I clucked my tongue, but I wasn’t mad. If I were a fat little dog, I think I probably would’ve done the same. It was a comfortable bed. He had good taste. I rolled my hand into a loose fist and tucked it under my chin, closed my eyes, and drifted. I dreamed of family. Of traveling the world, as we always had—as our ancestors had—seeing mountains, forests, oceans or water and sand, seeing people of every color and language. Of coming together with my mother, brother, and cousins, laughing and swapping stories, then going our separate ways again. It was a good life, and though each of us was born a wanderer, we kept close—coming together again and again. They were always the best of times, except the last time. Without Kimano.
“Sorry about that,” Kimano said in my dream. He lounged in the chair in the room’s corner, legs sprawled, wearing bathing trunks with a shell necklace around his neck. I could even see the beads of Pacific Ocean water on him. “I’ll bet I deprived Mama of some prime bitching about my work ethic.”
“What work ethic?” Sleep was good. Sleep was wonderful. It was the only place I saw Kimano since that bloody beach.
“True.” He shook his dripping hair as if he were a wet dog, then combed his fingers through it. “But you can work and play at the same time.”
“You could, but you never did, and Mama knew that.” In the dream I sat with my legs tucked under me on the bed, wearing a bikini with plumeria flowers in my hair. Their scent, so unmistakable . . . more of Heaven than Heaven itself . . . filled the air. “But you were still her favorite.” I tried to scowl, but couldn’t pull it off, not in the face of his teasing pleasure.
“The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” He tapped his foot on the side of the chair, dumping a rain of sand on my rug.
“The lazy wheel, you mean, and cut that out.” But once again I didn’t mean it, not really. Kimano was Kimano. It would be like getting angry at the wind or the moon. He was what he was and I liked that. I loved that. I missed that. I missed that so much.
“I’m gone, you know,” he said abruptly, sitting up with serious eyes. “All this you’re doing, all that you’re risking, it won’t bring me back, kaikuahine,” Hawaiian for sister. He’d traveled too, but always back to the islands as I always tended to return to the desert. “But I think . . .” He leaned and held out his hand. I did the same and our fingers just brushed. “I think we’ll see each other again. And if we do, I hope my lazy ass doesn’t keep you waiting too long while I’m off wandering. Have a mai tai until I show up.”
No one can lie to you like your own mind can. I woke up, dry-eyed in a way that was beyond pain. I wanted to think I’d see my brother again, but I didn’t know. I did know Heaven or Hell wasn’t for the likes of me. The Buddha-loving Wilbur and I had that in common. Where did my kind go? The free spirits, the wanderers, the gypsies at heart? We turn our backs on Heaven, refuse Hell—and occasionally kick demon ass while we do it. There was a place for us—I did know that—but whether I deserved the same eternity as my brother, I wasn’t as sure.
I heard a pounding on the floor, Leo slamming his fist on the ceiling below. “Trixa, get your ass down here!”
Leo was not in a good mood. It would have been “your beautiful ass” or “your gorgeous ass” if he had been. I sighed, rolled over, and checked the alarm clock. It was just past eight p.m. Considering the day I’d had, I felt I deserved to sleep around the clock, but that particular timbre of pounding meant something was up. And by the time I made it downstairs, that something was up all right, in full force.
Zeke.
Zeke and Griffin, to be more specific, but Zeke was the one making all the trouble, as usual. It was his gift. He was still drugged as he’d been in Eden House’s minihospital, but he was conscious this time. In a way. Griffin was holding him up—Griffin and the hair of a customer with his face smashed against his small table. “Tip . . . your . . . server,” Zeke slurred. Lank strands of his hair fell over a completely bloodless face and the green of his eyes was almost completely obscured by the huge black of his pupils. He was dressed in hospital scrubs and sneakers, no socks.
“You were going to tip Leo but good, weren’t you, sir?” I managed to pry Zeke’s fingers from the unfortunate cheap bastard’s hair. A small trail of blood crept down from the man’s right nostril to pool onto his upper lip.
“Tip. Yeah, tip. Was about to do that.” He wiped at the smear of red, left a wad of bills for Leo on the table, and bolted for the door.
“What the hell?” I helped Griffin ease Zeke into the just-vacated chair. Barely in time, too. His legs melted like butter and he collapsed into the wooden framework without a single moan. Yes, very, very good drugs. You couldn’t look as transparently pale as he did, with Tim Burtonesque charcoal smudges under his eyes, without being host to a shitload of pain. I hoped Griffin had brought some of those excellent painkillers with him, because Zeke was going to need them for a few more days at least. “I’ve heard of bad doctors, Griff, but not even a chiropractor with an online degree would’ve let Zeke out of bed, much less into a slightly less than sterile bar.”
“Eden House kicked us out. Trinity said we’re tainted by our association with you and painted as liars for keeping your demon hunting a secret.” His fine suit jacket rumpled beyond repair, he crouched beside Zeke to keep him upright in the chair. His eyes looked up at me with perfect candor layered like frosting over the perfect lie. He didn’t bother to give me a little empathic jolt. I’d read him like a book when he was a kid, and I’d only gotten better at it over the years. He knew I’d grasped the real reason right away.
Eden House had sent two spies to keep an eye on me, sent their two best men. The trouble for Mr. Trinity was I’d gotten hold of those men . . . boys then . . . first. I had fed them and sheltered them and I hadn’t used them in the meantime. Trinity couldn’t say the same. Now in return for his emotionless employment, lies, and icy coldness, he had two double agents. They simply were double agents for me.
I touched blond hair as mussed as I’d ever seen it. Griffin was riding a thin line. Being betrayed by his employers, his partner injured, more or less at a loss as to what was really going on, he had had a hard day. Knowing I’d gotten what he’d been trying to tell me, he turned a haggard face toward Zeke . . . a thin face. Leo and I had eaten at Eden House, but I didn’t recall Griffin doing so. “Come on.” I motioned Leo over. “We’ll get Zeke up to my bed and get you both some food.”
Leo and I took Zeke’s weight from Griffin—probably the first time that had happened in days, physically or emotionally. We basically carried him up the stairs. His legs made uncoordinated motions that were more unhelpful than anything, but he did make an effort. Griffin followed us. By the time we reached the bed, Zeke’s jaws had begun to tighten and he was shaking in our grip. We got him under the covers while Griffin went to the bathroom for a glass of water to go with the two pills he’d fished from the amber bottle in his pocket.
By the time I returned upstairs barely fifteen minutes later with food, Zeke was out, his profile marble pale against the deep red of my sheets. The bedspread was pulled up to his chest and his right hand was curled upright against the fiery colors . . . still as stone. His chest moving was the only thing that let me know he was breathing. Beside him, on top of the covers, Griffin was out too, as deeply unconscious without the drugs. I wasn’t surprised. Who knew the last time he’d slept. Before Zeke had been sliced to pieces, I was sure. I left the food, meat loaf and mashed potatoes from the deli down the street, on the bedside table. Ear-length, light blond hair covered Griffin’s closed eyes, and there were deep brackets besides his mouth. Poor damn guy. I covered him up with an extra blanket.