Part 13 (1/2)

We didn't wait to see his response. Our own had been enough. We entered Niko's bedroom and closed the door behind us. ”s...o...b..ll.” I bared teeth in the nastiest sort of grin. ”I hear you're feeling better.”

Better, maybe, but he wasn't completely healed, not yet. The slashes that had run from chest to navel were brutally ugly and red, but they had mostly closed. A few more days and they'd be s.h.i.+ny pink scar tissue. The gla.s.siness had faded from his eyes, leaving them alert if not precisely sharp. There was still a wheeze to his breathing from a damaged lung. That might take more than a few days to heal, maybe a week, but it would. Wolves were tough b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. You let one crawl away from a fight and chances were it would keep crawling.

Flay's red pink eyes glared at us and the muzzle wrinkled to show a few teeth of his own. Still in wolf form, he yanked at the sheet with shredding claws. ”Hungry.” The throat spasmed with effort. ”Hungry.”

”Really?” I sat on the edge of the bed and patted my stomach in consideration. ”Whatta ya know? Me too. And you know what they say about Auphe.” I leaned close until my nose was a bare inch from his neck and inhaled. ”We'll eat anything.” I hated the Auphe, loathed that they were a part of me. That didn't mean I was above using them when I had to. Why not? They'd done their level, h.e.l.lish best to use me.

A hand landed on my shoulder and pulled me back. ”You'll get indigestion,” Niko said with reproof. ”If not a hair ball.” The blade of his sword flashed past me to land edge first on Flay's stomach. It balanced with the utmost serenity, needing but one really deep breath from the wolf to slice open his abdomen. ”We talked earlier, you and I,” my brother noted almost idly. ”But I wonder if perhaps you didn't put your all into that conversation. Now, with Caleb less than pleased with your efforts, you might be able to search your mind.” Several split white hairs floated upward. ”Truly rack it. It certainly wouldn't hurt you to get on our good side.”

”And it might even keep you alive,” I added darkly. I didn't mean it, of course, but I could lie with the best of them. A lifetime of being on the run is good training in deceit.

”Begin with why you led Caleb to believe the crown would be so difficult to locate in Cerberus's organization. It took us barely days.” Niko made a good point. It hadn't been exactly a Herculean endeavor.

Flay looked down at the line of silver crossing his stomach before letting loose with a resigned growl. ”I knew. I... saw it... was for her. Vain wh.o.r.e. But knew... couldn't-” The jaws worked painfully. ”Could steal, but... couldn't get away. Also wanted...” This time the jaws worked in a different way, into a hateful grin. ”Cerberus dead. Wanted him dead. Couldn't do. Not by self.”

I felt a grudging respect for the wolf. He'd pretended to Caleb to be less than he was. Less intelligent. Less cunning. In actuality, he was pretty d.a.m.n smart. After all, who had ended up taking the up-front risk? Not Flay. He had made his move only when Cerberus had been distracted trying to kill me. First in his puppy cla.s.s after all.

”Clever.” The curl of Niko's upper lip lent a different flavor to the word. He said it in the way you might compliment a cannibal on his willingness to experiment outside a burgers-and-fries diet. We may have lived in deceit, but not once had my brother ever embraced it. He did what he had to do, but I didn't doubt that it chafed at his sense of honor. ”Tell us how you met Caleb.”

”At Moons.h.i.+ne.” Ears flattened to his skull. ”Never seen him... there before. He talked. Wanted me on inside. Wanted spy. Offered money.” There was drool on his muzzle. It was the kind you saw on a dog when it stumbled onto something that tasted bad. Apparently Caleb's offer hadn't gone too well. ”Wanted to. Hated Cerberus. Stick it to him-what not good? But... afraid. Hated him, but afraid. Know my limits. Know my worth.” From the way he spit the word, obviously he found it lacking in himself. ”Turned him down.”

”And what changed your mind, a.s.shole?” I asked with disdain. ”Figure out your little plan of having someone else do the dirty work for you? Or did he up the price?”

His eyes bored into mine, so foreign, yet they held an emotion so common to every living, thinking creature that it floored me. ”You.” He coughed and it wasn't from the tattered lung. His hands tore the sheet over him, ripping it to forlorn streamers. The next sentence he said with the utmost care. It was the first nearly complete and whole one I'd heard from him even as he struggling to produce every word with all the clarity he could muster. ”You aren't only one with a George.”

Slow, odd sounding, and it clearly hurt his non-human mouth, but it resounded with truth. I didn't bother to ask how he knew about what George was to me. He would've smelled her on me at our first meeting. What I did bother with was what he had said... and what it meant.

”Oh, s.h.i.+t.” The room seemed to shrink in size, the air becoming thick and stifling. I'm not sure what I would've said if I'd had the opportunity, but at that moment the phone rang. Robin must have finished his call, and five seconds later he appeared with the receiver in his hand. ”It's Caleb,” he announced with white-lipped anger. ”He wants to talk to you.”

