“Money, lives, and blood no object?” The grunt became a question. “And I learnt me some lettering. If it makes money, I learn.”
“Good for you, and price no object? Who do you think you’re talking to? Who got you the Trojan horse while Troy fell? And it was on fire at the time. If my business wasn’t serious, I’d take it to Walmart.” He lifted a shoe off the damp black-green fungus creeping across the floor and the rivulets of sewer water that seeped into anything belowground in the city. “At least they mop at Walmart. I’ve heard people say so.”
“Lemme look, guvnor.” That he mixed with a grunt and grumble to keep his vocal cords in the game. He swept jewelry, silver and gold teeth, metallic nuggets—all that was shiny and covered the threadbare black velvet into a large Tupperware bin. Robin didn’t go to Walmart, but this guy did. Putting them away, he then pulled out and slammed down a book as thick as a NYC phone book but wider, bigger, and the cover was definitely made of tanned, dark brown human skin. It was the frigging Necronomicon, and if it wasn’t, it should’ve been. “I’ve expanded me business.” Dodger chortled slyly. “On my way to being a right proper gentleman now, I am. I am. Rich I’ll be, sitting up in some fancy roost like you.”
Goodfellow groaned. “Don’t start that again. Not that accent. If you can’t do it correctly, don’t do it at all. I cut your tongue out once. Don’t make me do it again.”
Cut it out, huh? It’d grown back nice, though, hadn’t it? Which meant…
The guy was short, had to be six inches under five feet, and he looked odd, as if the face of a ten- or twelve-year-old boy had aged while the rest of him, including his child-size hands, didn’t grow. He had a face that would substitute for a prune, mud brown hair cut in a bowl cut, and eyes that matched the mud of his hair. He looked human, but I’d bet Kalakos’s left nut, right one too, that he wasn’t. Down here Niko and the gypsy were the only humans walking around. As for me, there was no dual citizenship in monster–human land.
I leaned a few inches closer for a whiff to get a trace of what he really was. I narrowed my eyes. All I was getting was human, every last cell. I tried elsewhere, the last refuge of a human on the outside but a paien on the inside, their minds—that was always the difference. It took but one cell to get you in the club, and where better to hide it? And from the faintest trace I detected, it was one cell. One damn cell to have him crossing the line. That was a trick.
And developed into a bigger one than I thought, as Dodger was giving me the same once-over.
“Monster.”
This time I wasn’t the one saying it. Dodger was. He said it to me as he grew two feet taller, his arms became wings, his head narrowed, his mouth became a beak, and black feathers covered him. The irises of his now round eyes were a white full-moon shine. They made his feathers appear blacker. The night and the moon, as one.
“Monster,” he croaked. “Auphe!”
No one else had heard the “Auphe” over the loud bickering of the customers as Niko wrapped his hand around the beak, shutting it tightly. The wings flapped desperately as Robin did his best to calm him down. As he did, Niko said, “The Artful Dodger from Dickens. His real name in the book was Jack Dawkins. Jackdaw. A jackdaw is one of the known tricksters. Very clever. I wonder who fooled who? Did Dickens fool his readers or did Jackdaw fool Dickens?”
“He’s very…free…with his knowledge,” Kalakos said, eyes fixed on Jackdaw, but the comment was meant for Niko.
“And you just noticed?” I asked wryly.
Goodfellow wasn’t having any luck with the convincing or restraining until he snapped, “He is what he is. Do you want to annoy him enough that he tells us to let you go for him to handle your squawking death wish?”
I pulled out the Glock and slapped it down on the book. “I’ve never seen a trickster turn into a bird before, but Thanksgiving is only a few months away. I’ll bet you wouldn’t taste that different from turkey.” Then I picked up the gun and aimed it at one MoonPie eye, the muzzle a half an inch or less away. “So shut the fuck up, as plucking feathers all day from your dead ass isn’t my idea of a good time.”
Jackdaw stayed a bird, one that bowed his head to hide his eyes and the tears dripping from them. I didn’t know birds could cry. “This is what I am,” I said flatly to Kalakos. “Whether I try to back down from the paien’s insults and attacks or I am this, I am always treated the same once they know. Terror or attempted slaughter. I learned that a long time ago.”
Kalakos watched as Dodger rapidly turned the pages of the book. “How long since you were able to try to back down?”
“Sixteen. The day I escaped the Auphe.” The two years of captivity I didn’t know. I didn’t remember if I’d backed down or fought. I did know one thing: I might have backed down in the beginning, but I must have learned to fight. Or I wouldn’t have made it back with teeth coated in black Auphe blood.
The pages of Dodger’s book were flying faster and faster. It was a good indication that this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be a part of and as soon as he was rid of us the happier he’d be. “Humans only notice once in a while that I’m not…right. But I don’t live in a human world anymore. It wouldn’t be safe for them. Eventually…” I shrugged.
“Everything is not eventual,” Niko refuted sharply.
“But eventually everything is,” Kalakos said. It wasn’t a counter to Niko. It was as if he were saying it to himself.
“There is nothing. There is no Janus.” The crappy cockney accent had disappeared and the voice was that of a bird, a harsh caw, but an improvement. “I am sorry. I am sorry. Please. Please.” The tears had slowed but not stopped. He’d been about to scream my identity to every monster in the place, and I recognized crocodile tears whether they came out of the eyes of a bird or not.
Sometimes I took off my mask and showed who I was, could be, would be.
There were times it was necessary…like with a giant screeching tattletale of a blackbird.
There were times it was purely instinctual.
And there were times I enjoyed it.
“Dodger.” I leaned closer and picked up a fallen black feather, ran my finger along it. “I’ve been looking into goose-down mattresses. Good for insomnia. But expensive as hell.” I considered him before smiling—a sociopathic shopper finding a bargain. “But you…you’d be free. And better than cable when I have you pluck your own feathers out one by one”—I let the one I was holding drift away—“…by one.”
Dodger dived his beak back into the book, turned a few more pages, and then: “Here. It says here. There are commands or spells or phrases, but none specific in a way they can be written down for the sake of history. They are…” He peered at the word, puzzled, as a last fake tear fell from the end of his beak. “Mutable? Indefinable? Erratic?” He hunched. “I am sorry, Lord Auphe. That is the best I can decipher.”
Lord Auphe. Now I did feel like shit, crocodile tears or not. He was afraid; I knew it was true. The tears were an act; the fear wasn’t. Almost everyone who knew the truth was afraid. I grabbed Robin’s wrist and took off his five-trillion-dollar watch, shiny and gleaming as they came, and tossed it on the book. “Sell it. Buy Mrs. Jackdaw something nice. And keep your mouth shut until we’re gone or a jackdaw mattress won’t have a chance to hock anything.”
As I was turning to leave, with Goodfellow bitching and snarling about his watch before demanding the location of other book stalls with more helpful information, I saw it, a black blot overhead. Bad things come from beneath, beside, and overhead. I didn’t skip a location and hadn’t since I was fourteen.