“It wasn’t good,” I corrected, vexed. “It was unparalleled. I saved thousands, maybe a hundred thousand souls.” I didn’t invent the big fish story, but I was sure it was a trickster who had. “I’d think I’d get a sainthood at the very least.”
“A hundred thousand souls saved, but did they all deserve to be saved?”
The voice of conscience. I was glad it lived in NYC and not here. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought some of the souls might not be rightfully damned. Abusers, murderers, but I knew, I’d seen that one Rose hadn’t deserved anything close to damnation. Leo had promised to pass along the word via his family. Our afterlives weren’t Heaven or Hell. There was more leeway, more flexibility between what was evil and what was only naughty. Most of the souls would find the home they were due. Justice would be served, and if some did escape to wander alone, unable to touch the real world or any world for the rest of eternity, that was a punishment all its own.
“Your rules aren’t necessarily our rules. I saved an innocent girl. I tricked Hell—that’s what I was born to do. Chirp away, Jiminy. It won’t do you any good.” He kept the chirping silent, but it was implicit in the way he held himself as we walked back to the bar. Stiff back, tight jaw, braced shoulders.
At Trixsta’s door—Leo had the glass fixed . . . nice of him—I stopped. “You didn’t ask what Cronus wanted. What he really wanted.”
“After what you did by conning Eligos, truthfully, I’m afraid to ask. You put yourself in Hell’s crosshairs. Made yourself the target of every demon alive. I don’t think you could survive that, trickster or not. That makes me think you took a huge risk because you know what Cronus wants and it’s something you aren’t going to walk away from . . . that chances are good that no one is walking away from. Plus, if you were going to tell me, you would have by now, and I know how impossible it is to pin down an uncooperative trickster. Heaven won’t like it, but I know better than to think I can do anything to change that. You’ll tell me when you want to and no sooner.”
He was right . . . about it all. I took his arm and turned him from the door after calling for Leo. “Leo will take you to the airport, Ish. Go back home to New York and sex up Goodfellow five ways to Sunday. Hold on to what you have now. There’s no guarantee the world will keep turning. That’s true of any day, but with Cronus here, it’s even more true . . . so go home. Give Robin my best.” As Leo stepped outside, I asked him if he would take Ish to the airport and he did his pissed-but-I-am-stoic-and-rise-above-it expression. I smiled, squeezed his arm, and urged the both of them toward the alley and Leo’s car. I’d called the restaurant this morning too. My car was long gone—to the tow yard or Mexico. “But whatever you do,” I called to Ishiah, “stay out of his pantry.”
Puzzlement and annoyed jealousy crossed the peri’s face before he shook his head in resignation. “Tricksters.” He asked one last time, “Are you positive you don’t want to tell me? Who knows? It might save your life.” Against Cronus? I wished Heaven had that kind of power. I wished anyone did. I shook my head and made a shooing gesture as if he were a particularly stubborn rooster and I was all out of corn. “Damn tricksters,” he embellished.
He was disappearing into the alley when I challenged after him. “So close to blasphemy. So close.”
The only thing he left behind was his growl to call him when I needed the help—not if, but when. It was irritating that he knew that I would. I almost hoped Goodfellow didn’t give him any.
A puck not give it up? That would never happen.
After they left in Leo’s car and I waved to them, I went into the bar, five . . . ten steps. Eligos came up through the floor as if it was nothing more than a hallucinatory mist instead of hardwood—the shattered hole about the size of a well’s mouth. His claws tangled in my shirt, and we kept going up. When we hit the ceiling, it was the same as the floor . . . to Eli. I was in a human body, however, not demon, and it hurt, even with Eli ahead of me—by a nose, like they said at the racetrack, by a nose.
By nearly a foot, a head, in his case. He was in full demon form—copper scales, thrashing wings, a narrow dragon’s jaw, broken glass teeth, a fury-filled black gaze with swirling specks as brilliant as coins weighing down a dead man’s eyes. I caught flashes of all that as wood splinters, paint chips, and plaster chunks and dust fell around us as we ended up in my bedroom. If Eli hadn’t been leading the way clearing a path, I would’ve broken my neck on the ceiling or crushed my skull or, hell, both.
We hovered in the air in my bedroom as I all but swallowed my tongue to keep from coughing at the dust or make a sound at the tearing pain in my shoulders that had scraped through Eli’s new “door.” A fully functioning shape-shifting trickster wouldn’t, so I couldn’t. “Lying bitch.” It was calmly said, but the movement that went with it was anything but restrained. I flew through the air and landed on the bed... almost. I never appreciated the difference “almost” could make until I hit the floor on my back. I’d fallen there like an autumn leaf . . . if an autumn leaf weighed a buck thirty.
Buck thirty-five.
Buck . . . no one’s goddamn business.
I had red and gold scarves on the ceiling, hanging like billowing sails or the canopy of the bed of a princess. I didn’t feel much like a princess right then, but I did feel as if I were sailing. On a smooth glassy surface . . . not a ripple—only me and the red-gold of a setting sun as I drifted silently. Then the falling sun was gone and the Fallen took its place—fallen leaves, fallen suns, fallen God’s own.
Everything fell, sooner or later.
“Lying, lying bitch. Useless païen filth. Not worth one-fifth the soul of a common whore.” The teeth touched the skin of my face. “Cronus is still taking wings. Giving up those souls accomplished nothing.”
I had told him this might be the case. A convincing lie cannot be told without some shred of truth to it. I blinked at the plaster dust in my eyes and took a shallow breath, the best I could do after most of the air had been forced from my lungs when I hit the floor. I gave Eligos the best imitation of a triumphant smile as I could, considering the pain and lack of air that, thanks to the reaction to my smile, didn’t get any better.
Eli hissed and wrapped his hands around my throat. They started out covered with scales and equipped with talons but in a short second turned human—as did the face inches from mine. “Thousands and thousands of souls gone and Cronus didn’t give one good goddamn. Or two or three goddamns.” The hands tightened. I didn’t struggle. If I did, he’d see I was still weak. I could go for the gun in the small of my back, but I wouldn’t make it with his weight on top of me. There was nothing I could successfully do to escape him. I was hurt, dazed, and I was being choked to death, and there was only one thing I could do that might save my life—use the weapon I’d been born with that required no shape-shifting at all.
I kept smiling.
I didn’t let my body buck against the lack of oxygen as it was so desperate to do. I didn’t rip at his hands. If I was turning blue, I did my best to make it look like a good color on me—this year’s must-have—and I smiled up at that impossibly handsome face. His impossible face, my impossible smile, an impossible thing not to struggle for air. But I was out of all choices except one. So I smiled as my lungs burned as if they were torched from the inside out. I even smiled as dark blotches began to slide across my vision . . . from sunsets to storm clouds.
Then another impossible thing happened. The pressure around my neck eased. I could breathe. I did, in slow and even breaths as if I hadn’t missed a one, much less many. They, mainly Buddhist monks, say you can control your body in more ways than you can imagine—slow your heart, your respiration, fly above the needs of your physical self. That was nice for them, but I still would’ve liked to have seen the Buddhist monk who wouldn’t have gasped for air and tried to claw Eli’s face off right then. The first at least . . . They were better about not seeking vengeance than I was. You don’t see many face-ripping Buddhist monks. Good men, very good, very patient men.