“Fine. I was a demon then. I was a murderer, a soul eater, a hell-spawn,” he said bitterly, keeping his voice low so as not to wake our napping ex-angel. The last thing he wanted Zeke doing was worrying about his partner’s mental health. Zeke’s security in his own mental health wasn’t that high.
“No. You are not a demon and you weren’t a demon. Glasya-Labolas is dead. You killed him and you killed every horrific deed he ever did. You’re Griffin Reese. You were born at the age of ten with a few false memories of parents who abandoned you and you were born human. A human with extra empathy, but lots of humans are born that way. They made you all human, or an angel would’ve known. Just as they made Zeke all human, or a demon would’ve known. Only a trickster like me or a god like Leo had known. Switching your body whenever you cared to taught you to see when a change had been made in others. The low can’t recognize the high-level, but a high-level can recognize any angel or demon of equal or lower rank.” I rested my hand on his tense leg. “You were and are human. Because you chose to be,” I finished quietly. “Then when Solomon pushed the demon back into you in the cave, you still chose to be human, you still chose to be a man, and you still chose to be good. And if that’s not the greatest accomplishment since the world appeared out of the darkness, I don’t know what is.”
I squeezed his leg and let go with a pat. “I don’t know that I could’ve done it. I honestly don’t. To give up all that power, to become something a demon has nothing but contempt for?”
“But you did.” His fingers relaxed on the steering wheel. “Not the contempt, but you gave up your power for your brother. Not for as long maybe, but you gave it up. Sometimes there are things . . . people worth giving it up for.” He automatically turned his head to check on a still-sleeping Zeke.
“Big spoon or little spoon?” I asked coyly.
“Oh, shut up,” he shot back, but not as crossly as I’d expected, and when I put in the cassette,of the Eighties’ Greatest Hits, the best the floor had to offer, he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel along in time with “Duran Duran . . . Yes, Duran Duran.” Those were the days. They all were the days.
“An old Sicilian proverb says, ‘Only the spoon knows what is stirring in the pot,’ ” I said with a grin. “So what’s cooking?”
“On-the-bench trickster or annoyed peri with a Lou isville Slugger, who ranks there?” He gave his lips a none-of-your-business quirk as he patted the bat leaning against his door.
“Truthfully, I don’t know.” I smiled and leaned my seat back farther, ready to join Zeke in a nap. “Who could say?”
Me.
I could say.
On the bench or not. Griffin’s memories—or those of the demon Glasya—were gone because the demon was gone. But my memories? I still had them. Six thousand years of doing bad things to very bad people. Not to mention some of the best tricksters in the world couldn’t change shape. . . . In fact there is one race of tricksters who all have the same shape—clones of one another. One of them had actually ruled Greece for a while, although most were car salesmen now. I’d be damned if I let a puck like Robin Goodfellow think he was better than I was. Eli didn’t stand a chance.
I waited almost ten minutes before I said it:
“You’re the little spoon, aren’t you?”
Chapter 17
It was good to be home, and I didn’t feel the need to bite my tongue at the word. Incredible. Home. I looked around the bar. Same stained floor. Same pool table and dartboard. Same beat-up tables and chairs. Despite myself, I was fond of it. Oh hell, I loved it. It beat Ramses II’s palace hands down. Forget gold, carnelian, or lapis lazuli; this was better. This was home, the first one I’d ever known and the first one I’d ever wanted. It wasn’t the dirty word I’d always thought it. I think Kimano had figured that out before he died, as much time as he spent in Hawaii. Not a fighter, not close to being a halfway good trickster, but he’d been smart in a way I hadn’t. He’d known what a home could do for you—what it could be—when I hadn’t had a clue.
“You’ll be all right?”
I looked over my shoulder at Griffin. “More than all right. Go home, boys. You’ll get to sleep in your own beds tonight. No sharing and no napping in bathtubs.” I was a good little trickster and didn’t say any more, although I did measure them with my eyes. Yes, Zeke was definitely an inch or two taller. Big spoon all the way.
Griffin walked over to the bar, took a bottle of whiskey, and said in explanation, “It’s been one hell of a week. Put it on my tab, would you?”
“As if your money’s any good here.” I waved him off.
“Your money would’ve been good replacing my ostrich skin jacket you ruined,” he grumbled halfheart edly, but nodded and disappeared out the front door.
Then there was Zeke. He stood there, looking the same as he’d always been. But could he be? Finding out he’d been an angel, and that’s what had made his human brain different from others, not a drug-addicted mother. Discovering his partner and best friend had been a demon—the one thing he lived and breathed to kill, his one and only purpose. Learning the head of his House was a traitor in Hell’s pocket. Seeing that his friend/surrogate big sister wasn’t human and had been involved in some elaborate plot of revenge and espionage for more than fifty years—what was he thinking? Behind those placid eyes and blank face, how did all of that impact on someone like him?
“He really liked that jacket,” he said disapprovingly.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Of all of us, I thought Zeke might have the healthiest outlook on this whole situation, whether he believed it or not. I hugged him hard. “I think it’s your turn to take care of Griffin. He has a lot to brood about. Don’t let him think he’s any different now than he was yesterday. He’s not. He’s a good, good man.”
“The best.” The placid bottle-glass green went fierce. “The best in the whole goddamn world.”
“Make sure he knows it.” I let go and nudged him toward the door. “And I’ll have you know a B cup is the perfect size. Dick.”
He waffled his hand back and forth. “Eh, but the ass. Now that . . .” I pushed him through the door and slammed it after him before I was forced to hear the rest. I wasn’t in the mood for any more violence this soon.
The quiet left behind was perfect. As was my bubble bath, toes with nails painted bronze peering from mountains of pink foam, followed by my silk pajamas, my own bed, my overstuffed pillows. I turned on my side and let my eyes drift over the piece of amber resting on my bedside table. It glinted faintly in the streetlamp’s light that came through the half-open blinds. I couldn’t see the imprisoned spider clearly. It was only a shadow. “You’re not trapped,” I murmured. “You’re just taking a break. Resting.” Long dead, it probably didn’t care. “Anyway, get used to it.” Because I had. I felt for the shotgun, closed my eyes, and slept.
In the morning I woke up and Leo was there.
Not right there. Not sitting on the bed or looming like a window-peeping pervert. But he was back. I knew the way I always knew—it was the way I couldn’t tell Griffin when he’d thought Leo had been kidnapped by Eli. Tricksters always know other tricksters. We usually know all other supernatural creatures. Païens. Not always, but the majority of the time. Some you don’t know until you’re face-to-face, assuming they look human. If they don’t look human, you obviously don’t need any special sense to recognize them. Some païens you could feel a block away. Those were usually the ones you didn’t want to see face-to-face like the others. No chatting with them or passing on gossip if you were in the boonies far from a cluster of other païens.