Why me over Niko I wasn't sure, but I accepted the phone with all the enthusiasm I would've shown if he'd handed me a piranha who'd just scented blood. ”Motherf.u.c.ker,” I said flatly in greeting. Not precisely phone etiquette 101, but it was the most I could manage.

”And a pleasant morning to you as well, Caliban.” Caleb's smooth, placid voice hit my ear. ”Are you enjoying a relaxing break after your abject failure?”

I wondered if Flay had filled him in, but then dismissed the thought immediately. Flay had been on the verge of dying as he'd dragged himself after us. It was highly unlikely he'd been capable of stopping to make a report-even with a life depending on him just as George's depended on us. Making a split-second decision I was probably going to regret, I covered for the fur ball, saying harshly, ”Did that son of a b.i.t.c.h Flay fill you in? I could've swore we left his a.s.s dead on the roof.”

”Ah, that would be telling.” The mocking lilt deserted his voice abruptly. ”You lost it, you miserable Auphe. You lost the crown and now I'm betting you're quite curious to know what else you're going to lose.”

”We'll get it back.” I could barely hear myself through the sudden ringing in my ears. ”Give us a week and we'll get it back. Seven days, that's all.”

”You sound so sincere,” he said with a hideous parody of reluctant doubt. ”But I have to question your work ethic. Now, how can we provide an incentive you can't close your eyes to?”

”Don't.” One word, just one, but it was all I could get out.

”Come, now, you can't tell me you don't want proof that that precious girl is still alive. My little present didn't prove that, did it? It only proved I have a pair of scissors.” It was said with a patient tone-a long-suffering accountant explaining for the tenth time why a deduction was so questionable. ”How would you like your proof? I pride myself on being an accommodating business partner.”

”We'll get it, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. We'll get it. Don't hurt her.” Me... who'd never begged. Not to an Auphe, not to any monster. But I was begging now. Raw, rage filled, but begging.

”You have your week,” Caleb said with the brisk efficiency of a true businessman. ”I would say goodbye, but I believe I'll let someone do it for me.”

Seconds later, the phone fell from my hand to thud onto the carpet. I watched it tumble with a distant gaze. ”We have seven days,” I said remotely.

”What happened?” Goodfellow demanded. ”Did you speak with Georgina?” Niko said nothing at all; neither did Flay, whose exceptionally sharp ears had flattened to his head. They knew... both of them.

”Seven days,” I repeated, and then I turned and walked away.

”Not your fault.”

He hadn't made her cry. Couldn't make her cry. It would've gone easier for her if she had just given him what he wanted.

”Not your fault.”

An exoneration... absolution. And yet it didn't make hearing the sound of the thudding blow and the switchblade snicking to life any more bearable. Funny how that worked.

I walked through the apartment and on out. No mirrors to be found. We'd made sure of that. But the lobby had one. It hung over a cheap table with an even cheaper vase host to plastic flowers. Small and oval-a silver window that had once nearly ended my soul and had ended my life. Briefly. Since then mirrors had been a phobia that ruled by mundane details. Looking away from my reflection in plate-gla.s.s windows. Averting my eyes from every mirror in every public place. But now I was ready to look. I needed to look... needed to see. With my back to it, I took a breath that filled my chest to the aching point. And then I turned. You'd think I'd expect to see a monster, a long-dead one or maybe a brand-new one with an intimately familiar face. I didn't, though, and I hadn't expected to at all. In the end, I saw exactly what I'd suspected I would.

There was nothing there...

Nothing at all.

Not even me.

Chapter 16.

She was just a girl, Georgina King.

Granted, she was a girl in trouble, but that didn't change who she was. A girl who was nothing special to me. Yeah, I'd do my best to help her, like the others would. Give my life to save hers-because it was the right thing to do. She was an innocent... I was not. It was a fair trade. But George? George herself?

George was only a girl I knew.

Too bad I hadn't figured that out sooner. It would've saved me a lot of melodramatic brooding. And Goodfellow would be the first to say I didn't need any extra encouragement there.

Just a girl... it was the only way I could survive.

”You're cleaning your gun.”

I rolled my eyes upward to see Niko gazing down at me with an overly bland expression. I recognized the look. He was perturbed by something. ”You made it clear that my a.s.s was lazing in that department.”

”I did,” he admitted, brow furrowing lightly. ”But since when do you actually listen to me?”

I turned back to the task at hand. Cleaning the barrel with the rod and a solvent-soaked patch, I said seriously, ”I always listen, Cyrano. I'd be d.a.m.n stupid not to.”

He considered that for a moment and sat at the table with me. ”It worries me to no end that you're actually admitting that.” When I responded with only an absent nod, he moved on. ”Where did you go earlier? After the call?” He paused. ”Can you tell me?”

”Sure.” I finished with the barrel and began to oil the disa.s.sembled parts. ”I went downstairs to the lobby.”

He picked up on the implications of that with lightning speed. ”The mirror.”