so, from the other monsters on the outside, yeah, but primarily the one on the inside. If I said it out loud, my brother would do more than kick my ass. He’d remind me I had human in me too by dunking me in the East River, holding me under for a good three minutes, and calling it negative reinforcement training instead of the overgrown swirly that it was.
Sheep versus human . . . yeah, that might very well point to an identity crisis on my part.
When it comes down to it, I’m a monster. There was some human in me, true, although less all the time. I’d tried to hold on, but life is life. Love it or leave it.
It’s simple. I am a monster.
And I kind of liked it—which is the definition of an identity crisis.
Oh Jesus. Was Ishiah still droning on and on?
Hell. Of course he was. Serial killer. Serial killer. The guy could not take a hint if they were giving them away free with a hooker and a six-pack.
“Because, Caliban, while this serial killer preys only on humans, from what I hear it is not human itself. Very much not human and is skinning people alive. The police will not know what it is, much less be able to catch it.” The peri’s gold-barred white wings flashed into view, disturbed, and then disappeared as he continued to stack glasses. “That makes it your business, doesn’t it?”