“But effective?” he smiled.
We didn’t talk about the Light as I’d expected. We didn’t talk about anything else at all. We sat and stared at each other before he kissed my wrist and let me go. I went. I hesitated at the table and I looked back at him halfway across the room, but I went. As I took my last look at the strong planes of his face years familiar now, I thought. . . .
Solomon, what am I going to do with you?
It was a good thing that I flew the “Slayer Not Layer” flag, because when I did get home, my bed wasn’t empty. There wasn’t room for Solomon. There wasn’t room for me either.
Zeke was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, unloading and reloading his gun. I blinked. No, he was really there. He and Griffin had gone back to their house earlier. They had a dingy box of a house in a concrete alley in a neighborhood over by Lake Mead in North Vegas. It was a perfect choice for them—a part of town so bad that an occasional gunshot from a demon attack wouldn’t be investigated by their neighbors or the police.
I was sure Griffin would’ve preferred something more like the District at Green Valley where expensive condos were located over the top of expensive stores, all painted a rainbow of pastel colors that reminded me of the houses known as Painted Ladies in Charleston, South Carolina. Gracious Southern living brought to the West. Griffin did like the finer things in life, the things he’d never had as a foster kid. But personally I felt my brain twitch at the thought of shotgun-toting Zeke living above a Pottery Barn or a Williams-Sonoma.
The outside of their current shack might have been for work, but the inside was the dream bachelor retreat. Huge flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, surround sound, slate floor, leather couch and chairs, spartan glass and bamboo wood kitchen, all in desert colors. Griffin had gone all out, although the TV was probably Zeke’s baby. If Griffin couldn’t live where he wanted location wise, he’d make the inside up to his standards. Then it had been a simple matter of Zeke using his telepathy to pick out the dealers and thieves in the neighborhood, knock on their door, and stick a shotgun muzzle in their face with a matter-of-fact, “Do not fuck with our house. Do not fuck with our car. Do not fuck with the blond guy.” Thanks in advance for your cooperation and lack of future bloodstains on our driveway. I doubted he’d actually added the last sentence. Politeness wasn’t one of Zeke’s strong points. I also knew Griffin didn’t need Zeke acting as his bodyguard. He was as deadly a fighter in his own right. He didn’t need babysitting.
I looked at him now on my bed, and thought to myself that it could be there was an exception to that. They must’ve come up the back stairs sometime in the last few hours. “You’d better not get gun oil on my bedspread,” I warned Zeke.
He didn’t look up. He’d heard me come up the stairs and open the door. Probably heard me breathing. Zeke was uncanny that way. So was Griffin. Eden House training or natural talent? I was betting on the latter. “Griffin is sleeping,” he said unnecessarily.
And he was, as I’d noticed. In my bed like Goldilocks. I’d seen he was lying beside Zeke when I’d walked into my bedroom, but I hadn’t really wanted to notice or see, so I’d managed to push it to the back of my mind. The bathtub, believe it or not, was not a comfortable place to spend the night and I was seeing that in my future again. “I see that. And why aren’t you both asleep at home in your own place?”
“Because all he does is sleep. I had to drag him here.” Zeke finished with the gun and holstered it. “He won’t eat. He won’t get up. He just sleeps. And if he just sleeps, he’s not there to help me know what to do. He’s not there to talk to me. He’s”—his light eyes darkened with the slightest edge of panic—“not there.”
I sat on the other side of him, although there wasn’t much room. I wrapped an arm around his shoulder. It was a lot like embracing a cactus. He only allowed Griffin to touch him without tensing up, at least while conscious. But I gave him a few minutes and he relaxed minutely under my touch. “You were out of it for two days. The drugs knocked you out, but the pain was still there. Not to mention the worry. Griffin didn’t know if you’d make it. The doctors said yes and there was a good chance, but things happen. Griffin has been with you . . . what? Since he was ten and you were eight? That must feel like his whole life that he’s looked after you. He felt like he failed you when the demons took you down; he felt all your pain even when you were out. If he slept for a week, I wouldn’t be surprised. His body is exhausted and so is his mind. Whisper didn’t heal him like she did you.”
He was silent for a moment, then asked belligerently, “Why not?”
“Because healing bodies is simple for a healer, but healing minds isn’t. At least that’s what a healing friend of mine said a long time ago. It’s just the way things are.” I smoothed his hair and tugged at the short copper ponytail. “You want to stay here tonight?” I asked.
His eyes moved over to Griffin and he laid a hand on the slowly rising and falling back. “I want . . .” He stopped and started over, more honestly. “I need help to watch him. If the demons come, he won’t be ready. Not as ready as he needs to be. I have to protect him.”
Like he protects you. I understood perfectly. “Okay. No problem.” I waited for him to offer to sleep in the tub since Leo was still sleeping on the couch downstairs. And I kept waiting. Finally, I said, “How about I sleep with Griffin and you take the tub and some blankets.”
“No.” He went for one of his knives this time, one from an ankle holster, and began polishing it—with my bedspread. My expensive, well-loved bedspread.
“Zeke . . .”
“No.” This time he scowled. “He’s my partner. I’ll guard him. Understand?”
Indeed I did. More than he himself, I thought. I looked at the tub and grumbled under my breath. I really was too softhearted for my own good . . . no matter how many demons I’d killed. I grabbed blankets, enough for a thick pseudomattress and one to cover me. I also took a pillow and climbed in. It was a huge, roomy tub, but it still wasn’t a bed. “You owe me, you know?” I told Zeke over the edge before pulling the curtain and changing into pajamas.
“I know,” he answered without emotion. “I owe you everything I have in my life. I won’t ever forget that.”
“But I still can’t sleep with Griffin?” I groused, as I tried to find a comfortable position.
“No.” This time he sounded faintly amused. I pushed the curtain back and peered over the porcelain edge just in time to see the small smile disappear.
Sneaky dog. I curled up in the fetal position, felt for the gun under my pillow, and dozed off. Whether Zeke slept at all I wasn’t sure, but when I woke up in the morning he was in the same position and this time cleaning my weapons. At least he wasn’t using my bedspread this round. It was an improvement. I don’t, as a rule, get attached to things. That was the way of the traveler, but I’d been in Vegas longer than I’d been anywhere else. Things started to creep in. Bedspreads. Whimsically carved beds. A large hunk of amber encasing a trapped spider from long ago. That was actually to remind me. I might be in a cage now, one of my own making, but I’d get out eventually, when I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to do. Then again, the amber was a particularly fine orange-gold. Like being cradled by the sun—comfortable and warm. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to stick around a place for a while. Oh, hell, what was I thinking?
I’d been here ten years. That was a record for my family. Apparently it was taking a toll on my sanity, along with everything else that was going on. I was a wanderer, born and bred. I had to give it up temporarily for the Light and for Kimano, but I’d wander again. It was my nature, and natures don’t change. Hair color, breast size, houses, cars, schools, and jobs—all of it changed. Every second of every day there was change, but never the spots. You were born with spots and you died with the exact same ones.