Valid, yes. Polite and conciliatory, perhaps no.
“And, honestly? A heart attack. In your shape? Even your last girlfriend’s IQ wasn’t low enough to believe that old urban legend.”
That hadn’t improved the situation any. In my defense, at the time I’d still been a little fuzzy, and had had my ass kicked by a demon—which had never happened before. Never. I’d been somewhat out of it with my ego off crying in a mental corner. I had pulled off the Roses. I had talked Eli, more or less, out of killing me . . . for a while, but a demon had still taken me down. That had been hard to swallow and harder to admit when Leo had demanded to know what had turned my bar and apartment into a Habitrail for the world’s largest hamster, with holes and tunnels everywhere.
The termite explanation wasn’t my best lie ever. It hadn’t gone over well and while he’d stripped me down, followed suit, gotten in the claw-foot tub, and turned on the shower to wash me clean of dust, dirt, and the occasional streak of dried blood, I’d told him the truth. I always told Leo the truth eventually. This time it was more painful than the scrapes and bruises that covered my arms from shoulder to elbow and blotched my ribs. Damn it, it was worse than painful. It was mortifying and beyond, so much so that it wasn’t until I was sitting on the edge of my bed while wrapped in a robe, that I realized I’d missed something.
“We were naked.” I’d stopped finger-combing the sopping wet tangle of my hair. “We were naked in the shower . . . together. You and me.”
“Yes, we were and you were so busy telling me how you are the best damn trickster on the planet despite Eligos beating you nearly unconscious that it escaped you until this second.” Impatient hands had dumped a towel on my head and briskly dried my hair from soaked to just damp. “All hail the queen. You can trick, fool, and fleece anyone, but notice when we’re both nude and slippery from soap, inches away from each other? Now that you miss.” The towel had dropped into my lap as I’d been summarily informed, “We’re going to the hospital, Your Majesty. Put some clothes on. Or walk around nude. It apparently makes no difference to you either way.”
That was how I ended up surrounded by pissed-off people. After a less than quick visit to the ER—bumps and contusions, nothing broken, take some Tylenol and suck it up, said the good doctor—Leo and I had ended up in Griffin’s room. He’d been upgraded during the night from an ER curtained cubicle to an actual room with a view. The view was of another wall of the hospital, but it was a private room, which was good. A roommate wouldn’t have appreciated the show that was going on. If I thought Leo was irritated—massively, volcanically irritated, then Zeke was a nuclear bomb.
“I said I’ll do it.”
I leaned in the doorway, gratefully—Tylenol wasn’t the miracle cure-all that the doctor had assured me it was—and watched as Zeke faced down a nurse’s aide who held a plastic basin full of soapy water and wore a stubborn expression that said if anyone was going to see Griffin in his birthday suit, it was going to be her. Considering she no doubt had seen more than her share of shriveled eighty-year-old penises in this place, enough to last her a lifetime, I didn’t blame her for standing her ground to get a peek at something more aesthetic.
“I’m a professional. This is my job,” she said firmly.
“And this”—Zeke jerked his thumb at Griffin in the bed—“is mine. Period. If anyone gives him a bath, it’s gonna be me.”
Griffin groaned. “How about I do it myself? Will that simplify things?”
“Fine.” The nurse’s aide deposited the basin on the bedside table and slapped the towels against Zeke’s chest. “He’s all yours. Maybe I can actually take my break tonight.”
Zeke didn’t move except to hold the towels until she was gone. He was a good warrior. He waited until any possible threat was either out of range or disabled, his attention fixed, stance ready. I started to imagine how he would’ve disabled her if she hadn’t given up without a fight, but that led to progressively worse and worse mental pictures, and I stopped at the one of Zeke trying to stuff the towel down the poor overworked woman’s throat.
Giving up the door frame’s support, I passed Zeke, patting him on the shoulder, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Griff, you look . . . worse.”
He snorted. “Thanks. I thought you were supposed to be an excellent liar.”
“When I want to be.” I took his Jell-O. Cherry. Yum. It really is about the small pleasures in life. I ate a spoonful. He did look worse. The bruise had darkened and spread on his face. It looked painful. I hoped they’d given him better painkillers than they’d given me. There were several pieces of paper on the table and I flipped through them. They were covered front and back with curse words. I spotted the German Arschloch Zeke had called me about the day before. In addition to that one, there was a hugely impressive number of English ones written down. If there was one he’d forgotten or that wasn’t applicable, I didn’t see it. “He’s still not talking to you?”
“Oh, he’s speaking volumes in his own way,” Griffin said wryly. “I’m lucky his pen ran out of ink. But I deserve it. He also took my car keys, not that I remember where my car is, and I heard him trying to talk a security guard out of his handcuffs in the hall at breakfast.”
“Trying?” That didn’t sound like the Zeke we knew.
Wriggling his foot out from under the sheet, Griffin lifted it to show where his ankle was cuffed to the rail at the foot of the bed. “Since they took the catheter out, bathroom breaks have been difficult.”
I was about to grin—Zeke learned his lessons differently than the rest of us, but he did learn them—until Leo said, “Handcuffs. Now that is the best idea I’ve heard today.” That was enough to have my momentary slice of happiness fading, but worse yet, it was enough to catch Zeke’s attention.
He accepted that the aide was gone, moved his gaze to Leo, who still stood just inside the door, and then turned to give me the same searching look, that expression he wore when he read someone’s thoughts. “You showered together? And you didn’t have sex? Why would you shower together and not have sex?”
“Oh God.” Griffin covered his eyes with one hand and pulled his foot back hard enough to rattle the cuffs, but there was no getting out of them . . . or the room, as much as he might want to. As loudly as Leo was growling, I knew he wanted to.
“Oh.” Zeke’s attention was back on Leo. “She didn’t notice?” His eyebrows knit, perplexed as his scrutiny dropped about three feet down Leo’s body in an attempt to puzzle out the situation. “Huh.”
“Oh God.” It was repetitive, but that was understandable. Griffin couldn’t get out of the bed, but he could turn on his side and shield his head with the pillow, which he did. I carefully put the spoon down on the table as he disappeared beneath white cotton.
“Spying, Kit? That’s rude. That is very rude.” But this was Zeke and while you did tell him when his behavior was not acceptable, you also made allowances for his differences . . . his uniqueness. That’s when you went to who was truly accountable in the situation. Leo. “You were thinking it loudly enough, he could hear it through your shield?” I charged. Normally no demon, angel, or peri could penetrate our shields unless we weren’t being careful or we were all but screaming in our heads. “Unbelievable. Do you want demons knowing things like, ‘Oh, I’m not quite a god anymore’ along with ‘And my penis is this big’? Do you want Eligos to kill you? Bagging Loki would make his eternity. Besides, it was almost three hours ago. I said I was sorry.” I hadn’t, but I made it a principle to never apologize when a lie will do. “Let it go already.”